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Sam Orchard - New Zealand Cartoon and Comics Archive [AI Text]

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So my name is Sam Orchard, and I am the assistant curator for cartoons and comics at the Alexander Turnbull Library. We're currently in the room of the Alexander Turnbull Library, and we we've got a long table that I've got out a few cartoons and comics to show you what is the history of the, um collection? So the New Zealand cartoons and Comics archive is quite an interesting one. It started in April 1st, 1992. April Fool's Day, which is? It's having [00:00:30] its 30th birthday this year. It started as a community archive, much like Gans did, and like, kind of joined into the Alexander Turnbull Library. And a couple of years ago it was fully merged into Alexander Turnbull. And last year, no, no. What year are we in? In 2019? Um, because of a series of events, the kind of community [00:01:00] Guardians group decided to step down, and they the Alexander Turnbull took that opportunity to say, Hey, let's examine the scope of the cartoon archive because it started as just a New Zealand cartoons archive as opposed to cartoons and comics. And at that point they said, Hey, things are changing within editorial cartoon landscape newspapers are shrinking, and there's not as many cartoons coming through our workflow. So why don't [00:01:30] we expand the scope to include comics as well? And you might ask, What's what does that mean? So originally we were collecting cartoons, and by this we mean editorial cartoons and newspapers. They're the kind of single panel things you see that are very topical. On a day to day basis that happened in newspapers so long, long time ago, we used to have very provincial. A lot of provincial newspapers and cartoonists were employed [00:02:00] by each separate newspaper to kind of comment on events of the day and over time, newspapers have kind of merged into different media conglomerates. So there's lots of, uh, the same company might own quite a lot of newspapers, so a newspaper circulation has gone down and we have lots of digital newspapers now, So the kind of the career prospects for an editorial cartoonist [00:02:30] have kind of shrunk. And the other thing is that editorial cartoonists have a really long life life span in terms of jobs, which is really lucky for a cartoonist. Lots of cartoonists will kind of yeah, have quite a long career working into their seventies eighties, because a lot of us who do cartoons and comics are passionate about it, and we just do it because we need to. So there has. There was a kind of narrowing of editorial cartoons, [00:03:00] and meanwhile, there's this explosion of comic artists within New Zealand, and a lot of the comic artists were kind of telling a whole bunch of different and new stories and weren't being captured by any sort of archives because they kind of don't fit in with their books in the traditional sense. And they don't kind of fit with art in the traditional sense. So there was a gap in the market in terms of no one, really archiving [00:03:30] a whole lot of stories that were coming through. So that was the impetus for expanding this collection. And when they expanded the scope of the collection, they said, Hey, it's probably time for us to have a curator and that's when my role was created and I just happened to be looking for a job and I love community and I love cartoons and comics. And so it was the perfect opportunity to apply for a regular job because I've been freelancing and doing cartoons for a long time. And thankfully they said yes. And [00:04:00] so here we are. So you are the first curator? Yes, in the new. In the new iteration of this archive, I'm the first New Zealand cartoons and comics archive curator. Congratulations. How does that feel? It's very exciting. It's like a dream job that I, you know, it's a job that didn't exist a couple of years ago, and I didn't know that I was employable in terms of my unique set of skills. But here we are. I know a lot about [00:04:30] cartoons and comics, and I'm really passionate about cartoon and comic community, and the the way that the has expanded particularly falls into my areas of interest and expertise. So, yeah, it's very exciting. So what does your day to day look like? So it's a lot of learning, So I was employed almost a year ago into this position, and I haven't come from a library's background. So it's a lot of learning about information management situations and [00:05:00] conservation practises and just exploring the collection that has over 60,000 cartoons and comics in it. So this is This is a lot to get my head around. So part of it is doing that learning part of it is bringing in new collections. Part of it is answering research requests, so someone might have some research that they're doing where they want to find a particular cartoon. And it's going through those the the the [00:05:30] catalogue and saying, Yes, I think we have that This is the form that we have it and working through those things and then also working out where the gaps in our collection are so we can bring in new material into the collection as well. So what are the things about cartoons and comics and and also graphic novels? Do you do you collect graphic novels? OK, so I think of it as comics, as as an umbrella term in much the same way that queer is right. Um [00:06:00] so it covers a range of things that fall under that umbrella. Comics being something that is partially a mixture of words and graphics that together elevate it to something else entirely, and it can include editorial cartoons and newspapers. It can include comic strips like foot rock flats. It can also include comic books like You Think of Superman or Things Like That. And it can also include Web comics, [00:06:30] zens mini comics, um, auto bio comics, graphic novels, which is a kind of longer form storytelling of comic books. If you think of comic books as small chapters in a story, the graphic novel might be, uh, the collection of the chapters altogether. So with comics, cartoons and graphic novels, what are the unique things that make them important [00:07:00] to collect? What I feel really excited about in terms of cartoons and comics is that they're reflecting our stories and the breadth of our stories because, you know, I think of. I think of cartoons and comics as quite a queer medium in that it is something that is a little bit amorphous and hard to pin down in terms of having a a consistent definition. But it also has something that comes in a variety of formats, like I was talking about before, [00:07:30] and so that means that people can come to it with really different viewpoints and really different stories to tell. It covers fiction. It covers nonfiction. It covers historical events. It cover covers, you know sub subjective material as well as objective material it covers published things that are printed for mass media. And it's also covers things that are self published that are only meant for really small communities as well. Which kind of I think [00:08:00] has the opportunity to reflect the the huge diversity of perspectives and stories that exist within a which is what we're trying to do at the National Library in Alexander Turnbull as well. So think cartoons and comics has something for everyone. See, this is interesting, because when I came here today, I had in my mind that, um, everything was published so it would be published in a newspaper or a zine or whatever, but you were saying [00:08:30] that's not necessarily the case exactly. So cartoons The Cartoons and Comics Archive is an interesting archive in that it covers both published material. So things with an ISBN number that you find in bookshops and things like that magazines. But it also covers people's sketchbooks, little doodles that people have done original artwork, small zines that are only intended for, you know, small audiences, digital comics. So comics and archives [00:09:00] in, um, the Internet. Sorry. Um, Web comics things like that. So it covers a whole range, which is, Yeah, it's exciting. And can you describe the the the the kind of state of, um, creation of comics and cartoons in New Zealand? Um, at the moment it's it's actually in a really exciting and huge growth space at the moment. So one of the cartoonists, one of our one of New Zealand, in fact, a Wellington [00:09:30] based comic artist, is currently making the the world's most Red Web tune comic ever. So this is her. This is Rachel Smith, who creates Laur Olympus. She's been creating that comic for the last couple of years, and it currently has a readership, a regular readership of over 5 million people. So her readership is bigger than the whole population of New Zealand, which is incredible. And New Zealand comic artists [00:10:00] are constantly kind of, you know, shooting above the norm, and we have a really excited and vibrant community. Book publishers are finally kind of coming around to the idea of cartoons and comics as literature and things that they can produce on a map in a mainstream as part of their regular printing catalogue. Um, and I think the Internet has kind of changed things, so that your it it really kind [00:10:30] of expand our audiences and and has the ability to show that there's a larger audience out there for maybe some of the more marginalised or or um, less mainstream published communities like Queer Communities. So I think over the last 10 or 20 years, there's been a huge rise in diversity of comics, which has happened internationally, [00:11:00] and New Zealanders are certainly on that wavelength and bandwagon. So there's heaps of people who are making cartoons and comics in New Zealand at the moment and getting them published in online as well as in mainstream, um, publications. How do you think the kind of rest of the literary kind of ecosystem sees cartoons? And in comics, I think it's, I think it's really in an interesting place. I think it's changing, You know, you have [00:11:30] people like Alison Bechdel who did dykes to watch out for and then kind of broke into into literature, and I mean that in inverted commas, in a way, through her work with fun home and I my mother in a way that people kind of were like, Oh yeah, That's right. Cartoons and comics are literature. They can be taken seriously and she's not the first person to have done that. You know, this has been an ongoing history, but she's certainly played [00:12:00] a role in this in this latest wave of that. And so I think that, you know, that's that's floating through into our writers, festivals and publishers here. So that publishers us are cottoning onto Oh, yes, these these do fit within the canon of our catalogues and they do fit within sort of mainstream book festivals. And, um so we're being included in ways that we haven't [00:12:30] before. I personally like that cartoons and comics are seen as kind of fringy and an outsider art form. I think that lends to the queerness of it and the kind of subversiveness that we can do. But I'm also pleased that we are seen as as more kind of mainstream as well. So it's like both end. Can you talk to me about, um, how comics and cartoons kind of reflect the time that created it for [00:13:00] sure, I