Books & Zines
LIST: Best 12 Books I Read in 2009
Posted March 8, 2010 by jmacphee in Justseeds & Member Projects
I've been trying to organize some of us Justseed-ers to start posting top ten lists of various things, I've always thought they were fun to both write and read. To kick it off, here's my list of the best 12 books I read in 2009 (in alphabetical order by author):
1. A Woman of the Iron People by Eleanor Arnason
2. Penguin by Design by Phil Baines
3. On the Wall by Janet Braun-Reinitz & Jane Weissman
4. Red Star Over Russia by David King
5. Bakunin by Mark Leier
6. Wobblies & Zapatistas by Staughton Lynd & Andrej Grubacic
7. Live Working of Die Fighting by Paul Mason
8. How to Make Trouble and Influence People by Iain McIntyre
9. Manituana by Wu Ming
10. The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson
11. You Don't Have to Fuck People Over to Survive by Seth Tobocman
12. Incognegro by Frank B. Wilderson, III
Eleanor Arnason, A Woman of the Iron People (William Morrow & Co, 1991).
It had been a couple years at least since I had read much science fiction before this past year, but my interest was re-sparked when I was invited to the Think Galactic political sci-fi convention this past summer in Chicago. I had never heard of Arnason, but she was one of the invited guests, so I went to the library and picked up A Woman of the Iron People, one of her most popular novels. Wow, what a great book! Like the best Le Guin, Arnason builds a new and interesting world, and instead of wasting it with one-dimensional relationships and dramatic battles, she uses it to explore the implications of very different political, economic, and scientific realities on the fabric of individual relationships and larger social relations. Don't let the terrible cover scare you (Arnason has great stories about the terrible covers her books have been saddled with!), pick this up and give it a read.
Feminist Press 40th Anniversary Party
Posted March 1, 2010 by jmacphee in Books & Zines
My upcoming book collecting all of the Celebrate People's History Posters and then some will be coming out on the Feminist Press in November! If you're in NYC, show them some support and come out by their 40th Anniversary Party (wow, what if Justseeds lasted 40 years, I can't even imagine it!). Info below:
Studs Terkel's Working:a graphic adaptation
Posted February 22, 2010 by k_c_ in Books & Zines
I was given a copy of Studs Terkel's Working: a graphic adaptation by an acquaintance from The New Press, last Summer. I gladly accepted the gift and expressed my intention of sharing my opinion of the book here on the Justseeds blog. There are many familiar contributing artists to the book including Peter Kuper, Sabrina Jones, and Justseeds member Dylan Miner!
In all honesty I have never read Terkels' Working, so this is my first encounter with the material. I am fascinated with people, where they were born, grew up, what kind of formative experiences did they had, etc. I'm interested in the places that shape us into who we are. Like my pal Chris says "everyone's got a story". So I'm curious to hear those of most people I engage with. For those, like me, are not familiar, Working is a collection of accounts, from the 60's, of how ordinary folks in the USA made their living. It is an exploration of what makes work meaningful for people in all walks of life.
While reading the different narratives I found myself realizing that these experiences are not much different than contemporary feelings about work and society. Garbageman, organizers, hooker, and farmworker are some accounts that appear timeless, and would remain so if wages and historical references weren't maintained.
I found Peter Kuper, Ryan Inzana, and Dylan Miner's pieces to be the strongest. Their graphic styles and lettering appealed the most to me. Some accounts feel short, making their inclusion a little confusing. Nevertheless, Working: a graphic adaptation is an indication that Studs Terkel's efforts from the 60's is still relevant and compelling in this new millennium.
Interview with MaryMack on the Papertrail Interview Series
Posted February 19, 2010 by k_c_ in Justseeds & Member Projects
There's an interview with Justseeds Member Mary Tremonte over at the Paper Trail Interview series site.
interview with mary mack tremonte
02/18/2010
mary is a zinester, deejay, & artist living in pittsburgh. interview originally posted august 18, 2009.
how did you get involved with zines/d.i.y. publishing?
i am one of many women who came of age in the early 90’s and discovered zines through Sassy magazine! i started ordering zines & tapes & records by ladies after reading reviews in there. a crucial discovery was Action Girl, a newsletter of reviews of zines by ladies, i started making my own zine with my buddy leah early on sophomore year (this was 1993). zines gave me a way to connect to like-minded folks in other places—i had a very active pen pal life all through high school, it really saved me from feeling alone and gave me a big outlet for art and ideas.
Read the rest of the interview at Interview series
the paper trail interview series was launched in january 2006, in conjunction with my now-defunct (as of january 2010) zine distro, learning to leave a paper trail. i came up with a fairly wide-ranging set of ten basic questions about zine creation, zine culture, the creative process, history, advice, & philosophies, & started sending the questions around the zinesters i worked with through the distro. they answered & i posted their thoughts on the distro website.
A dynamic month-long series of radical art exhibits and presentations in West Philadelphia!
Posted February 12, 2010 by k_c_ in Art exhibits/shows
Beginning March 5th, international artists’ cooperative Justseeds presents Bring Down the Walls!, a series of artistic exhibitions and educational events. The series celebrates radical movements that struggle to collapse the boundaries of class, race, gender and generation. The majority of events will take place at two locations, blocks apart on Baltimore Avenue in West Philadelphia. An Independent Project of Philagrafika 2010, Bring Down the Walls! is organized in collaboration with local activists.
Exhibitions-
At the A-Space (4722 Baltimore Ave.), there will be an exhibition of Justseeds' recent portfolio Voices From Outside: Artists Against the Prison-Industrial Complex and related materials. This project is a limited edition portfolio of original prints that either critique the prison industrial complex or address alternatives to incarceration. Twenty artists from the US, Canada, and Mexico contributed prints, which were then collated and presented to 50 different groups working on prison related issues. Many organizations have organized exhibits and have used the images as tools for educating and discussing incarceration.
At Studio 34 (4522 Baltimore Ave.) there will be a larger and more varied exhibition of prints from Justseeds members. This show will feature dozens of pieces from over 25 artists from across North America, with bold images addressing topics from personal inspiration to environmental devastation.
Justseeds Artists' Cooperative is a decentralized community of artists who have banded together to both sell their work online in a central location and to collaborate with and support each other and social movements.
More Events below!
Maureen Cummins
Posted February 1, 2010 by jmacphee in Books & Zines
Book artist and print maker Maureen Cummins, who is in the Paper Politics exhibition and book, recently put up a new site of her work HERE. There's a lot of great material up there, and well worth checking out. The image to the left is from her 2000 artist book "Stocks and Bonds."
Journal of Aesthetics & Protest #7
Posted January 31, 2010 by jmacphee in Books & Zines
The Journal of Aesthetics & Protest #7 is out now, and chock full of material that looks both interesting and is by a bunch of solid people that have been friends in past and present. You can read it online HERE, or buy a print copy HERE. Here's the table of contents:
Amor y Resistencia graphic on the cover of Critical Moment
Posted January 27, 2010 by k_c_ in Art & Politics
a newsprint magazine working to provide a forum for education, debate, and dialogue around the political issues affecting communities in the Southeast Michigan areahas used Amor Y Resistencia's contribution to the Justseeds portfolio Voices From Outside: Artists Against the Prison Industrial Complex
You can download the first six pages at issue 31
Graphics from Voices From Outside may be downloaded for use by groups working on incarceration related issues at Voices From Outside-Images. Artist credit is always appreciated.
PTP #8 Video Review
Posted January 24, 2010 by jmacphee in In the News
Billy da Bunny, of Loop Zine Distro, has started putting up very strange, yet engaging, video zine reviews on the We Make Zines website. He recently put up a set of reviews that includes my zine Pound the Pavement #8. It's the last zine he reviews, and he says some very nice things about Justseeds:
Justseeds Print Show and Paper Politics Book Release-NYC
Posted December 18, 2009 by k_c_ in Events
In case you're not on Facebook(contributing to the demise of flyer and poster promotion) the Justseeds Artists' Cooperative is having an art show and book release party for Paper Politics: Socially Engaged Printmaking Today- featuring political prints by over 200 international artists, edited by artist/activist Josh MacPhee. The event will be today 8-11pm
at Book Thug Nation
100 N.3rd St.
Brooklyn, NY
There will be new work by the Justseeds artists on display and for sale, free snacks and drinks.
So come out, wish us a happy solstice, congratulate Josh on another book, meet Icky who's visiting from PDX, buy all your holiday gifts, and check out the Book Thug Nation space so you know where to sell/buy your used books!
Friends of AK Press
Posted December 17, 2009 by jmacphee in Books & Zines
I just recently designed a new logo for the Friends of AK Press book subscription program, I think it turned out pretty hot. AK Press is now pushing 20 years of producing and distributing anarchist and left political books, dvds, and cds. Most left leaning people have an AK book on their shelf whether they know it or not.
AK runs a great program called Friends of AK, where you can sign up to get a copy of every AK release. It's like a magazine subscription, but to a publisher. I'm a Friend, and it's great, all the books come straight to my mailbox. Here's what it is in AK's words:
Red Emma's Red & Black Ball
Posted December 15, 2009 by jmacphee in Events
For those in Baltimore and surrounding environs, party with Red Emma's!!:
Celebrate Five Years of Red Emma's at the Red & Black Ball!
December 19, 2009:
7:30PM - 11PM
2640 Saint Paul Street
That's right my fellow mischief-makers: the Red Emma's Red and Black Ball returns again this year on December 19! Join the Red Emma's collective as we celebrate the traditional anarchist gift-giving season with an all-out, over-the-top evening of revelry in your Victorian-era red and black finest! Think Victorian-era dances, parlour games, phrenology, and, of course, spirits to warm your body and soul. Think renaissance festival dress gone anarchist. Think steampunk. Think Alan Moore (V for Vendetta). Live and DJ'd music throughout the evening, as well as performances, games, "etiquette" lessons, phrenology, and more, led by our very own Master of Ceremonies, Ryan Coffman, with the help of a variety of Baltimore favorites! Plus ... freakin' amazing vegan cake. And booze. Pull out that fancy dress you picked up at a thrift store; borrow your brother's tuxedo! Make a mask, or grab one at the door! This is the holiday party you don't want to miss ... come out and celebrate with us!
It all takes place at 2640 Saint Paul Street, December 19, starting at 7:30PM. Tickets are $10-$15 sliding scale, and include food and a free drink. Masks provided for those who need them. Proper attire is NOT required, but isn't it more fun to cobble a costume together? Email info@redemmas.org for more info ... this event is all-ages, and no one turned away for lack of funds.
Mary Mack Zine Collection on View
Posted December 4, 2009 by mary_tremonte in Books & Zines
Mary Mack's (that's me!) Zine Collection, collected from 1993-present, will be on display in a cozy reading nook at Encyclopedia Destructica Studios. The zines will be available for browsing on Wednesdays 7:30-10:30pm, during Destructica's weekly binding parties, and Sundays 2:00-5:00pm. Learn a variety of bookbinding techniques while putting together Encyclopedia Destructica's publications, or just stop in to nook up and read.
Mary Mack Zine Collection
on view at
Encyclopedia Destructica Studios (clicky)
156 41st St (Lawrenceville)
Wednesdays 7:30-10:30pm (binding party)
Sundays 2:00-5:00pm
now through January
Howardena Pindell on KARA WALKER - NO / YES / ?
Posted December 2, 2009 by jmacphee in Art & Politics
Philly correspondent Theodore A. Harris just sent this along, an great looking event this weekend in Brooklyn:
Howardena Pindell on KARA WALKER - NO / YES / ?
Sat. December 4th
2-4pm
MoCADA
80 Hanson Place, Brooklyn, NY
Professor, artist and activist Howardena Pindell has created a new anthology. Kara Walker-No, Kara Walker-Yes, Kara Walker-? is a collection of essays written by other contemporary artists, educators, writers and poets discussing controversial artist Kara Walker. Whether you agree with Pindell or not, or whether Walker's silhouettes appeal to you or not, this book will certainly begin a
conversation about visual culture in the Black community. The talk features a number of authors and artists including Theodore A. Harris, Ben Jones and Rashida Ishmali.
collage image by Theodore A. Harris.
Paper Politics: Socially Engaged Printmaking Today
Posted November 23, 2009 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
Paper Politics: Socially Engaged Printmaking Today has just been released by PM Press! A brand new book which collects 200 political prints from 200 different international artists. Loosely based on the exhibition I've been touring around of the same name, this book is jam-packed full of image and text about the intersection of printmaking, politics, and social engagement.
I'm really proud of this one, it's chock full of great writing and art. There are essays by Deborah Caplow (art historian and biographer of Leopoldo Mendez!) and Eric Triantafillou (co-founder of the San Francisco Print Collective), as well as additional writing by a dozen artists in the book about why and how they print, and what it means to them. And the prints are awesome, ranging from street artists like Swoon, Chris Stain, and Sixten, to veteran political artists like Sue Coe and Carlos Cortez. There are gig poster makers like Emek and Seri Pop, and graphic/comic artists like Nicole Schulman and Seth Tobocman. It's all in here! Pick up a copy HERE, and check out some sample page spreads below.
Art Work website and PDF
Posted November 21, 2009 by nicolas_lampert in Books & Zines
Temporary Services and Half Letter Press have created a website for the project Art Work: A National Conversation About Art, Labor, and Economics. The site contains a PDF to download. Check it out here:
Art Work is a newspaper and accompanying website that consists of writings and images from artists, activists, writers, critics, and others on the topic of working within depressed economies and how that impacts artistic process, compensation and artistic property. The newspaper is distributed for free at sites and from people throughout the United States and Puerto Rico. It is also available by mail order from Half Letter Press for the cost of postage.
Critical Pedagogies of Consumption
Posted November 13, 2009 by nicolas_lampert in Books & Zines
One of my collage images and an essay "United We Consume? Artists Trash Consumer Culture and Corporate Green Washing" is included in the recent book Critical Pedagogies of Consumption” Living and Learning in the Shadow of the "Shopocalypse", edited by Jennifer A. Sandlin and Peter McLaren (New York: Routledge, 2009)
The book is a timely critique of consumer culture, corporate green washing, green capitalism, and privatization, and how educators, scholars, and activists are fighting back. The table of contents is listed in the extended entry.
http://www.routledgeeducation.com/books/Critical-Pedagogies-of-Consumption-isbn9780415997904
Books Through Bars Bingo Night
Posted November 4, 2009 by molly_fair in Events
Join Books Through Bars NYC for a night of bingo, beats, and booze so we can
keep sending free books to incarcerated folks! Featuring prizes from
Babeland, BAM, Film Forum, NY Adorned... and many more!
