Affect in the Gutter
Project details
- Year
- 2024
- Programme
- Bachelor – Illustration
- Practices
- Honours Programme
- Minor
- RASL Re-Imagining Tomorrow Through Arts and Sciences
Judith Butler, Frames of War: When is Life Grievable?
Without grievability, there is no life, or, rather, there is something living that is other than life. Instead, “there is a life that will never have been lived,” sustained by no regard, no testimony, and ungrieved when lost.
Delving into the archive (as opposed to the archives) – an ambiguous space preoccupied with the intangible remnants of history, Illustrator Nicholas Westgård questions how critical fabulation can serve a role in addressing the silent landscapes of the past .
In appropriating the medium of the comic, he contends that the inherent dialogue it establishes with its reader, the give and take that happens between panels – the gutter, positions it as a uniquely effective tool in conveying the mechanics implicit in an affective encounter with the archive. The gutter between comic panels takes on the analogy for a queer space of the non-figurable that defies the imposed rigidity of the traditional archive, touching upon the ephemeral. Calling for sustained engagement, fabulation, and [re]contextualization of the past- a filling of gaps left behind by queer lives, who’s traces are often “ephemeral and unusual”, having been forged in a context of privacy and invisibility, both chosen and enforced to make space for those history has rendered [un]grievable.
When Swallows Dive is a work of fiction written from the perspective of a comic artist who in present day, as a father, tries to make sense of the relationship to his older brother and his male partner 40 years prior in Oslo 1974. The traditional comic panels are interwoven between the fragments left behind – the paper trail of their relationship. The 22-page excerpt gives a glimpse into the couple’s life before the arrival of the houseguest and follows the older brother Veier as he returns to his hometown. By providing context to how, by whom, and why certain moments and feelings were deemed worth capturing: it makes the case for how a photograph of a thermos on a car roof has history making potential once [re]contextualized as an act of queer affection.
Nicholas Westgård is a Rotterdam based illustrator preoccupied with formulating and exploring how to translate and convey the unseen into something that others can use and apprehend, a form of knowledge production in itself. In this sense, he embodyes the act of storytelling as a tool that allows for the bridging of gaps across disciplines, between forms and practices.