So we have 60,000 cartoons in our collection and the viewpoints that are expressed there are pretty can be pretty, um, intense. They There's a lot of offensive material in it in this particular collection, which, you know, I these exist in other collections as well. But someone once said [00:13:30] that cartoons are are a blunt instrument. They're very in your face and can. So there's, you know, there's a lot of racism. There's a lot of misogyny. There's a lot of homophobia transphobia within the collection, and some of that is changing. And some of it isn't. Um, you know, I think that when you're looking at mainstream accountability within newspapers, it's really interesting to see the shift of what's an acceptable joke and [00:14:00] what's not anymore. So looking back into the collection, some of the racism is, is much more apparent. And now it's a little bit dialled down a little bit, Um, in terms of sort of jokes around homophobia and transphobia that seems to have quite markedly shifted. Um, but there there still is an imbalance in terms of a lot of the people who have been employed by mainstream newspapers are white [00:14:30] cisgender heterosexual men. Um, and that represents a particular viewpoint. It might be a fairly diverse viewpoint, but it's still particular, Um, so there's when you're talking about representations of queerness or rainbow things, that's always it's mostly coming from a perspective and that that means for me. I think we need some of the cartoons and [00:15:00] comics that we're bringing in to speak back to that from a community perspective to kind of balance out those perspectives as well. It sounds like quite a a direct barometer of what is kind of publicly acceptable. But then, I guess if you've only got white si cartoonists, you get quite a different view than you and I. You know, I think it's changing, like I recall, um Lewis or played a really integral [00:15:30] part in terms of countering some of the cartoons that Al Nisbet was was producing in terms of representations of beneficiaries Pacific Island and Maori people. And she kind of called him out publicly and said, Hey, this is not acceptable. He no longer is working for a for a newspaper, So there are ways that the public and people in power are speaking back to some of those viewpoints and changing the system, and it's really interesting looking at some of the cartoonists, you know, I said before we. They [00:16:00] have quite long careers. Well, if they're not keeping up with the Times and suddenly their views are are out of step with what's acceptable, they don't no longer will have jobs. So that's quite interesting to watch. Some of the cartoonists in recent years have been called out for some of their perspectives, which I would argue, haven't changed since their career. But the, uh, social acceptability of those viewpoints have changed. So how do you personally cope? Uh, when [00:16:30] you're dealing with a collection that has some a lot of phobias and, um uh, racism in it. And II, I would be going like I mean, do you get angry? Do you get sad? I mean, I have lots of personal feelings about all of these things, but I also in terms of the role of this archive, is to represent the diverse experience of New Zealanders and the diverse perspectives and and stories that we have [00:17:00] to tell and and I actually think it's really important that we do acknowledge and don't hide some of our racism. Some of our transphobia, some of our homophobia I know as someone who has experienced transphobia and homophobia for it to be swept under the carpet and pretended that it hasn't happened is actually quite a traumatising. It's almost as traumatising as having it happen to you in the first place. So that's part of what what I think is important is to collect, to collect that bread and, [00:17:30] um, and to hold it within a balanced perspective. So you, you know, if you do have cartoons that are homophobic and transphobic, you also have the balance of that to kind of say, Well, here's perspectives from within our communities that are speaking to those experiences as well. So you would still collect a homophobic transphobic or or racist cartoon today? Yep. Yeah, I think these are important receipts to have, and they do reflect where we're at [00:18:00] and what is. You know, it's interesting with with watching when cartoons are controversial and and when they're suddenly out of step with the, um, the current society. Those are really important to collect as well as the all of the articles and conversations that happen around that cartoon as well, because I think they tell it a really interesting story that reflects the point in time in which suddenly it goes from Yes, this is [00:18:30] an acceptable joke to make to all. Maybe it's not so acceptable to No, it's definitely not. And this is the line. This is where it happened. And that's an important historical record, I think. Can you, uh, take me through, uh, some of the representations of rainbow communities within, um, the the archive and and and maybe show how it's changing? Sure. Um, so I thought we would start with some of the, um some [00:19:00] of the stuff that we've collected over time, which has mostly been put together, Um, for for a book called Hary and Heroines, which was, um, put together by the cartoon archive when they were doing printed series. They've done, I think, nine books over the over the course of their existence. And one of them is particularly around a cartoon history of women. And so that afforded the archive and opportunity [00:19:30] to collect and examine particularly broadsheet, which was an important feminist