Manchester 2024
The CORALA Conference was held at the University of Manchester on 25 and 26 January 2024. The programme included speakers from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru and covered topics including neo-extractivism, the superhero genre, caricatures, domestic work, and the intersectionalities of race and gender. The CFP can be downloaded here.
One of the emergent questions debated during the conference was: what is specific to comics when it comes to addressing these issues? After all, all cultural forms have histories of racism and anti-racism. Some of the answers to these questions referenced the power of drawing back against the archive; the mobilisation of multiple temporalities in the same space; the occupation of the page-territory; and the potential to play with genre and comics traditions in ways that escape mere repetition.
The conference also included a small exhibition of Condorito comics, organised in collaboration with one of the conference participants, Alejandra González Hermosilla, and two workshops with Latin American artists.
The first workshop focused on race and land rights, and was led by Panchueli (Francisca Cárcamo Rojas), a Chilean comics artist and illustrator who is currently focusing on non-fiction comics and particularly her project The Other Archive.
The second workshop focused on comics and everyday life, and was led by Bennê Oliveira, a Brazilian comics artist whose work focuses on how the minute details of our daily routines speak to wider social issues, including race and class.
The Peruvian comics artist Trilce García also participated in the conference. Her work focuses on human rights issues in Latin America and other parts of the world, and includes the comic WARMIMASIY, a piece focused on protests undertake by Quechuan women and which formed part of the ‘Movements and Moments’ project organised by the Goethe Institute.