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THE BLOG AT THE CROSSROADS
Article: François Schuiten - Architect of the Fantastic
Posted: April 9, 2013
For their ever-expanding parallel universe, Schuiten and Peeters set each story in a different, often isolated city, rigorously ‘terraforming’ a coherent continent on a steampunk-esque ‘counter-Earth’, rotating exactly opposite ours and so invisible from our Earth. Their metropolises come with their own beliefs, visions and anxieties which they use to allude to and comment on our own. They channel many cultural references, such as the fin de siècle futuristic imaginings of Jules Verne, who appears in person in the series, as well as the ingenuities of Jorge Luis Borges and the existential terrors of Franz Kafka. Schuiten’s draughtsmanship is exquisite, his meticulous linework reminiscent of Fine Art engravings, his colouring equally evocative.
Schuiten and Peeters construct each fresh urban space along distinct designs and utopian ideals but taken to thought-provoking extremes. Architecture becomes allegory. Their characters’ lives often become dominated, even overwhelmed, by the extraordinary ‘psychetectures’ they are forced to inhabit. Schuiten’s interest is in a “character caught up in a system. And how an environment constructs us, reveals us or destroys us. The organic links the city forges with us, fractal links which form between very small and very large things. Comics and architecture are perfect tools to address these ideas.” Read the rest of my Article here…
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