magazine. Um and so we have the work here. I'll come show you. So we have some of the original artwork created by Helen Courtney who, um, was a cartoonist for broadsheet over the years, and it's just I love original artwork, and I think it's one of the the beautiful parts of our collection [00:20:00] in front of us. We've got small hand drawn cutouts on various shades of paper and various types of paper. They're all kind of cut out into very small pieces, and it's just as though someone has been doodling on whatever spare paper they have in front of them. And these cartoons have been done by Helen Courtney. And they're a kind of mix of kind of delightful feminist cartoons and [00:20:30] bits and pieces that would have peppered through the Broadsheet magazine. Just they look like they're done in in just black ink. A few of them have been coloured in quite darkly, so maybe she has been using some brush brush ink as well. But these sort of treasures I you can imagine that they might have sat in Helen Courtney's desk or on the floor or peppered through bits of paper and folders, and they had just They're quite delightfully stored by [00:21:00] us in temperature controlled rooms in a place that has like very, very fancy material. And I just love that about cartoons and comics that we have said, Hey, this lesbian feminist cartoonist is really important for us to collect, and we don't mind that her cartoons are clipped out and cut out into small little pieces. We're going to look after them because that's important. Um, we also have a bunch of photocopies from, um, broadsheet that includes [00:21:30] Sharon Alston's cartoons and comics. One of them has Lesbian Nation and a whole lot of lesbians kind of chatting in community, and it's a photocopy. But it sits within the photocopy of the page of what broadsheet looks like, so it's within context as well. So we have both original art as well as, um, photo copies and copies. And I think that lesbian feminist cartoons are really important to our [00:22:00] history and speak to, You know, when we look at editorial cartoons and as I was saying, most of them being then we have these micro publications and indie publications that kind of spoke to the same political issues but would have quite a different perspective, and we'd be talking about different things. So that's part of what I wanted to bring out. So it's interesting. I'm just looking at the dates for these uh, the broadsheets in 1973 and 1975. Is there anything earlier [00:22:30] than, say, the early 19 seventies that, um, directly speaks to, um, kind of Rainbow Communities? There isn't a great deal at the moment, but part of what what the expansion of the Cartoon and Comics archive has meant is that we get to draw up a new collecting plan. And the cartoons and Comics archive sits within the umbrella archive of contemporary voices. And part of that is to reflect the change [00:23:00] in technological format of of comics. So both digital as as well as, um, analogue. But part of it also is that comics have been a home historically for a range of diverse voices because of the fact that that it is a kind of subversive medium, and it is something that you can do quite cheaply, and it is something that's that's been taken up by a lot of independent publishers. So we've [00:23:30] kind of had we've got priority areas in which we're collecting, and part of that is, um, representations of groups and communities that haven't been represented within the scope before, but also who haven't been represented in histories before women, chiefly being one of them. So a few years ago, uh, a history of New Zealand comics came out. It included three women in it. I think out of 100 ish, I'm not entirely sure what the numbers [00:24:00] are, but but there was an extreme lack of women within the the book and people kind of the cartoons and comics. People have conversations about this. What does it mean? And historians were finding it really difficult to find any, um, representations of women drawing comics. Which is not to say that women don't draw comics. It's just that we haven't collected them before. So a bunch of women got together and created three words, which is an anthology of women's [00:24:30] comics, and they managed to find women from across New Zealand from across a range of ages who had been creating comics since forever. So we know that women in comics are out there just as rainbow people and Rainbow voices are out there. And it's our job as historians and as archivists to find those cartoons and comics to make relationships so that people and make our institutions safe so people [00:25:00] want to donate them here and to make them accessible for historians. So it's harder for them to ignore us. So we don't have a great deal at the moment. We are working on it, and that's one of my Yeah, One of the things that I'm really excited about is rebalancing that collection to make sure that we are including people who maybe history has ignored or forgotten or not known about, um, in terms of what we do [00:25:30] currently have. You know, we have these broadsheet comics and feminist and lesbian comics in the collection. We have a few smatterings of trans creators. Um, we don't have a great deal of gay men within the collection, which is, I find quite interesting. And, um, I'm curious about that. And that's work that I would like to examine a little bit further and work out where to find [00:26:00] these men because it's not a question of Do they exist? It's a question, because they do. I'm sure it's a question of why can't we find them? And how can we find them? And how can we build those relationships? Even