Comic Art Museum - Brussels

In times when comic strip magazines are becoming ever thinner on the ground, the Comic Strip Museum aims to encourage initiatives that offer upcoming authors a platform to show off their skill. Following in the footsteps of the Brussels-based magazine 64_page, which has already been exhibited twice in the Gallery, it is now the turn of Vite. This magazine is a new type of laboratory for the Ninth Art, which always consists of a selection of works based around a topic, or rather centred around a core feeling. Dennis Marien, who is leading the project to successful completion, refuses to play the role of director, who decides what is to be published or who guides the content. He gives his authors carte blanche, in the hope that they will take full advantage of this freedom. In any case, the quality of the works proves that this method is working very nicely indeed. 

JC De la Royère, Begian Comics Art Museum

In contrast to what the name would suggest, Vite is a publishing house that takes its time to explore new horizons. Together with a group of friends composed of former pupils from the Saint-Luc Bruxelles arts college, in 2011, I was present at the birth of this creative adventure.

Collaborating on Vite means that you carry the responsibility of full artistic freedom on your shoulders. There is a dual source of inspiration: the narrative format and the book as medium. Comic strip artists especially see Vite as an ideal platform to combine the art of drawing and story-telling. It is therefore not surprising that comic strip stories have formed the core of our publications from the outset.

The choice of topic? I provide an illustration for that, which I forward to the participants. Anyone who turns up with the funniest ‘interpretation’, receives the honour of designing the cover. Having fun creating the contribution is what it is all about in the first place. It is therefore logical that the result may be eclectic and intensely individualistic, featuring various facets of the core topic. Vite offers artists the scary independence of creating as a challenge.

Dennis Mariën, Vite