CAMOUFLAGE COMICS AS DISCURSIVE MEMORIAL
www.camouflagecomics.com
I have more memories in myself alone than all men have had since the world was a world
Jorge Luis Borges in ‘Funes, the Memorious’
What does it mean to be ‘in Argentina’ today?
The “dirty war” of 1976-83 still informs the “structures of feeling” of Argentine society at this very moment. This project is a reflection of/on this, on how the junta had affected and how it still, posthumously, produces after-effects in the shaping of discourse, arts, and social memory – the “hearts and minds” of contemporary Argentine society if you will. Camouflage Comics: Dirty War Images can be read as a specific manifestation of this memory-work; it is a space intended for the ongoing visual and verbal reflection on the legacies of a (recent) past.
The comics and illustrations of Camouflage Comics are all new; they were made between 2002 and 2005. However, there is a strange continuity between these comics and the handful of what one could call “critical avant-garde” comics published during or around the time of the military regime, by such pioneers as Alberto Breccia, Carlos Trillo, Hector Oesterheld, and others.
On Thursday 19 May 2005, the website Camouflage Comics was officially launched at the ABK, the Academy of Fine Arts (Maastricht, the Netherlands).