Posters & Prints
Defiant Proclamations
Posted March 1, 2010 by jmacphee in Events
I'm involved in a number of Bay Area events coming up in mid-March, loosely in connection with the SF Anarchist Bookfair. Russell Howze, author of Stencil Nation and purveyor of HappyFeetTravels.org, is putting together a one night political poster exhibition at Cell Space which promises to be interesting. The Interference Archive (what Dara and I have named our increasingly unwieldy collection of posters, prints, books, ephemera, etc...) is contributing work, as are a number of other cool folks with interesting materials to share. Check it out:
Defiant Proclamations
Radical Posters from the 1960s to the Present
For decades, Bay Area walls have been pasted with bold art and pertinent messages about the politics, practices, and abuses of contemporary mainstream culture and its co-opted voices. Also speaking outside the frameworks of organized labor and left movements, individual artists and collectives have shouted defiant proclamations with ink and paper. Today, political graphics have reached a broad audience via many media sources, hopefully creating a new wave of radical art as well as a redefinition of visual art and it’s usual commodified structures. With a strong history in the Bay Area, this one night only exhibit will feature works old and new, giving a glimpse of the broad range of opinions and styles that have papered walls across the area.
Thursday, March 11 (one night only!)
7 pm to midnight
FREE!
CELLspace Gallery
2050 Bryant St., San Francisco, CA 94110
Art Against Empire
Posted February 23, 2010 by jmacphee in Events
This just in (from Evil Monito, check it HERE):
Art Against Empire: Graphic Responses to U.S. Intervention Since World War II
Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions
3/10 to 4/18/10
LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions) is proud to present Art Against Empire—Graphic Responses to U.S. Intervention Since World War II, curated by Carol A. Wells from the archives of the Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG). Featuring works by Josh MacPhee, Corita Kent, Jay Belloli, Cedomic Kostovic, Stephen Kroninger, and more.
Art Against Empire uses the power of posters to document 60 years of opposition to U.S. interventions into the domestic affairs of sovereign nations. Political, economic and military interventions, many of them covert, have repeatedly resulted in unacceptable deaths and misery for millions. These posters show hopes and dreams, and the pain of dreams destroyed.
Free Radicals
Posted February 19, 2010 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
Jess Baines, whom Dara and I were lucky enough to catch a pint with in London when we were there last Fall, has just published an edited version of a longer piece she has been working on about the evolution of alternative printshops in the UK in from the 60s–80s, with a focus on women's printshops (Baines played a roll in one of the most active women's liberation print groups in London, See Red). The below piece is yanked from Afterall, and definitely check it out on the Afterall site HERE, because their are 18 more images of UK posters and prints! Baines has also created an online and communal repository for information on UK print collectives which can be found and contributed to HERE.
Free Radicals
Jess Baines
Between the late 1960s and 1970s numerous alternative printshops were set up across the UK, with the founding objective of producing, providing or facilitating the cheap and safe printing of radical materials. They were started by libertarians, aligned and non-aligned Marxists, anarchists and feminists, and as such were constitutive of the fractured and fractious politics of the post-1968 left. Emerging mostly at the tail end of, or just after, the 1960s underground culture, they arose in a period that saw not just the extension of political concerns to cultural ones but also the rise of community activism and feminism. Despite their differences in position, those involved in the various printshops shared common left/libertarian ground:
Berlin Posters
Posted February 12, 2010 by jmacphee in Street Art & Graffiti
Last November Dara and I were in Berlin, and I took a lot of photos on the street. Berlin is one of the few cities of been to that still have a somewhat thriving street art/poster scene, with lots of work up and the streets visually changing on the regular. Here's a collection of 20 political posters and stickers I snapped, click on them for larger images:
Signs of Change in Portland, OR!
Posted February 2, 2010 by jmacphee in Events
Dara and I just finished installing our exhibition Signs of Change in Portland, OR at the Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA). We're doing an artist's talk/walk through tomorrow, Wed. Feb 3th, at 12:30 (see HERE), and the opening is Thursday, Feb 4th, from 6-9pm (see HERE). If you are in the Pacific Northwest, please come check it out!
Women's Lib Posters video
Posted January 25, 2010 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
Dara recently found this very strange video on YouTube, it appears to be homemade music video for the 1960 song "Cantata della donna nubile" by Italian singer Edmonda Aldini. It's entirely constructed from late 60s/early 70s feminist movement posters, many are from the Chicago Women's Graphics Collective, but some I have never seen before. Ahhh, the things you find on the internet...
Justseeds: Paper Politics for a New Decade
Posted January 8, 2010 by jmacphee in Justseeds & Member Projects
Opening Tonight!!!!
Justseeds: Paper Politics for a New Decade
Hillyer Art Space at International Arts & Artists
9 Hillyer Court NW
Washington, DC, 20008
Exhibition Dates: January 8 - January 30
First Friday Reception: Friday, January 8, 2010, 6-9PM
Live music by experimental trio Vodka and Donuts!
