Frémok: Comics Out-of-Bounds

Abstract

56 WLT MARCH / APRIL 2016 E ven in the diverse world of Franco -Belgian independent comics , there is no publisher quite like Frémok. The name itself is a neologism—a combination of Fréon and Amok, the two publishers that merged to form the new entity. A hybrid itself, Frémok constantly reapproaches, readdresses, and reinvents the comics medium by repeatedly hybridizing fine arts and narration at the extreme limits, wilfully disregarding the conventions of the comics form. Despite the diverse artistic media used to produce Frémok comics—woodcuts, oil paint, graphite, carbon paper, lithography, and more—Frémok insists that the book is itself an artistic production, and they give extraordinary care and attention to bookmaking. Beyond publishing, Frémok functions as a “platform ” for new projects that expand the organization ’s fundamental thesis across a spectrum of activity that includes exhibitions, site-specific installations, and, increasingly, collaborations with other institutions. The beginnings of what would later become Frémok took place in a distressing period for francophone comics. The profound renewal that came with the countercultural explosion of the 1960s and ’70s seemed to be definitively over two decades later. By the second half of the 1980s, francophone comics, or bande dessinée, had become as standardized in their own way as the DC/Marvel-style superhero comic books in the US. Overwhelmingly, publishers adhered to the oversized, forty-eightpage hardcover “album” format (perhaps best known to American readers as the standard format for Tintin and Asterix volumes ). Publishers produced countless series with endlessly recurring characters in established fictional genres, privileging the eternal return of conventional artistic styles. Yet the change was already there in essence, notably at Saint-Luc Bruxelles, famous for being the first European art school to have a curriculum especially devoted to comics. The students at this school would form the core of the future publisher: Éric Lambé, Dominique Goblet, Jean-Christophe Long, the twin brothers Denis and Olivier Deprez, and Thierry Van Hasselt. All of them still emphasize today the major influence of Michel Céder, lecturer in semiotics and art history. He claimed that comics were still largely underexploited and would gain much if they could develop beyond their entertainment status and enter into a dialogue with other art forms. Publishing comics along with photographs, poetry, or illustration , the Spanish magazine Madriz was regarded as a template. In 1990 most of the cartoonists from Madriz took part in an exhibition devoted to contemporary comics at Madrid’s Museo Reina Sofía. Among the foreign participants, the students and young graduates from Saint-Luc chose to christen themselves “Frigo.” Significantly, the very first public act of the collective was not a publication but an exhibition; many more would follow. On this occasion, cover feature international comics Frémok Comics Out-of-Bounds by Erwin Dejasse From Le fils du roi, by Eric Lambé (Frémok, 2012) WORLDLITERATURETODAY.ORG 57 Céder wrote a text that now sounds a bit like a manifesto: “History has taught us that art has to be the deconstruction of a norm. . . . It is necessary to say and say again that formal work is not to be confused with formalism . . . the meaning is built by the form. . . . In each work, we have to replay the idea of comics: because to break up the norms is to place oneself at the boundaries of one’s art form.” The birth of Frigo in 1990—renamed Fréon four years later—was part of a larger international phenomenon. The total inaccessibility of mainstream publishing houses to new, unique voices meant that it was no longer necessary to compromise; the comics field had become again a virgin land where everything would be possible. To allow their aspirations to become reality , young authors did not have any other option than to join forces and begin publishing themselves. Besides the Fréon group and others in Belgium (Pelure Amère, Bill, La Cinquième Couche), similar alternative structures emerged during the same period in Spain (Medios Revueltos), France (Amok, L’Association, Cornélius, Ego Comme X), Italy (Mano), Switzerland (Strapazin, Drozophile, Atrabile), and Germany (Boxer, Reprodukt). Notably influenced by Art Spiegelman and Fran...