Goethe Institute

Respect Moscow 2012

Back a few weeks now from a great ‘return’ trip to Russia with the lovely people at Respect Comics, this time in Moscow. The artists from the first trip and our Yekaterinburg jaunt all met up for the Kommissia Comics Festival, gave talks and workshops and saw the fruits of our labours printed up and on display.

Also paid impromptu visits to the mini-Bulgakov museum, walked around Gorky’s art nouveau house in felt slippers, saw Lenin and Stalin extolling the free market in Red Square and ate Kasha on the Arbat (just missing Vladdy P doing walkabout and mixing it up with the common people) by a day or so.

Big bear hug thanks to Anna, Olga, Heehus, Nastia, Sergei, Wolf and all other fellow Russian and European Respect artists and organisers who made it such a great trip. Большое спасибо!

Here’s a few random photos…

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Respect Comics Project in Russia

I’ve been very slow to post all this stuff up, so apologies to the ‘fan’, but it’s been a mad whirlwind tour for lil’ ol’ me in the months of September through to early November, spanning two continents and ten time zones and I’m only just about recovered.

Anyway, the main event last month, was my involvement in the Goethe institute and Kommisia Moscow Comics Festival led project, ‘Respect‘ in Yekaterinberg, Russia, alongside a host of excellently talented fellow comic artists from Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, Finland and Russia and some lovely Russian organisers.

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The basic idea, developed after the last Moscow Comics Festival, involves the creation of pocket comics dealing with issues of tolerance aimed at Russian school kids and college students. There’d already been some really interesting results from the last project and we were invited last month to thrash out ideas, give talks and workshops for students, listen on local and national issues and attend a special exhibition of our own, translated work.

The whole week was a great opportunity to meet and work with Russian and European artists through discussion, debate and copious amounts of Vodka, made more enjoyable with my fellow Brit travellers, Rob Davis and Karrie Fransman.

Here’s a link to the project’s website and Facebook page, with loads of piccies from our workshops, meanderings and our sub-zero, freezing our dumplings off tour around the old Soviet city of Sverdlovsk.

Many thanks to Anna Voronkova, Heehoos, Sergei Simonov and all the other Respect team for making us so welcome and introducing us to Russia.

Check this page out soon for sketches and roughs from my Respect project.

спасибо