Joel Janiurek works as a musician, librarian, DJ and freelance writer and is an all-purpose pop culture nerd with an healthy/unhealthy interest in comics, films, TV shows and music. He is the creator and manager of the Islington Comic Forum - one of London’s most dedicated groups for the debate and discussion of graphic novels and comic books. His blog for the Islington Comic Forum takes in everything from LGBT memoirs to industry classics to Superhero alternate universe spin-offs. Following its success he recently launched the Barbican Comic Forum which operates under the same remit: providing a space for people to meet up and discuss comic books in an intelligent way. Both online and offline, his aim is to make the conversation about what you’ve read rather than trying to impress you with a list of what you haven’t. He enjoys analysing the unspoken assumptions in popular opinions about cultural classics, champions low-production values as well as high, and is proud to make the defence for under-appreciated works of art. His other projects include playing guitars and laptops in an scrappy little post-rock band, writing a sprawling audio drama about the end of the world and completing a book on the philosophy of stories: examining narrative and how it affects our perception of reality. As a Philosophy graduate, he remains interested in the metaphysics of personal identity, ethics, time, politics, infinity, death, snacking and taking naps. |
Africa and oil
"The Battle of Ideas gives a forum for the most topical of debates and the healthy exchange of ideas - in our session what interested most was the contributions from the floor, also just the sheer buzz of the crowds in the foyers."
Jeremy Musson, writer and historic buildings consultant; former architectural editor, Country Life