Food and refreshments will be served
$5 suggested donation
The Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative is a decentralized community of artists who have banded together to collaborate, sell their work online in a central location and support social movements. Utilizing print and poster making techniques to address a variety of social and environmental justice issues, collective mates work together over many miles to create, resist, and bring meaningful artwork to the masses for affordable prices. These artists believe in the power of personal expression in concert with collective action to transform society. Featuring works by Justseeds artists and fellow political printers, including: Santiago Armengod, Jesus Barraza, Graham Boyle, Melanie Cervantes, DC51 Collective, Alec Icky Dunn, Thea Gahr, Sabeth Jackson, Nicolas Lampert, Josh MacPhee, Colin Matthes, Cesar Maxit, Dylan Miner, Roger Peet, Jesse Purcell, Favianna Rodriguez, Erik Ruin, Beth Schaible, Chris Stain, Meredith Stern, SWOON, Mary Tremonte, Kristine Virsis, Pete Yahnke, and Bec Young.
Excerpts from Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures 1960s to Now
Posted January 8, 2010 by jmacphee in Justseeds & Member Projects
171 Cedar Arts Center presents a selection from Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures 1960s to Now.
Houghton Gallery at the 171 Cedar Arts Center
155 & 171 Cedar Street, Corning NY
Jan 8 - Feb 5, 2010
Reception: Friday Jan 8th, 5:30 – 7:30 pm
In conjunction with a celebration to honor Martin Luther King, the exhibition at 171 Cedar Arts Center focuses on the cultures created by during the Civil Rights Movement in America and the fights for freedom that were waged by oppressed people globally. (This exhibition consists of reprinted materials from a small portion of Signs of Change.)
In Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures 1960s to Now, hundreds of posters, photographs, moving images, audio clips, and ephemera bring to life over forty years of activism, political protest, and campaigns for social justice. Curated by Dara Greenwald and Josh MacPhee and originating from Exit Art in New York City, this important and timely exhibition surveys the creative work of dozens of international social movements.
AOUON Mystery Posters
Posted January 3, 2010 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
Archivist Lincoln Cushing has been doing the painstaking work of combing through and cataloging the All Of Us Or None Poster Archive, and we'll all be the better off for it when we have access to this massive and impressive collection of left political posters. He's been hitting a couple stumbling blocks along the way in terms of sussing out the origins of some of the posters, and hit on the smart idea of calling on our collective braintrust to fill in some of the blanks. He's put up a page of "mystery posters" on his website, which you can check out HERE, both to see cool posters, but also offer help in deciphering the origins of these images. Bookmark the page, as Lincoln will be adding posters as he needs help figuring them out.
The poster shown here has cool artwork by cartoonist Spain Rodriguez, but does anyone know what the "May 5th Legal Defense" was for?
End of the Year Printing/Studio Visit
Posted December 31, 2009 by pete in Art & Politics
I finally finished up a large print this week, and thought I would share some pictures of the process and the printing of the piece. I also took the opportunity to print a large piece I finished a few months back and never got around to printing. Along with these pictures you will get a little tour of my basement studio, which seems to be getting more and more cramped every time I turn around, and shares a wall with the Justseeds world wide shipping headquarters!
Graphic Roots of Revolution
Posted December 19, 2009 by jmacphee in Art & Politics
Favianna is over in Rome right now with the new Yo! What Happened to Peace? show, Graphic Roots of Revolution. There's more info HERE.
Ricardo Levins Morales Opens New Studio
Posted December 18, 2009 by jmacphee in Art & Politics
Ricardo Levins Morales, one of the driving creative forces behind the much missed Northland Poster Collective, has opened up a new store and website. He's got much of hiss material (posters, prints, notecards, etc.) from Northland, and new material. Check out his new site HERE.
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!
Celebrate! Celebrate? The Politics and Tactics of Visualizing a People’s History
Posted December 13, 2009 by nicolas_lampert in Justseeds & Member Projects
“Celebrate! Celebrate?” features four different poster series that visualize various people’s history and invites the viewer to contemplate the politics and the tactics of graphically celebrating people and events from the past. Significantly, how do these images operate? Do the images affirm our struggles, inspire, teach, and critique? Do they simplify history and rob struggles of their complexities? Do they accomplish both? The show invites these questions, varied opinions, historical context, and more.
Where: Mess Hall, 6932 North Glenwood Avenue, Chicago, IL, Morse CTA Red Line Train Stop
When: Now through January during Mess Hall events. Check Mess Hall website for times when Mess Hall is open. People's history talk and critique of graphics to take place in mid January. Time tba
Stumptown Printers on Monacle
Posted December 13, 2009 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
Our good friends at Stumptown Printers (who have been the long time printers of the Celebrate People's History posters) are the focus of a new short video put together my Monacle Magazine. I couldn't figure out how to put the actual video here on our site, so you'll have to go watch it HERE. It's a cool little movie, with many cameos by the CPH posters, esp. the new Dil Pickle Club poster!
TONIGHT! Stumptown 10 Year Anniversary Party!
Posted December 10, 2009 by jmacphee in Events
Stumptown Printers Celebrates Ten Years of Ink & Iron!
The Local Shop That Went Worldwide Declares: PRINT'S NOT DEAD!
Stumptown Printers 10th Anniversary Celebration
Thursday, Dec 10th, 8pm
Holocene
1001 se morrison
portland, oregon 97214
Stumptown Printers works primarily with independent musicians and small record labels. This show features Northwest artists who have worked with the shop to craft paper-and-ink complements to their own quirky musical visions: Norfolk & Western, a defiantly unclassifiable crossbreed of spooky folk and sawtoothed indie rock; LAKE, echoey, orchestral pop; Karl Blau, spacey, genre-annihilating singer/songwriter; Ilyas Ahmed, "Free-flowing, mind-bending folk-infused mantras"; Foghorn Duo, heart-wrenchin', whiskey-swillin' Old Time; and DJ Hometapes, selections by the braintrust of the local record label. Catering by Voodoo Doughnuts! Plus printed ephemera giveaways from Stumptown Printers!
