While the concept of drawing has existed for over 70,000 years, the ways in which they are produced, distributed, and understood are constantly in change. As a ten year old I started publishing drawings online, and have done so continuously the last 20 years. During this time period, the sheer volume of digitally distributed drawings has exploded, and symbols has become the dominate language of public discorse.
Today, image generators draw from enormous digital archives in order to assemble new drawings. Does it make sense to speak of a single drawing as something on its own, or has it become inseparable from the mass of images it’s composed of?
My research will look at two historical collections of drawings assembled to investigate the link between the human mind and it’s urge to draw and create visual language: Hans Prinzhorn’s early 20th-century study of artworks by psychiatric patients, and Rhoda Kellogg’s mid-century research on children's drawings.
I will also collaborate with the French contemporary collector Jolie Dessin, who curates digital drawings collected from the website DeviantArt. While widely known for it’s many manga and fanart artists, the platform also nurtures a rich underground where anthropomorphic and transhuman fantasies flourish through a forum-based logic far from the mainstream.
Using Prinzhorn and Kellogg’s research as analytical tools, I will explore ways of activating and discussing Jolie’s collection. Could it offer new insights into what Prinzhorn described as “the universal human urge for pictorial expression”, and how that urge takes place within contemporary internet culture? As a combined cartoonist and a publisher, I will use both parts of my artistic practice to reflect on and respond to the project’s ongoing research.
Erlend Peder Kvam (b. 1994) is a Norwegian cartoonist and editor based in Oslo. He studied illustration at HGB Leipzig and the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, where he is currently a PhD fellow. In addition to several self-published zines, he has published three titles with Swiss publisher Nieves Books and contributed to anthologies and exhibitions both in Norway and internationally. A former member of the performative design collective Narves1biblioteket, he now co-runs Foot Books, a publishing house dedicated to contemporary drawing across disciplines.