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In Spring 2021, when working on my comic book doctoral dissertation "Drawing Unbelonging," I audited Nick Sousanis' Image and Culture culture class, in which Nick talked about the De Luca effect and other weird and wonderful things one can do with comics. The discussion led me to draw a landscape of visual metaphors about comics' role in diving into memories of trauma, unpacking conflict, seeing from a different perspective, building community and more.
I have since used the De Luca effect in several other instances in my work to explore how comics can combine multiple temporalities in a single image. In the page below for example, with references to Gianni De Luca's original conception of the effect, Alison Bechdel's and Coin-op's in on it, I look at how simultaneity of time works in comics.
A variation of the effect has also allowed to me solve the challenge of citations in a visual work, by staging the authors I am quoting/referring to as characters on the page.