Digital Young

Still about teens in Buzau. Maybe I bother you talking and talking about these guys, but I was really impressed by these teens. You might say that it is something really normal for teens to express themselves through these art forms: dance, graffiti or manga. But I will tell you that in this case it is not so normal after all. These kids have no source where to see these things or to learn how to do these things besides Internet. They also do not have places to express them. They also don’t have other local crews or groups to socialize with or to learn from. So, my question is: how do they do it? Isn’t this a legitimate question?

From these break dancers, I found out that there are teens for whom break dance is not the only art form for expression. It’s like they are a melting pot of urban art forms. Ionut Alexandru (aka Saga), 16 years, is a break dancer, a graffer, an extreme biker, an illegal car driver and he also does volunteering in a ONG. So…how does he deal with all these?

Graffiti sketches…

Graffiti on walls:

And…

Madalina, 16 years, she’s also a multi-functional-maker urban stylist. She’s more into graphics and manga, but she also does graffiti. Here are some of her works.

Manga:

She’s so incredibly talented, so I really wanted to show you what she does and how she does. Both of them, Ionut & Madalina, are witty, smart, interesting and do so many things that make a part of their everyday life. They identify themselves with every drawing, graffiti, or dance that they do. I liked them a lot, I only hope that this incredible talent do not waste and just transform into different art forms.

This weekend, 17-18 may, there has been the second edition of Otaku Festival in Bucharest.

Now, this is an important event for all manga fans and creators in Romania. As manga remains a little bit underground as social phenomenon, it starts bit by bit to develop in Romania. Why did I say underground? The sources for manga fans and makers are not available so easily; either they download what they can find from DCC++, or they spend a lot of money buying them from SUA or other countries.

Last year, Otaku Festival took place at Carturesti library. This year, they needed more space because they organized expositions and projections of animes. The place of this year’s festival was the ancient center of Bucharest, on Selari street.

At the exhibit, here are few of the artworks exposed.

Even if it was quite a small place, there was a continuous dynamic. What I really liked was that there came parents with little children, teens, youngsters. Most of the people were, obviously, teens. It was like their space and I liked this fact very much. Here are some of the people who came and also who organized the festival.

At the festival, there was also a little table with a manga fan accessories:

In the other place, a bar where there were the projections, I bought myself a repertoire of a manga creator (I think her nickname was Anima, but I think I might be mistaken), the Otaku Festival poster and the last number of Otaku Magazine, the Romanian community of practices’ magazine.

I would like for the future to make a comparison between the different ways of figuring and the new forms of literacies. This my next project, to make a description and interpretation of this new digital culture, manga creators. Why digital? Because, mainly, they use technological tools. The creators who came to the festival were still drawing by hand. But here is a picture showing us the opposite.

So, if you are interested of how Romanian manga creators work, with what tools, what they come up with, stay tune because I am trying to put in place a mini-research and I hope that in a relatively short period of time.