Friday November 6, 2009
8pm
ABC No Rio, 156 Rivington St., NYC
All Ages/ 21 to drink// Free to enter, $1 to play
Books Through Bars is a volunteer collective that sends free literature to
incarcerated people.
Zine Reading at the Library
Posted October 28, 2009 by mary_tremonte in Events
above: collating artnoose's zine ker-bloom
I am doing a zine reading at the Carnegie Public Library on Thursday October 29th with awesome cohorts Leanne O'Connor (New to Everything zine), Artnoose (Ker-bloom zine) and Hannah Bean (Fat Snakes Are Patient zine). I will hopefully have my one-pager and the other ladies will have new zines to share. There might be treats. There will totes def be a zine-reading open mic without a mic after we read. Come enjoy sweet zine culture!
ZINE READING
Thursday, October 29th
6pm-8pm
Carnegie Library Main Branch (Oakland)
Classroom A
free, all ages
How to Make Trouble and Influence People
Posted October 22, 2009 by jmacphee in Books & Zines
Iain McIntyre and Breakdown Press have joined forces to release a book length collection of the greatest hits of Iain's long running zine How to Make Trouble and Influence People. It's fully rewritten, reedited, full of new material, and beautifully designed by Tom Civil (I've had a sneak peak, it looks awesome!). I'm hoping to get some of these babies over here for people in N. America to check out, but in the meantime, have look at the new Trouble website HERE, and Breakdown Press HERE.
“These tales and images also serve to remind us that political activity need not be a predictable and grim slog. As well-resourced as our opponents may be, they are vulnerable to the use of creativity, solidarity, and humour. Indeed, these are often the only tools we have.”
Justseeds at the London Anarchist Bookfair
Posted October 11, 2009 by jmacphee in Books & Zines
Yup, we'll be there, so come say "hi!" All the info on the bookfair is on their site HERE. This years great poster designed by Edd from Last Hours.
Reproduce & Revolt makes the rounds-in Chile!
Posted October 5, 2009 by k_c_ in Justseeds & Member Projects
My pal Erok & I sent some copies of Favianna Rodriguez and Josh Macphee's book Reproduce and Revolt down to Chile about a year ago. Like many of the punks I know in Mexico, Chilean anarchists use screenprinting for making lots of patches and stickers. As it turns out a friend of mine just sent me a link to a screenprinting workshop she's been taking classes at, in Valparaiso, Chile. It appears the book is being put to use there!
ZINE SOUP
Posted September 28, 2009 by colin_matthes in Books & Zines
A new book about zines has been released by the folks who run TTC / Telefon Til Chefen, an art space in Copenhagen.
This 200 pages book consists of material from over 80 zine artist from around the world. Through images and text we present a wide range of artistic and graphic zines and the people behind them.
Banned Books Week
Posted September 26, 2009 by molly_fair in Free Speech
Celebrate freedom of expression and access to information by reading books that have been challenged and banned for national Banned Books Week, Sept. 26-Oct. 3! For suggested reading check out these lists of top 20th century classics and frequently challenged books in the last decade.
And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell has been at the top of the list 3 years in a row. Apparently the true story of the two male penguins named Roy and Silo at the Central Park Zoo who were sexual partners and raised a chick together just doesn't sit well with some people. It's been challenged for depicting homosexuality, being anti-family, anti-ethnic (are penguins an ethnic group?), having a religious viewpoint (what?!), and being unsuited for it's intended age group. Check out Justseeds artist Mary Tremonte's poster Roy and Silo:Powerful which also tells the penguins' story.
Justseeds at Baltimore Book Fest
Posted September 24, 2009 by jmacphee in Justseeds & Member Projects
Erik Ruin will be representing Justseeds at the Radical Bookfair Pavilion as part of the Baltimore Book Festival this weekend. He'll be there all day Friday, Saturday and Sunday, so visit him and say Hello!
Radical Bookfair Pavilian
Mount Vernon Place
600 block North Charles St.
Baltimore, MD 21201
Friday Sept. 25, 12-8pm
Saturday Sept, 26, 12-8pm
Sunday Sept. 27, 12-7pm
it looks like a lot of great stuff is going on in Baltimore over the weekend, organized by the totally awesome Red Emma's crew. Check it out!!!
Peter Kuper at MoCCA
Posted September 18, 2009 by k_c_ in Art exhibits/shows
I went to Peter Kuper's presentation of his recently published book Diario De Oaxaca: A Sketchbook Journal of Two Years in Mexico on PM Press. The event was an opening for Peter's current exhibit up at the MoCCA Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art, at 594 Broadway, Suite 401
"MoCCA is pleased to present Peter Kuper's Diario de Oaxaca: A Sketchbook Journal of Two Years in Mexico. This exhibition is in conjunction with the release of his book published in a bilingual edition from PM Press in the US and Sexto Piso in Mexico. Diario de Oaxaca is Kuper's chronicle of his experiences in Oaxaca, Mexico during the political uprising of 2006 and its aftermath. The exhibition includes sketches, illustrations and comics, capturing both the light and shadows that defined his time there."
The exhibit is really simple and stark. I started to notice how Peter was using the nationalistic colors of Mexico in the wall text. It then occurred to me that the wall to my right was painted red, to my left, green, and the wall in front of me had an eagle eating the serpent on the cactus. He incorporated simple elements like the Mexican flag along with stenciled slogans from the streets of Oaxaca on the walls amidst his journal sketches. There are two large screens in the gallery one, a multimedia collage of Peter's stenciled "Day of the Dead" self-portrait, and another displaying dozens of slides he took while living in Oaxaca. The images range from the immense amount of graffiti and visual culture produced in the streets as part of the uprising to buses, which were commandeered and burnt to provide barricades in street battles against the Federal Police, to snapshots of his daughter in front of a line of riot police.
Sustain Our Libraries!
Posted September 17, 2009 by mary_tremonte in Posters & Prints
I made this print in grassroots support of the public library system of Pittsburgh. Most of the posters I printed include the Pittsburgh-specific informational text at the end of this entry. I printed a few without the text to sell on Justseeds to recoup my costs and pay my library fines! (seriously). Dig the rubylith-cut children's book illustration-style, hearkening back to my own childhood, when I would walk to the library every day in the Summer!
Public libraries are so crucial for folks in all walks of life, and their services are becoming even more crucial with increased unemployment, cuts to youth programs, access to computers and continuing education...Libraries fulfill all these roles and more; for many disinvested communities, their public library branch is a community center. The Carnegie Libraries of Pittsburgh, our public library system, is really incredible; they order good progressive-to-radical books, have a spectacular graphic novel section, a very active teen section and programming; a zine collection in both the teen and adult sections(!); the Pennsylvania Room is an incredible resource for doing local research, including a bangin' photo archive; the library also hosts concerts, film screenings, zine readings, classes and more...
LISTS: Twenty Poster Books of Note
Posted September 16, 2009 by jmacphee in Books & Zines
I was making out a list of books for a friend, and realized I could share it with all our blog readers. For those that don't know, I'm both a book nerd, and a poster nerd. For years I've been collecting every book about political poster art I can find. Here's a list of what I think are the 20 best books about post-WWII political posters. They are in alphabetical order by author, not importance. A handful of them are out of print, or painfully expensive to get in the US, but most are still available and findable on sites like ABE Books:
Arnulfo Aquino & Jorge Pérezvega, eds. Imágenes y Símboles del 68: Fotografía y Gráfica del Movimiento Estudiantil. Distrito Federal, México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2004.
The best book available on the political graphics produced during the Mexican student upheaval in 1968. Unlike Europe, where screenprinting became the poster production method of choice in 68 and into the 70s, in Mexico the block print was most widely used. In part this was likely due to the graphic history of Mexico, and the political printmaking traditions of the Taller de Gráfica Popular. This book captures a ton of the graphics produced, as well as a lot of photo documentation of banners, marches, and the student propaganda brigades, which produced and distributed a lot of the prints. The only drawbacks to the book is that it's in Spanish (a bummer for us English-only idiots), and the images are all black & white or a brick red duotone, which looks nice, but doesn't give us a full feel for how the color posters actually looked.
Dana Bartelt, Yossi Lemel, Fawzy El Emrany, and Sliman Mansour. Both Sides of Peace: Israeli and Palestinian Poster Art. Seattle, WA and London: University of Washington Press, 1996.
So far the best collection of posters from the Palestinian-Israeli struggle. The Israeli posters tend to be more polished and "designed," and although the majority are critical of Israeli policy, there are a number of zionist pieces. It is one of the largest collections of Israeli David Tartakover's designs (at least available in English), and we get to see how effective he marshals the raw tools of the collage and photocopy in creating anti-occupation posters. The Palestinian work tends to be more raw, many of the posters photo-reproductions of paintings and drawings. A lot of the posters are created by the PLO, or celebrate the Intifada. Stylistically many mirror Cuban political posters, showing the aesthetic aspects of Third World solidarity.
Eduardo Castillo Espinoza. Cartel Chileno 1963-1973. Santiago, Chile: Ediciones B Chile, 2006.
This one is particularly hard to find, but well worth the search. Kevin actually brought this back from Chile for me. First, it's giant, 11"x15", so you almost get the full feel of what these images actually look like as posters. The focus here is on the Allende years, and there are a couple framing essays in Spanish. The real treasure is the posters, over 90 full page images, and on top of that there are a half dozen images of some of the posters in development, from rough pencil sketches to colored marker proofs. This is a rare insight into historical poster production, all of these made before computers were used for design. Interestingly, most of the posters here were created by a handful of designers, including Vincente Larrea, Waldo González Hervé and Mario Quirez, but commissioned by a wide array of organizations, from unions to universities, political parties to musicians, film houses to student organizations.
REVIEW: Street Art San Francisco
Posted September 2, 2009 by jmacphee in Reviews
Annice Jacoby for Precita Eyes Muralists, ed.
Street Art San Francisco: Mission Muralismo
Abrams, 2009
I gotta say, at the first crack of the spine of this book I was immediately nostalgic for San Francisco, strangely enough a city I've never even lived in! There was something extremely powerful about the streets of SF between 1997-2004, even for a visitor and outsider like me. Coming to the city, and the Mission District in particular, was like walking into a giant, explosive, exciting car crash of ideas, experiences, ideologies and people. The walls literally dripped with the shrapnel, covered with the remnants of 1970s & 80s murals, anti-gentrification screenprinted posters, art student graffiti, Latino gang markings, weirdo street artists, anarchist slogans, and billboards triumphantly announcing the dot-com and real estate booms. And for the most part this book does a great job of capturing that energy and feeling, carrying us through the blur.
Although Street Art SF is broken into sections, they are fairly hard to distinguish, which in many ways is a good thing, allowing the reader to flow from one style to another, fade between histories, jump between artists, just like a pedestrian on Valencia, Bryant or Mission streets would. Don't let the title fool you, this isn't just another edition pulled of the seemingly endless conveyor belt of dull "Street Art" book cash-ins. Likely a smart marketing move to put street art first in the title, this is really a mural book that understands and values the contributions that street art and graffiti have added to the brew of public expression.
Claiming the University as a Punk Space
Posted August 22, 2009 by dylan_miner in Books & Zines
Although not the normal sort of writing that appears on the JustSeeds website, I thought some of our readers may be interested in a recent column I wrote. The following article was written for Give Me Back, a DC-based hardcore zine in the vein of HeartattaCk. Now in its' fifth issue, GMB publishes a rotating column on teaching in each issue. For issue #5, Estrella Torrez and I co-authored a column addressing the relationship between punk ontologies and the university.
What follows is our essay. Let us know what you think. If you like it, you may order your own copy from GMB.
‘Claiming the University as a Punk Space’
Punk and academia are queer bedfellows. Any hardcore kid who has spent time in a university classroom will recognize the inherent contradiction between her/his anarchic (and activist) desires to create an alternative and equitable society and the university’s ability to restrict all counter-hegemonic voices within it. Although conservative pundits, such as David Horowitz, portray the university as an autonomous sphere where old Left intellectuals train and inform new generations of anti-capitalist activists, the university allows only a minimal degree of dissent before discarding those rebellious and anti-authoritarian voices. The high-stakes examples of tenure-dismissal and tenure-denial for Indigenous activist-intellectuals Ward Churchill and Andrea Smith are only two of our allies who have been denied a space within the university.
REVIEW: Mostly True
Posted August 19, 2009 by jmacphee in Reviews
Bill Daniel
Mostly True
Microcosm Publishing, 2008
Hummm, book? zine? scrapbook? film companion? Mostly True straddles all these things, introducing us to the cluttered archives (and head?) of Bill Daniel, itinerant film maker and boxcar graffiti aficionado. A rambling collection of letters, graffiti photos, fiction, news clippings, interviews and a collage of bits and pieces from turn of the 20th century railroad magazines, Daniel fully immerses us right into his hobo world. And what a treat!
The striking cover consisting almost entirely of a modernist masthead and a lonely Barry McGee graffiti writing character set the tone for the rest of the book, which draws visual inspiration from teens and twenties magazines but never falls into empty nostalgia. Instead we get a steady stream of both the old and the new, and a glimpse into how the hobo culture and art of the old days has helped inspire new forms and actions, and has been reinvented by contemporary artists, train hoppers and social rebels. Daniel's film, Who is Bozo Texino, only hinted at this, giving us a glimpse of the merging of these cultures, but Mostly True throws open the doors. Train cars covered by modern day graffiti artists like Other, Labrona and Matokie Slaughter (Margaret Kilgallen) share space with interviews with old-timers like Herby and Bozo Texino. A long, in-depth interview with Colossus of Roads (buz blurr) bridges the gap between the two, sort of like a 1968er squeezed between today's anarchists and yesterday's Communist Party.
Revolt on Goose Island
Posted July 23, 2009 by jmacphee in Events
TONIGHT:
Please join us Thursday, July 23rd, as we help launch Revolt on Goose Island, the new book by award-winning Washington Post staffer Kari Lydersen. Lydersen will read from Revolt and discuss how she wrote the book “live” by blogging about events as they unfolded during last year’s worker takeover of Republic Windows and Doors factory. Labor rights activist Danny Postel will moderate and C-Span will record the event.Thursday, July 23rd, 7-9 pm
Stop Smiling Storefront
1371 N. Milwaukee Avenue, Wicker Park, Chicago
Evil Brothers at There Goes the Neighborhood
Posted July 16, 2009 by jmacphee in Art exhibits/shows
My friend Tom Civil and his brother Ned ("Evil Brothers") installed what looks to be an amazing cardboard ghost train at the There Goes the Neighbourhood exhibition at the Performance Space in Sydney back in May. The show looks like it was pretty interesting, and included other friends like Temporary Services, 16Beaver and Michael Rakowitz. Tom also designed the catalog, which looks great. You can buy one here, or download a pdf here.