Bushwick Print Lab Grand Opening
Posted December 10, 2009 by jmacphee in Events
A long time friend of Justseeds, and former co-director of Ad Hoc Art, Ray Cross has just opened up his new spot, the Bushwick Print Lab!:
Bushwick Print Lab
Grand Opening and Holiday Print Sale Spectacular
Thursday, December 17
6:00 PM to Midnight
1717 Troutman Street #203 - 204
Queens NY, 11385
(3 blocks form the Jefferson L stop and just across the Queens line in Ridgewood)
Bushwick Print Lab, a new community silkscreen space in Bushwick/Ridgewood, is excited to announce our Grand Opening and is hosting an affordable print sale for the holidays. The Bushwick Print Lab is a new rental space dedicated to offering film printing, screen-making, shelf and locker storage, and hourly and monthly shop rentals to artists, printmakers and designers who are seeking a professional and well equip lab to create work in silkscreen on paper and apparel. BPL has affordable rates and will offer classes and production assistance for contemporary artists using the versatile medium of silkscreen. We are dedicated to creating increased accessibility to printmaking for artists of all media and the advancement the art of silkscreen printing.
Art as Action- 12/12/09- 2/20/10- at the Printmaking Council of New Jersey
Posted December 9, 2009 by erik_ruin in Art exhibits/shows
I'll be in a 5-person group show at the Printmaking Council of New Jersey & paticipating in a panel discussion at the opening this Saturday. please come by if you can.
Art as Action features works by five acclaimed printmakers whose passion for complex social, economic, political, and environmental issues spills over into their art.
Featured Artists - J. Catherine Bebout, Karen Guancione, Curlee Raven Holton,
Doris Nogueira-Rogers, and Erik Ruin.
December 12, 2009 through February 20, 2010.
Opening Reception & Panel Discussion moderated by educator, essayist, poet and photographer John Ripton will take place on Saturday, December 12, 1 - 4pm.
PCNJ
440 River Rd
Branchburg, NJ 08876
Evolution of a Poster
Posted December 9, 2009 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
After seeing one of the Garage Collective posters I put up here a couple months back (see below: a poster to announce an art show supporting creative resistance to the New Zealand state), Lincoln Cushing sent me images of 2 historical posters from the AOUON Poster Archive (which he is currently cataloging). The first, from Cuba, is the likely origin point of the flower pattern. The poster is an advertisement for a 1979 film about the Ethiopian Revolution, created by Cuban poster designer and illustrator Eduardo Munoz Bachs (more info about Cuban posters can be found in Cushing's book ¡Revolucion! Cuban Poster Art. I also just found this blog about Cuban posters HERE). The second, from Oakland, borrows and re-purposes the flowers, this time for an anti-recruitment protest poster, likely from 1983. Thanks Lincoln!
Daniel McGowen Art Auction
Posted December 9, 2009 by jmacphee in Events
Our friend Daniel is still locked up in Federal prison, and he needs your help! If you are in NYC, please come out this weekend and buy some art! More info about Daniel can be found HERE.
Art Auction to Benefit Imprisoned New York City Social Justice & Environmental Activist Daniel McGowan
On December 7, 2005, New York City activist Daniel McGowan was among the first people arrested as part of an FBI offensive against environmental activists called "Operation Backfire", which activists have dubbed part of the Green Scare (after the Red Scare of the 40s and 50s). Daniel began serving his seven-year sentence in July 2007. In August 2008, Daniel was moved to the Communication Management Unit (CMU) in Marion, IL, a federal prison unit that bypassed the usual review process and severely restricts inmates' communication with the outside world.
To mark the four-year anniversary of Daniel's arrest, and to highlight the continued repression of activists that the federal government has labeled "terrorists," Family and Friends of Daniel McGowan will be hosting an art show, auction and raffle this December. Proceeds will go to Daniel's commissary account and a number of his favorite environmental and social justice organizations.
WHO: Presented by Family and Friends of Daniel McGowan along with popular street artists; political printmakers; and renowned graphic designers.
WHAT: Art Show and Auction featuring artists such as SWOON; Nikki McClure; Just Seeds Artist Cooperative members such as Josh MacPhee and Kevin Caplicki; BORF and many more.
WHEN: Saturday, December 12, 2009, 1-9pm. Reception: 7-9pm
WHERE: ADC Gallery, 106 West 29th Street, Ground Floor, NYC
activism3cream in Tokyo
Posted December 5, 2009 by jmacphee in Events
Our friends at Irregular Rhythm Asylum in Tokyo have mounted an art show/installation/social movement archive/hang out space called activism3cream, which based on all the photos (see HERE) is awesome. Hidden in there is some Justseeds work.
Berkeley Student Protest Posters, 1970
Posted December 4, 2009 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
With all the occupations and protests going on in University of California system, particularly at UC Berkeley, I thought it would be interesting to throw up a couple of posters from a part Berkeley movement, the anti-war student occupations in 1970. Soon after students were killed by the National Guard at Kent State and Jackson State, and Nixon began bombing Cambodia, there was a national student uprising and a call to strike. At UC Berkeley, the faculty at the College of Environmental Design encouraged the use of their department as a screenprint workshop, which created an estimated 50,000 copies of hundreds of works. For more info on the workshop, go HERE. To see the whole collection of posters from that era, go HERE.
