Blood-red and steel-blue. With a series of ballpoint pens in two colours, Mikkel Ørsted Sauzet cuts a conscience onto paper. The French-Danish comic book artist allies these simple means to a sincere concern for the world both past and present, a bittersweet sharpness of mind, and “a big, fat, local accent”. “That’s the privilege of making alternative comics that don’t earn you anything: you can do as you wish.”
“When I moved to Brussels, I made a lot of friends very quickly. The welcome here was great. Maybe they thought it was funny to have a Danish friend. They often told me I was exotic. Ah well, maybe it’s just some sort of latent racism.” [Laughs out loud] The casual sting characterises Mikkel Ørsted Sauzet (1978), born of a Danish mother and a French father, who since 1999 has been the exotic friend of a multitude of fellow Brussels inhabitants: he cuts a path across the paper and our conversation in an incisive, flexible, and bittersweet way. You laugh uproariously, but it leaves you with a wry aftertaste. It is a little like the feeling you get when you’ve read your first dose of Bitterkomix, the razor-sharp South African comic strip magazine.
But while in the early 1990s Conrad Botes and Anton Kannemeyer were avidly dissecting South African society, Mikkel Ørsted Sauzet still had his nose in American comics. “Denmark isn’t a big comic book country like Belgium, though that has been changing over the last few years, and more and more alternative comics are being published. But when I was young, you could say we were invaded by American and Belgian comics. There was no real space for our own stuff. I have always been interested in comics, like every kid I guess. But also because my father is French: he had some special French comics, very different from the usual stuff, which I used to read when I was a kid. Magazines like L’Écho des savanes and Fluide glacial, stuff from the 1970s, and comics by Moëbius and the like. Those were real eye-openers for me. Coming to Belgium to study comic book art felt like coming home to the world of comics I knew through my father.”
Though Saint-Luc still held some surprises, back in 1999. “In Denmark there weren’t any schools where you could study comic book art. I had the choice between Angoulême and Brussels, but when I found out that Angoulême was quite elitist and hard to get into, I decided to come to Saint-Luc. Brussels was very different than I had expected; even more artistic than I thought. At Saint-Luc, I was still a kind of stupid teenager with a love for superhero comics like X-Men and Superman. Here I got to know all the really alternative comics.”
Mikkel Ørsted Sauzet now calls Brussels home - “in a big, fat, local accent, according to my French cousins“ [Laughs] - and has been working at the Belgian Comic Strip Centre for the past four years. "I’m a guide and a teacher there. The work at the museum was a great opportunity and the perfect way to learn about comic book history. At Saint-Luc, we had lessons in the history of art, but we never had a course focusing on the history of comics. So it really filled a big lacuna." Brussels also nourishes Mikkel Ørsted Sauzet in a different way. “The city is obviously more international than Denmark. The cosmopolitan idea of having so many different nationalities, this melting pot experience is something I really like. There’s an abundance of reality and politics here in the heart of Europe. Brussels and Belgium are so important and yet so little talked about. Before I came here, I knew about Dutroux and C’est arrivé près de chez vous. [Laughs] Those were my only references."
Those means are extremely flexible. “I try to read as much as I can and when I find something that I didn’t know, and that I think might interest other people as well, I can really dive into the subject. The preparatory work is the most time-consuming. And it’s a hard choice: what do I use, what do I waste my time on? But hey, that’s the privilege of making alternative comics that don’t earn you anything: you can do as you wish." [Laughs]
His wordless debut Aske ("Ash"), which was published in 2013 by the Danish published of, inter alia, Chris Ware, Jim Woodring, Daniel Clowes, and Anke Feuchtenberger, unveils a brutal but representative fraction of the story of the Haitian slave revolution in red (and black) ballpoint drawings. "I put a lot of research into that project. A lot more than the comic actually bears witness to. It's a process of reading a lot, and throwing a lot away, trying to figure out what would be the best way to tell the story. It's something I need to do: I have to find out as much as I can before creating the story, so that I don’t do injustice to the Haitians, to history… I don’t want to provoke any criticism on that front." It’s taking a stand in these very contemporary times. “These days we are supposed to be postmodern and not really care about history. We’re just living in the now… Of course we cannot know everything, and there will always be blind spots, but the now is a construction of yesterday, and we cannot be complete until we embrace that thought.”