Here are a bunch of photos of the Evil Brothers install. It's hard to see what the entire thing looked like, but it's a glance into another world:
Rivet #4
Posted July 13, 2009 by jmacphee in Books & Zines
Jared Davidson/Garage Collective has put out possibly his last issue of Rivet, a journal o art and anarchism. Jared has been at the center of a number of political debates in the New Zealand art scene about the role of politics within art production, and he collects much of that material here. He is also the designer of the very handsome Red Feds Celebrate People's History poster. You can download a pdf of Rivet #4 by clicking here.
The Big Dance
Posted July 3, 2009 by k_c_ in Books & Zines
I used to play in a park across the street from the county jail while growing up. I vividly remember (when I was really young) heavily armed policeman guarding those facilities. The pictures of state troopers with shotguns, on the covers of the local papers, burned into my memory. And the activity of so many government agencies surrounding the town.
I would learn later in life about the "Brinks Armored Car Robbery" and its connection to many radical organizations of the sixties and seventies. The images and memories of my childhood are from the change of venue of the trial of Judy Clark, David Gilbert, and Sekou Odinga to the county courthouse across the street from my swingset.
One night, a couple months ago, Josh was looking through the window of a new used bookstore in Brooklyn and pointed out a title on the shelf, The Big Dance. He told me it was about the failed armored car robbery by the BLA in the early eighties, and it immediately sparked my interest and I purchased it the next day.
The Big Dance: the untold story of Kathy Boudin and the terrorist family that committed the Brinks robbery murders by John Castellucci is an interesting book written a couple of years after the robbery and trials. Castellucci was a journalist in the county where the events took place and he gives a very detailed account of the robbery and history leading up to it. Castellucci wanted to write a book that would display the motivations by providing a biography, of sorts, of each of person involved.
He follows the political development of everyone from Kuwasi Balagoon to Marylin Jean Buck, and gives his analysis of the inner dynamics of the various groups.
There is a lot of radical history from the 60s and 70s that I encountered for the first time in The Big Dance. He illustrates the involvement of these individuals in groups like the May 19th Communist Organization, Republic of New Africa, The Black Liberation Army(BLA) The Weather Underground Organization, and the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee
And talks about events like the occupation and takeover of Lincoln Hospital, in the Bronx, by the Young Lords and other radical groups. This led to a drug detoxification unit being created to serve the neighborhood which, at the time, was suffering a severe heroin epidemic. It was in this program that Mutulu Shakur and other Panther 21 defendants would volunteer and help junkies kick their habits with alternative methods, such as acupuncture. The detox center would be a main component of actualizing the radical politics of many involved in the expropriations, and continued at BAAANA (Black Acupuncture Advisory Association of North America) after being ousted from the hospital. It also explores the jailbreak of Assata Shakur in detail.
The book is practically a primer (for the 1980's) on living underground. It illustrates how the various expropriations were achieved, the materials they used, and the networks that sustained them.
Even though the writer expresses that he is attempting to be unbiased, his judgments come forth when discussing the politics and development of each individual involved. He writes with clear disdain on the idealism and anti-racism of the white revolutionaries in the group, Kathy Boudin receiving most of the direct criticisms.
The information in this book is pretty invaluable and hard to find elsewhere, just be ready for some problematic politics and perspectives of the author.
books! Books! BOOKS!
Posted June 29, 2009 by jmacphee in Books & Zines
I love books, the feel of them, the way they are made, how the spines bend and crack, and all of the amazing ideas and images that can fly out of them when opened. But there is some serious trouble brewing in the book industry. The problems are part current economic meltdown, but even more so they seem to be part byzantine, inane and ass backwards corporate models of publishing, distribution and retail. There is also the rising cost of printing and shipping, the collapse of independent bookshops, and the specter of everything turning digital. So, I'm seriously concerned about the future of these things I love.
All my friends involved in independent book shops seem to be deeply struggling. Some are no longer paying themselves, others are going out of business. Bluestockings, a worker-owned, largely volunteer-run bookstore in New York City, has an amazing community that has developed out of it, yet is struggling to survive. Every time I stop by there are lots of people in there, and even people buying books, but it is still a huge struggle to pay the rent. When I moved to Chicago back in 1997, there were a couple dozen used bookstores on the Northside of the city, many of which I frequented, or at least checked into once in awhile. When I moved from Chicago in 2005, there were maybe 5 left, if that. I travel a lot, on tours, tabling at events, going to conferences or speaking gigs, and in most cities I have favorite bookstores. Increasingly I go back to cities and find these bookstores gone. These spaces are not simply locations to find entertaining and/or important books, but are social spaces, locations to meet people and talk about ideas. In Europe there is a healthy social centre scene, but in the US these bookstores and infoshops are all we've got. Now is the time to support your local bookstores!!
Libraries appear to be finding themselves in similar situations. Shrinking budgets, static space, and increasing publishing schedules mean that libraries need to sacrifice
What If? online
Posted June 26, 2009 by jmacphee in Books & Zines
What If? A Journal of Radical Possibilities was a short running journal that started coming out soon after the WTO protests in Seattle 1999, and ran for a number of years, putting out 3 or 4 issues. I was always generally impressed with it, in terms of being well put together, well designed, using quality artwork (Rini Templeton, Erik Drooker) and featuring the intersection of art and politics. What If? founder/editor Christy Rodgers has put the journal online, and plans on using this new web version to continue the goals of the print edition. Check it out here. (It also looks like Justseeds artist Fernando Marti will soon have a nice image gallery up on the site as well.)
NYC Zine Fest '09
Posted June 24, 2009 by jmacphee in Books & Zines
Justseeds will be tabling this weekend at the New York City Zine Fest '09. For a number of years successful zine fests have been held all over the country; they're a place for zine makers to talk shop, people to find the coolest new self-published projects, and an introduction to zines and DIY publishing for the uninitiated. This is the first zine fest in NYC, so if you are in town, come up and take part in the fun.
NYC Zine Fest '09
Brooklyn Lyceum
Sat and Sun June 27 and 28
12 - 7pm
FREE admissionThe mission of the NYC Zine Fest is to circulate and promote self-published, homemade, independent, and small publications called zines. The Fest aims to support and expand the network of creators who self-publish these zines, as well as independent publishers and distributors in and around the NYC metro area.
There will be more than 70 zinemakers, publishers and institutions participating in the Fest, including Printed Matter, World War 3 Illustrated and the Barnard Zine Library. There will be workshops, discussion groups and a screening of zine documentary '$100 & a T-Shirt' - the latter which will run at 5pm both days. As zines gain popularity and clamor, this fest welcomes a wide audience to attend, meet the artists, participate in the free workshops, and buy and learn about zines. There will be food, beer, coffee, and music!
The Fest will also include a raffle with prizes consisting of rare zines, books, gift certificates, art, and more. Raffle donors include Spoonbill & Sugartown, Printed Matter, Melissa Staiger, Picturebox Inc., Opal Massage, Microcosm, 92YTribeca and Trong Nguyen.
For info and programming schedule: http://www.nyczinefest.org
Art Front
Posted June 23, 2009 by jmacphee in Art & Politics
Marc Moscato just sent me a link to a great post he put up on his blog Whittlin' Away. It's on Art Front, a 1930s radical art publication from the US. Check it out (and go to Marc's blog to see more images and read other good stuff!):
In my research for the Art for the Millions bike ride, I came across an amazing little-remembered publication, Art Front (1934-1937). This magazine provided a fantastic resource and community sounding board for issues surrounding art and politics during the Works Progress Administration (WPA) period. Based in New York City, the magazine was the official organ of the Artists’ Union and served as a main organizing tool. Contributors included Fernand Leger, Harold Rosenberg, Louis Bunin, and Stuart Davis, among numerous others.Art Front’s mission was “as wide as art itself.” Stated its editor, H.S. Baron, “Many art magazines are being published in America today. Without one exception, however, these periodicals support outworn economic concepts as a basis for the support of art which victimize and destroy art. The urgent need for a publication which speaks for the artist, battles for his economic security and guides him in his artistic efforts is self-evident.”
Within the pages of Art Front are things you would expect from a union paper — arguments for higher wages and more jobs in the arts. But also found are a marvelous assortment of manifestos for the creation of public art centers, tracts on revolutionary art vs. art for the bourgeoisie, reviews of (then) contemporary artists and reports on censorship and red-baiting (many WPA artists came under attack for political activity and leftist organizing).
One interview with Thomas Benton struck me as particularly insightful. How would we answer these questions today?
1. Is provincial isolation compatible with modern civilization?
2. Is your art free of foreign influence?
3. What American art influences are manifest in your work?
4. Was any art form created without meaning or purpose?
5. What is the social function of a mural?
6. Can art be created without direct personal contact with the subject?
7. What is your political viewpoint?
8. Is the manifestation of social understanding in art detrimental to it?
9. Is there any revolutionary tradition for the American artist?
10. Do you believe that the future of American Art lies in the Midwest?Fascinating read if you can track it down (I inter-library loaned a microfilm copy).
The Coming Insurrection-Release at Barnes and Noble's
Posted June 19, 2009 by k_c_ in Books & Zines
Liberating Lipsticks and Lattes
By COLIN MOYNIHAN
Published: June 15, 2009
in the New York Times
They arrived at the Barnes & Noble at Union Square in small groups on Sunday afternoon, proceeding two and three at a time to the fourth floor, where they browsed among shelves holding books by authors like Jacques Derrida and Martin Heidegger.By 5 o’clock a crowd of more than 100 had gathered. Their purpose: to celebrate the publication of an English translation of a book called “The Coming Insurrection,” which was written two years ago by an anonymous group of French authors who call themselves the Invisible Committee. More recently, the volume has been at the center of an unusual criminal investigation in France that has become something of a cause célèbre among leftists and civil libertarians.
The book, which predicts the imminent collapse of capitalist culture, was inspired by disruptive demonstrations that took place over the last few years in France and Greece. It was influenced stylistically by Guy Debord, a French writer and filmmaker who was a leader of the Situationist International, a group of intellectuals and artists who encouraged the Paris protests of 1968.
In keeping with the anarchistic spirit of the text, the bookstore event was organized without the knowledge or permission of Barnes & Noble. The gathering was intended partly as a show of solidarity with nine young people — including one suspected of writing “The Coming Insurrection” —whom in November the French police accused of forming a dangerous “ultraleftist” group and sabotaging train lines.
¡Viva Carton!
Posted June 2, 2009 by molly_fair in Books & Zines
Friday June 5, 2pm-5pm
Sculpture Center
44-19 Purves St. Long Island City, NY
My friend Michael McCanne, a book and printmaker and a founding editor of Lightful Press will be giving a presentation and slide show about the work of Eloisa Cartonera, an art and editorial project based in Buenos Aires, Argentina who he spent four and a half months working with. There will also be a workshop on the methods that are used to create books out of recycled materials with cardboard covers, how to paint them and bind materials into them. You can make a new book, or bring your own zines or art to use.
Background:
In the wake of the 2001/2002 economic collapse two artists, Fernanda Laguna and Javier Barilaro, and a writer, Washington Concurto, initiated Eloisa Cartonera, a cooperative editorial project dedicated to working with Cartoneros (cardboard scavengers) to produce accessible books bound in cardboard. The phenomenon of the cartoneros, who are estimated to number in the tens of thousands, arose as a direct result of the distingration of the Argentine economy under neo-liberal policies of president Carlos Menem and the structural readjustment program of the International Monetary Fund.
Eloisa Cartonera is a part of the multilithic popular response to that crisis, a response that is both creative and based on equal cooperation. The project purchases cardboard directly from Cartoneros at an elevated price and uses it to bind short stories and poetry collections of well know and experimental Latin American writers. The books are stenciled and hand painted in bright colors and then sold for five pesos (equivalent of $1.30). Eloisa produces books in Spanish, English, Portuguese and German and has over one hundred titles.
Since its inception in 2003, Eloisa Cartonera has spawned an organic and independent movement of cartonerias across South and Central America, with workshops in Paraguay, Columbia, Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Mexico and Ecuador. Each cartoneria is autonomous and each country has its own unique social and economic situation but Eloisa has set a model. This phenomenon has spread in which people are organizing alternatives by example–organically and without any structure or over-arching hierarchy. In the vacuum left in Argentina, a new mode of production was synthesized; a production based in reuse, creativity and cooperation.
Defining Anarchist Art
Posted May 29, 2009 by k_c_ in Justseeds & Member Projects
I wanted to draw attention to AK Press' blog Revolution by the Book
there is a post about Josh MacPhee & Erik Ruin's book Realizing the Impossible called
Defining Anarchist Art:Gleanings from a Roundtable on Realizing the Impossible. There's a handful of links leading to some interesting stuff, if you like art, or anarchism.
Our Lenin: kid's book from the USA, 1934
Posted May 19, 2009 by icky in Books & Zines
I can't remember where I found this book, but this is a children's biography of Lenin published in 1934 by the CPUSA press. The writing is a basic heroic summary of his life, translated and adapted from a Russian book by Ruth Shaw and Alan Potamkim. The illustrations are by William Siegel, who I can find no reliable information about off a quick search. But I like his drawings, they're nicely done and simple, good for kids books. His composition is really good too.
This book is heavy on the propaganda (no surprise there) and there's something slightly creepy, comforting and hopeful in this art. The book itself is handsome: big bold red lines at the top and bottom of each page, the drawings fit in nicely with the text. Here's a selection of images:
REVIEW: Protest Graffiti Mexico
Posted May 5, 2009 by jmacphee in Reviews
Louis E.V. Nevaer & Elaine Sendyk
Protest Graffiti Mexico: Oaxaca
Mark Batty Publishers, 2009
As far as I know, this is the first book out that exclusively focuses on the political street art produced during the uprising in Oaxaca in 2006. Normally one might ask why we should embrace a book on the graffiti of a political rebellion when we barely have any books that deal with the actions of the period or the politics behind them. But as our world becomes more and more media saturated, how people that reject the status quo represent themselves publicly becomes increasingly important. If most people in the US saw anything about the Oaxaca rebellion, it was likely photos of the graffiti it produced on yahoo news. The popular and mass occupation of Oaxaca City lasted longer than the Paris Commune, and all we got were a couple lousy internet slideshows?!?
Thankfully Nevaer and Sendyk give us a much more in-depth look at the streets of Oaxaca than any web news outlet. Sendyk took the bulk of the photos included (over 150), and Nevaer narrates our trip through the images. Unlike most graffiti books coming out these days, this one actually attempts to provide context for the images included. The book begins with a reprinting of an Open Letter in Support of the People of Oaxaca, signed by an international collection of Left public intellectuals, and leads right into a chronology of events in Oaxaca. Nevaer tries to give us the information we need to understand the images, including a history of the PRI Party in Mexico, context for teachers strikes in Oaxaca, background on the Mexican Revolution, as well as the development of the strike in 2006, the formation of the Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO), and the role of women in the struggle. The information provided is generally solid, if a little to liberal and repetitive for my taste.
Overspray #9
Posted April 18, 2009 by jmacphee in Books & Zines
If you look beyond the cover (with the image of the politician everyone has already forgotten about, I honestly can't even remember her name right now...), the new issue of Overspray is pretty darn good. It's got a lot of Justseeds love inside, including a piece about Swoon, a 2-page spread on the Street Art Workers with images of posters by Icky and Erik R. (see images below), as well as a review of Reproduce & Revolt. Also inside are pieces on the Billboard Liberation Front, Revered Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping, Free Tibet street art, Palestine graffiti, and a short piece on the Situationists and Paris 68 graffiti.
Presente! Close the School of the Americas!
Posted April 8, 2009 by Melanie_Cervantes in Books & Zines
Recently Jesus and I connected with the folks at the ¡Presente!, the newspaper of the movement to close the School of the Americas (formerly known as the SOA Watch Update). Check out the use of our artwork for the cover of the Summer issue which would put the civil society organizing of the Zapatistas and the people who struggle in Atenco - the solution - on the forefront instead of featuring the drug war smokescreen.
Content of the Summer 2009 issue of Presente:
This issue deals with the roots of the drug war currently raging in Mexico. Ana Esther Ceceña, a key organizer in the international Anti-Militarization networks, wrote an insightful article for ¡Presente!. The cover design was created by Jesus Barraza and Melanie Cervantes, two artist-activists who work to foster a resurgence in the screen-printing medium for social change. Instead of focusing on the violence of the SOA and the drug war, their image portrays a woman from Atenco and a Zapatista, representing Mexico's powerful social movements. The grassroots struggles in Mexico that are proposing real alternatives to the racist system of violence and neoliberal domination are largely muted in the current Mexico coverage in the mainstream media. At the same time, the Mexican military is using the cover of the drug war to repress indigenous movements in southern Mexico ...
Also in this issue, SOA Watch council member Andy Kafel reports back from election observations in El Salvador and discusses the significant electoral victory of the Cover of the Summer 2009 issue FMLN when their candidate, Mauricio Funes, won the presidency on March 15, 2009. Adam Kufeld took amazing photos during the FMLN election campaign, that accompany Andy's article. We share information about the six SOA Watch prisoners of conscience who were sentenced earlier this year to prison and house arrest for their nonviolent direct actions to close the SOA/WHINSEC. And SOA Watch Legislative Coordinator Pam Bowman compiles detailed information about the upcoming congressional vote to de-fund the School of the Americas -- exciting especially because the last bill (in 2007) lost by a margin of only six votes. This time around, we'll need all hands on deck and together we'll have to rededicate our efforts to win the vote. SOA Watch-DC organizer Vera Leone conducted an interview with Black Freedom movement activist Ruby Sales, who founded and directs the Spirit House Project, currently based in Columbus, Georgia. In their frank conversation, Ruby Sales and Vera Leone talk about police execution of Black men in the United States as a means of social control, the similarities to death squads in Latin America and about the history of state violence against oppressed peoples in general. Ruby Sales also raises the lack of recognition of the connections between repression inside the United States and in Latin America on the part of white people in the Latin America Solidarity movement.
Bronx Anarchist Fair
Posted April 3, 2009 by jmacphee in Events
Justseeds will be tabling at the Bronx Anarchist Fair tomorrow, in the Bronx, NYC.
Here's the info:
Saturday April 4th
11am-6pm Brook Park
141st St. and Brook Ave.
Bronx, NY
Grace Lee & Jimmy Boggs people's history poster: an explanation
Posted February 27, 2009 by bec_young in Posters & Prints
I first became interested in moving to Detroit when, living in Ann Arbor, I read some grad students' thesis paper about urban agriculture in Detroit, as I copied it for him super s-l-o-w-l-y at my copy shop job near the campus of U of M. After that I began to look for books about the city, and Detroit: I Do Mind Dying quickly made it to the top my reading list. Within the book, the names Jimmy Boggs and Grace Lee Boggs stuck out in my mind, and pretty soon after I moved to the city in the summer of 2000 I began volunteering for Detroit Summer, "a youth program / movement to re-build, re-spirit and re-define Detroit from the ground up;" Jimmy and Grace were among the founders of the organization. I continued to learn about them and their ideas, reading almost all their other books during the last nine years I've spent in Detroit.
In The American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Worker's Notebook, Jimmy, a auto factory worker, lays out what has turned out to be a prophetic vision of labor. He explains that with the advent of automation, there will be less work as we know it, and that many people will be unemployed, and suggests that in this technologically advanced society "productivity can no longer be the measure of an individual's right to life." This book was published in 1963. In chapter 4, The Outsiders, he asserts that our definition of work will need to change from production of goods to the mental work of re-organizing society: "The revolution which is within these people will have to be a revolution of their minds and hearts..."
Another book, Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century, came out in 1974. It consists of Grace and Jimmy's analysis of revolutions that happened all over the world, as well as ideas of how revolution might happen in the U.S. Conversations in Maine was published in 1978, and summarizes discussions that took place during ten years of retreats about politics and revolution. Grace published Living for Change: an Autobiography in 1998, which explains the development of her political sensibilities.
Jimmy died in 1993, but Grace still lives at The Boggs Center, the community center they established in part of their house on the East side of Detroit. At almost 94 years old, Grace is still quite active and writes a column weekly for the Michigan Citizen, "America's Most Progressive Community Newspaper." What impresses me most about Grace is how flexible she is in her thinking. She is very open to new ideas and ways of doing things, and is very creative in her perspective about everything she theorizes about. That includes just about everything, but recently she often focuses on schools and the economy. I am grateful to have been able to show the poster to Grace for feedback before printing, and to hand the finished copies to her afterward. In what was one of the most rewarding moments so far of my art-making life, she looked at it and said simply "I love it!"
Choose your own (dis) adventure with the help of Mujeres Públicas
Posted February 22, 2009 by bec_young in Reviews
Review:
Elige Tu Propia Desventura: La Increíble y Triste Historia de una Cualquiera de Nosotras
(Choose your own dis-adventure: the incredible and sad story of any one of us)
Mujeres Públicas, 2008
While in Buenos Aires I met with one of the women in the feminist art collective Mujeres Públicas, which has been reclaiming public space for six years. They often combat sexism by creating posters and wheat pasting them to advertisements, or printing stickers. I noticed that they recently started a blog, which lists an event they held at the end of January with 28 participants, in which the subject of birth control was addressed in a hands-on workshop!
Amid one of their brainstorming sessions, they came up with the idea of writing a book which would represent challenges women typically face in a Western, industrialized county, challenges which are largely invisible to men. They had the idea to make a book in which the readers control the journey through a series of choices about body image, sexual abuse, sexist encounters and depression. They decide to use the format of a "choose your own adventure" novel, which would cleverly reveal the limits to our "choices" in "free" societies.
After three years of work, the final result is a book that is well-written in a simple style that many different types of women may relate to, and the illustrations are charming. The most impressive thing about this book to me, however, is that it was written collectively by five women, whose lives are embedded in the stories of hope and despair. The cover image reveals their process; behind the image of the woman, a criss-cross of arrows links one situation and event to another. It was explained to me how they laid the paper out on the kitchen table and mapped out the stories of their lives - and the lives of their mothers and sisters - in scrawling text. Then, they linked these stories with dots and red arrows, and spent hours talking while scribbling out, erasing, and redrawing lines. The book is copy-left and self-published, and hopefully will someday be translated and printed in English to reach a wider audience. What's most inspiring is the idea that such an interesting book could be collaboratively written by a group of artists, a feat that is definitely worth repeating.
Agitate! Educate! Organize!
Posted January 30, 2009 by jmacphee in Books & Zines
Political graphics historian Lincoln Cushing has a new book coming out in the Spring called Agitate! Educate! Organize!: American Labor Posters. It's a giant collection of over 250 labor posters from the United States, something that has never been put together in a book before. It will also include a number of posters from the Graphic Work exhibition I curated, and pieces by multiple Justseeds artists. Lincoln has a webpage up with more info on the book, check it out here.
R&R interview on Brooklyn Street Art Blog
Posted January 27, 2009 by jmacphee in Books & Zines
Brooklynstreetart.com has posted an interview I did with them about the Reproduce & Revolt book. Check it out HERE.
Review of Realizing the Impossible
Posted January 24, 2009 by jmacphee in Books & Zines
Here's a new review of Realizing the Impossible from the UK anarchist mag Direct Action #41:
Reviews: Realizing the Impossible: Art against Authority by Josh MacPhee and Erik Reuland AK Press 2007 – 319 pages – £16.00 – ISBN: 9781904859321This monochrome book arrived shortly after an interview with Banksy, the “graffiti artist”, had been aired on the BBC. A commentator went along to a working men’s (sic) club in Bethnal Green to view Banksy’s diversion of yellow road markings across the pavement and up the wall to blossom into a flower. Banksy says in the book, “Imagine a city where graffiti wasn’t illegal…a city which felt like a living breathing thing which belonged to everybody, not just real estate agents and the barons of big business”. The club secretary was quite pleased to leave it there. But not all graffiti is of artistic merit and many regard it as degrading the environment. Do graffitos adorn their own dwellings thus?
Anarchist Studies cover
Posted January 23, 2009 by jmacphee in Books & Zines
One of my images is on the cover of the new Anarchist Studies journal, a publication that comes out of the UK. The issue is on "Post Anarchism" and is edited by Saul Newman. Haven't had a chance to crack the spine yet, but there's a number of articles in here that look interesting, including "A is for Anarchy, V is for Vendetta: Images of Guy Fawkes and the Creation of Postmodern Anarchism."
R&R in the top 10!
Posted January 22, 2009 by jmacphee in Books & Zines
Format Magazine has release their Top 10 Street Art Books of 2008, and Reproduce & Revolt is at the top of the list! Check it out here.
Preview of Christopher Cardinale's Graphic Novel
Posted January 19, 2009 by molly_fair in Books & Zines
Our friend Christopher Cardinale passed along this preview of his art from his first full length book graphic novel, Mr. Mendoza's Paintbrush, which will be published by Cinco Puntos Press. It is featured in this month's issue of The Comics Journal #295. The novel is an adaptation of a short story of by the widely acclaimed author Luis Urrea. It is scheduled to come out this Spring. Every time I see him he tells me he's hard at work to finish it. I can't wait. You can see more of Christopher's work in World War 3 Illustrated and the mural Not One More Death which some of us collaborated on, with him.
From Cinco Puntos Press:
Be careful growing up in the green, wet, mango-sweet Mexican village of Rosario, where dead corpses rise up out of the cathedral walls during July when it always floods; where vast silver mines beneath the town occasionally collapse causing a whole section of the village to drop out of sight; where a man with a paintbrush, to wit Mr. Mendoza, is the town’s self-appointed conscience.Magic realism, you say to yourself. Luis Urrea affirms to the contrary, “Not magical realism. It’s how kids grow up in Mexico. Especially if you’re a boy.” And the part about Mr. Mendoza is really really true: he brandishes his magical paintbrush everywhere, providing commentary to singe the hearts and souls of boys who are looking to get into trouble. If he catches you peeping at the girls bathing in the river, he’ll steal your pants and paint PERVERT on your naked buttocks. And one day, he performs a painterly act which no one in Rosario ever forgets!
Luis Alberto Urrea is the author of the widely acclaimed novel The Hummingbird’s Daughter and a 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist for nonfiction for The Devil’s Highway. Inducted into the Latino Literature Hall of Fame, Luis was born in Tijuana, Mexico to a Mexican father and an American mother. This is his first graphic novel and a riveting book, like Vatos, which young adults will love. Check out Luis' commentary on the upcoming Mr. Mendoza's Paintbrush graphic novel.
Christopher Cardinale is a muralist and artist with a social message. His large-scale murals against globalization and war can be seen in New York, Italy, Greece and Mexico. He lives in Brooklyn. He is a regular contributor to the zine World War Three. Check out our blog for an article about Christopher's trip down to the city of Rosario, Sinaloa in Mexico. This is the town where Mr. Mendoza's Paintbrush takes place.
Some Word Pictures
Posted January 18, 2009 by k_c_ in Events
Justseeds Pals Santiago Mostyn and Bill Daniels have an opening(at this moment) at Needles & Pens Gallery in San Francisco.
Expect photographic prints, writings, video, and ephemera of contemporary Americana - Early 90's SF street grafitti, river boats (MIss Rockaway), and imagery of wandering North America on freight trains.
Needles & Pens
3253 16th Street (btwn Guerrero & Dolores)
San Francisco, CA 94103
Santiago was just mentioned at this Woostercollective link.
They mention this collaboration and Santi's recent book All Most Heaven.
Im wicked proud of him and can't wait to see this piece when I'm out in California in the near future.
Book 'Em Book Sale Dec 13 & 14
Posted December 10, 2008 by mary_tremonte in Events
Book 'Em, Pittsburgh's books - to - prisoners program, is holding a book sale this weekend. All proceeds directly benefit postage for mailing book packages to prisoners (which runs about $900 / month). Book sale! Sweet treats! Giftwrapping!
Saturday December 13 10:00-2:00
Sunday December 14 3:00-8:00
Thomas Merton Center
5125 Penn Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15224
Feel free to visit our weekly book packing sessions on Sundays from 3:00 to 8:00 p.m. in the basement of the Thomas Merton Center, in Pittsburgh's Garfield neighborhood. There is always great company and conversation, and often music and snacks.
For additional information, contact us at bookem(at)indypgh(dot)org.
(I designed and printed this poster, using a Beehive Collective image from Reproduce and Revolt! Josh MacPhee and Favianna Rodriguez's amazing book of copyright-free radical graphics. Quick-and-dirty and good-looking poster-making!)
Arte di strada e movimenti sociali
Posted December 9, 2008 by jmacphee in Books & Zines
I'm excited to share that I recently had an article I wrote translated into Italian, and published in a great journal called Zapruder: Storie In Movimento. Zapruder is a non-academic history publication, as far as I understand developing loosely out of the Italian Autonomia tradition, which attempts to mine history for ideas that are useful to contemporary social struggles. This issue is dedicated to political propaganda, and is themed "Wall Against the Wall: Design and Communication in Political Posters." My article is called "Street Art and Social Movements," and is an edited version of a talk I've been developing for the past couple years under the title "Street Art and Counter Power." I'll be cleaning up the English version of this text and posting it here soon....
