Jeff Hemmer, born in Wormeldingen in 1982, lives and works in Bremen as a freelance comic artist, illustrator and workshop instructor specialising in political/cultural education.
Since 2020, his various interests and personal journeys have come together in his work.
Growing up in Wormeldingen, Jeff Hemmer discovered his passion for drawing and storytelling at an early age during the Luxembourgish-language comic wave of the 1980s.
This was followed by punk music and a degree in history in Aberdeen, Scotland, a study-related move to the University of the Arts in Bremen and finally many years of educational work as a language trainer and as a counsellor in a facility for teenage and young adult refugees.
Throughout all these phases, drawing always remained an important means of personal, interpersonal and political expression.
Today, Jeff Hemmer draws for NGOs, bands and theatre productions and teaches the techniques of graphic storytelling in workshops at schools, museums and neighbourhood centres.
Concept | Linie, Druck und Spiel - von den Möglichkeiten der Erzählung (translation: Line, Print and Play - on the possibilities of narrative)
As part of his artist residency at the Kulturhuef Museum, comic artist Jeff Hemmer has explored the theme of narrative in a variety of ways.
Narrative as an everyday practice concerns the essential core of interpersonal relationships. We recount our experiences, express our feelings, convey information and make contact. Narrative forms and conveys our own identity, our perception and our view of the world. As a cultural technique, storytelling has accompanied mankind for thousands of years. From oral tradition to the development of the first visual and written languages, methods of manual and machine reproduction, right up to today's multimedia age of information technologies, narrative functions in the broadest sense as a carrier of our collective knowledge.
At the same time, narrative is always a struggle for perspectives, power and resources. Which narrative do we trust? Who speaks to whom? Who or what is not spoken about? Who has no voice? How do our narratives change, and how do narratives and social change relate to each other? What reach can this or that narrative develop? And how can our current narratives be preserved for future generations or even an unknown, non-human culture from another corner of the universe?
Jeff Hemmer wanted to be guided by these and other questions in his work at the Kulturhuef Museum. In addition to analysing the content, this search also involved exploring different materials and techniques. How much comic can be conveyed from the reduction of a single printing plate? What stories do the cards tell during a round of Doppelkopf? What frictions and synergies arise at the interface between analogue printing processes and digital media? How many moments can a narrative be broken down into?
Over the course of the year, the moment of the narrative was also explored further in two workshops and joint exhibitions with the artists Lena Bartels and Misch Valente.
