| Please note: All Saturday-Sunday programming will be
held at the MoCCA Gallery, 594 Broadway (Suite 401),
just below Houston.
The program for this year’s MoCCA Art Festival
features a rich mix of animators, cartoonists, graphic
artists, and writers. Our special guests include Jessica
Abel, Rebecca Donner, David Hajdu, David Heatley, Chip
Kidd, Alex Robinson, Frank Santoro, and Brian Wood. Saturday’s
program opens with author Blake Bell talking about his
new Steve Ditko biography, and closes with Dan Nadel
in conversation with Chris Forgues (“CF”),
whose comics, according to one critic, “exude the
ease of someone just now putting all the pieces together
to make for consistent great work.” Sunday’s
program opens with an illustrated history of radical
cartooning, by social movement cartoonist Nick Thorkelson,
and closes with a screening of new animated shorts from
Scandinavia.
The MoCCA Art Festival, now in its seventh year, is
an annual fundraiser for the Museum of Comic and Cartoon
Art (MoCCA). Each year the MoCCA Art Festival Award is
presented to a creative figure whose work has elevated
the cartoon arts. The Award was presented to Jules Feiffer
in 2002, and in subsequent years to Art Spiegelman (2003),
Roz Chast (2004), Neal Adams (2005), Gahan Wilson (2006),
and Alison Bechdel (2007).
This year’s Award recipient, Bill Plympton, is
an internationally renowned cartoonist, illustrator,
and animator. His cartoons have appeared in major newspapers
and magazines, from the Village Voice and the New
York Times, to Vogue, Rolling Stone,
and Vanity Fair. He is the author and/or illustrator
of numerous books and graphic novels, including Hair
High, Mutant Aliens, Tube Strips,
and The Sleazy Cartoons of Bill Plympton. He
is probably best known for his short and full-length
animated films, which include The Tune, I
Married a Strange Person, Guard Dog, and Idiots
and Angels, which premiered earlier this year. Bill
Plympton will be introduced by the animator Signe Baumane.
The 2008 program is being held in tandem with an event
at NYU that will take place the day before the Festival
officially opens, on Friday, June 6. Sponsored by the
New York Institute for the Humanities and MoCCA, “Post-Bang:
Comics Ten Minutes After the Big Bang!” features
roundtables and presentations on “key trends and
debates facing comics in this new, ‘post-bang’ environment.” The
day opens with a roundtable on “Comics and Canon
Formation” (11:15-12:30) and moves onto “Comics
and Kid’s Lit” (1:30-2:45), “Comics
and the Literary Establishment” (3:00-4:15) and “Comics
and the Internet” (5:30-6:45). The day closes with
Art Spiegelman and Gary Panter in conversation (7:00-8:00),
and Hillary Chute interviewing Lynda Barry (8:15-9:30). “Post-Bang:
Comics Ten Minutes After the Big Bang” will be
held at the Cantor Film Center at NYU, 36 East 8 Street.
For more information, visit nyih.as.nyu.edu/page/home or
click here.
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Saturday, June 7 |
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11 am - Noon
Blake Bell on The World of Steve Ditko
Blake Bell is a Toronto-based writer and the author
of Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve
Ditko, forthcoming from Fantagraphics. He
is also the author of I Have to Live With This
Guy! (TwoMorrows). |
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12:15 - 1:15 pm
David Hajdu on The Great Comic Book Scare
David Hajdu is the music critic for The New
Republic and the author of Lush Life:
A Biography of Billy Strayhorn and Positively
4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez,
Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña and
Richard Fariña. He will
be talking about his latest book, The Ten-Cent
Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How it
Changed America. |
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1:30 - 2:20 pm
MoCCA Art Festival Award Ceremony
This year’s recipient: Bill Plympton
Presenting the Award: Signe Baumane
The 2008 MoCCA Art Festival Award is being presented
to Bill Plympton, for his many contributions to
the fields of illustration, cartooning, and independent
animation. The Museum is delighted to honor the
work of one of the world’s foremost animators. |
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2:30 - 3:30 pm
Rebecca Donner and Brian Wood in conversation
Rebecca Donner’s essays have appeared in Bookforum, The
Believer, and People; she is the
author of the forthcoming graphic novel Burnout (Minx/DC).
Brian Wood is the creator of DMZ, as
well as Demo, The Tourist, Supermarket, Northlanders,
and The New York Four. |
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3:45 - 4:55 pm
Spotlight on Frank Santoro
Frank Santoro is the author and artist of Storeyville,
the prize-winning graphic novel that was originally
published in 1995 and recently reissued by PictureBox.
His latest book, Cold Heat, will
be published by PictureBox later this summer. |
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5:00 - 6:00 pm
Dan Nadel in conversation with CF
Christopher (CF) Forgues’s distinctive comics
have appeared in Kramer’s Ergot, Low
Tide, Paper Rodeo, Free Radicals, The
Best American Comics 2007, and elsewhere.
Dan Nadel is the author of Art Out of Time (Abrams)
and the editorial director of PictureBox. |
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Sunday, June 8 |
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11 am - Noon
Nick Thorkelson on the History of Radical Cartooning
Nick Thorkelson’s comics include The Underhanded
History of the USA (with Jim O’Brien), the “Econotoons” and “Comic
Strip of Neoliberalism” features in Dollars & Sense magazine,
and a regular series of editorial cartoons for The Boston
Globe. He got his start as a “movement cartoonist” illustrating
the ERAP Newsletter in the summer
of 1965. |
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12:10 - 1:10 pm
Alex Robinson and Mike Dawson in conversation
Alex Robinson is the author of Tricked, Alex Robinson’s Lower
Regions, Too Cool to be Forgotten, and Box
Office Poison. The French translation of Box
Office Poison received the Prix Du Premier
Album prize at Angoulême International Comics
Festival in 2005. Mike Dawson is the author of Freddie
and Me: A Coming-of-Age (Bohemian) Rhapsody (Bloomsbury).
He received the Ignatz Award in 2002. Alex Robinson
and Mike Dawson are members of the notorious Ink Panthers
comics collective. |
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1:20 - 2:20 pm
Chip Kidd on the Secret History of Batman in Japan
Chip Kidd is a novelist, essayist, and prominent graphic
designer. His latest book, Bat- Manga! The Secret
History of Batman in Japan is being published later
this year by Pantheon. |
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2:30 - 3:30 pm
Spotlight on David Heatley
David Heatley’s cartoons and illustrations have
appeared in The New York Times, The New
Yorker, The Best American Comics 2006, Kramer’s Ergot, McSweeney’s,
and Nickelodean Magazine. His latest book is My
Brain is Hanging Upside Down (Pantheon). |
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3:40 - 4:55 pm
Drawing Words and Writing Pictures: A Workshop
Matt Madden and Jessica Abel
Matt Madden and Jessica Abel are the coauthors of Drawing
Words and Writing Pictures: Making Comics from Manga
to Graphic Novels (FirstSecond), an important
new how-to book on creating comics. Matt Madden’s
books include Odds Off, Black Candy,
and 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises
in Style. Jessica Abel’s books include Soundtrack, Mirror/Window,
and La Perdida. |
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5:00 - 6:00 pm
Nordic Animation
For the second year in a row, we are pleased to present
short animated films from northern Europe. |
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