Graffiti Wars: Government-Punks Without Sneakers
Posted December 2, 2008 by molly_fair in Inspirations
A passage from Return to the Same City by my favorite detective novelist and radical historian Paco Ignacio Taibo II:
"I'm involved in ideological warfare."
"Against whom?"
"Against a gang of juveniles. A bunch of guys from my neighborhood who spraypaint."
"What do they paint?"
"Bullshit," Carlos said, lighting a new cigarette. "Sex Punks, Wild Border-" meaningless phrases like that, numbers, incomprehensible clues to mark their territory. It's like dog piss. Wherever I piss is my space and nobody can come in."
"And what do you do?"
"I paint on top of their paintings. I go out at night with my spray can and paint over theirs. It's a war."
"But what do you paint?"
"Punks are Strawberries, Long Live Enver Hoxha, or Che Guevara Lives, He's a Living Ghost, Be Careful Assholes, He Lives in the Neighborhood, or Sex Punks Were Born With a Silver Spoon in Their Mouths, or If a Dog Falls in the Water, Kick Him Until He Dies. Some come out too long, they're not effective, but I hadn't painted in a long time; my da Vinci profusion is in arrears. I've got them screwed. It's not just ideological warfare; it's generational warfare, too. Obviously it's a professional war and, in that, my painting technique dominates. Those sucklings are going to teach me how to paint walls...? My most successful one was Government-Punks Without Sneakers, and the second most successful, celebrated to the hilt by the dry cleaner guy downstairs, had to do with a discount chain of stores. It was: Paint Me a Blue Egg and Woolworth Will Buy It, but the Woolworth logo didn't come out that well."
Héctor raised an eyebrow.
"Don't worry, it's not insanity, it's just to keep me in shape until I find a new little place in the class war. Besides, sometimes I agree with the punks and we restore universal harmony. The other day I was painting one that said If the PRI wants to govern, why don't they start by winning the elections, and the gang came along and instead of destroying it, they wrote Yes, that's true below it, six feet tall."
"And where is that painting?"
"Two blocks away. Want to go look at it?"
Héctor agreed. The morning was improving.
Big Box Reuse
Posted November 19, 2008 by jmacphee in Books & Zines
My friend Julia Christensen has been hard at work for years photographing and documenting what happens to giant big box walmarts and other monstrosities once they go out of business (as they inevitably do, since most of these companies intentionally over saturate regions with stores they know will fail in the long term in order to put all their competition out of business in the short term). She has just released a book about the project, Big Box Reuse, on MIT Press, and it looks promising. Here's the press release:
America is becoming a container landscape of big boxes connected by highways. When a big box store upsizes to an even bigger box “supercenter” down the road, it leaves behind more than the vacant shell of a retail operation; it leaves behind a changed landscape that can’t be changed back. Acres of land have been paved around it. Highway traffic comes to it; local roads end at it. With thousands of empty big box stores spread across America, these vistas have become a dominant feature of the American landscape.In Big Box Reuse, Julia Christensen shows us how ten communities have addressed this problem, turning vacated Wal-Marts and Kmarts into something else: a church, a library, a school, a medical center, a courthouse, a recreation center, a museum, or other more civic-minded structures. In each case, what was once a shopping destination becomes a center of community life.
Christensen crisscrossed America identifying these projects, then photographed, videotaped, and interviewed the people involved. The first-person accounts and color photographs of Big Box Reuse reveal the hidden stories behind the transformation of these facades into gateways of community life. Whether a big box store becomes a “Senior Resource Center” or a museum devoted to Spam (the kind that comes in a can), each renovation displays a community’s resourcefulness and creativity–but also raises questions about how big box buildings affect the lives of communities. What does it mean for us and for the future of America if the spaces of commerce built by a few monolithic corporations become the sites where education, medicine, religion, and culture are dispensed wholesale to the populace?
El Tercer Feria Anarchista del DF/Mexico City's 3rd Anarchist Bookfair!
Posted November 15, 2008 by k_c_ in Books & Zines
Esta tercera feria se realizara en la cd de México los días 7, 8, 9, 14, 15 y 16 de noviembre de 2008.
Habra venta de Venta de libros, periódicos, videos, fanzines, comida y más...
I found out about Mexico City's Anarchist Bookfair smack in the middle of its events, and felt the need to tell yins about it!
Wish I was there.
Journal of Aesthetics & Protest #6 out now
Posted November 7, 2008 by jmacphee in Books & Zines
Issue #6 of the Journal of Aesthetics & Protest just released!
I've been reading the Journal from the get go, and always find something interesting in each issue. This one's got contributions by Gregory Sholette, Dorit Cypis, smartMeme studios, Rebecca Zorach, Kelly Marie Martin, Amy Franchesini, Lisa Ann Auerbach, Code Pink, Andrew Boyd, Iraqi Veterans for Peace, John Carr of Yo! What Happened to Peace and many more.
Here's a blurb about it:
Crafted & collected for 7 months, this sober eyed jumbo sized brick of a book explores 3 distinct premises in contemporary life: Sustainable Culture, Antiwar Activism, Contemporary Critical Theory. The book comes with in depth analysis of activist and art projects as well as resolute analysis of cultural conditions by people we want you to read."One could see the level of frustration in your eyes. There were ways to avoid it; staring to the internets, listening to radio, cursing, cursing news, attending protests, trying at little "political projects." But generally, it was all around, this horrible stasis. There were wars, the loss of a city, the disappearance of beloved bookstores, magazines, community centers , and the cruel inability for networks to amount to anything real. It appeared that nothing good could be generated out from under this era. And you were getting older." This issue finds a way forward.
Half Letter Press
Posted November 6, 2008 by jmacphee in Books & Zines
The Chicago-based art collective Temporary Services have just launched a new publishing outfit, Half Letter Press, and a new book, Public Phenomena. Here's the blurb on the book:
It is titled Public Phenomena and let us tell ya, it looks beautiful! 152
glossy full color pages. We can't wait for you to see it.This book is the result of over ten years of photographic documentation and
research on the variety of modifications and inventions people make in public.
From roadside memorials to makeshift barriers, people consistently alter shared
common spaces to suit their needs, or let both man-made and natural aberrations
run wild. The result is a new kind of public space – with creative and
inspiring moments that push past the original planned design of cities.Images and text by: Temporary Services, Polonca Lovšin, Joseph Heathcott &
Damon Rich, Boštjan Bugaric, Ana Celigoj, Maša Cvetko, Marko Horvat, Meta
Kos, Darjan Mihajlović, Danijel Modrej, Maja Modrijan, and Sonja Zlobko.
Zine Yearbook #9
Posted November 5, 2008 by jmacphee in Books & Zines
Just got a package in the mail from Microcosm Publishing with a copy of the hot-off-press brand new Zine Yearbook 9. Over 100 excerpts from zines put out in the last couple years, it looks to have some great stuff in there, including zine world favorites like Doris, Peops, Ghost Pine, You, Duplex Planet, The Match, Kerbloom, Spread, and tons and tons more. It also includes some photos excerpted from my zine Pound the Pavement #10.
Justseeds at the Baltimore Book Festival
Posted October 1, 2008 by k_c_ in Events
We went, it rained, we tabled, people went home with bad-ass radical art (good job Microcosm). Was hosted by Gaia and had my first experience with the BPD at a college party (which makes one really feel their age-30!) Eric had some respiratory thing then got pink eye, he gave a presentation of Realize the Impossible, sold some stuff, then we went to our respective homes, and hope to do it again next year. Thanks Baltimore!
Justseeds at this Weekends Baltimore Book Festival
Posted September 23, 2008 by k_c_ in Events
Justseeds members Eric Ruin and Kevin Caplicki will be tabling at the Baltimore Book Festival, this weekend.
September 26-28, 2008
11-7pm
Mount Vernon Place
600 Block N Charles St
Baltimore, MD
There is an incredible schedule of events in every category of literature. On top of a ton of authors like Dr. Cornel West, Naomi Wolf, Amy Goodman, and Seth Tobocman, our own Eric Ruin will be presenting!
Erik Ruin, Realizing the Impossible: Art Against Authority
Sept 27, 2-3pm
Radical Bookfair PavilionThere has always been a close relationship between aesthetics and politics in anti-authoritarian social movements. And those movements have in turn influenced many of the last century's most important art movements, including cubism, Dada, post-impressionism, abstract expressionism, surrealism, Fluxus, Situationism, and punk. Erik Ruin, author, artist, and member of the JustSeeds collective discusses the relationship between aesthetics and politics, with examples drawn from France, Indonesia, Chicago, Denmark, and even Baltimore!
There's also a handful of other stuff happening in the Radical Bookfair Pavilion, check the schedule for info!
Overspray #8 out now
Posted September 2, 2008 by k_c_ in Books & Zines
Overspray number 8 is now available through their store, or in whatever lucky little place you hope to find it! (Many independent bookstores and Barnes & Noble carry it)
Overspray is the world's first and only 100% international street art magazine. Created and run by artists, Overspray and all it's satellites exist to document and further urban culture in all it's facets. Our ultimate goal is to inspire and provide tools to anyone who feels it necessary to create art, and sustain the community through bringing it together.
Justseeds at Portland Zine Symposium
Posted August 22, 2008 by icky in Books & Zines
If you are in Portland Oregon this weekend be sure to stop by the Portland Zine Symposium. Icky and Pete from Justseeds will be tabling both Saturday and Sunday.
The 8th Annual Portland Zine Symposium is on August 23rd & 24th, 2008 in Portland, Oregon in the Smith Memorial Ballroom on the Portland State University Campus.
hours are:
- Saturday from 10:00AM until 5:00PM
- Sunday from 10:00AM until 4:00PM
R&R interview at Identity Theory
Posted July 6, 2008 by jmacphee in Books & Zines
Identity Theory has published an interview that Favianna Rodriguez and I did about Reproduce & Revolt. You can read it here.
Toolbox for Sustainable City Living: A Do-It-Ourselves Guide
Posted June 27, 2008 by k_c_ in Books & Zines
My friends from the Rhizome Collective, in Austin, TX, have just finished their guide on appropriate technology and sustainable living, Toolbox for Sustainable City Living.
The Toolbox for Sustainable City Living is a DIY guide for creating locally-based, ecologically sustainable communities in today's cities. Its straightforward text, vibrant illustrations and accessible diagrams explain how urbanites can have local access and control over life's essential resources: food production, water security, waste management, autonomous energy, and bioremediation of toxic soils.
Scotty and Stacy are co-founders of the Rhizome collective, and have lived and worked in a warehouse in Austin. For seven years, with countless others, they have developed the building and land into an incredible experiment of urban gardening and living. When I was seasonally nomadic, the Rhizome was a destination for me. I was exposed to an incredible community of people, and alternatives to plugging into "the grid". Going back every other years or so, I've seen the incredible amounts of time and labor the collective has put into the space. The most visible and impressive is the garden in the courtyard, which once was parking for trucks, is full of mulch, garden beds, fishponds, and so much other stuff.
Two artists that I met during my visits were Beth Ferguson and Juan Martinez. Both made an impression and were always encouraging me, giving me more confidence in my creative process. I would have had little interest in stencils if it weren't for Juan's incredible insects, dragonflies, ants and the like. And Beth is a powerhouse of
creativity too, both are Beehive collaborators. You can check out a conversation/interview VR did with Beth, here
They have both made artistic contributors to the book.
If you're curious or interested in do-it-yourself technologies to retrofit your house or apartment, you can buy the book, from them, online at Radical Sustainability. It has been published by South End Press.
I hope it will inspire folks to think beyond the "green"-consumer capitalism that's in vogue at the moment. And we can imagine simpler methods to satisfy our needs.
Print Art and Revolution in Mexico
Posted June 19, 2008 by jmacphee in Books & Zines
Poster historian and archivist Lincoln Cushing has written a great review of a new book on the Taller Grafica Popular (TGP). The review, published in A Contra Corriente journal, can be downloaded here as a pdf. The book reviewed is Deborah Caplow's Leopoldo Méndez: Revolutionary Art and the Mexican Print, published by the University of Texas Press, 2007. Back in 2005 Caplow wrote a great introductory essay on the history of political printmaking for the exhibition catalog to my Paper Politics show.
Reproduce & Revolt SF release party!
Posted June 6, 2008 by jmacphee in Books & Zines
San Francisco artists celebrate the release of Reproduce & Revolt, an extensive collection of contemporary political graphics collected from around the world, featuring today's most exciting street artists, poster makers and graphic designers.
WHAT: An art jam and book release party featuring live printmaking, music, and refreshments.
WHEN: Wednesday, June 11, 6-10 pm
WHERE: CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission St. (near 9th), San Francisco, CA 94103
WHO: Reproduce & Revolt Co-Editor, Favianna Rodriguez, Taller Tupac Amaru (Oakland), San Francisco Print Collective (SF), Political Gridlock (Alameda), and Chaman Visions (Los Angeles)
On the evening of Wednesday, June 11th, artists, activists, and art lovers will gather to celebrate the release of the new book, Reproduce & Revolt. Activism depends on design to capture imaginations and spread a message. Reproduce and Revolt not only documents some of the best activist design work of the past few years, it shows readers how to do it themselves. Political artists from the Bay Area will host an evening of live poster printing, political art displays, and other art making to promote a message of social justice.
Reproduce and Revolt features the work of artists from over a dozen countries. The collection contains hundreds of high-quality illustrations and graphics about social justice and political activism for use on flyers, posters, t-shirts, brochures, stencils, and any other graphic elements of social causes. The graphics are bold, easy to reproduce, and available to reproduce without permission. The book offers clear instructions on how to utilize the images to improve the effectiveness of visual campaigns. It also contains a short history of political graphics, highlighting the vital and powerful role that graphics have played in social movements all over the world – serving as tools to inspire, mobilize, and transform communities.
Stencil Nation release parties
Posted June 4, 2008 by jmacphee in Events
Russell Howze, long time maintainer of the site StencilArchive.org has just released a new book on street stenciling called Stencil Nation. He's having a couple release parties this weekend in the Bay Area, if you're there, check them out:
1>>
Stencil Nation: Graffiti, Community, and Art
Book Release Party and Stencil Art Exhibit
Friday, June 6
7 PM to Midnight
Revolution Cafe
3248 22nd St. (at Bartlett)
SF, CA 94110
(415) 642-0474
Free
Artwork on the walls until June 30
Confirmed participating artists:
Adam5100 (San Francisco, CA)
Amy Rice (Minneapolis, MN)
Chris Stain (NY, NY)
Janet "Bikegirl" Attard (Toronto, ONT)
John Fekner (Bayside, NY)
Josh MacPhee (Troy, NY)
Klutch (Portland, OR)
PaperMonster (Madison, NJ)
Scott Williams (San Francisco, CA)
Peat Wollaeger (St. Louis, MO)
Tiago Denczuk (Portland, OR)
and Street Art Workers (SAW)
Come celebrate the Manic D Press release of Stencil Nation: Graffiti, Community, and Art by Russell Howze. Autographed copies of the book will be for sale by the author at the night of the exhibit opening. The author will also feature slide shows of the Stencil Archives, with over 10,000 photographs of international stencil art. Stencil-making materials will also be available upon request. Proceeds of the art sales will benefit the artists as well as help fund the upcoming Stencil Nation book tour.
