Public defence in New Media, MA Ilan Manouach

MA Ilan Manouach will defend the thesis "Estranging Comics – Towards a novel comics praxeology" on 22 April at 12:00 in Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Department of Art and Media, in lecture hall F101, Otaniementie 14 (Väre), Espoo, and online in Zoom.

Opponent: Prof. Jan Baetens, KU Leuven, Belgium
Custos: Prof. Bassam El Baroni, Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Department of Art and Media

The public defence will be organized via remote technology. Follow defence: https://aalto.zoom.us/j/63903131818?pwd=Z1ZZaFhUbWh4aTNwQ2FtdThiVTdPQT09

Zoom Quick Guide: https://www.aalto.fi/en/services/zoom-quick-guide

Thesis available for public display at: https://aaltodoc.aalto.fi/doc_public/eonly/riiputus/
Doctoral theses in the School of Arts, Design and Architecture: https://aaltodoc.aalto.fi/handle/123456789/54

Press release:

This thesis embraces an attitude of productive estrangement towards the medium’s forms, material qualities and operations, and constructs comics as a “contemporary object”. According to philosopher Anne-Françoise Schmid, a contemporary object is an extra-disciplinary entity that is massively distributed in space and time. Understanding such an object depends on the increasingly aggregate nature of knowledge production and dissemination in the computational age. Both in theory, with a series of papers in peer-review journals, and in artistic practice, by way of published comics and commissioned curatorial projects, this thesis examines the mutations of the comics ecology as an expansion of the scope of knowledge. It embraces the cumulative impact of digital transformation and articulates a novel comics praxeology predicated on two conditions. First, the thesis appeals for a systematic exploration of comics outside of narrow media purviews, the implicitly disciplinary conceptions, and the dominant historical perspectives in Comics Studies. It aims to develop a conception that embraces a rigorous application of a non-hegemonic interdisciplinarity in comics research. Second, and most importantly, the thesis argues for the expansion of operational agency on the part of comics professionals. This agency is described as a heightened contextual appreciation of the industry’s infrastructural backend, an awareness of its imbricated institutions and a diversification of the professional toolbox. I argue that a novel comics praxeology is a necessary attribute in order to embrace future, speculative, unclaimed or hitherto impossible forms in comics expression.

Contact information of doctoral candidate: