Closer

CLOSER is a comic book that emphasizes a ‘Handheld Mirror’ while strolling through Angouléme (France), known for the International Comic Strip Festival since 1974. Leafing through the pages, the reader discovers various sights, many of them remnants of past events in the renowned ‘City of Comics’. However, the reproduced surroundings appear deformed, as in a distorted mirror, a détournement of the place itself. Each of the drawings is repeated on a double page, in this way becoming an ‘echo-comic’ that duplicates the environment and the pages themselves. Enhanced by an accompanying voice that sings scattered fragments of songs from Joy Division’s cult album Closer (1980), the book is a visual echolalia of a walk through the city that gently deforms its environment and soundscape in parallel, thus an introspection on the language of comics.