2>>
Stencil Nation Budget Gallery
Cheap art that anyone can afford!
Saturday, June 7
Noon to 4 PM
The sidewalk in front of Al's Comics
1803 Market St. (at Octavia)
SF, CA 94103
415-861-1220
Free
Celebrate the Manic D Press release Stencil Nation: Graffiti, Community, and Art by stopping by author Russell Howze's TAG (Temporary Autonomous Gallery) on the sidewalk in front of Al's Comics. Munch on crackers and cheese while choosing a cheap piece of hand-made stencil art to take home and hang on your wall. Autographed copies of Stencil Nation will be available for sale too.
Proceeds of the art sales supports the Stencil Nation Book Tour and the Budget Gallery Project.
Nowtopia review online
Posted May 15, 2008 by jmacphee in Books & Zines
Erick Lyle recently wrote a great piece on Chris Carlsson's new book Nowtopia for the SF Bay Guardian. Check it out. I haven't had a chance to read the book yet, but it's on the top of the pile. Chris has a really interesting analysis of new class formations and cultural production.
Event: World War 3 Illustrated artist's reading
Posted May 14, 2008 by jmacphee in Events
Tonight!!
The Cup and Pen Small Press Reading Series
World War 3 Illustrated Artists
May 14th, from 8-10 pm at Think Coffee in Manhattan, 248 Mercer Street
There will be a fabulous reading featuring slide shows and multimedia by:
Rebecca Migdal
James Romberger
Sabrina Jones
Tom Keough
Fly
Mac McGill
Also featuring: our hostess the lovely Rebecca Alvarez; the vocal stylings
of Breeze; and the accompaniment of Andy Laties on saxaphone, flute,
harmonica and the garden hose!
Here's you chance to pick up an autographed copy of WW3, and be vastly
entertained while sipping java and nibbling cake.
Mimeo Mimeo #1
Posted May 14, 2008 by jmacphee in Books & Zines
Kyle Schlesinger, who a couple years back put together the cool self-published book Schablone Berlin with Caroline Koebel, has launched a new journal/periodical called Mimeo Mimeo.
According to Kyle:
Mimeo Mimeo is a forum for critical and cultural perspectives on the
Mimeograph Revolution, Artists’ Books and the Literary Fine Press. Edited by
Jed Birmingham and Kyle Schlesinger, this periodical will feature essays,
interviews, images, correspondence, artifacts, manifestos, poems, and
reflections on the graphic and material conditions of contemporary poetry
and language arts. Contributors to the first issue of Mimeo Mimeo include
Christopher Harter, Alastair Johnston, Stephen Vincent, and Jed Birmingham.
In New York City tomorrow, Thursday May 15, you can pick up a copy at a small press party at the Max Protetch Gallery at 511 W. 22nd, NYC between the hours of 6-8 PM.
Event: On The Lower Frequencies Book Release
Posted May 14, 2008 by jmacphee in Events
Tonight in San Francisco!!!
Come celebrate the release of
On the Lower Frequencies: A Secret History of the City
by Erick Lyle
out now from Soft Skull Press
On the Lower Frequencies: A Secret History of the City, from the editor of Scam Zine, looks back at the past ten years of fighting the war and gentrification in San Francisco. 272 pages of squatting the ruins of the Dot Com era, illegal punk shows in the streets and shutting down the city in anti-war protests!
Wednesday May 14 at Counterpulse (1310 Mission St. AT 9TH)
San Francisco
Featuring reading and slide show by Erick Lyle
Guest Speakers:
Paul Boden (SF Coalition on Homelessness)
Mary Howe (SF Needle Exchange)
Antonio Roman-Alcala (Alemany Farm)
Art by Zara Thustra and Ivy Jeanne
Photos by Heather Renee Russ (Cutter photozine)
and music by
Shotwell
Black Rainbow
The Judy Experience
A free vegan dinner will be available, as prepared by Leif Hebendal
Dineer/Speakers/Art at 6:00 PM
Bands at 9:00
This event is FREE, FREE, FREE!
Books will be on sale for $15 each.
The new issue of Scam Zine will be available for $3
In the Middle of a Whirlwind
Posted May 12, 2008 by k_c_ in Art & Politics
Justseeds member Kristine Virsis coordinated with the Team Colors crew to produce the accompanied image for their upcoming project "In the Middle of a Whirlwind"
In the Middle of a Whirlwind (Whirlwinds) inquires into current organizing efforts in the United States, and through that process, assembles a strategic analysis of current political composition as a tool for building political power.Whirlwinds’ strategic context is this summer’s RNC and DNC protests; through these documents and the discussions that erupt from them we hope to directly impact the anti-Convention organizing. In a larger sense, and in the long-term, Whirlwinds is intended to provide a set of useful documents for contemporary radical organizing. Each essay and interview addresses the issues of movement, working class power and composition, and/or gives strategic insight into organizing, and the strengths and weaknesses of current movement/s in the U.S.
A one-off online journal of theory, art, activism and organizing to be released May 25th!
Stencil Nation
Posted May 4, 2008 by jmacphee in Street Art & Graffiti
Long time friend Russell Howze, who has been running StencilArchive.org for years, is about to release a new stencil book that looks really promising! It's called Stencil Nation: Graffiti, Community and Art, and it's the only book I've seen since I released Stencil Pirates that attempts to deal with the ideas behind stenciling, where it actually comes from, and how it effects the world we're in. And unlike my book, Russell found a publisher who could print in full color, so you get the best of both worlds, a coffee table picture book and some thoughtful writing to chew on. It's slated for a June 1st release date on Manic d Press out of San Francisco. Russell will be touring around the country, so keep an eye on the book's website for dates, and keep an eye on your local bookstore to scoop up a copy.
NYC Anarchist Bookfair
Posted April 9, 2008 by jmacphee in Events
This Saturday, April 12th, is the New York City Anarchist Bookfair! This is the second annual bookfair, and last year's was great. Justseeds will be tabling: Kevin, Kristine, Erik, Dara and I will be taking turns selling radical art. There's going to be over 40 publishers, bookstores and political projects tabling, as well as meetings, presentations and an art show. Here's the info:
NYC Anarchist Bookfair
April 12th, 2008
Judson Memorial Church
55 Washington Sq. South
Manhattan
Directions: Judson Memorial Church is located on the south side of Washington Square Park between Thompson and Sullivan Streets. Take the A, C, E, F trains to West 4th Street station; the R to 8th Street-NYU; or the 1 train to Christopher Street-Sheridan Square. The M1, M2, M3, M5, M6 and M8 bus lines also serve the area.
Kevin and I are the resident bookfair poster designers, and this year's poster features a photo of Emma Goldman giving a speech in Union Square, NYC. 2 color silkscreen prints of the design will be for sale at the bookfair!
Arab In America
Posted April 7, 2008 by jmacphee in Books & Zines
An old friend from Chicago, Toufic El Rassi, just released his first graphic novel, Arab In America, on Last Gasp Press. I haven't seen it yet (I went to buy a copy from Last Gasp at the SF Anarchist Bookfair and they were sold out!), but it's been getting some interesting reviews. Keep an eye out for it.
New book by Detroit activist Jhon Clark
Posted March 23, 2008 by bec_young in Books & Zines
I was pleased to be asked to design a cover illustration for a new poetry book, Being. Still, by my longtime friend and comrade, Jhon Clark. Jhon is a dedicated Detroit activist who really put his hands and his heart where his mouth is when it comes to creating community. Jhon's poem reflect, in his sparse style, the everyday tragedy and joy involved in living in a city like Detroit. He spends much of his time rebuilding his house and blogs about it at www.upsidedownhouse.wordpress.com. This is also a first release for White Print Inc., which sells the book online, "a new avant-garde Detroit press dedicated to unknown and emerging writers."
OUR FLESH OF FLAMES: collages by Theodore A. Harris, captions by Amiri Baraka
Posted February 26, 2008 by nicolas_lampert in Books & Zines
Philadelphia artist Theodore A. Harris, who has been creating some of best political collage work for the past decade, has a new book out that he collaborated on with Amiri Baraka. Check it out and encourage your local book store to order copies.
OUR FLESH OF FLAMES:
Collages by Theodore A. Harris
Captions by Amiri Baraka
Introduction by M. K. Asante, Jr.
Afterword by Gene Ray
Is now out and can be ordered from the publisher for $29.95
Anvil Arts Press
64 West Penn Street
Philadelphia, PA 19121
USA
215-849-2793
http://www.anvilartspress.cjb.net
Also check out the video interviews of LeRoy Johnson and Theodore A. Harris at their exhibit at the Penn State University HUB-Robeson Gallery ACRID DIALECTIC:The Visual Language of LeRoy Johnson and Theodore A. Harris
http://www.sa.psu.edu/usa/galleries/Videos.shtml
Shifting Map: Artists’ Platforms and Strategies for Cultural Diversity
Posted January 25, 2008 by dylan_miner in Books & Zines
There are some super rad art history books out there that aren’t frequently taught in art history classes. Lots of them aren’t even known in the radical art circles within which we traverse. In the course of preparing a class entitled ‘Horizontality + Creativity: Art as Social Justice,’ I have come across a bunch of these super rad books.
Post queer project Zine!
Posted January 23, 2008 by meredith_stern in Calls for Art
I found this in the Bulletins on our myspace page...
Hi Friends,
I'm (finally) going to gather up all the postqueer contributions to put together a zine. Since PQP is an open platform, the zine will be, too, so I want to extend some advertising space in the back for fellow glue stick jockeys/paginators/queer zinesters, other queer-based projects, and businesses.
If you have a zine or project and would like to have an ad in the zine, get in touch. Sizes are 2.75" x 2.75." You can email them to me ( info at postqueerproject dot com), if they're saved @ at least 150dpi, as a .jpg, .eps, .tif, or .pdf. Or, of course, mail to PQP / PO Box 22474 / Oakland CA 94609
Free, of course... but even better if you're willing to trade ad space and/or forward this to all your zine-making friends and cohorts.
Let's shoot for a January 31 deadline, but contact me as soon as possible.
xxx,
lex / postqueerproject.com
myspace.com/postqueerproject
The Subversive Imagination
Posted December 12, 2007 by meredith_stern in Books & Zines
"The Subversive Imagination: The Artist, Society, and Social Responsibility"
Edited by Carol Becker
One of my favorite quotes from her is: "The more that is hidden and suppressed, the more simplistic the representation of daily life, the more one dimensional and caught in the dominant ideology the society is, the more art must reveal.”
This is a selection of essays about topics Just Seeds members have all thought about in our work. I am so excited about street art as our strongest tool of enacting true freedom of visual artistic expression. Most visual images in our landscape are advertisements. The only so-called "legitimate" arts works are done through public arts projects. This book brought up so many questions for me, I wonder what people's thoughts and experiences are with these issues....
-who decides what images/art should be displayed in a neighborhood?
-who has a voice? How do we provide spaces for these voices to be heard? Particularly peoples voices who are underrepresented and marginalized? Money, access to resources, information, and native language and writing/reading skills create an unequal playing field
-if public art is expected to be representative of the environment it lives in, how do we contact the public for their input?
-is the public defined by organizations, individuals, people who can afford to forward their own opinions?
-what is the responsibility of the artist in society?
-what is the responsibility of the society to the artist?
-what role should public and private funding play in the future lives of artists?
-art which claims/aims to be community based: what is community? What communities can/should artists relate to? Who constitutes community?
-Is public art supposed to imitate life? Or envision a better world? Or something entirely else?
-is art supposed to be democratic?
-Is art supposed to represent the artist? The viewer? The patron? Does one take precedent over the others?
Visions of Peace & Justice
Posted December 5, 2007 by nicolas_lampert in Books & Zines
Check out this great new book! “Visions of Peace & Justice is a full color book containing over 500 reproductions of political posters from the archives of Inkworks Press. Inkworks is a worker cooperative-union shop-green business in Berkeley, California started in 1974. During the 30+ years of Inkwork's history, the shop has functioned as a pillar of the progressive community in the Bay Area providing printing services including discounts and donations to social movements, community groups, and non-profits. This unique position has allowed Inkworks to accumulate a comprehensive and fascinating archive of beautiful political posters that have been printed on its presses compiled for the first time ever in this important historical document. Whether it's the American Indian Movement, Latin American Solidarity campaigns, Women's Liberation, community-based struggles against environmental racism, the current efforts to end the war in Iraq, or a broad range of other post-1960s US social movements, Visions of Peace & Justice records it all through the timeless powerful art of the poster.”
Featuring Essays By:
David Bacon, Lincoln Cushing, Angela Davis, Anuradha Mittal, Carol Wells, and more
Prints in All the Wrong Places
Posted November 26, 2007 by jmacphee in Books & Zines
The 2007 issue of the Journal of the California Society of Printmakers, "Prints in All the Wrong Places," has just been released. This years issue is all about political printmaking, with a guest editor, Art Hazelwood.
Art has put together a huge collection of images and essays bringing together a real cross section of political printmakers, exhibitions, and political action. There are pieces focusing on printmaking in revolutionary Oaxaca, the San Francisco Print Collective, and Inkworks Press. Exhibitions such as Yo! What Happened to Peace and the Art of Persuasion are discussed, and really great writers, artists and poster archivists like Lincoln Cushing, Favianna Rodriguez, Mark Vallen and Carol Wells all show up. I also wrote a couple short pieces on the Celebrate People's History poster series and the Paper Politics exhibition.
The best part about it is that you can download a pdf version of the issue for free right here.
The Coffee Calendar
Posted November 16, 2007 by jmacphee in Art & Politics
Ricardo Levins Morales, one of the main artists and organizers behind the Northland Poster Collective in Minneapolis has just released a great new collection of work in the form of a calendar. The 2008 Coffee Calendar is a wall calendar, a full color collection of Ricardo's art, and an introduction to the history, culture and politics of coffee. He has created an completely new body of art work around coffee and done a huge amount of historical investigation into the politics of coffee production. The calendar can be seen in all its glory here, as well as a list of online stores that carry it. The calendar is also union printed using high quality recycled paper and soy-based ink.
