CAMAGÜEY.- Kronikas' experience and the safeguarding of heritage through comics occupied another of the sessions of the 14th edition of Jornadas ArteCómic, focused on the opportunity of that publication for the author's work.
Haziel Scull, visual artist and director of the Vitrina de Wallonia Museum of the Office of the Historian of Havana explained the dynamics of this specialized magazine with worldwide coverage.
“The secret of Kronikas is to achieve, through a correct narrative, the need to communicate to the public the need to save the heritage and for the building to be the protagonist,” he stated.
Haziel Scull began connecting Vitrina de Valonia 12 years ago as a student in a Saturday workshop. He then joined the team of professionals to the point of today running the institution with a library opened in 2008.
“The first job of the cartoonist is to understand that the public does not know the author or the context and communication must be sought in a practical way,” he insisted before mentioning the collaboration of Russian, Algerian and Belgian artists.
In the Nuevo Mundo video room for an audience made up mainly of students from the Vicentina de la Torre Academy of Arts, he said: “The comic has an aesthetic, artistic and narratological function in which each vignette has a specific step. The process is not first class.”
The Kronikas project has been led by Alexander Izquierdo, a regular guest at Jornadas ArteCómic, and who has brought together cartoonists from Pinar del Río, Matanzas, Sancti Spíritus, Santiago de Cuba and Camagüey.
“You love the comic and you dedicate yourself to it because the comic cannot be loved halfway,” Haziel Scull emphasized and then maintained that “the Cuban comic has a lot to say” although in his opinion today “it is in a vegetative state.”
Along with the representative of Vitrina de Valonia were Eddislén Escobar and Laura González, authors of Areté, a comic strip dedicated to La Casona de Línea, published in Kronikas 6 L'inventaire Imaginaire, the issue on Art Nouveau.
Laura González, audiovisual director and screenwriter confirmed that “Kronikas has very clear guidelines. The first is the protection of heritage, not only physical but intangible. The artist has a lot of creative freedom with his own style. You can make up characters or use a real one.”
She remembered another comic strip dedicated to the property where the ISA University of the Arts is located. They both studied there: “We had to transmit the history of those of us who live there where it feels like a magical place.”
The work exceeded the commissioned pages: “The most difficult thing is to remove.” In those cases, as an audiovisual producer, specifically an editor, she sees the movement and when deciding which still image to keep, she leaves the decision to Eddislén Escobar.
He teaches the graphic narrative and illustration workshop at “Vicentina”, his school prior to ISA, and always clarifies: “The cartoonist does not have to be a good illustrator, but a good narrator.”
He commented that the process takes months of work because “you can't skip processes and never stick with an idea. The same page, the same image is sketched many times.”
For Eddislén Escobar, it was essential to meet teacher Orestes Suárez: “It is a school. When we come from an academic background we tend to minimize comics. I met Orestes and then I went to Vitrina. When I saw the originals of Orestes I said this is what I want to do. “It marked my life.”
Both Laura and Eddislén won First Place in the comics contest of the Jornadas de ArteCómic 2019 for the work El vino servido (Served Wine), a version of the homonymous story by Michel Encinosa.
Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez