Deepesh Sangtani’s Konni-Chhua comes to us from Kutty Press who we interviewed here at Broken Frontier earlier this year. Sangtani and co-founder Bhavani Balasubramanyam describe their publishing output as being from “an independent publishing and print initiative that focuses on experimental, self-published formats, including zines, artist books, and printed ephemera.” We’ve reviewed a number of publications from their direction this year at BF, remarking on their distinctive tactile properties, including the experimental Meep, Logging Off_ and the powerful Ghost Trains: Quotes from Partition.
Konni-Chhua is a minicomic that is very recognisable in its subject matter. It’s a concertina fold-out zine that presents a series of images depicting those uncomfortable moments where our elbows bump into those of strangers. Holding the bar on a commuter train, for example, raising our arms to gesticulate at a music festival, or reaching for a book at a library.
Sangtani depicts only the touching arms/elbows in each of the six images, divorcing us from specific subjects and allowing us as readers to more fully project us into events on the page. The awkwardness of the inadvertent physical contact made all the more weird by the “action” being brought into the foreground in dark tones against an all-red backdrop. In some ways Konni-Chhua is a deliberately slight thing but it’s in its gauche familiarity that it becomes so universal in experience.
Deepesh Sangtani (W/A) • Kutty Press, £5.00
Buy online here from Good Press
Review by Andy Oliver
