Life Strips
Monday, November 10th, 2008
Lifestrips is a comic art project by visual artist Katharina Anna Helming and photographer Marc Seestaedt. They took the well-established format of the photocomic and twisted it around, manipulating the photos until they have a photocopied, downgraded feel to them, and replacing the bland, clichéd dialogue with real conversations and stream-of-consciousness remarks.
The purpose of the experiment is documenting private thoughts and feelings in trivial moments of everyday life, and observing which of these actually are spoken out loud. The result are very recognisable sketches and slices of everyday life in a modern city. It’s also very interesting to see that, although the strips are kept separate, certain constant themes seep through : love, work, purpose, they all form the meandering subtext of these apparently mundane situations.
I was particularly struck by the effective use of expressive typography, and by the fact that the comics are presented in one long horizontal strip, which allowed me to try out the horizontal scroll button on my newfangled Laser Mouse. Neat !
