Taipei diary: two

Day two, which was actually my first full day in Taipei, had Dala Publishing's Lawren, Olivia and Yuching meet me, Tim Gibson and Ant Sang after breakfast of pork dumplings, fruit and warm soy milk at the Howard Hotel, to take us to The Attic, where we would be staying for our residency in the Artists Village.

 

After dropping off our bags, we were treated to an amazing cooked brunch of pork and ribbon noodle hot-pot and I got to sample sour milk (tastes like yoghurt drink) before moving on to Taipei's speciality bubble tea.

 

 

 

  

Just when I thought bubble tea was the happiest-making food-stuff in the world, I tried black sesame dumplings in red bean soup. Anyone who has spent any time with me around food will know that sugar gives me the giggles. Alas, Yuching had no idea why her favourite pudding made me cry with laughter, just as my taste buds had no idea what was happening to them. Welcome to Taipei, taste buds!

 As night fell, the streets became alive with lights. Taipei is the city that never sleeps. It's also the city with subterranean comic shops such as Manga Sick, where a young man slept on a beanbag by the doorway as ambient music filtered out from a speaker hidden somewhere in the zine-filled shelves.

 But even the mainstream book shop Eslite has 24 hour opening, and gave us a glimpse of some familiar covers before us luminaries went out for the night.

 

Taipei diary: day one, can be read here.

Open art

 

Me, standing proudly beside some of my art: clockwise, l to r, the first page of "Alchemy Hour", four pages of my residential work-in-progress "Natural Desire", a page from "Escape Behaviours" and one from "Orcus" (the full comic of "Orcus" can be read in the latest issue of Funtime Comics Anthology).

I just got back from Taiwan, where I participated in the second half of the NZ Book Council's Graphic Novelist Exchange Residency in association with the Publishers Association of New Zealand (PANZ) and the Taipei International Book Exhibition (TIBE).

 

"Warkworth" from "Escape Behaviours", my epic graphic poem about marriage, migration and stuttering.

There's so much I want to tell you about - too much for one post - so I'll talk about the graphic novelists' exhibition today, then (because I still haven't finished posting about the first half of the residency, that happened back in October) I'll try to zoom through the whole residency and get up to speed with current events in the next few posts and post more about the book fair after that - I can't believe it's almost March already!

  

 

Muriwai Ihakara

New Zealand was the 2015 Guest of Honour at the Taipei International Book Exhibition, which opened with a blessing given by Muriwai Ihakara.

Ant Sang, Tim Gibson, 61 Chi, Ahn Zhe, Sean Chuang and I were lucky enough to have works selected for exhibition and luckier still to be given such a spacious exhibition arena, right by the busy manga section of the TIBE main hall.

 

Ant Sang, with his awesome art: pages from "Shaolin Burning" and work-in-progress from the residency. 

 

 It was the best feeling in the world to see my work blown up so huge and people taking their time to really look closely at it. 

 

61 Chi's art.

 

Information about the residential exchange and the artists' village, where we stayed for the residential part of our time in Taipei. 

 

More people looking at my work! 

Because I had submitted the most work-in-progress, I was very generously given eight stands to display it and was thrilled to see it all presented so beautifully - and so big!

 

Had I known my photo would be enlarged to this size, well...hindsight, eh? 

All the art looked amazing and it was especially touching to see it displayed with photographs taken during the residential exchange, both from Auckland and Taipei.

  

Tim Gibson's work and photographs from the residency. 

 

Tim Gibson, at the blessing.

 

Photographs from the residential exchange.

 

Sean Chuang's art. 

 

Ahn Zhe's art.

 

People who liked Rae's work also liked Ahn Zhe's work - 'cause it's poetry, innit?

My sincere gratitude to PANZ and the NZ Book Council for selecting me to participate in the Residential Exchange and the TIBE, and to their staff and Dala Publishing's staff in Taipei, who worked tirelessly to make the event a great success. Thank you.



Happy Chinese New Year!

Islanded one

 

Day one of the Graphic Novelist Exchange Residency began with Ant Sang, Tim Gibson and me being introduced to Chuang Yung-shin, 61Chi and Ahn Zhe by Catriona Ferguson, Director of the NZ Book Council, with the help of translation from Dala Publishing's Aho Huang, at Vaughan Park Retreat Centre (you can read my introduction to the residency here).

Left to right: Dala Publishing's Aho Huang (our translator), 61Chi, Ahn Zhe, me, Chuang Yung-shin, Tim Gibson and Ant Sang.

Once the welcoming was over, we had the first of what was to become a daily ritual: the meeting.

 

The meeting gave us all a chance to air our initial ideas and thoughts about what form our collaboration could yield. 

Since finding out I had been selected for the residency, I had put a lot of thought into form and took along some graphic novels and stories and sketches to illustrate my ideas.

 

 

Click on images for links. 

I chose The Octonauts and the Only Lonely Monster to show how pages could be printed in different directions, upside down, for eg, to engage readers to participate physically with book and how this technique could be employed to make a reader from one culture shift their perspective, literally, to see a work from another culture's point-of-view (start video at 5:05 for demonstration of how the book has to be turned to be read).

I talked about Mary and Bryan Talbot's graphic collaboration, Dotter of her Father's Eyes, which demonstrated beautifully not only the relationship of its subjects but also is endearingly revealing about its author's marriage. 

New Zealand cartoonist Grant Buist had told me about another collaboration that involved translation of sorts: The Red Re[a]d Diary, by Teddy Kristiansen with Steven T. Seagle, where one artist, unable to read the language of the original manuscript, had made up his own interpretation for what the story was by looking at the images and text and guessing. 

And I talked about the graphic conversation Dylan Horrocks had with Emily Perkins, that resulted in All Hail Ellie Destroyer of Worlds.

I wanted to visually represent the surface image we present to strangers and the inner that we only reveal once we become friends, and how this applies to our cultures. 

I demonstrated how cut-outs could be used to hide then reveal parts of a narrative.

 

This idea was popular as it fit well with the overall theme of the exchange: Island to Island. 

The meeting gave us lots to think about. We decided a walk was in order to let the thoughts settle in. 

Vaughan Park is siutated at the edge of Long Bay Regional Park and the weather was kind to us as we took in the beautiful views....

 

 

...recorded ourselves recording and...

 

...recorded graphic fiction in the sand....

 

...encountered a little history about an earlier cross cultural exchange...

 

...and found our own ways to bridge our cultures.