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Blog: IGNCC 2024
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Well, I SAY I spent it in Norwich, actually I spent it on a weird concrete campus on the very outskirts of that fair city, as it was taking place at The University of East Anglia, or UEA as The Cool Kids call it. UEA is WEIRD (see above) as it is an entirely self-contained campus of JUST UNIVERSITY, and it was mostly built in the sixties in a brutalist style so is like an entire VILLAGE made up of lots of CAR PARKS. Also, it was EXTRA weird because it was out of term so there was hardly anyone around. ALSO also all the delegates were staying in the same student halls (which looked EXACTLY the same as the halls I stayed in in Edinburgh a couple of years ago) THUS you basically only saw the same fifty or so people everywhere you went - when I got home afterwards I felt like a medieval villager suddenly THRUST into the metropolis, surrounded by STRANGERS for the first time!
One consequence of our isolation was that almost all of our dietary needs were met at all points, as there wasn't really anywhere else to go. We had vouchers for breakfast in the cafe (which sat in a pretend street of other shops and cafes close closed for the summer), lunch brought out to us in the conference reception, and then our TEA was supplied at pre-arranged events. It was all very pleasant, but a bit STRANGE, like one long WEDDING RECEPTION.
The actual conference was dead good, and I saw several VAIR INTERESTING presentations, with my favourite - for purely intellectual reasons of course - being a WHISKY WORKSHOP that involved ACTUAL WHISKY. The downside of THIS was that on that day I was semi-sozzled by mid-afternoon and then went on to drink WINE at a conference dinner (in AVENGERS HQ!!) and then BEER in the pub afterwards which was ENTIRELY the wrong order. Luckily, my entire body was on hand to point this out to me the following morning.
To be honest the nicest thing was seeing everyone again. When I first started going to these conferences many moons ago it was TERRIFYING because, like all conferences that have been going for a while, it felt a bit like you were intruding on a reunion and that everybody else knew each other. Thankfully a) comics people are an extremely jolly bunch who make the effort to invite new people in and b) I have been there long enough now to BECOME one of the people being gleefully reunited, but I did have to keep reminding myself that other people were in the same situation I used to be, and invited THEM in too.
Sadly this had some downsides, such as when I ended up bringing forward Early Career Researchers to be BEATEN at POOL by some of our Senior Academics, but my heart was in the right place. Also, I paid for it by being drawn in - AGAINST MY WILL - to a succession of late night drinking escapades by certain of the above which lead to some VERY bleary mornings. Honestly, do they not even THINK of their duty of pastoral care??
Another GRATE highlight was walking into the reception area on the first day to find that Dr D Huxley had brough a MASSIVE pile of old British comics with him to give away for FREE, as part of his Clearing Out His Collection operation. For reasons which will soon become clear I have spent the past couple of weeks searching eBay for Old British Comics and paying sums of CA$H for one or two, and then suddenly I was presented with LITERALLY HUNDREDS of them, all for FREE! This was all very exciting, not just for me but for everybody else there too, and so at every break you would see people gathered around, saying "Oh, just a couple more then" and snaffling piles of comics. It was amazing!
On the last day myself and professional pool shark Dr I Horton gave our presentation about our planned Donald Duck project which seemed to go down all right, including some PERTINENT questions about the issue of STYLE, and also the aforesaid Dr Horton being traumatised by me saying "A lot of arts research is just people saying things". I didn't mean it like that Ian!
It was a lovely, though SLIGHTLY WEIRD, week amongst a whole bunch of lovely, and SLIGHTLY WEIRD, people, as it always is. The next one's going to be in BRUSSELS and I for one cannot wait, although my liver is already getting nervous!
posted 16/7/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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