bots on tour

3 FESTIVALA > ZAGREB – LJUBLJANA: [ INDIGO ] [ OHOHO]  [ TINTA] / [ FB ] / [ BOTS PODCAST @ RADIO ŠTUDENT ] / [ READ BOTS ]

INDIGO X CAFFEINE HOURS FESTIVAL: 14. – 15.10. / 1. festival @ centar suvremene umjetnosti CUKRARNA, LJUBLJANA / [ INFO LINK ]

TINTA STRIP FESTIVAL: 9.10. / kino šiška, ljubljana / [ INFO LINK ]

OHOHO STRIP FESTIVAL 3.10. / akc medika, zagreb /   [ INFO LINK ]

VIŠE/ MORE:

bots album uvod/introduction / svetlana slapšak: žena s tri noge ili poučnost stripa o seksualnosti / a woman with three legs or on the instructiveness of comics about sexuality

in the case of ivana armanini’s comics, i asked myself yet again why do feminist comics, in this day and age, have to have a touch of instructiveness when it comes to female sexuality. aren’t we all ashamed of the fact that someone still has to explain to us how a part of our sensitive pleasure apparatus works in a light and kind fashion? does it have to be drawn for us pictured in black and white or in colour? it seems to me that ivana armanini is wondering the same thing. her answer is a vaguely defined three-legged creature that thinks like a feminist: not as a woman or any other gender but as someone who has finally mastered gender. which means that it was set free. let it go free, then, with its third leg, faster towards the future that will eventually come up with its own and renew it sold pleasure. ivana armanini’s comic book thus isn’t a textbook but an exercise book. grammar lies somewhere else, probably in life. 

ivana armanini’s comics aren’t pretty or baroque or post-something or avantgarde: to me, this is proof that she doesn’t need cynicism, distancing or deconstruction. her comics are brutal and demand an active approach from the readeress, best right now, in the street, deep within oneself, behind a curtain, during an exchange of views. they bear no burden or past, nor women or comics. if it wasn’t for workshops, tools, schools, paper and all other interventions, these comics would’ve been drawn in ochre onto a cave wall in which a three-legged woman is punishing the bad pupils of desire and pleasure.

ivana armanini’s heads of feminists are scalp-less and their gaze is penetrating – at least it seems so to me – the heads are seen from the side, they are not looking at me. readeresses thus easily begin to believe that they are safe at the very moment the fall into the trap. because – feminist heads are staring into a risky future where a third leg will be indispensable and the speed will be unstoppable.