Endorfin Fractured Communications

©Endorfin Fractured Communications or ©EFC was a collective identity behind anonymous Estonian author(s) who in the early 2000s produced visually laconic comic strips, which were deliberately not humorous and mixed poetic texts, photography and drawing in order to create an impact similar to the experience of reading a poem.
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History

As an “officially unregistered juridical person” ©EFC was active until 2005, when the end of its existence got manifested on the pages of an album entitled "Narratiivsus piltides: Eesti '00 aastate autorikoomiks" (2007). [ See: "Narration in Pictures. Estonian Alternative Comics from the '00s." Tallinn: Estonian Academy of Arts, p. 3 ] Yet, emergence of an old work from 2003 as an updated remake in 2008 [ See: "Müürileht" no 3, http://www.genklubi.ee/myyrileht3.pdf ] indicates that it could be a temporary hiatus, although no official comeback plans have been publicly declared. Again, at least three people living in Tallinn have been reported as co-authors of the project, although no authorized data has appeared on the subject. However, it is most likley that ©EFC was stemming from ©ENDORFIN, a similar name, under which some alternative comics had been published in Estonian newspapers and Internet from the mid 1990s on. [ Internet site of Estonian alternative comics “Koomiks.ee”: http://www.hot.ee/endorfin/e/elist.htm ] The main reason for a name change was most likely connected with the birth of a new concept, which one critic later dubbed as the concept of “poem strips” [Sven Vabar. "Igavikku kinni pandud – ilmselt vastu tahtmist" – Estonian cultural weekly "Sirp" 23.03.2007 (net version can be found here: http://www.sirp.ee/arhiiv.php?task=viewNumber&year=2007&month=03&day=23; alternative link to the article: http://my.tele2.ee/svenvabar/endorfin.htm) ] , referring to the series that were published in Estonian cultural weekly "Sirp" in late 2003 and early 2004.

Identity

Little is known about the background of ©EFC, except for the fact that supposedly there was no coherent identity or persona behind it and quite a few people contributed to the project in a way or another. Instead of the name(s) of the supposed author(s) the work was always supplied with a fictive barcode, the name of the copyright holder and respective copyright warnings in English. As it is written on most of the strips, the copyright of the work is “lost”, but the fact that the name of ©EFC actually contains the copyright symbol ©, reveals an ironic twist addressing copyleft ideology. In 2007 a biannual art magazine "Estonian Art" published an article about local scene of alternative comics [Andreas Trossek. "”Comicsalization” of Culture or Why There Are No Comics in Estonia? " – "Estonian Art", 2007/1, pp. 15-17 (net version: http://www.einst.ee/Ea/1_07/trossek.html) ] that featured four strips produced by ©EFC, but again, the article does not give any additional information about the author(s) of the work, neither are illustrations mentioned in the article itself.

Characteristics

The “poem strips” of ©EFC were usually short in the sense of narrative length (usually not more than two frames, sometimes just one photo or drawing), melancholic in content and relied heavily on computer graphics software such as Photoshop or CorelDraw. “Digital manipulation could be the next step towards world-wide entropy”, was a motto of one early piece by ©EFC. Although some parts of the works were in English, most of the textual data on the strips was given in Estonian, therefore accenting the local addressee, the reader able to speak the native language of a small European country Estonia.

ee also

* Classificatory disputes about art
* Pluralism
* 2000s

References