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ate is their very own. Each one of these texts creates its own space, a corner, which belongs to them by a right they themselves created. Within the political framework we have discussed, two spatial dimensions exist which need to be stressed: the body and topological space. With regard to the first, it must be said that rather than a mere abandoned object in space, the body must be seen as part of an equation of relationships, including in relation to space itself. There is a reason why these authors opt for marked graphic and stylistic approaches disconnected from an attempt at “illusion”, one moment naturalistic and the next simplified. They do not want, by creating the illusion of a crystalline representation, to “extinguish” the drawing in order to see “the diegetic world”. Whether via the various possibilities of ultra-stylisation (Diniz, Sica, Kitagawa) or the figurative approaches which seek a naturalism but one intersected by graphic noise and dirt (Gerlach, Franz, D’Salete), they all seek
manages life, and the capitalist society we live in increasingly controls every dimension of it. Bodies are not just ever more regimented by their gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, class, age, cultural level, health and disability, standards of beauty, but controllable by systems of housing, food, health, etc., creating something akin to specific “corridors” in the social space of human existence. There are fewer and fewer spaces outside this realm and it is in these corners where the dissonant voices reside, which express themselves through different channels, or conventional ones (such as comics) but in a different way. And the choice of freedoms may involve strange acts of self-inflicted violence: Sica’s characters become objects and spaces; the drugs taken by Franz’s attain a somewhat distinct level of existence; Kitagawa and Gerlach’s abandon themselves to acts of melodramatic violence; Diniz’s seek alternative life spaces or a different relationship with the established powers (police ver-
ways to attract particular attention to the materiality and textuality of their comics, that is, the “corporality” of their object-texts, as we shall see in each case. As far as topological space is concerned, the fact that this group of authors lives in vast metropolises and creates narratives which mostly take place within them means it is inevitable that urban landscapes should play a major role in transforming their characters. In some cases, the authors seek to make the bodies of the characters an integral part of these backgrounds: the way in which the angles and patterns (of the hair and clothes) of Diniz’s characters are reflected in the forms of the surrounding spaces; the way in which D’Salete or Kitagawa’s characters seem at times to vanish into the dark shadows of the corners of streets and buildings; the absurd movements of the people inhabiting Sica’s comic strips, who seek to mix or conceal themselves physically in the spaces; and the dérive or flâneur wanderings of Franz’s “street urchins” and Gerlach’s “heroes”. The side of the cities portrayed by these authors is the most down on its luck, those neighbourhoods which in Portugal would be called “problematic”, “marginal”, or “favelas”; those which, via these very words, gain an immediate moral and political significance which seems to prevent a greater or more intimate closeness due to the illusory familiarity with their reality that the words create. And the closeness is that people live there (in fact, in Morro da Favela this is explicitly stated by Hora, who wants “to show the whole world that there is life in this place too!”). If Marc Augé’s concept of “non-places” is essential in order to understand a certain degree of dehumanisation, of the evacuation of the signs of living from certain semi-urban environments, its careless use can lead precisely to the concealment of the experiences and existences which actually take place within them, and the stories by these authors re-place the onus on these lives (real, fictitious, absurd, etc.). Another perhaps productive concept is that of Paul Virilio’s “over-exposed city” (almost all of the artists explore the technological mediations which the urban space allow, either through photography, TV, digital media, the paradoxical solitariness their use also implies, etc.), which is curious to see in a genre (comics) which is “old” technology (drawings on printed paper) but distributed digitally (online sales, blogs, etc.). Power, according to Foucault (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, The Will to Knowledge), is characterised above all by the way in which it
sus traffickers). Even the ambiguity in D’Salete, the kind of inertia or nocturnal tedium which confines them, can be seen as a (micro-) form of resistance to the expectations created by the discipline and political technology of the system. Let us look at a few points related to these authors individually. André Diniz (b. Rio de Janeiro, 1975) is the author and illustrator of an entire series of independent fanzines and publications (Grandes Enigmas da Humanidade, Informal, Café espacial), illustrated books or books in comic format for young readers (História Mundial em Quadrinhos, História do Brasil em Quadrinhos, O negrinho do pastoreio, etc.), but for this exhibition we shall focus on Morro da Favela. Despite belonging to the same generation as the other authors, Diniz’s work is broader, more continuous and more successful, and it is the latter title which has generated most interest. Up to a point, this work could be described as “autobiographical”, though “loaned”, that is, in which Diniz “loans” himself as the voice and image of Maurício Hora, a photographer from Morro da Providência, a Rio favela. In fact, Morro da Favela can be regarded as one of those works “composed in collaboration” which Philippe Lejeune foresaw in the broad field of autobiographical projects, above all those which do not hide the “fabricated” dimension of their discourse (i.e. they are open about their subjective nature and accentuate their authenticity and “own voice”). In comics, the prime examples are Emmanuel Guibert’s best work, La guerre d’Alan, with Alan Cope, and Le photographe, with Didier Lefèvre. In each of them, a person recounts his own life in the first person, but the visual and structural layer is constructed by an artist who didn’t live the experience(s) first-hand. Morro da Favela does not complicate the temporality and activity of Hora’s experiences, since the ultimate purpose of this narrative is to turn the protagonist, and his interest in photography as a means of escaping a narrow set of career options (seen as “inevitable” for the inhabitants of the favela), into a lens, or even a camara oscura, which reveals the life of the neighbourhood. The typical unfulfilled promises by the powers that be, who consequently take no responsibility for the “problems” of that world and who confine it to a marginal existence are accentuated. However, it is precisely in the testimony of Maurício Hora and the people he photographs that