London Anarchist Bookfair
Posted October 26, 2007 by jmacphee in Events
Tomorrow (Saturday October 27th) is the 23rd annual London Anarchist Bookfair, and Justseeds will be tabling. The longest running and one of the largest anarchist bookfairs in the world, we are excited to be getting some Justseeds art and ideas out across the ocean. Over 100 other tablers will be there as well, plus there is a full day of speakers, presentations and films.
There's a full list of all the scheduled events, plus detailed directions to get there on the bookfair website. Come out and visit us!
Realizing The Impossible book out now!
Posted March 16, 2007 by in Books & Zines
AK Press just released Josh MacPhee and Erik Reuland survey of anarchist art, Realizing the Impossible. I got a copy yesterday and it's a sprawling, exhilarating look at an under-examined subject. From the book description:
There has always been a close relationship between aesthetics and politics in anti-authoritarian social movements. And those movements have in turn influenced many of the last century's most important art movements, including cubism, Dada, post-impressionism, abstract expressionism, surrealism, Fluxus, Situationism, and punk. Today, the movement against corporate globalization, with its creative acts of resistance, colorful puppets and posters, inflammatory actions and interventions, has brought anarchist and anti-authoritarian politics into the forefront of the global consciousness.Realizing the Impossible: Art Against Authority explores this vibrant history. It's a sprawling and inclusive collection bursting with ideas and images. With topics ranging from turn-of-the-century French cartoonists to modern-day Indonesian printmaking, from people rolling giant balls of trash down Chicago streets to massive squatted urban villages and renegade playgrounds in Denmark, from the stencil artists of Argentina to the radical video collectives of the US and Mexico—as well as conversations with pioneering anarchist artists like Clifford Harper, Carlos Cortéz, Gee Vaucher, and members of Black Mask—Realizing the Impossible is a richly illustrated history of art and anarchism.
The title comes from a quote by Max Blechman: "It is said that an anarchist society is impossible. Artistic activity is the process of realizing the impossible."
The book covers little-known history -- Dara Greenwald's profile of Videofreex and Morgan Andrew's history of political puppetry are particularly illuminating -- and also looks at the present through profiles of current projects and interviews with active artists. Meredith Stern's interview with contemporary printmakers (including Chris Stain, Swoon, Icky A., Pete Yahnke, Miriam Klein Stahl, Shaun Slifer, and others) is worth the price of the book. The third section, dealing with aesthetic and political theory, is refreshingly free of academic jargon.
Realizing the Impossible joins a very short list of books on anarchist art, and is essential reading for anyone interested in creative resistance and the political imagination.
No Need For Sleep
Posted October 20, 2006 by in Art & Politics
No Need For Sleep is an exhibition of original art and zines by artists from around the country. This exhibition celebrates the artists, their independent productions, and the do-it-yourself culture of zine making. The exhibition will be up during the Madison Zine Fest in Madison, Wisconsin before moving on to Milwaukee in November. This exhibition is curated by Colin Matthes, for more information visit Ideas In Pictures.
The Exhibition includes work by:
Icky A.- Nosedive (Portland, OR)
Mike Ball- Clap Yr Hands (Philadelphia, PA)
Peter Burr- Bountiful Little Dudes, Hooliganship, Cartune Exprez (Portland, OR)
Mary Mack- The F-Word, Chick Pea, Not Quite Venice (Pittsburgh, PA)
Josh MacPhee- Stencil Pirates, Cut and Paint, Pound the Pavement (Troy, NY)
Polina Malikin- The Archaeology of the Recent Future Association (Milwaukee, WI)
Cristy C. Road- Indestructible (Brooklyn, NY)
Ally Reeves & Shaun Slifer- Ross Winn-Digging up a Tennessee Anarchist (Pittsburgh,PA)
Meredith Stern- Dragomen, Crude Noise, and Mine zines (Providence, RI)
Tea Krulos- Riverwurst Comics (Milwaukee, WI)
Other work will be included by:
Hot and Cold zine (Oakland, CA) & Street Art Workers.
Madison,WI Exhibit Information:
The 6th Floor Art Space is located at 455 Park St. in the Humanities Building of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The reception will run from 6-9pm the night of the Madison Zine Fest Saturday, October 21, 2006.
Milwauke, WI Exhibit Information:
Exhibition will be held at the Cream City Collectives Gallery located at the corner of Clarke and Fratney Sreet in Milwaukee 's Riverwest neighborhood. 732 E. Clarke St., Milwaukee, WI 53212
Opening reception: 6-11pm, Friday, November 17, 2006.
Gallery Hours are Mon-Sat 1 p.m. - 7 p.m. Sun 10 a.m. - 2 p.m.
Sustainable Eating Online Zine- Call For Submissions
Posted June 4, 2006 by in Art & Politics
Sustainable Eating is an online zine exploring the connections between the food we eat and our personal, community and environmental health. Currently, Sustainable Eating is seeking submissions from writers, artists, activists, cooks, and gardeners for issues #4 & #5.
**Issue #4 (Fall/Winter 2006): Roots
Issue #4 will explore how food connects us to the land and to each other. How are you rooted to place by food? In what ways is your community connected through the production, harvest and sharing of food? What is the role of food in your personal, family, or ancestral roots? What root foods do you enjoy? What are the root causes of hunger, the exploitation of land, labor and animals, or other food injustices.
Deadline for Submissions: August 1, 2006
Issue Available Online: Fall/Winter 2006
**Issue #5 (Spring/Summer 2007): Unnatural Eating
Factory farms, GMOs, irradiated foods, hormones, seasonal foods available year-round, regional crops available world-wide, fast food diets, no-carb diets, microwaves, lunch breaks in front of your computer... in so many ways modern food production and eating patterns are far from natural. Analysis, critiques and alternatives to today's unnatural food systems and diets are all welcome for this issue.
Deadline for Submissions: February 1, 2007
Issue Available Online: Spring/Summer 2007
All kinds of submissions are welcome, including: personal essays; news articles; feature stories; interviews; profiles of people, organizations and projects; artwork; and fiction. Sustainable Eating encourages you to interpret this theme in any way you wish, so please do not feel restricted to traditional concepts of the topic. If you are unsure about how your idea might fit with these themes, please feel free to contact Sustainable Eating with a proposal.
Please send your submissions, suggestions, feedback, and questions to: se@semagazine.com.
http://www.semagazine.com
Cut & Paint: free stencil designs
Posted February 6, 2006 by in Books & Zines
Josh MacPhee's excellent stencil template zine Cut & Paint has finally gone digital, thanks to John Emerson of Social Design Notes. Click over to CutAndPaint.org and you'll find over 40 different free stencil templates with great imagery and radical politics.
Contributors include many of the unsung heroes of street art. Often working anonymously and undocumented, eople like Roger Peet, Shaun Slifer, Erok A., Colin Matthes, Erik Ruin, Andalusia, Ally Reeves, Claude Moller, Etta Cetera, Brandon Bauer, and the rest are creating some of the best work out there and reinventing the tropes and techniques of radical art.
Check it all out here. Download the templates, print, cut, and spray. Borrow images and alter them for your needs, location, and message. Thanks to Josh and John for making this great work available.
WW3 Illustrated anniversary
Posted October 4, 2005 by in Events
Peter Kuper sends word that the next issue of World Word 3 Illustrated is ready to hit the streets, and that this issue marks the magazine's 25th anniversary. They're celebrating both events with a party and exhibition Thursday night at Exit Art:
EXIT ART presents an exhibition and the release of World War 3 illustrated's 25th anniversary issueThursday, Oct. 6th, 2005, 6-8pm
475 10th Ave. (at 36th St.)
The release party will also be the opening of a show of original art from WW3 with many of the artists in attendance. Show will remain on display through Oct 27th
If you're not familiar with World War 3 Illustrated, you're missing out. The magazine has cultivated an incredible array of artists, many of whom are featured in #36. The new issue is called "Neo Con" and was edited by Ryan Inzana and Peter Kuper, features a cover illustration by Sue Coe and contributions from Eric Drooker, Seth Tobocman, Sabrina Jones, Mac McGill, Ryan Inzana, James Romberger, Chuck Sperry, Nicole Schulman, and Joe Sacco's account as an embedded journalist in Iraq.
Full details on the anniversary event after the jump:
EXIT ART presents
an exhibition and the release of
World War 3 illustrated
25th anniversary issue
THURSDAY, OCT. 6TH, 2005
6-8 PM
475 10TH AVE. (AT 36TH ST.)
NYC 10018
Gallery hours
Tues-Thurs 10-6
Fri 10-8
Sat 12-8
(212) 966-7745
New issue of Left Turn
Posted September 28, 2005 by in Books & Zines
The new issue of Left Turn is hot off the presses, with a beautiful cover by one of our favorite artists, Cristy Road. Left Turn is probably the best radical magazine currently being published in the US. The magazine always looks good, and the content informative and well-written. Unlike most radical publications, they manage to have strong political positions without being dogmatic or sectarian. Their writers aren't cranks or armchair critics -- they're usually young activists and new voices.
This issue features a special section called "The Revolution Will Not Be Funded" which turns a critical eye on the role that large philanthropic foundations play in funding non-profit organizations. The section was inspired by a 2004 conference of the same name that was set up after INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence lost a $100,000 grant from the Ford Foundation because of their stance on Palestine. From co-editor Max Uhlenbeck:
What has been the cost of the proliferation of this Non-profit Industrial Complex? Why have we seen this shift from volunteer-based activism to staff-driven advocacy work? How has the field of social change become so professionalized that one needs multiple college degrees just to qualify for a job?
These are important questions for people concerned with building organizations and making activism their work. And although thousands of activist grumble about them, almost no one is facing these questions head-on. When non-profit groups and alternative media projects rely on funding to pay the bills they suddenly have two constituencies to please: their actual audience, and foundation officers. The availability of Ford and Rockefeller money has allowed many organizations to avoid confronting hard questions about their own sustainability. And the professionalization of non-profit work has led to an industry where only college graduates who will work for miniscule salaries can afford the luxury of activism.
But Left Turn doesn't fall into that trap: it's volunteer-run and funded completely by sales and small donations. So check out the new issue, get a subscription, and drop a few extra bucks in their jar if you can. And while you're feeling generous, support Cristy Road too!
Related: VisualResistance.org's interview with Cristy Road.
Crimethinc re-releases DIY guides
Posted September 21, 2005 by in Books & Zines
Crimethinc, those dreamy utopian anarcho-poets, have reprinted two excellent zines full of tips and information on graffiti and a whole lot more:
The Walls Are Alive: A concise and masterfully conceived introduction to doing your own graffiti. It consists of practical and thorough advice on every step of getting your graffiti skills primed: preparation, how to make a stencil, mapping it out, strategy, escape, post-action regrouping, and also a whole section about wheat-pasting. Valuable also for its forty photographs of great real-world graffiti to ignite ideas and provide examples.DIY Guide #2: This rugged little urban pirate handbook includes practical information and tips on tons of different projects, tasks and adventures: dismantling capitalism, forearm guards, software piracy, diy spelling and grammar, travelling on trains, backpacking, evasion communiqué #2.25, herbal gynecology, how to abort, sewing, diy oil change, quarter pipe, records, cd's and zines, book publishing contacts, postal jubilation, cook it yourself, wheat flour egg noodles, intro to plaster, black and white photography, safety pin tattoos.
The graffiti zine is especially good, and has inspired innumerable young punks to cook up their first bucket of wheatpaste. The Crimethinc kids do an admirable job of distributing huge numbers of free zines & posters. You can help them out by ordering a bundle and getting the word out.
Wobbly centennial celebration at CUNY
Posted September 12, 2005 by in Events
From Nicole Schulman, co-editor of Wobblies! the wonderful comic history of the Industrial Workers of the World:
100th Anniversary of the Wollblies: A New York City Celebration of the IWW CentenaryTuesday, September 13, 6:30pm
CUNY Graduate Center - 365 5th Avenue (at 34th St), NYC
Free admission
The hundredth anniversary of the Industrial Workers of the World will be celebrated by artists, historians, musicians and today's Wobbly organizers. The event will feature performances, talks and a slide show commemorating the Wobblies role in Labor history. Featuring:
--- DANIEL GROSS (Starbucks Workers Union, IWW)
--- PAUL BUHLE (historian; Senior Lecturer, Browne University; co-editor of 'Wobblies! A Graphic History')
--- HENRY FONER (Labor activist, musician, historian)
--- JOHN PIETARO (protest musician, Labor organizer, writer)
--- PETER KUPER (artist)
--- NICOLE SCHULMAN (artist, co-editor of 'Wobblies! A Graphic History')
--- SABRINA JONES (artist)
--- SETH TOBOCMAN (artist)
This event will also be the official release party of the new CD 'I DREAMED I HEARD JOE HILL LAST NIGHT...A CENTURY OF IWW SONG' by John Pietaro & The Flames of Discontent
Plus, an exhibit of original art from the "Wobblies!" book will be up in the exhibition hall (near the student center, ground floor) at CUNY grad center from Sept. 1 through Sept. 23rd.
ReAnimation zine
Posted June 27, 2005 by in Books & Zines
ReAnimation: Magazine for Urban Environment is a new PDF zine designed by Martin Stiegler that explores street art and public space. Part of our zine on the how-to's of street art were adapted for the first issue, which is beautifully illustrated with photos of street art from Milan, Berlin, and Vorarlberg, Austria. From the ReAnimation site:
All over the world, artists are working in and with the urban environment of our cities. The ReAnimation magazine wants to unite all the different approaches to urban space, regardless of the medium.So every artist, may he/she be graffiti-artist, street artist, photographer, texter or anything else is welcome to participate. Let's reanimate the boring walls in public space!
A German version is forthcoming. Check out the site here or download the zine here (PDF file, 6.7M). Thanks to Martin for the great work!
DanZine in NYC
Posted June 7, 2005 by in Events
A great exhibit about the history of Danzine is currently showing for FREE at the Art Gallery of The Graduate Center, City University of New York until June 25, 2005. The address is 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY and the Gallery Hours are Tues-Sat 12-6 pm.
Danzine began 10 years ago in Portland, OR by and for exotic dancers, escorts, and lingerie models. Cutting and pasting the first issue on a folded piece of paper, Danzine was left "in every dressing room where a gal provided entertainment and labor." From that, several community outreach programs were initiated. StreetReach entered the community and offered a no nonsense needle-exchange program. DanceReach was founded to educate women on STD's and unwanted pregenancies. The Sex Work Task Force, working with local Portland agencies, investigated the risk of HIV transmission among sex workers there. Lastly, the Danzine Resource Room, with various resources and services, provides a safe place for people to meet and talk about their experiences in and outside of the industry. DanZine has also helped to create a space for newer publications like Spread Magazine.