Animating Chickens
Posted November 25, 2009 by jmacphee in Art & Politics
New animated print videos by my friend Nathan Meltz. These are amazing, defininitely take the 15 minutes to watch them!!!
Pony Pedro Go!
Posted November 24, 2009 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
While in Berlin a couple weeks back I got to hang out a bunch with my friends in Pony Pedro, a great screen print and design collective with a studio in Kreuzberg. They do fabulous work, from posters to blank books to postcards, as well as an interesting mixture of printing and performance, working with different groups of artists, community members, and youth to organize social projects. These take many forms, from a moustache parade (dozens of people with different crazy facial hair jogging down the middle of the street) to converting an abandoned parking garage into a community garden and street fair.
Their style tends to be very decorative and urban, with cityscapes that remind me of Icky's prints. Check out what they've got on their website HERE.
images are of screenprinted posters by Pony Pedro's Sebastian Wagner.
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.
Free Palestine Remix
Posted November 22, 2009 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
The Free Palestine Justseeds sticker I designed and we printed up earlier in the year has been remixed by an artist on DeviantArt. Check it out HERE.
Political Graphics of the Long 60s
Posted November 17, 2009 by jmacphee in Art & Politics
Lincoln Cushing has just added a new essay, "Political Graphics of the Long 60s" to his Docs Populi site. The essay was also published in the new book New World Coming: The Sixties and the Shaping of Global Consciousness, edited by Karen Dubinsky, Catherine Krull, Susan Lord, Sean Mills and Scott Rutherford, Between The Lines Press, 2009. Check it out HERE.
Image: Frank Cieciorka, “Stop the Draft Week,” Stop the Draft Week Organizing Committee, 1967.
Justseeds Presentation at Black Sheep Books, Montpelier, VT
Posted November 16, 2009 by k_c_ in Events
Tonight! I'll be giving a presentation about Justseeds and the Voices From Outside: Artists Against the Prison Industrial Complex.
Monday, November 16, 7pm
at Black Sheep Books
5 State St
Montpelier, VT
In 2006, Justseeds a radical art distributor transitioned from a project run by its founder to a cooperatively run business and collective committed to creating and distributing socially engaged artwork. Over the last three years Justseeds has produced posters, calendars, print portfolios, exhibits, books, and collective installations tackling numerous contemporary themes and celebrating radical history.Come join member Kevin Caplicki for a presentation on
the trajectory of the artist-owned and run Justseeds
Cooperative and an exhibition of "Voices From Outside:
Artists Against the Prison Industrial Complex",
Justseeds portfolio project 2008.
Innercity Struggle 15th Anniversary Print
Posted November 16, 2009 by Jesus_Barraza in Posters & Prints
I designed and printed this poster for Innercity Struggle's 15th Anniversary, this is the second print I've designed for them an hope to make many more in the future. ICS has been very important to their community and like many others was very proud of them when they helped get a new high school in East Los Angeles, the first in over 80 years. I have always been very supportive of the work that they do and when i first started printing in 2001 i would give them posters I made to help them with fund raising.
Chris Stain in Miami
Posted November 13, 2009 by jmacphee in Justseeds & Member Projects
Chris is following his usual themes of the importance of the individual's experience and the struggle of daily life. Here's some new work that will be on view at Art Basel in Miami during the first week of December.
Juan R. Fuentes print for the CSPG 20th anniversary portfolio
Posted November 13, 2009 by Jesus_Barraza in Posters & Prints
I recently worked with Juan R. Fuentes on screen printed reproduction of one of his linoleum prints for the Center for the Study of Political Graphics. It was part of a portfolio to celebrate their 20th anniversary and was up for sale at their annual awards dinner, where Juan received the Art is a Hammer award. The print is of a woman who is working in the fields, tending to her crops, and in the background you see a rain of bombs falling. The linoleum was first published in 2001 and is one of many responses to the unjust wars that the United Stats has been waging in the Middle East.
Poster for National Domestic Worker Congress
Posted November 11, 2009 by Jesus_Barraza in Posters & Prints
"Mujeres Unidas y Activas (MUA) is a grassroots organization of Latina immigrant women with a dual mission of personal transformation and community power. Creating an environment of understanding and confidentiality, MUA empowers and educates our members through mutual support and training to be leaders in their own lives and in the community. Working with diverse allies, MUA promotes unity and civic-political participation to achieve social justice."
We were honored to create this poster for the National Domestic Worker Congress by Mujeres Unidas y Activas, they were founding members of the National Domestic Workers Alliance. Their work here in the Bay area is very inspiring, It is a great to see women standing together to create better working conditions in their community. More inspiring is that people are standing together to make this organzing happen at a national level to create a Domestic Worker Bill of rights.
Domestic Workers Organize
Not into unions -- federal labor law prohibits domestic workers from forming unions -- but into the National Alliance of Domestic Workers. And the first thing they want is a "Domestic Worker Bill of Rights." (Washington Post)
Ravenstahlin
Posted October 29, 2009 by mary_tremonte in Posters & Prints
Just in time for the mayorial election on Tuesday!
My friend Amos created this sweet silkscreen of Pittsburgh's (good old) boy mayor, Luke Ravenstahl. This poster references Ravenstahl's decision to devote $20 million to security measures for the G20, while many public services in the city are struggling financially. For reference, here is also a photo of the mayor...snoopenstahl?
