STRIP STRASSE AND ART & MUSIC
Last year the Pula book fair for the first time put comic books in the spotlight. Near the main venue, Croatian Defenders’ House, an entire street was occupied and squatted. Stripovska – Via dei fumetti – Strip Strasse had its own comic bookshop, gallery, library, café, entrance through a comic book scene, ‘comic-facades’, its own traffic signs. It lived vibrantly day and night thanks to the merry comic book people led by Nina Bunjevac and Vladimir Šagadin. Strip Strasse in just a few days became a world of its own, a parallel festival, with its own rhythm of events and its own audience.
This year we are revisiting the Strip Strasse on the Comic Book Night, next to exhibition 5 A and a Strip Strasse marathon. The Strip Strasse is also hosting the Book Folks club, a club intended for graphic authors, comic festival organisers, publishers and editors. Utterly fleeting and unpredictable, the Strip Strasse will this year again definitely come up with unannounced programmes, ad hoc, without premeditation, set boundaries and spotlights.
The Strip Strasse is hosting a comic book workshop organised by Art & Music festival. This workshop and a night-long live music performance (Letu štuke, Miki Solus, Artam Lili, Lice Mista) at the once iconic punk club HP will mark the birth of Art & Music festival for the first time in wintertime, during the Book Fair(y).
Founded one hot summer, in sorrowful 1993, Art & music was a surreal haven for all the lovers of pop culture, especially rock’n’roll and comic books. In a city of refugees, conscriptions, empty beaches and closed down hotels, in a country at war, a festival was born that unrelentingly defied the time. A magical combination of comics and rock’n’roll created a unique platform of resistance against the savage 1990s, a platform of young audience who refused to conform to nationalistic divisions and aggressive celebration of primeval values. They celebrated comic book heroes and emerging rock bands which gained extreme popularity after Art & Music. In fact, it is hard to find a good band in Croatia and the region that has not appeared on the A&M stage, already in its very beginnings. Art & Music has been struggling lately. Quite simply, it does not fit in with these neoliberal times. But it still persists and gathers the remaining dreamers who refuse to adhere to the numbing dictate of time.
At the book fair, together with the Strip Strasse, Art & Music is a tribute to the Pula underground scene of the 1990s, an island and asylum to the comic book authors and all those who do not know censorship and who find freedom of speech as important for survival as air.
The strip strasse programme features: Sylvain Coissard, Beli sladoled – Leon Zuodar and Miha Perne, Boris Stanić, Ivana Pipal, Miron Milić, Benjamin Flao i Alem Ćurin
The Art & Music programme features:
LETU ŠTUKE
Letu štuke is a band from Sarajevo founded in 2004, but goes way back to the 1980s, when Dino Šaran played in the namesake band. Almost 20 years later he decided to reanimate the band, joined by drummer Đani Pervan. The following year they released their first single, Sunce, in association with Rundek and Cargo Orchestra, as well as the album which echoed across the region. It was followed by other two albums, to a wide public and critical acclaim, and a new release is coming up. Next to Šaran and Pervan, the band consists of Dejan Ostojić (bass), Emir Jugo (guitar) and Bojan Ahac (keyboard).
ARTAN LILI
Artan Lili consists of Bojan Slačala, Romana Slačala, Marko Ajković and Dragan Knežević from Belgrade. They exist since 2013 and have made a name for themselves with their first single Džoni and since then they released other 11 singles, which comprise their first album. They are the first band to try out such a successive, song-by-song method of album release. They play a vibrant pop-noise to set you in motion and smash the winter melancholia.
MIKI SOLUS
Miki Solus is a singer songwriter from Zagreb. He plays with Frano Visković (bass), Andrej Tačigin (cajon drum) and Medarda Pack (saxophone). This spring he released his latest album Muzika za djecu i penzionere. He stands out from the rest of the Croatian songwriting scene with his choice of humour as the key expressive method. His texts are often derisive and (self)ironic, with an equal nonchalance in approach to hipsters studying Liberal Arts as to great musicians or romantic love.
LICE MISTA
Lice mista comes from Preko, island of Ugljan. They developed as a continuation of the project Brižno grlo, present on the Zadar scene since the 1990s. Their sound is notably acoustic, with hints of psychedelia, folk and post-punk. They sing in the Preko dialect on the island reality. Although they use many clichés and Dalmatian music stereotypes, like singing about the sea in all its forms, Lice mista does not sound like any other island band you may have heard.
