Le Dernier Cri

First published: Winter 1999/2000

An animated film for a premium cable channel, an exhibition at the Bibliotheque Nationale, posters torn down during the World Cup by fans who thought they would jinx their teams . . . Little by little, Le Dernier Cri emerges from the fanzine ghetto

Exceptional both in the quality and the diversity of its production, this association of French, Swiss, Finnish, American and Japanese graphic artists is led by the dynamic Pakito Bolino who, for the last six years, with the help of his mischievous accomplice Caroline Sury, has been printing and editing their images. Along with their radically edgy music, their work remains stubbornly independent and politically incorrect.

A contemporary point of view favoring a single technique, serigraphy, is adapted to their objective: to contribute a vision of the future made up of combustible fragments of the present.

Their principal merit? The willful combination of ingredients generally perceived as heterogeneous: mangas and Art Brut, virtual reality and Expressionism, free-form drawing and the dance of death, pornography, noise, violence and spoken language, jubilation and lyric effusion. Not because of some neo-punk dandyism, not for the simple pleasure of disorder, although some of their provocations are as joyous as they are inevitable, but because Le Dernier Cri from its very beginning has chosen to make the raw material of our everyday reality the measure of all things.

This is an article extract; read the full article in Raw Vision #29