Print & Print Studio in Progress
Posted October 23, 2009 by mary_tremonte in Posters & Prints
washout area with papercuts by swoon, painted corner by josh tonies & leslie stem
I am working on a new print I'm really excited about in a space that I am really excited about---The Braddock Community Silkscreen Studio, a project of Transformazium at the Braddock Public Library. I am helping with setup and staffing, printing my own stuff to test-run the shop. It is a beautiful space on the 3rd floor of the library, next to the basketball court. (This library, the first of Carnegie's public libraries, could be a blog entry in and of itself! It was built explicitly for the workers at his steel plant, and featured in its heyday three floors of recreational and educational services, including a swimming pool - now empty - gorgeous theater, boxing ring, gym, showers and more...nowadays it has a kickin' ceramics studio with community access and now this silkscreen studio)
The print is inspired and in support of a Queers Bash Back chant, shared with me by my friend Etta: WE SHIT GLITTER. I have four colors done in the print, which will eventually have six colors, all shimmery.
Check out some more information about Transformazium, the silkscreen studio, and the Braddock Public Library.
If you live in the East End of Pittsburgh, and especially in Wilkinsburg or Braddock, this could be the silkscreen access for you!
Rad Teen Print of the Week 3: Bike Power!
Posted October 20, 2009 by mary_tremonte
This week's rad teen print is another from the archives, by Hannah Thompson. Hannah created this two-color marmoleum-block print during RUST 2008, with the guidance of visiting Justseeds Artist Pete Yahnke. After hearing a presentation from Bike Pittsburgh about current bike advocacy issues, students created two-color block prints that were turned into vinyl stickers that can be stuck on bikes. This sticker in particular is the perfect size for a milk crate!
This is a timely sticker, as Bike Pittsburgh has recently been able to get an ordinance passed by the City Planning Commission to create more and safer bike parking in the City of Pittsburgh. They are now putting pressure on City Council to have it passed into law. You can check out their site to lend support.
Justseeds at North of Nowhere
Posted October 12, 2009 by jmacphee in Events
The Justseeds Prison Portfolio will be on display at this years North of Nowhere Festival in Edmonton, Canada! We'll be sharing the exhibition space with our friends from the Beehive Collective, who will also be on hand discussing their work. Check out all the info at the North of Nowhere Fest website HERE.
Keeping the message alive
Posted October 11, 2009 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
Art on Paper magazine has a nice article in the latest issue on the Center for the Study of Political Graphics:
Keeping the message alive
The Center for the Study of Political Graphics turns twenty
by Sharon Mizota
Although Shepard Fairey’s controversial image of Barack Obama may get all the credit, Carol Wells thinks the renewed visibility of the political poster might actually be a legacy of the White House’s previous occupant. “There’s a revival going on right now,” she says, “and I think part of the credit has to be given to George Bush and the Iraq War.” Wells, who is the founder and executive director of the Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG) in Los Angeles, believes that the former president’s administration has spurred the creation of political posters to heights not seen since the Vietnam War. “The posters come from all over the world—it’s just been phenomenal. It is hard to keep up,” she says. Recent hot spots for poster production include Greece, where in December 2008 student protests erupted against police violence and corruption; Israel, during the bombing of the Gaza Strip; and Iran, where supporters of opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi angrily disputed the reelection in June of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. ...
Read the rest of the article HERE.
The image is one of my all time favorite political posters: Rockwell Kent/International Longshoreman's and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU), Save This Right Hand, lithograph, 1949
Women in Prison posters
Posted October 10, 2009 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
BeyondMedia in Chicago has produced a couple great posters about women in prison. Check them out and buy them HERE.
Winston Smith's Idol
Posted October 10, 2009 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
Any fans of the Dead Kennedy's, or critics of the ever miserable combination of god and capitalism, will be psyched to see that Paper Laboratories have just released a nice 5 color screen print of Winston Smith's Idol collage. It's a short print run of 50 copies, and looks pretty nice (at least on screen). Check it out HERE. Paper Labs also has some cool prints by other friends, like Know Hope, Karen Fiorito, Gaia, and Gee Vaucher.
Posters for Peace & Justice 2010 Calendar
Posted October 5, 2009 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
This year's Posters for Peace & Justice Calendar features a piece by Justseeds artist Favianna Rodriguez. Check it out HERE.
CSPG Celebrates 20 Years of Explosive Graphics
Posted October 4, 2009 by jmacphee in Events
I've always wanted to go to one of these CSPG annual events, but am never in LA at the right time. If you're in LA check this out and let us know how it went!!
CSPG Celebrates 20 Years of Explosive Graphics
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Union Station
800 North Alameda
Downtown L.A.
6:30 PM - Music & Silent Auction
Original art, vintage & contemporary posters
Music: Marcus L. Miller with Freedom Jazz Movement
7:00 PM - 8:00 PM Buffet Dinner
On Location Catering
8:00 PM Program & Live Auction
Emcee: Sandra Tsing Loh
Auctioneer: Robert Berman
Rini in Mexico
Posted October 3, 2009 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
Just a quick shot of a poster in Mexico City using the art of Rini Templeton. Her work is still getting around! If you don't know about Rini, check out the RiniArt site, built by Favianna R. and Jesus B.
