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| Maksim Agafonov (in front) draws a story about red hair |
The Finnish Embassy in Moscow organised a
grassroots comics workshop together with Udmurtian language activists in
Izhevsk, Udmurt Republic (Russia) in May 2016. The workshop took place at the youth
center LIFT, which is run by Izhevsk City. The eight participants were artists,
art students, graphic designers and library staff. Most participants had
experience in comics, but the grassroots comics method was new to them, as was the
idea of making comics entirely in Udmurtian language. Some comics that were
made in the workshop dealt with minority language issues and differences
between Udmurtian and Russian languages. Other comics had a variety of topics,
but all were made in Udmurtian.
In spite of the fact that the Udmurtian language is the official language of the Republic, general attitude to it and its speakers is
often contemptuous (arrogant) as it is mostly spoken in villages. State
structures don't use documents in Udmurtian. However, there has been a rise of
the interest to the language and ethnic roots recently among progressive young
people. It has been a trend in other republics of Russia as well. Udmurtia hosts annually Finno-Ugric language congresses, international film festivals, and other intercultural events, but popularization and preserving of the
language is still a big problem as the amount of its speakers is diminishing. It
disappears from schools and gets replaced by English.
The workshop was tutored by comics artist Sanna
Hukkanen from Finland and Anna Voronkova from Moscow comics festival KomMissia
(http://kommissia.ru/), who is also a linguist and translator from Finnish.
Sanna Hukkanen and Anna Voronkova are also planning to
take grassroots comics workshops to other Finno-Ugric language groups in the
near future. The purpose of the workshops is to promote the use of minority
language in new medias.
LIFT also hosted two comics exhibitions at the
time of the workshop. One displayed comics from Karelian language activists
from Petrozavodsk, Karelian Republic from 2015. The other exhibition introduced
workshop tutor Sanna Hukkanen's comics translated in Udmurtian.
Posted by Sanna Hukkanen
ja Anna Voronkova
Comic from the workshop: Anna Obraztsova's poetic comic about misunderstandings between Udmurt
and Russian
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