The 2nd Asia-Europe Comics Project, LINGUA COMICA, was held in London from 20th-24th October, 2007. ASEF joined hands with COMICA (the London International Comics Festival) to bring together 14 emerging graphic novelists from 14 ASEM countrie. The participants undertook online artistic projects and engaged in a five-day dialogue using the medium of the graphic novel as the main tool of communication and artistic work.
The project was organised in two phases. It started off as an online artistic project, the Asia-Europe Collaboratory, at the end of August, 2007 in which the participants were broken down into seven Asia-Europe pairs and worked together via the internet. They continued their collaboration in London in October, where the artists met, attended panels on comics collaboration between the two regions and shared their experiences on their online works, continuing their collaboration.
The partnership online and offline was facilitated by internationally-renowned comic artists and lecturers Sarnath Banerjee (India) and Gerald Gorridge (France), and supported by a high-level number of resource people and guest lecturers, including Benoit Peeters (Belgium), Kosei Ono (Japan), Igort Tuveri (Italy) and Titus Ackermann (Germany). Paul Gravett (UK) was the Artistic Director for this project.
The outcomes from the meeting will be made available to the public in the form of a graphic novel. The graphic novel will contain the very relevant and innovative works from the talented Asia-Europe artists that worked in Asia-Europe pairs for this project, as well as solo works from each artist. The graphic novel is expected to be published by mid-2008.
This project was implemented in co-operation with the COMICA International Comics Festival in London and was supported by the Institute of Contemporary Arts London, the Goethe Institute London, the Institut Francais London and the Japanese Embassy for the UK.