Elizabeth Catlett Show in Syracuse
Posted October 2, 2009 by jmacphee in Events
Missed the opening, but there's a big Elizabeth Catlett show in Syracuse! If you're in the area:
Matzpen CPH Poster Released
Posted September 29, 2009 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
A new Celebrate People's History poster has just come out: Matzpen by Joshua Kahn Russell and Dan Berger.
The Israeli Socialist Organization, better known by the name of its publication, Matzpen (Compass), formed in 1962. It was the first organization in Israel founded on principles of anti-Zionism. Its membership joined Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs to resist Israel’s apartheid policies. Matzpen challenged Israeli manifest destiny for twenty-five years, and its legacy continues to animate anti-Zionist organizing within Israel and around the world. The poster was designed by climate and social justice organizer Joshua Kahn Russell and anti-imperialist author Dan Berger. Russell and Berger interviewed each other over the recent Rosh Hoshana (Jewish New Year) about the poster, Jewish radicalism, and Palestinian self-determination.
September 20, 2009
Dan: Hi Joshua. Happy new year!
Joshua: Hey Dan, Shana Tovah. So we made a poster, huh? I hear 5770 is the year of liberation-history education through social movement art.
Dan: Cultural work on a variety of levels has been so important to interrupt the false consensus around all Jews supporting Israeli colonialism.
Joshua: Art is always and important medium and vehicle in social movements, but I think this is particularly so among Jews learning to challenge some of the dominant myths around Zionism. Artists like Israeli-born, Detroit-based rapper Invincible are creating amazing multimedia to tell stories and narratives of the occupation and colonialism, with songs that include extensive interviews with displaced people, footage of demonstrations and military violence, etc. I think this is partly because the subject is still (though increasingly less) taboo; art and creative expression is like the sugar that helps the medicine go down for an uncomfortable subject. We’re talking here about basic Jewish values: self-determination, social justice, freedom, interconnection and interdependence. Unfortunately, talking about them in the context of the harsh realities of the Israeli military and State make it confusing and difficult for Jews to speak frankly and honestly.
ArtCrank opens Thursday
Posted September 29, 2009 by jmacphee in Events
ArtCrank Portland! A poster party for bicycle people!
ArtCrankPortland is set for Thursday, Oct 1 at the ACE Hotel. This will be opening night for the Oregon Manifest Bike Expo. Admission is free, and all posters are $30.
Also note that $5 from the sale of each poster will be donated to Bikes to Rwanda.
Inkworks Artist of the Month
Posted September 27, 2009 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
Inkworks Press has released their latest online newsletter Hot Off the Presses, and this month Bay Area printmaker Doug Minkler is their Artist of the Month. Doug's been making political posters for decades, and can often be found out on Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley selling his silkscreens. Check out the write-up on him HERE.
Impressions for Change
Posted September 25, 2009 by jmacphee in Events
Impressions for Change:
35 Years of Political Posters from Red Sun Press
This anniversary exhibit of posters printed by Red Sun Press highlights progressive activism of the past thirty five years – focusing on peace, justice and a sustainable world.
Jamaica Plain Open Studios
September 26-27, 2009
11 am-6 pm
94 Green Street, Jamaica Plain, MA
Reception
Saturday, September 26, 6-8 pm
Explosive Expression
Posted September 23, 2009 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
Another nice poster from Jared Davidson/Garage Collective in New Zealand. This one is an announcement for an upcoming art exhibition. Those in the NZ, check it out and let us know how it is!
Bookstock Library Benefit
Posted September 22, 2009 by mary_tremonte in Events
As a follow-up to the Sustain Our Libraries poster I put up here last week...
BOOKSTOCK
benefit, art auction + dance party
REMEDY 5121 Butler St, Lawrenceville (x 51st Street)
Thursday, September 24th
8:30pm-1:30am
Featuring artwork, homemade wares and services for auction, live silkscreening with D.H.
crazygood lady DJs Mary Mack, Drop That, ja(m) (bo)x
video projections by Blissy
music by Dean Cercone
Renée Alberts waxing poetic
library-themed coloring books, and more!
Sliding Scale admission $5-10 (no one turned away for lack of funds)
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...
EveryBody! Visual Resistance in Feminist Health Movements, 1969-2009
Posted September 8, 2009 by shaun in Art exhibits/shows
“Our feelings will lead us to our theory, our theory to our action, our feelings about that action to new theory and then to new action.”- Kathie Sarachild of Redstockings Radical Feminist group, presented at the First National Women’s Liberation Conference, Chicago, November 27, 1968
Curated by our cohort Bonnie Fortune, and including Justseeds artists Favianna Rodriguez and Meredith Stern as well as Pittsburgher Hyla Willis (subRosa), "EveryBody!" opens this Friday at I Space Gallery in Chicago. For address, hours, images, and more info on the show including links to artists and organizations involved, head over to Bonnie's site!
Exhibit runs until October 10.
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.
Artists for Health Care Reform
Posted August 24, 2009 by jmacphee in Calls for Art
Two artists with prints in the Paper Politics show, Patricia Dahlman and Michael Dal Cerro, are organizing an online art show of art works for health care reform. Here's what they sent me:
Due to the right wing loud voices and lies concerning the Health Care Reform Bill, Mike and I are organizing an online exhibition of artists' work titled "Artists for Health Care Reform." We are interested in seeing art work that is pro Public Option, pro Single Payer, art work about people and communities that are shut out of the health care system and art work in response to the lies the right wing is putting out there. I am hoping that you are interested in participating. We are asking artists to email a jpeg of their work for this online exhibition as soon as possible. The deadline is September 7. Congress will be voting on the bill September 8.email an image to them here.
