RiYL
RiYL
Brian Heater
Episode 063: Peter Kuper
44 minutes Posted Jul 23, 2014 at 2:34 am.
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Show notes
Every time I speak to Peter Kuper, the conversation invariably turns to
New York — or, as is often the case, begins there. It’s my own fault.
I’ve got this insatiable need to ask fellow residents, artists in
particular, what keeps them in the city’s orbit. Kuper is a particularly
interesting case study, having left the city — and country — in 2006,
for a life in Mexico.
It was, as one might, expect, a
multifaceted decision to move his entire family down to Oaxaca, in part
an attempt to expose his daughter to another language and culture — and
certainly leaving the country at the height of George W. Bush’s second
term was seen as a net positive for the oft political cartoonist. A few
years later, the Kupers found themselves back in New York, but the
experience generated, amongst other things, the lovely Diario De Oaxaca,
a sketchbook diary chronicling Kuper’s time in Mexico, immersed himself
in the area’s stunning counter-cultural murals. More recently,
Kuper returned to the book’s publisher, PM Press, in hopes of helping to
anthologize World War 3 Illustrated, the progressive comics anthology
he co-founded with fellow New York cartoonist, Seth Tobocman. The
process was a touch more complicated, and when we sat down to speak at
the MoCCA Arts Festival back in April, the duo had recently completed a
successful Kickstarter campaign. Even outside the long-running
anthology, Kuper’s career has long been both fascinating and diverse,
from multiple Kafka adaptations and his 2007 semi-autobiographical Stop
Forgetting To Remember to an on-going stint as Mad Magazine’s Spy Versus
Spy artist. So, you know, plenty to talk about.