Gray, Maggie (2020) The freedom of the press : comics, labor and value in the Birmingham Arts Lab. In: Giddens, Thom, (ed.) Critical directions in comics studies. University Press of Mississippi. (In Press)

Abstract

This chapter engages with important strands of scholarship on comics work, arguing for a critical comics studies that attends to the political economy, social relations and material processes of production. It examines the relationship between struggles over the organization of cultural labor and the forms of value inscribed in comics, via the case study of a specific site of British comics production that reimagined how comics work could be organised and the artistic value comics could have– the cooperative Birmingham Arts Lab Press (1969-1982) and its Ar:Zak imprint. Bringing together archival inquiry and participant interviews, wider historical research into the arts lab, alternative press, community arts and underground/alternative comics movements, and Marxist political and aesthetic theory, this chapter analyses how struggles for an autonomous, democratised, participatory creative practice that took place within this context of comics production were embodied in the material and visual form of the comics made.

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Item Type:	Book Section
Research Area:	Research Areas > Art and design Research Areas > Communication, cultural and media studies Research Areas > History of art, architecture and design
Faculty, School or Research Centre:	Kingston School of Art Kingston School of Art > Visual and Material Culture Research Centre
Related URLs:	Publisher
Date Deposited:	17 Dec 2019 09:45
Last Modified:	06 Oct 2020 15:44
URI:	https://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/id/eprint/44615

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