Paper Politics: Without Bureaucracy
Posted August 21, 2009 by jmacphee in Art exhibits/shows
There's a really nice write up on the Richmond, VA Paper Politics show on the RVA Magazine website. RVA Mag is a cool art and culture publication focusing on Richmond. I did an interview with RVA's Preston while installing and this is what came out of it, read it HERE.
(image: Refugio Solis, La Otra Campaña, screen print, 2005)
Silkscreen How-To
Posted August 10, 2009 by jmacphee in How-To
I just stumbled upon this great, easy to follow silkscreening how-to on the No Media Kings site. It's written by artist Shannon Gerard and is a simple, straight-forward introduction to screenprinting, images and all. Check it out HERE.
Paper Politics Richmond-Install Shots
Posted August 7, 2009 by jmacphee in Art exhibits/shows
Here's some photos from Paper Politics Richmond at the Ghostprint Gallery. It opens TONIGHT!
Paper Politics Richmond
Posted August 5, 2009 by jmacphee in Art exhibits/shows
Paper Politics, a show I curated of political prints from around the world, is opening on Friday in Richmond, VA. Please come by and check it out if you're in town!:
Paper Politics: Socially Engaged Printmaking Today
200 prints from 200 artists
Ghostprint Gallery
220 W. Broad St.
Richmond, VA 23220
www.ghostprintgallery.com
Opening Reception:
Friday, August 7th, 7-10 pm
show runs August 7th-August 29th, 2009
Wed-Sat, 1-7pm or by appointment
Popsicles and Grenades
Posted August 3, 2009 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
I just stumbled across the site Popsicles & Grenades, which is the platform for the work of artist Jorge Arrieta. He's got a lot of recent political graphic work, including a number of nice silkscreened posters. You can take a look at all of his political posters here.
Hot Off the Presses #5
Posted August 1, 2009 by jmacphee in Art & Politics
Our friends at Inkworks Press in Berkeley have produced another great issue of their online newsletter, Hot Off the Presses. This issue features Justseeds' artist Favianna Rodriguez! There's an intro to Favianna's work, an artist statement, and images and explanations of 4 of her posters, two of them brand new.
In addition, the newsletter contains a story on the SF Mime Troupe, and a great collection of images from the East Bay Calendar of Political and Cultural Events, which Inkworks printed from 1976-1979. The Calendar is beautiful, with amazing split-fountains, overprints and duotones. I've attached a couple images of the fountain below.
Boycott Israel
Posted July 26, 2009 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
Our friends at Tadamon!, a Montreal-based activist organization, have produced a new poster in their on-going series of propaganda pieces in support of Palestine. Designed by LOKi Design, this new image is quite striking, and we hope to have some here on Justseeds to distribute soon. A high-res pdf of the poster can be downloaded from LOKi here.
Global Justice Movement Posters
Posted July 18, 2009 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
A couple friends have sent along a link to a new collection of Counter Globalization Movement posters someone has put together in a online image album. It's a great collection, well over 200 posters and counting, starting with sweatshop awareness posters from 1998 and WTO posters from 99, moving up through anti-IMF/World Bank, various G8 summits, World Economic Forum, and more. Check it out here. The collector has put some info about each poster up, but a lot is missing. I'm sure they'd love it if people filled in the gaps.
New Online Exhibitions from CSPG
Posted July 15, 2009 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
The Center for the Study of Political Graphics has just put up some great new online exhibitions. You can go to their site and look through each of these exhibits virtually, clicking through dozens of images, each with credit and historical information. This is the kind of use of the web to distribute images and info that I get excited about, where I can look at current and historical material, learn something about its creation, and think about issues and struggles and how they have been represented visually. In addition, multiple of the shows include Justseeds folks, including Favianna, Jesus and myself. In addition a lot of our friends and fellow travelers are in there, such as Andalusia K. (whose prison print was also in our 2008 portfolio), John Jennings, Design Action, John Carr, Karen Fiorito, and Scott Boylston.
Here are the 4 new exhibitions, check them out!:
Real to Reel: A Political Reflection of Hollywood Film Posters
Prison Nation: Posters on the Prison Industrial Complex
Subvertisements: Using Ads and Logos for Protest
Ink & Paper
Posted July 11, 2009 by jmacphee in Art exhibits/shows
Ink & Paper
The Biannual Studio Opening of the Taller Tupac Amaru
Jesus Barraza, Melanie Cervantes & Favianna Rodriguez
July 11 & 12, 2009. 11am-6pm
Radical Political Art | T-Shirts | Books
Printmaking Demos, Raffle, Youth Activities and More!
1505 33rd Ave. Oakland, CA 94601
(accessible via Fruitvale BART)
Join members of the Taller Tupac Amaru, a collective of Xicana/o artists and printmakers, at their biannual Open Studios. They will be showcasing their latest political and fine art prints. Self-guided studio tours will give visitors a unique opportunity to meet the artists and see their work in the place where it was created. This is a family friendly event.
