A sequence from Zograf’s comic book devoted to the musical legend Jonathan Richman, American proto punk icon and one of the starters of "indie" rock has been taken for the selection of art works on billboards for this year’s BELEF. Zograf used Richman’s stay in Belgrade for the intercourse with this remarkable artist and for the story about his beginnings, dreams, and obsessive devotedness in his youth to the work of "Velvet Underground" group. That’s where the illustration of Richman’s story about going to New York, the dream about flying from native Boston to the city where life is much more exciting, and where Velvets work comes from. When we speak about the current thematic concept of BELEF, thinking about here and there, dilemma to stay or to go, this work clearly states another kind of a desire for dislocation, the one not induced by the need for a change of poor social or life status, but rather induced by the need to be somewhere else where the inspiration is, where something is changing and something new is being created, where the way of life people wish for includes different kinds of "impulses" from the basic ones, to work, earn, survive.

Aleksandar Zograf

Born in 1963 in Serbia. At the moment the most successful domestic author of comic books in Yugoslav periodics. Has been publishing comic books since 1986 and active on international scene since early 1990s when his work started to appear in American comic book antologies, such as "Weirdo" and "Zero Zero" and when Fantagraphics Books publishing house from Seattle published some of his titles. He authored the cult comic books like "Život pod sankcijama" (Life under Sanctions), "Psychonaut", "Dream Watcher" i "Bilteni iz Srbije" (Serbian Bulletins) that were translated and published in many European magazines, and some of the titles were published by L'Association in France, PuntoZero in Italy, Jochen Enterprises in Germany and Under Comics in Spain. He publishes his works in the "Vreme" magazine. He is the founder and the member of the comic book festival "GRRR" in Pančevo.