Abbas Naaseri / Let me begin by admitting—I know it’s impossible. Just like life without a mobile phone or the internet. Many of us have, at some point, told ourselves: I wish I could spend some time without my phone, internet, calls, and all that. We’ve wrestled with the idea, tried to convince ourselves. But the moment the low battery warning appears on our screens, we panic and scramble for the charger, as if it’s the most essential thing. We feel as if, in those moments battery dies. It seems like the whole world would have business with us—an urgent call, an important message. In this age of illusion, we live with illusions.
I’ve organized as director over fifty festivals and judged even more than that. My biggest regret has always been this: I wish I had been born fifty years earlier. I longed to be the director of festivals where the postman would deliver original, tangible artworks by artists—color, paper, and nothing else.
Even the simplest edit or initial changes in light. I had witnessed the pure power of color, line, and the raw brilliance of ideas born in that era.
I wish I had lived in those years, when as a judge I could feel the artworks in my hands, live with them. Not like today, when each monitor shows a different color and feeling, and the true essence of a piece can never really be grasped.
For years, I dreamt of hosting an event-based on line, until Hossein Chakmak became a pioneer. And now, somewhere in the back of my mind, I imagine a festival that feels like it’s being held fifty years ago. A postman smiling at me every morning, delivering color and paper from every corner of the world.
This writing is not meant to oppose the world of digital art, scanning, editing, and so on. It’s one of the sweetest wishes of many artists and me.
Indeed, the world moves forward, but sometimes, a person wishes to go back.
Many thanks to my dear friend Melo for reminding me to write about this.
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Weekly Single Page of Cartoonmag
No 44
Saturday , 17. May . 2025
This single page has been prepared to remind the news and calls published on the cartoonmagazine website and it is supposed to be published every Saturday.
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