Mikkel Ørsted Sauzet is armed to the teeth and combative. For the magazine Vite, he made a very confronting, yet magnificently poetic story about the West Bank - the place literally undermining the foundations of our own society. His “Manif des Indignés” focuses on the issue of public space through a very literal interpretation of the Occupy movements. And in “Utøya”, he deals with the monster of racism and its roots in a surprising way. The political level is a necessity in his work. “I don’t just want to tell funny stories. I need to be close to the realities that interest me, and that I think should interest others. When Joe Sacco goes to Gaza or Art Spiegelman talks about the Second World War, you learn something. That is also what I aim to do in my comics."
"But of course, comics aren't photography: you can use your imagination while also saying something valuable about reality. You need to have some extraordinary element. Even though Sacco and Spiegelman do not show reality, they do talk about it. Adding an element of fiction doesn't mean you're lying. What is essential to me is the honesty about it all. Yes, they are mere drawings, but they reference reality. I want to make comics that aren't just comics with a well-rounded story and neat closure at the end. I always try to leave the end open, to stimulate people to find out more about the topic themselves. I'm a comic book artist, I can't make a history book in three tomes. [Thinks] Well, I could, but we already have the internet today. A comic can only be an eye-opener."
His work is a continuous battle for the immigrant local. "Yes, it's always a quest. Comics are an old language and a new one at the same time. I have always read comics and I still don’t know which ones I prefer. What are comics supposed to be like? It’s fascinating material, sure, but it’s scary as well: you doubt all the time." But Mikkel Ørsted Sauzet turns that doubt into a strength: honesty above all. "I have tried all sorts of styles. In the beginning I made a lot of comics in acrylic, but that was too expensive, too slow, and too distant from other people. For the time being, I like to use ballpoint pens. It might be a less noble drawing tool, but it’s closer to other people. We all use pens. It’s a nice thought that you can talk about the Haitian revolution with the same tool other people use to make their grocery list."
Though there are some remnants of his history as a painter. ”I used to paint a lot, and I don't do it anymore, but maybe there is part of my painting in my drawings. I draw as if I am working on a painting, sketching within the drawings. Other comic book artists often separate their sketches and final drawings. When I saw sketches by Hergé, there were lots of lines all over the place. And I wondered: why hide the lines? When you draw your final ligne clair, you're really pulling the reader's leg. I thought it was better to be honest and show the process, including the errors. That way readers can be part of the drawing."
There is an example of such a drawing with sketch lines on his drawing table. The blue shimmers from the pulsating beats. "It's part of what should be the follow-up to Aske, still a story about a revolution, but closer to our age." The drawings that he has already completed are in a folder. "Enjoy the apocalypse" is written across one of them. The open book on his desk is Haiti by photographer Bruce Gilden, and his tiny sketchbooks are in one of the drawers of the cupboards. The walls of the living room, which looks out over a Schaarbeek/Schaerbeek square, are decorated with a grid of paintings: "These are my own work, yes. Skin, my hand, my girlfriend’s ear, eyes. Details, extreme close-ups, that are supposed to play with the mind of the viewer, make them see other things."
The ultimate purpose: to transform perceptions: "Yes, you could say I am living and breathing for another world. I don’t think I can do it by myself, though maybe my comics can help a bit, or at least that’s what I hope. Perhaps that is a bit naive, but you need to have some kind of objective. So yeah, for me it’s about doing what I can, whether it be through comics or other things, to have a brighter future for this world, if at all possible.”
BOROUGH: Schaarbeek/Schaerbeek
PUBLICATIONS: Aske (“Ash”), Aben maler, 2013; ’In verscheidenheid verenigd’, in Bruss.2: Brussels in Shorts, Oogachtend, 2014
INFO: inutiledumoment.wordpress.com
PHOTOS © Heleen Rodiers
Read more about: Expo
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