looking at the explosion of comics online, particularly with queer creators, um, making things and doing that, uh, self publishing. There's a lot of queer artists. There's a lot of by artists, but [00:26:30] again, there's not a lot of gay men who are coming through in terms of my networks. So that's an issue for me to kind of be constantly examining my own access to communities and maybe unconscious bias and recalibrating and rebalancing. So we're not leaving people out. And, yeah, I'm I'm really interested in what that means and and how we can examine that further and make make more space and [00:27:00] make sure that people aren't left behind. So is your starting point that these creators exist? It's just that they haven't either been discovered or have been ignored. Yeah, I think so. I think that that there's reasons for why cartoonists and comics get their work out there, and part of it is, you know, they get a job that's pretty easy. [00:27:30] And the other part is that that they feel like their story is valuable enough to tell. And I think that's why some of our stories have been forgotten and lost is because either we've hidden our identities, um, from other people because of fear of the implications of that which, you know, lots of women changed their names when they were writing comics because they were scared or worried about their employment, um, [00:28:00] prospects. Or that they were kind of told that they were only allowed to create this certain type of comic like the Rita Angus was making, um, cartoons for kids. And there's a lot of women who've made cartoons for kids and the ways in which histories are written. They've kind of said our cartoons for kids are not really real cartoons, so we've kind of ignored them, So part of that is our own kind of narrowness. But I think probably, [00:28:30] um, part of what is the delight of the Internet again is that it creates space to say, Hey, your stories are valuable and you're allowed to share them. And if no one ever says that, then I assume that these drawings will just go into people's personal diaries and um, or into the bin or in places where they're not shared and not celebrated. So it's not a question of whether people are creating these. [00:29:00] I think I think there's lots of people who use comics as a way to do their own self expression. Um, it's whether they feel comfortable or affirmed or safe enough to share them. And so that's part of my role. I think is to say that your work is valuable and your work should be shared and your work is a treasure and should be saved and cared for is a way to encourage more [00:29:30] people to to come out of the woodwork if if you know what I mean. What about, um, negative representations of Rainbow people? Were there those kind of cartoons and comics prior to the seventies? So our collection has a lot of cartoons and comics about our communities. We don't have a great deal by our communities. So, um, Valerie Love actually did a presentation back in 2013 [00:30:00] that examined what representations of Rainbow people within the Cartoon Archive and within mainstream editorial cartoons and kind of talked through, You know, big legislative changes and and topical events in which rainbow people were part of, and the cartoons that set aside sat alongside them. A lot of them are fairly negative portrayals or fairly stereotypical portrayals, and I can show you some examples if you would like, [00:30:30] but I haven't gotten that today because I don't for me. I feel like we have as rainbow people. We've probably seen them. We probably know what the jokes are. We, um we don't need to platform them in a way that's that highlights them. I guess. I feel like they've had their time in the sun and they exist. And they're important, reflective historical [00:31:00] documents. And at the moment, they are much higher in representation than they then the counter arguments or the the perspectives from within our communities, whether that's positive or negative. Yeah, just getting back to Helen's creations. When I look at these, uh, drawings, I see it as just as a as a viewer. But when you're looking at it, you're also seeing it as somebody who [00:31:30] creates, um, cartoons and comics. What do you see when, when you when you're looking at another artist's work, I just get such a kick out of seeing, um, original artwork and the process that you that a cartoonist goes through. So when I look at this, I kind of look at the paper that it's drawn on. I look at the way that the marks are made. I look at things like in this one here, you can see marks [00:32:00] from the white out that they've used. What do you call it in New Zealand twink? I can't believe I forgot that word. Um, so things like that mistakes that they've made And you just kind of it tells a whole a whole new story than what you see on the printed page when it's all laid out and looking nice, which is Yeah, just delightful to me. I feel like I've learned so much about [00:32:30] cartooning and comic creation since being in this room. Just looking at the original artwork that we have in the collection, Which is Yeah, just lovely. And an integral part of the artwork is the words that are used that go along with the illustrations. The wording must have changed over time. