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1/30/2018

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Graphic violence
The 2016 version of Curios and Conundrums came in a deliciously large format, and I mean large — an old-fashioned broadsheet newspaper, running 14 by 23 inches per page (resulting in more than a two-foot-wide centre spread). That’s a lot of real estate to fill. Eye-catching features were essential. Most issues contained at least one feature told wholly or in part through infographics. 

Any good infographic is trickier than it looks. It is not just an adjunct to a story; it is a story in itself. As such, it requires all the elements of a story, like narrative structure and point of view. And the form should add something to the telling. A timeline, for example, is a common and basic form of infographic. You see them everywhere. But without a compelling point of view — a strong rationale, whether visual, design or content-driven, for what information is included — a timeline is just a list. Why bother?

One of my favourite infographics was devised by the excellent designer Kris Forge for the “From Death and Dark Oblivion” issue of Curios and Conundrums, an issue exploring the concept of hubris. To my mind, as editor, that meant at least one story had to delve deep into ancient Greek theatre where so many famous tragedies examine humankind's arrogance, folly and self-destruction. But an academic parsing of the Greek notions of hamartia, hybris, ate, and nemesis might not be the most accessible of stories. But you never know. Research leads the way.

I decided to focus on the Oresteia, Aeschylus’ trilogy exploring the multigenerational curse inherited by Orestes, son of Agamemnon, hero of the Trojan War. It doesn’t end well.
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From the start, I knew I wanted something of a genealogical chart to illustrate the story. That’s easier said than done. There are countless competing and contradictory myths and dramatic traditions. Identifying a clear through line was a tricky business. 

While showing who begat whom was important, how they did the begetting — and undid the begetting  --- was much more germane. After many false starts and blind alleys, I think the infographic we settled on powerfully communicates the web of violence and weirdness ensnaring six generations of one family. And that graphic crystallization of melodramatic depravity, in turn, changed how I wrote the final piece. The story ended up a bloody-tongue-in-cheek entry to Soap Opera Digest. (Hat tip to my colleague, Jennifer Orme, for suggesting I commit the piece fully to that idea.)

I hope you enjoy your visit with The House of Atreus.
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Our paranoia issue from 2016 had all sorts of creepy crawlies t
hroughout, just to get our readers itchy with runaway thoughts. It featured a gorgeous full-page infographic titled "The Swarm.” I sourced most of the imagery and did reams of research. The math at times was devilishly difficult, but understanding what the story communicates shouldn’t be.

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1/20/2018

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Ambitious twists
The Mysterious Package Company is an entertainment company like no other, offering a range of genre narratives — Lovecraftian horror, for example, or Victorian murder mystery or zombie apocalypse — that are deconstructed and retold through custom-designed objects and ephemera. These obsessively researched materials are packed into a series of “mysterious packages” that are delivered by mail, most often as gifts to unsuspecting recipients. It is the job of whomever receives these packages to figure out the connections among the items and hunt for telling details in the hopes of reassembling the narrative. “Stories you can touch,” is the MPC tag line.

After a year freelancing with the company, I was hired at the start of 2016 to devise and enact a wholesale revamp of the MPC’s quixotic quarterly publication called Curios and Conundrums. As editor in chief, I was to up the ante in terms of the publication’s weirdness and quality, to broaden its appeal among the company’s eccentric and discerning membership.

(In the future, I'll post additional forays into, and samples of, my work with the MPC.)

I hear dead people

It was an exciting challenge to bring my 25-plus years’ experience in journalism and media to the weird and wonderful publication Curios and Conundrums (C&C) and to look for opportunities when to twist the content and infuse it with the C&C’s off-kilter vibe.

One of the more unusual and ambitious innovations I 
concocted was a series of interviews, in Q&A format, of artists and thinkers where I, as the interviewer, took the voice of a real person from the past, someone who had had a profound influence on the interviewee, someone the interviewee admired. Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin, for example, chose to be interviewed by Uruguayan writer Horacio Quiroga (who died in 1937). Canadian artist Kent Monkman, in the guise of his alter ego Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, chose to be interviewed by French painter Eugène Delacroix (who died in 1863). A third in the series switched it up a little, with British industrial designer Thomas Thwaites, author of GoatMan: How I Took A Holiday From Being a Human, choosing to be interviewed by the god Pan.

The choice of interviewer was made after much back and forth. You can’t just call up people and say, “Ya, I want to interview you in the voice of a dead person.” Actually, I did; I know both Maddin and Monkman. Thwaites, on the other hand, didn’t know me from Adam; he’s just a goer. I was lucky. I am very grateful to have been granted these individuals’ trust to collaborate on such a wacky conceit, to have them play along.
Researching an artist in tandem with their inspiration was great fun: understanding the artist’s connection, finding the voice of a person from the past, searching for intersections. Wherever possible, I used the actual words of the “interviewer.” In the case of Delacroix, Monkman directed me to Delacroix’s journals; they are a continuing source of insight for Monkman. It's plain to see why, for they are a fantastic record of Delacroix’s thoughts on both the art and craft of painting.
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I had an unstated hope for this series of Q&As. Often I find that people are much more forthcoming when discussing the work of others rather than their own. Through some special alchemy, these semi-fictional interviews result in truthier truths.
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    This is not a (b)log

    Gordon Bowness is a Toronto-based writer with more than 30 years' media and entertainment experience. Apparently, he still has a few more things to say.

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