Atanasio (Claudio Romo) lives in a house on top of one of the hills that surround the harbor city of Talcahuano, Chile. Being the relentless smoker i am, i always get there on the verge of asthma
there are more cats than the last time, Claudio is sitting in front of a big flatscreen tv and grins when he sees the movies i'd borrowed and now bring back: Kitano's "Zatoichi" and "Ghost in the Shell". He pops the latter into the DVD player, and yes, the new tv does look really really good. Conversation swirls about posthuman realities, brutalist filmakers, and the sad story of the old tv.

stigmatattoo Tell us a little about yourself and what you do.
I’m a faculty teacher at the Department of Visual Arts of the University of Concepcion, Chile. I teach Printmaking (etching and lithography), Drawing –especially human figure classes – and recently I’m implementing Illustration and Graphic Narrative courses. Besides, I’m dedicated to designing Illustration and Prints books and right now I’m designing a socio-fiction comic book.

stigmatattoo You live in a harbor city at the butt-end of the World. How is that fact present in your work?
At some point that was very much present, especially at a time when I edited Prints’ books (self-publications). Then, my work was close to what I could denominate “narrations of origin”. I created many images based on “my” harbour, fictions from my harbour: I imagined it like an anthropomorphic island that broke away from the mainland, like a ship of fools inhabited by characters of varied origins. I made the prints and self-published two books about the harbour: the “Chronicle of Portentous Facts” and “The Devil’s Murga*”
_{(*A murga is a group of street singers whose lyrics talk satirically about politics and society’s problems on Carnival parades. Note of the Translator).}

stigmatattoo Did you Picture yourself as an artist when you were a schoolboy?
No

stigmatattoo I left your house with "Ghost in the Shell II" and "Oldboy" under my arm. I know you have a great collection of Anime and oriental filmmakers. What’s up with that? Do you feel a thematic connection there?
I feel attracted to the intensity of oriental narration, the freshness of their images, their foreign reflexions about the body and their closeness to the posthuman.




stigmatattoo I’m also taking “Black Hole” by Charles Burns. You’re a great comic connoisseur. Tell me your favourites and why.
Burns is one of my favourite draughtsmen, his interpretations of the body… it’s like reading Burroughs, the narrative he creates between strange viruses and infections that transform the body. The mastery of ink he possesses is impressive.
Mike Mignola, I like his xylographic sense of drawing, generating mysterious atmospheres.
I also enjoy the oneiric visions of Moebius. There are others like Guy Davis, Geof Darrow, Hugo Pratt, Enrique Breccia, etc.

stigmatattoo I don’t think i’ve ever seen paintings of yours, although you must have painted in Art School. Were you that bad?
Horrible.

stigmatattoo It’s been said that Printmaking is a dying art, a superfluous vestige. You have progressively moving from traditional techniques to an almost wholly digital approximation. Are we allowing Printmaking to die?
It doesn’t appear to me that Printmaking is a dead art and even less a superfluous vestige, I don’t even understand what that last is supposed to mean. I think the problems with the contemporary practice of Printmaking relate essentially to speed of production and the passiveness of its diffusion and sales, I believe that the value of Printmaking today is not about its capacity of reproduction (because printing machines and the Web are more efficient), but it’s about the specificity of its graphic characteristics: nothing can imitate the visual character of an etching or a burin print. In respect to the Digital issue, it would be foolish of myself not to take the opportunities that it gives, but always its production is linked to analogous practices, it is what I do in my work and what I teach in my courses: the hybridity.  The disciplinarian purisms are a trap, the visual creator, I believe, should not impose upon himself technological dogmas. Printmaking will not die, there’ll always be people that will practice it, I think the important matter is at what level of production it is done.

Mature Content

stigmatattoo You’ve had the opportunity of working on Printmaking studios in Germany, Mexico and Chile. Tell us something about the particularities of each situation.
The main thing I learned from those experiences, besides the pleasure of working with professional printers and an efficient infrastructure, is that those studios exist only in the context of a wide audience, visually cultured and consumer of graphic goods; without that economic characteristic it is hard to implement a good studio with the condition for production of cultural goods as one would wish.

stigmatattoo Progressively, your fascination has derived in the creation of plates and texts documenting fictitious organisms or histories. How do you get there?
Not much to tell, I’ve always enjoyed illustrated books of all kinds, from old science textbooks to the plates in religious books; to arrive as a consequence to designing books of fictitious anatomy seem to me a superior step of the same ladder.




stigmatattoo “He who can’t do, teaches”. This becomes apparent in some of your colleagues, but you’re usually at a feverish pace and always have a new project in the works… or at least it seems that way.
Yes, I think it’s really hard to teach if your work doesn’t legitimate you in front of the students, it’s important to produce art and be related with the complexities of its procedures to be able to teach.


_{Screenshots from the 3D modelling of "My name is Legion" project}

stigmatattoo I had the chance of seeing your brand new Project: a wholly digital comic with a surprisingly xylographic result. Tell us a bit about that.
I’m investigating about the structure of comics, I think it is a broad and rich territory for graphic realization, it allows me to enrich my work with new elements like time and sequence.
My relationship with digital media will always have traces of analogous graphic, in my case there’s no tabula rasa because I owe myself tho what I know and what I’ve practiced before and, as I said before, by not being a purist I have a tendency to technological hibridity.




stigmatattoo You have illustrated a number of books and recently published a book of which you are the author. How did you get into that scene? What’s that experience been like?
I got in this scene through the illustration of children books I did in Mexico, where I worked with the Fund of Economic Culture _{(respected editorial institution of the Mexican government. Note of the Translator)}
It is a great experience that has opened new possibilities for visibility and circuit, I feel that when one produces a book, it becomes your gallery or museum, you leave one way of “cultural infrastructure” and enter another that’s wider but less legitimate in relation to terms like “inscribing oneself in the official scene of contemporary art”. It’s take one lose one, visibility versus inscription.




stigmatattoo Here we have some questions sent by labornthyn:

-Does literature influence your work? Do you consider your art literary?
My work generally narrates, tells, yes, I think that it always contains a literary element.

-What kind of mental state are you in when you begin, work on, and finish a work?
Always lucid and focused or it all goes to hell.

-What do you feel is the overall character or essence of your work?
It is difficult to me to find a good answer for this question, the word essence is not one I’m very fond of, I’m too close to my work to be able to define it but words that come close would be abjection, monster, body, fiction, narrative.