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I'm sure that, um Rainbow communities are not alone in this, but words to describe different communities and different things that are happening [00:33:00] within movements and political moments change dramatically. And I really like that. I feel like you can learn so much because because comics kind of require a kind of scarcity of words and pictures together. You can't put too many words in a comic because people won't read it. It really the language that gets used is usually very direct and very pointed. And it can tell you a lot [00:33:30] about where our society is at and what what words are in use and not in use anymore. Which is kind of yeah, I find it quite interesting. Have you come across comics and just said, Oh, my goodness, By using that word, I mean, yes, a part of me feels shocked. Sometimes I open a comic and I I have a like a moment of shock. And then I'm like, Oh, of course. [00:34:00] But that happens on the day to day. I was reading through it through a zine the other day that was made in the early two thousands and just some of the language that was used in it. And this is a zine that was about Rainbow coming out stories. The language has just changed so much in the last 20 years, and I kind of like had that same reaction of wow. Things are changing really, really fast within comics within rainbow communities, within language in general, it's it's a delight. I find it [00:34:30] really, really quite lovely. So, do you think Rainbow communities are drawn to comics and cartoons, and if so, why? Well, so I did a project a couple of years ago that I went across to the Queers and Comics, um, conference in New York, and part of what I wanted to do is to kind of share the amazing Rainbow community comic artists and writers that we have here. [00:35:00] And I kind of give a call out on the Internet and just said, Hey, if you want to be involved in the I'll make it as a little catalogue. You can share what sort of things you make. And, um, I'll take it with me and I'll share it with other people. And just what I got back was so diverse and so much more than I kind of thought that I'd have and I left people out because they didn't kind of get back to me or didn't want to be involved. So there's even more than what I had in this little publication that I threw [00:35:30] it through together in a kind of week or so and so I think that Sometimes I think that I'm the only one who sees, like, queerness and comics going together. But then I do something like that, and I realise that comics is a space that really fosters queer stories. I think partially that's because of the Internet, and you're able to reach a much wider audience than maybe you would. I think part of it is because it's low cost, Um, [00:36:00] and so it's really accessible to lots of people, and part of it is because it's hand drawn and and part of the hand drawn. This means that you are literally creating the emotions and feelings with on the page. I think of queer people having a lot of emotions, for better or for worse. But you know, we are people who have been told a lot of times to kind of not share [00:36:30] our stories, not share our feelings. And so when we have opportunities to, we bust through that and we just explode with stories which is, you know, you look at poetry. There's so many queer people in that you look at writing in general, there's so many queer people who are writing stories. Comics is is another part of that expression television as well, which is slowly starting to change. I think I think there's a lot of kind of cost barriers and and things [00:37:00] like that for getting our stories out there. But, um, yeah, I think as as queer people we are, we have to be quite creative to survive, and that comes through without our work as well. I think also to, um, the ability to very quickly subvert mainstream culture and also as an activist tool, because actually, within two or three words in an illustration, you can say a hell of a lot, can't you? Yeah, absolutely. I think that, um, [00:37:30] that's that's one of the delights of cartoons. Is that because they're seen as a little bit fringy and a little bit silly that you can They're really accessible and easy to read You. You kind of pick something up because you're like, Oh, that has pictures in it. And then suddenly you're kind of met with a message. You know, there's a reason why propaganda works really well. In terms of its use of of images and words. Together, you think of like [00:38:00] propaganda. Posters are essential. I like to think of them as comics in some ways, you know. And I think that's because as humans, we're drawn to pictures and words together. Some there's something about the combination of the two that makes them really digestible, whereas if you just have a picture or just have a lot of words, then people might not access the meaning in the same way or, you know, with pictures. I think it's open to a lot more interpretation, and I think with words, it actually [00:38:30] is. Is is much more didactic. So it closes that off. Whereas comics has this kind of weird magic middle bit that I love and just the ability to, you know, I've come across things in the past. Well, even in stickers, stickers as well, where you know, small little cartoons, comics have been placed, you know, just around Wellington, around the streets, on on on the sign posts. Um, and they just make you stop and think, Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. [00:39:00] I mean, stickers as a form of comics is definitely a thing. When, when I got my little fact shot, I got a little sticker by Ruby Jones, who had drawn a little image of community and it's I can't even remember what it said. But it said something about strength and community together. It's a little comic. She was the one who did the, um, the comic with the two women hugging after the, um, March 15th terrorist attack that went viral, [00:39:30] and she ended up doing a