Medium and culture at Play: Creative Collaboration in the Contemporary Belgian Graphic Novel

This project is based on the observation of an increase in the publication of collaboratively created graphic novels in the contemporary Flemish graphic novel and its Walloon counterpart as well as the fact that the graphic novels in question have strong ties to the cultural industries. This observation is interesting from a double point of view. Firstly, it suggest a parallel medial dynamic between the Flemish graphic novel and the Walloon graphic novel that makes it possible to study these productions together for the first time. The observation in question runs counter to contemporary modes of creation in the American and French graphic novel, where collaboratively created graphic novels are rare. Whereas the United States and France have a national comics industry, this is not the case in Belgium. This project hypothesizes that the absence of a comics industry proper to Belgium lies at the basis of the observed convergence and divergence and that it is related to the second point of interest of its starting observation: the inclusion of the Belgian graphic novel in the cultural industries. The cultural industries question the dichotomy between industry and art. Given the fact that the defining characteristic of the graphic novel medium is the play which it performs with the conventions of the industrial comic book, this project asks the question how and why the Belgian graphic novel functions in a cultural system that performs at least part of this characteristic.