• Chris Staros will be at STAPLE! in Austin, TX March 3-4. Top Shelf is an offical sponsor this year, and Kagan McLeod will be with Top Shelf as an invited special guest of the show. Here's a boss ad designed by our own Chris Ross.

• Call for submissions! Slovenian comics juggernaut Stripburger is calling for contributions to their next big project. Take it away:
Forum Ljubljana, Institute for Art and Cultural Production, Metelkova 6, Si-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
tel. +386 1 2319662, fax. +386 1 4338074, burger@mail.ljudmila.org / stripburger.org

WORKING TITLE!
Comics of the theme of Work

Gather all, ye scurvy comic scribblers, scratchers and drawers!

This year's special edition of Stripburger is dedicated to work in all its forms. Yes, the W-word.

In these turbulent times we're witnessing changes to the paradigm of work. Once it used to be a part of a daily survival strategy, then a way of expressing oneself, nowadays we cannot distinguish it from leisure time anymore. How can we define work in the first place? Is it a rational guided process aimed at some tangible goal, or is it any human activity where new things are created? Is it only paid labour, remunerated by a wage or salary, what about voluntary work? Is it the work that made the human species, or is it the other way around, that we as humans tend to put significance into our creative activities and call that work? What about art? Is an artist creating or working? What's the difference between these two terms in his or her case?

Many questions can be asked about the nature of work in our contemporary society. Due to the fleeting nature of its definitions we've assembled a list of terms, clues and starting points, all somehow connected to the concept of work, which could serve as sources of inspiration for you, dear artists, when you try to tackle this heavy issue. We're expecting socially engaged comics, but also intimate meditations on the issue of work, status and rights of workers, on the artist as a worker, then humorous submissions as well, even mischievous are most welcome! Let them not be politically correct, PC is for pussies, we're expecting full-blooded comics that will become often quoted referential material in the future, or at least fun to read!

Work as:

• means of survival
• effort, toil
• a characteristic human need
• a necessary evil
• joke, fun, goofing-off
• »He who does not work, shall not eat as well!« - a Slovenian proverb
• work as godly activity – »creatio ex nihilo«
• work vs. Rest
• waiting for work: Unemployment office
• work vs. antiwork
• working at home
• manual vs. intellectual work
• taboo of work/banned work
• »a Sunday kind of work«
• »precarious, temporary, part-time, seasonal work
• workoholism
• internship
• strike/denial of work
• legal vs. illegal work (moonlighting, etc)
• voluntary work
• trade unions
• history of work
• exploitation of workers: sweatshops, slavery, forced/compulsory work
• gyms: working out
• the division of work/labour
• work and gender
• work and age
• work and sexuality (prostitutes and man-whores, etc)
• work today vs. work in the past (manufactories, guilds, etc)
• »Work less, create more!«
• stigmatisation of the non-working
• »gastarbeit« work: work by more or less temporary immigrant workers and
• whatever it works for you

Please feel free to work on some other ideas.

A traveling exhibition is planned at the release of the anthology and also some other things like workshops …

Deadline for submissions: 31st May

TEHNICAL DETAILS:
book wil be size: 235x170 mm
So send the works no smaller then A4 format(21x29,7 cm)
print: black and white

Files should be:

• lineart: at least 600 dpi resolution, 240 mm height
• grayscale: at least 300 dpi resolution, 240 mm height

TO BE SENT TO:
burger@mail.ljudmila.org
Stripburger / Forum Ljubljana, Metlekova 6, SI – 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia, Europe