Abbas Naaseri / Whispers or personal declarations regarding the recent judgments continue. This story has no end, and it’s a thick book.
They say humans don’t change, but they understand. Some people support festivals and judges who do not perform their duties properly. They insist on pretending not to understand.
The number of people hoping for future prizes was so high that I felt like I was talking to myself on an island. But I was not alone. This was the voice of many artists. When you find people who are like you, you realize that there was never anything wrong inside you.
We, without enmity or personal gain, strive for clarity and the health of this art.
I received many logical and illogical recommendations. Here are some of them:
- Forming an independent, professional, experienced group to oversee the judgments.
- Requiring the publication of the finalist cartoons, especially the winning works, before the official results are announced. These works should be shown to experts who can identify similarities and errors.
- Establishing a special committee composed of colleagues with extensive experience in this area, who have accumulated a large database for recognizing similar works. Once their findings are verified, the results can be announced.
- And many other recommendations of a similar nature.
But my question is: why do festivals, with their weak teams, force artists to identify similarities? Is this important task really the responsibility of the artists and participants, or should it fall to the judging team, who merely take photos? It seems this issue is still a tangled mess, and we need to find a logical way to solve it.
Anyway, as always, we write and discuss these matters. Maybe this note won’t heal the wounds of cartoons or ease the pain, but it will certainly give us the strength to endure and eventually find a solution.
In your idea, how can a structure be designed to ensure that the judging of artistic works is conducted in a completely transparent, fair, and professional manner, without placing the burden of discovering similarities or errors on the artists, while simultaneously maintaining the trust of the artistic community in the festivals?
Thanks to Walex for summation the suggestions
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Weekly Single Page of Cartoonmag
No 62
Saturday , 22 November. 2025
This single page has been prepared to remind the news and calls published on the cartoon magazine website and it is supposed to be published every Saturday.
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