Here is a description of the show from their website:
"This installation recreates 'Switzerland', a neutral space within the Danzine agency where one could retreat to a small beautiful room to read, watch videos or take a time out. From the Danzine Archives come paintings, drawings, sculpture, photography, collage, covers of the publication danzine, framed film festival and benefit art auction posters, books/pamphlets on harm reduction such as syringe exchange, overdose prevention and safer sex, safer sex supplies, gear, post cards and the last Danzine T-shirt. "
Wobblies in Brooklyn
Posted May 31, 2005 by in Events
Labor History Celebration
Remember the Past --- Organize for the Future
Nicole Schulman sends word of an upcoming event celebrating the Industrial Workers of the World and the new book Wobblies:
Picnic and educational entertainment Saturday June 4th, from 2-5 pm at Fort Greene Park, followed by an evening of music, refreshments and entertainment 8pm-midnight, at Dumba Space at 57 Jay Street in Dumbo, 2 blocks from the York Street F train stop. The picnic is free and open to the public. For the evening events we are asking for a suggested $5 donation. In case of rain the afternoon, entertainment will be added to the evening program.The days events will be part of the commemorations of the gathering of top labor organizers from across the continent that met to expand the labor movement to include all working people skilled or unskilled, male or female, regardless of race, religion or any other distinctions. This lead to the formation of the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905, we are celebrating their centennial. These labor organizers brought creative energy, free speech, new strategies, and lots of music, jokes and art, to the labor movements.
At Ft Green Park music will be provided by John Pietro, actors will present the words of labor leaders Big Bill Haywood, Lucy Parsons, and Mother Jones.
The evening events at Dumba will include more music and multi media presentations by Brooklyn labor artists commemorating the achievements of the past such as the 8 hour day and helping with the today's drive to organize in the sweat shops and fast food shops. Graphic artist Nicole Schulman will present a biography of labor martyr Frank Little. Tom Keough will give a presentation of art about coal miners and sweatshop workers.
This is being organized by the New York City IWW Centennial Committee.
For more information please contact David at 718- 769-3837
Come out if you can! Image at top is a Nicole's portrait of Frank Little, from the Wobblies! book. Read more about the book here, or get a copy here.
Peel Zine review
Posted May 26, 2005 by in Books & Zines
The fourth issue of Peel Zine is available. This issue covers artists like: ABOVE, Klutch, and 20mg. It contains articles about the StickerThrow04, StickyArt, the top entries in the Sticker Nation/Sticker Robot Sticker Design competition. and a review of Public Discourse, a documentary about "illegal street installations". The issue also comes with an assortment of stickers of the artists contained inside.
Peel is a zine focusing specifically on stickers, looking closely at one medium used on the street, much like Overspray magazine focuses on stencils. (Overspray three should be on the streets soon!) This is a slick zine with good layout and production that accepts submissions of photos and art, so check them out and get your copy at PeelZine
VR Zine now online
Posted May 15, 2005 by in VR Projects
Some Visual Resistance members put together a zine a few months back on the "how-to's" of street art techniques. The zine is meant to provide folks with basic information on posters, stickers, and stencils. So if you're a street art fan who thinks "I could never do that" or wonders, "How's that done?" just click here for some tips, tricks, and ideas.
The zine is not an encyclopedia or a forum for experts. It's just a few individuals experiences and ideas --- and it's very much a work in progress. If you have additional advice or find errors or incomplete info, drop us a line at visual.resistance [at] gmail.com. Oh, and a disclaimer: all information in the zine is presented for informational/entertainment purposes only, and is not meant to encourage vandalism, which is illegal and wrong.
Mayday issue of the RAT hits the streets
Posted April 26, 2005 by in Books & Zines
The good people at NYC's best anarchist newspaper --- the New York RAT --- have put together a special issue of the paper just in time for Mayday:
Our special Mayday issue is full of info about local groups and issues, including the Street Harassment Project, The Greenpoint/ Williamsburg rezoning fight, RNC Legal Victories, the Long Island Freespace plus much more. The RAT also has a special pull out schedule of events for the upcoming "A New World In Our Hearts" Mayday Festival. We have 3,000 copies. We would like to get the majority of them distro-ed before the conference this weekend. Let us know if you can take a few stacks to drop off, hand out, or give away.
They'll need a lot of help with distro, so if you've got some free time, drop them a line at newyorkrat [at] riseup.net. Be sure to check out the schedule for this weekend's Mayday Festival. In additon to presentations from Beehive Collective and Seth Tobocman, there'll be film screenings, concerts, and a wide range of discussions. Oh, and we'll be there too.
Wobblies! Release Party
Posted April 19, 2005 by in Events
The New York release party for the great new book Wobblies!, co-edited by Nicole Schulman, is set for next Friday at the new(ish) Vox Pop bookstore & coffeehouse in Flatbush, Brooklyn. Featuring multi-media presentations by: Mac McGill, Sabrina Jones, Tom Keough, Nicole Schulman and Seth Tobocman, it's sure to be a great event. Come out, buy a book, and say hello:
Friday April 29th, 8pm --- Free!
Release party for Wobblies! @ Vox Pop
1022 Cortelyou Road, Flatbush, Brooklyn (Map)
Directions: “Q” Train to Cortelyou Road --- exit to the Left, walk a few blocks.
New Issue of Melina Rodrigo's Zine
Posted April 11, 2005 by in Books & Zines
Melina Rodrigo just released issue 10 of her zine, AW. You can view it on her website risewithus.com This issue examines life from the point of view from an American woman. It is written as a poetic journal entry, describing frustration and stress experienced on a daily basis. But like Melina says, we can find comfort in the little things like our red shoes or Emma Goldman's autobiography! Melina's zines address issues war and terror, to debate on political and social issues, to the postal service in a playful manner. Reading them definitely helps me get through the day.
Wobblies!
Posted April 9, 2005 by in Inspirations
The long-awaited Wobblies! is finally here, and it's even better than I could have expected. It's easily the best recent book on the connection between art and radical politics, not only because of the history it explores, but also by the sheer force of its example.
Co-edited by Nicole Schulman, the book is a collection of comics and very short essays on the history and spirit of the Industrial Workers of the World. Featuring new work by Nicole, Peter Kuper, Josh MacPhee, Fly, Mac McGill, Ryan Inzana, Sabrina Jones, Sue Coe, Seth Tobocman, and many, many more, as well as Wobbly classics from Carlos Cortez, Ralph Chaplin, and Joe Hill, the book is a remarkable testament to the living spirit of the IWW and its remarkable influence. From the introduction:
[Their] way of looking at freedom makes the IWW seem like a lot more than a labor organization, or bigger than all the other labor organizations combined. It looks, for instance, like the grassroots of the ecological/environmental movement. It looks like the Mexicans and Americans who welcomed the Zapatistas taking back the land that had been stolen from their people. It looks like every antiwar movement. It even looks a little like the world John Lennon summed up in the song "Imagine": no distant god, no country, just us humans, all of us, and our world.
Unlike most books on the subject, Wobblies! doesn't end on a tragic note --- on the contrary, it makes a uniquely convincing case that the IWW lives on, not as some shadow of past greatness, but as a subterranean source of inspiration, a model of joyous, liberatory radicalism. The pieces on 60s comix, surrealism, and Judi Bari, weave threads between seemingly disconnected miracles of history.
The highlight for me is the final essay, The Art and Music of the IWW:
The IWW... was no organization of trained artists.... Yet it inspired dozens of talented artists, before 1920 some of the nation's most experimental and talented, and the IWW generated its own fabulous "school" of cartoonists. Next to songs, cartoons probably brought more workers around that any other expression of Wob creativity.... These rank-and-file artists appear to have received little or no pay for their work, choosing to go "on the bum" with their fellow Wobs, organize where possible, and take odd jobs to stay alive. Some of them signed their art only with the "red card number" on their Wobbly ID, or didn't sign cartoons at all....We look back upon the Wobbly cartoonists, then, as we do upon the Ash Can art of the Masses magazine: a century ahead of their time in their discoveries, but just ripe for our time --- not to copy but to learn and grow from, amid the tasks of art and revolution ahead.
I'm posting this in the category "Inspirations," because it is. For bringing together some of my favorite artists to do unique and necessary work, and for bringing a new focus to the legacy of the IWW itself, I can't recommend this book highly enough. I would like to feature further looks at the book in the next few weeks. In the meantime, support the artists who made it happen, and do yourself a favor: get it.
New York Rat's 3rd issue hits the streets
Posted April 6, 2005 by in Posters & Prints
Copies of the 3rd issue of NYC Rat, the Radical Anarchist Tabloid, are available at locations around NYC or through the collective. (Email newyorkrat[at]riseup.net)
The newest issue includes a wonderful cover illustration by Cristy Road and a centerfold poster for the upcoming Mayday festivities. Articles include Teenage Lobotomy, a piece on AntiRacistAction, the Libertad School Collective, a great "Know Your Rights" comic strip,
and a wealth of resources troughout and in their Anarchist Black pages.
Download the Mayday poster below...
8.5 x 11 inch JPG (400K)
11 x 17 inch JPG (700K)
Full-sized PDF on NY Rat page (6MB)
Sumpthin' new from The Icarus Project- Underground Roots: Taproots and Topsoils
Posted March 21, 2005 by in Books & Zines
We got word that The Icarus Project folks have a few new publications in the works...
The Icarus Project's new book, Underground Roots: Taproots and Topsoils is due out in April 2005. In addition they are putting together a smaller publication containing artwork called, Underground Roots and Magic Spells: A Guide to Creating Mental Health Support Networks in Our Communities.
Here's some of the artwork that will be included. These are from Fly, Cristy Road, and Sophie Crumb respectively. Click here to see the full gallery of pieces.
Taproots and Topsoils is all about building community from the ground up, looking at how other people do things and emulating and replicating what works – joining forces with them and figuring out how to grow together into the future. Our social and economic safety nets have either already been or are in the process of being cut, and the big question is: how do we make new ones with the scraps of what we’ve got? Instead of reinventing the wheel, how can we use all the pieces out there to create a whole new way to fly? The contributers provide a clever mix of social movements, healing modalities, and community organizing models.
Here's a bunch of pieces you can look forward to:
MindFreedom - On Finding My Tribe, and Thinking for Myself
Freedom Center–Grassroots Empowerment Model of Mental Health Organizing
Fountain House – The Clubhouse Model-History and Future
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy
Theater of the Oppressed
Re-evaluation Counseling – useful tactics/non-heirarchical therapy model
Somatic Experiencing and the Roots of Our Illness
Alcoholics Anonymous
The Harm Reduction Movement
Food Not Bombs – as radical non-heirarchical/decentrailized grassroots network model
Prison Moratorium Project – example of community outreach and education
Lessons From ACT UP
Welcome Home Zapatista – finding community in revolution
The Asambleas in Argentina
Harm Free Zones and Community Organizing by Kai from Critical Resistance
Affinity Groups - history from Spanish anarchists/anti-nuke move
Community Supported Agriculture/Permaculture - reconnecting with the ground
Processwork/Process Oriented Psych– integrating aspects of shamanism into our work
Green Gulch Zen Center – Finding Spiritual Community
$pread Magazine launch party in NYC!
Posted March 14, 2005 by in Events
$pread Magazine launch party in NYC!
Wednesday, March 16th, 8pm at The Slipper Room, 167 Orchard St
Party in New York City with: New York's hottest new punk band I LOVE YOU. Drag, dance, and dissent divas DALIPSTYXX, Playboy's first out lesbian Playmate STEPHANIE ADAMS, Off-Broadway interracial/interfaith comedy sensation EPSTEIN AND HASSAN of "The Black and the Jew", sexpert and author DUCKY DOOLITTLE, HOOK Magazine founders SHANE LUIJTENS and DANIEL W.K. LEE, DJ DESIGNER IMPOSTER Go-go wildness from the all-gender $PREAD DANCERS.
Also: Emcee Raven Snook raffles off t-shirts, magazines, and free passes to NYC strip clubs, $pread contributors read from the first issue, tarot readings, drink specials, and more!
Join sex workers, activists, and literati from around the world in celebrating the launch of the US's first independent sex industry magazine! (also a send off to co-editor Mary Christmas as she departs NYC for an indefinite period) Burlesque performers are to be announced.
Come early for the spectacular show and stay late for the band, DJs and dancing till 2am! Entry is $10 with a copy of the magazine, $7 without; sex workers get in for $8 with a magazine or $5 without.
$pread is the first magazine in the U.S. to explore the sex industry from the workers' perspective and includes articles by sex workers and their allies across the globe. Issue One features original articles by Jo Doezema, David Henry Sterry, and Katherine Frank, an exclusive interview with Carol Queen and contributions from Annie Sprinkle and Scarlot Harlot, as well as news, reviews and stories by sex workers all over the world. Topics covered include women of color in the American porn industry, anti-trafficking policy in Europe, the effect of the recent Tsunami on Asian sex workers, the Bangkok AIDS Conference, retiring fromstripping, and discrimination in Israel-Palestine.
BE THE FIRST TO GET A COPY AT THE LAUNCH PARTY!
$pread Magazine accepting material for 2nd issue.
Posted February 24, 2005 by in Calls for Art
Spread is a magazine by and for sex workers of all genders, sexualities and backgrounds, as well as those interested in the sex industry.The magazine aims to provide a forum for marginalized voices, a sene of community and support among sex workers, as well as a balanced view of the sex industry.
$pread wants/needs illustrations of all kinds. They must relate, somehow or someway, to sex, gender, sex work, gender structures, or power. Think strip club, whorehouse, prostitutes, s&m, doms, subs, pretty much anything sexual done for profit.
Contributions to the second issue are to be made by mid-May. Contact the editors at: contribute [at] spreadmagazine.org or mail contributions to:
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BAST Art Show and Book Release
Posted February 10, 2005 by in Events
BAST's First NYC Art Show "MAS VINO"
And the release of his new book "REVOLUTION DE PAPEL"
Opening Reception and Release Party: Saturday February 12, 6-9pm
Transplant Gallery is pleased to present the first solo exhibition of Brooklyn-based artist BAST titled “MAS VINO” This show will also celebrate the release of his new book "REVOLUTION DE PAPEL". A 60 paged soft covered book released in limited edition. Signed copied will be available on opening night. The exhibition will showcase a collection of new paintings on canvas... (more)
Bast is one of the first artists I noticed on the street when I woke up to street art years ago and i'm super excited to see some posters up in full, not ripped, torn, or weathered. So if your in NYC this weekend come out to the opening, or try to make it here while the show is up! The show will be exhibited from February 12-March 10, 2005 at: Transplant Gallery, 525 West 29th Street, second floor (bet. 10th and 11th Avenue).
For more of Bast's work check out: Pictures of Walls, as well as the VisualResistance Photolog for photos and updates from the opening!
