ASEF joined hands with COMICA (the London International Comics Festival) to bring together 14 emerging graphic novelists from 14 ASEM countries in LINGUA COMICA. In this second edition of the Asia-Europe Comics Project, the participants took part in an online artistic project and engaged in a five-day dialogue using the medium of graphic novel as main tool of communication and artistic work.

Organised in two phases, the project started off as an online artistic project, the Asia-Europe Collaboratory, in which the participants were broken down into seven Asia-Europe pairs and worked together via the Internet. They continued their collaboration in London from 20 to 24 October 2007, where the artists met, attended panels on comics collaboration between the two regions, shared their experiences on their online works and continued it.

The work online and offline collaboration 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 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 for this project worked in Asia-Europe pairs, 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.

For more information on the artistic outputs of the project please visit www.asef.org/linguacomica07 or contact Mr. David Ocón at david.ocon@asef.org