couple of covers for Time magazine. After that, speaking of another comic artist who's kind of like making waves internationally, she's from New Zealand and doing incredible things. Speaking of, uh, vaxes and masks. So we're right in the middle. Well, I hope we're in the middle or on the other side of, um, COVID-19, Um, and we're today wearing our kind of, um our face masks and we're looking towards omicron coming [00:40:00] into New Zealand. How has covid, uh, impacted, Uh, your job and the collections? If, if any, It's interesting. So again, speaking of another cartoonist who is doing amazing stuff we've got, we're collecting Toby Morris's comics that he's been doing with Susie Wiles, which are these which are interesting. He he doesn't actually think of them as comics. He thinks of them of graphics. I should say that they are graphics rather [00:40:30] than comics. They're small animated GIFs or GIFs, depending on how you say you pronounce it. There's a lot of controversy, um, that are explaining different things around covid and how to deal with it. You've probably seen them on the spinoff, Um, so we're collecting his work. We also have a covid archivist who's kind of collecting a lot of material about this time, which is really interesting. And lots of people are making comics about it [00:41:00] at this time because they're sitting at home. There may be, particularly at during lockdowns. They may be a little bit bored. They might be having a lot of feelings again, Um, and feeling a little bit trapped and and contained, and so sitting down and doodling your thoughts and feelings is a way to kind of get through that. So we've been collecting some of people's, um, lockdown diaries and lockdown comics as well, which is really cool. You know, I think [00:41:30] I think when we talk about some of the barriers to collecting, it's really good as curators to be able to go out and meet people and have those conversations and build relationships, and that has to happen via zoom or in creative ways these days, which is tricky and hard. Um, but we're also doing we're collecting a lot of digital cartoons, so that just continues on as normal. And, um, and also covid has, like I said, provided opportunities for [00:42:00] people to see the power of comics through Toby and Susie's work and using that as a way to disseminate information in a really easy and accessible way, which is really cool. I actually think the last time we met was, uh, you had organised an event called Gender Matters in Writing, which was fantastic here at the National Library, and the audience sat side by side. It was we could actually sit side by side together without masks, I think, and it was amazing. [00:42:30] And then, like literally about a week later, I think it was that same week, maybe, maybe even 48 hours later. Yeah, because that was a big week we were going to have. We had gender matters on early in the week, and then second, half of the week was comic fest, and by the end of the week, we had to cancel Comic fest. So yeah, it was a big it was a big turnaround. So what does What does covid meant for, like organising events? I mean, the amount of work that [00:43:00] must go into something like comic fest must be huge. Yeah, absolutely. It was a pretty gutting time that we the the the timing of it meant that we couldn't pivot fast enough to put it all online. Um, so we just ended having having to postpone it, and we kind of put it putting the pieces together again. Now, on the cusp of maybe an omicron, um, outbreak. So I feel like events, particularly events in person feel [00:43:30] really important to have at the moment. But they are also things that you have to hold fairly lightly, which is just the time that we're living in is that things can change quite quickly. And you have to have multiple plans of what happens in this instance in this instance in this instance. And you know, that's just that's just part of it. Unfortunately, I think you hit the nail on the head when that word pivot. We're all pivoting, aren't we? Yes, that's right. I [00:44:00] feel like there's, you know, we were talking about language before and the the changes in language of like Bubble has a new meaning. Now Pivot has a new meaning, and social distancing is a phrase that has a particular currency. Now that, I wonder, in 20 years will be seen as such a something that's kind of weird and outdated. Hopefully it will be. But who knows? So just looking forward to the rest of the year for for for your work, um, what are [00:44:30] you going to be concentrating on? So part of it is that the collections plan will become a public document soon, and so we'll go out for consultation. And I'm really excited about community feedback from that. You know, this is the first time that we'll have, um, comics within the collecting plan. So that will be really interesting to hear people's thoughts and feelings about that. We're organising for comic fest 2.0 to come through as well. So [00:45:00] again, hopefully we can do that And, yeah, just excited to get to know the collection a little bit more, as well as doing that work, to rebalance and collect more things coming through because it's a really exciting time. I feel like, you know, I've got a list of of cartoonists and comic artists who I'm just really excited to make contact with and to start building those relationships with and get their cartoons and comics and stories and reflections [00:45:30] as part of our national heritage.

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AI Text:September 2023
URL:https://www.pridenz.com/ait_sam_orchard_new_zealand_cartoons_and_comics_archive.html