Finland, a country of five million people, has never really witnessed the birth of a comic industry. This also means that Finnish artists are never under any illusions about their future. They know that they very likely have to earn their bread and butter doing something else. And as it will not make them rich, they also do not have to care about making compromises. Ville Hänninen, a Finnish comics journalist, critic and the chairman of Finnish Comics Society, will come to Riga and present the Finnish comics scene in its variety, Febryary 23, 17:30 at the premises of Birojnica, Bergs Bazaar. Conversation will be held in English. Ville Hänninen is comics journalist and critic and the chairman of Finnish Comics Society. Since 1997 he has written articles, reviews and interviews, as well as edited books about comics, including the colossal anthology Finnish Comics Annual 2011. In 2012 he co-curated ""Eyeballing! The new forms of comics"", the exhibition of contemporary Finnish comics in the Museum of Contemporary Art KIASMA. In 2014 he wrote Sarjatulta (with Jussi Karjalainen), a non-fiction book about comics and political cartoons in Finland during the Second World War. Organizers: The Nordic Council of Ministers’ Office in Latvia, Latvias Univeristy and a comics anthology kuš! in cooperation with the Finnish Embassy in Latvia.
