balkan_twilight

Should you take the Balkan Twilight superficially, or misjudge it by it’s title, expecting stereotypical and straightforward stories of War, hatred and violence, you will be very disappointed; instead, you will find twenty three stories, in which authors use the theme of the red sun setting over the Balkans as a mere starting point in their exploration of comics form and narrative techniques. The art of comics in the past two decades has served as the only medium for the people of the Balkans in presenting themselves to the rest of the world as poetical, or at least less dominantly political.Nevertheless, symbolic images of what is generally considered as the real Balkan Twilight appear sporadically, filtered, transformed and somehow estranged by the use of genre iconography, lyrical scripts or personal mythology. And for this very reason you have to take a deeper look; blood and violence may appear, but in form of a vampire in the “Hidden Thoughts in the Elevator” stories; the rise of nationalism is astutely presented in the metaphorical poem about “The Wolf”, the fall of Yugoslavia emerges behind the poetic description of family life, and the immigrant experience veers it’s ugly head in the story of a young gigolo living in USA. The artwork strongly supports this concept through pictorial and somewhat distorted representations of machines, factories and dying cities, having created dream-like scenery and disturbing imagery, yet always maintaining a healthy dose of Balkan-like humor and irony. Welcome to the mysterious world of Balkan twilight. /Ivan Velisavljevic/