Interview with Canan Marasligil

Canan Marasligil is an intersectionalist poet and writer, comics-lover, performer, podcaster and cultural programs coordinator, based in Amsterdam. She is fluent in Turkish, French, English, Spanish and Dutch and uses this multi-lingual approach in her work, trying to make audiences aware of subtle changing meanings and translations, across borders and societies.

She will be one of the main guests at the Conference “Comics, Heritage and Contemporary Art” that is part of the Remix Comix Project, realized within the framework of the European Capital of Culture 2022.

What are your plans (and expectations) for the Remix Comix conference in Novi Sad, could you give us a glimpse of what your seminar will be like?

I’m really excited to meet all the people who will attend and speak at the conference. Part of my work is to always listen and learn, and I feel I’ll do a lot of that. My session will look into reclaiming and reframing stories from people who have been pushed into the margins or into silence by systemic forms of exclusion. I am interested in challenging the contexts (and formats) that were imposed on those people and their stories. The conference offers this space where we can rethink the idea of “heritage” in its widest definition, as to include as many layers as possible, always looking at the world from a personal lens, which I believe is the power of comics. So that’s what I’ll try to do. 

What comics have you been reading recently that inspired you? Or, if none, is there a comics book you came across in the last few years that you would recommend to everyone.

My recent reads in comics have been about the lives of fascinating thinkers, writers and artists. One is a graphic novel on Anaïs Nin: Anaïs Nin: Sur la mer des mensonges by Léonie Bischoff (in French) (https://www.casterman.com/Bande-dessinee/Catalogue/albums/anais-nin), another is about Hannah Arendt: The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt by Ken Krimstein (https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/three-escapes-of-hannah-arendt-9781635571882/). And after I read The Secret To Superhuman Strength, Alison Bechdel’s latest work, I dived back into Are You My Mother? which I already loved when I first read it (I just love the connections she makes with poetry, with Virginia Woolf…)

I guess from this list you can say I love the connections that can be made between comics, philosophy and literature. 

Remix Comix is about reframing and recontextualizing stories and narratives. What narrative, you think, is not yet realized as a comic, but would make a great comic?  

I would love to see a comic exploring translation. Not just having a character who is a translator, or have a comic including different languages, but using the medium itself to play with translation and look at the process of translation in language, in our bodies, in public space, in politics, and how it shapes us and our societies. If that comic book exists, please send it my way! Otherwise, I may be working on it myself in the future 🙂