Also The Great Tortilla Conspiracy will be joining us on Sunday at noon.
featuring: Rene Yañez, Rio Yañez, and Jos Sances
MUSIC by DJ Max Champ and DJ Quix
Emory Douglas: Black Panther
Posted July 6, 2009 by jmacphee in Events
For those in the NYC area, after 18 months of being open, the new New Museum is finally doing a show worth going to! They're mounting an exhibition of posters and artwork by Emory Douglas, former Black Panther Party Minister of Culture. Most of Douglas' work was originally published as graphics, covers, and centerfold posters in the Black Panther newspaper in the 1970s and early 80s, where he collaged together his drawings, found photographs, and ziptone patterns to create an amazing array of graphics in service to the Black Revolution in the US. For whatever reason (likely cannibalistic), a portion of the art world has recently taken a shine towards Emory, and I'm not going to complain, this promises to be a great opportunity to see a huge collection of difficult to find work from a political graphics master. Here's the details, and a link to more info and more images(!):
Emory Douglas: Black Panther
An Exhibition Curated by Sam Durant
7/22/09 - 10/18/09
New Museum
235 Bowery
New York, NY 10002
212.219.1222
Aberdeen Poster Collective
Posted June 27, 2009 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
The Aberdeen Poster Collective is another UK poster group I've stumbled across online. This crew is from Aberdeen, Scotland, and appears to have had their heyday in the early 2000s. They have about 50 posters up online which you can download and reproduce. Some of them are quite simple and effective. Check them all out, and their manifesto, on their website.
Solidarity With the Iranian People
Posted June 24, 2009 by Jesus_Barraza in Posters & Prints
Check out this new poster I've been working on...I have to say it took me a while to figure out what is going on in Iran and it seems like many places things are complicated. In the end there are many people struggling against oppression and to have their voice heard. As far away as we are from Iran we need to stand in solidarity with the people fighting for change and make sure that they have the opportunity to determine their own future.
Poster Film-Collective
Posted June 18, 2009 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
In the 70s and 80s there was an explosion of community and political printshops in the UK. One of the most active silkscreen poster shops was called the Poster Film-Collective. I recently stumbled across their site, where they have a nice archive of images of all the posters they produced. Check it out here.
May 68 — May 08
Posted June 15, 2009 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
I don't think I ever posted this project here, and it just popped back up in my head, so I thought I'd share it. Back in early 2008 designer Brian Ponto asked a number of artists and designers to create posters inspired by the Atelier Populaire posters from France in May 68, but relevant to the realities of 2008. Among those invited to work on the project were Chris Stain and myself, as well as Jody Barton, Scott Boylston, Seymour Chwast, Sun Dawang, Gwenaëlle Gobé, Finn Nygaard, UG Sato, James Victore, Brett Yasko, and John Yates. The project culminated in a newspaper collection of black and white posters which also included an essay on the form of the political poster by Carol Wells, director of the Center for the Study of Political Graphics in Los Angeles. You can learn more about the project and read Carol's essay here and here. And since the posters were reproduced in black & white in the paper, I've posted a color version of mine below:
Chomsky Event Poster Designed by Josh Macphee & Kevin Caplicki
Posted June 9, 2009 by k_c_ in Posters & Prints
Josh Macphee and Kevin Caplicki collaborated on a 5-color handprinted poster for an upcoming benefit for the Brecht Forum.
The event features Noam Chomsky who will deliver a lecture called Crisis and Hope:Theirs and ours. He'll be introduced by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, and features music by Earthdriver and Mahina Movement
The event will be held
Friday, June 12
7:00 pm
At Riverside Church
490 Riverside Drive (Btn 120 & 121 St)
NYC, NY
Sliding scale for talk: $20/$25/$30
Reception with Noam Chomsky (includes reserved seating for the talk): $50/$100/$250/$500
Special Benefit for the Brecht Forum,
Please contribute what you can afford.
The poster, a signed and numbered edition of 60, will be available for sale at the event, and tickets can be purchased through the Brecht Forum website.
I shold also mention that Justseeds will be tabling the event along with others, like our comrades from Bluestockings Bookstore
Northland Poster Collective Closing
Posted June 6, 2009 by mary_tremonte in Posters & Prints
Sad news! Check out their site for a big, 50%-off sale. And check out Life After Northland for future endeavors...
Northland Poster Collective is closing. As an organization that has struggled on for thirty years and three months, we have enjoyed long and deep relationships with many organizers, activists, students, teachers, leaders and rank and filers in unions, immigrant rights, nationalist , GLBTQ, farmer, women’s and too many other movements and groups to enumerate. We have worked community strategy sessions, union and labor dissident conferences and picket lines. We’ve designed demonstrations with high-schoolers and taught screen printing behind bars. We have friends for whom Northland has always been there and others who have just discovered us. We have friends who discovered us when they were rank and file activists and who are now national leaders.
Given these ties we have tried, once the decision was made, to close Northland in a deliberate, transparent and respectful way that will preserve some of the services that you have come to appreciate (see Life After Northland).
MasterPeaces: High Art for Higher Purpose
Posted June 4, 2009 by jmacphee in Events
This just in from the Center for the Study of Political Graphics out in Los Angeles:
MasterPeaces:
High Art for Higher Purpose
June 6 - 27, 2009
DaVinci Gallery
Los Angeles City College
855 N. Vermont Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90029
323.953.4000
Gallery Hours: Thursday, Friday & Saturday, 12 – 4 pm
From Dada to Punk, from anti-war movements to feminism and ecology, high art has been repeatedly incorporated into a visual language that ranges from the iconoclastic to overt protest. MasterPeaces shows how works by Leonardo, Michelangelo, Picasso, Warhol and many others have been parodied, appropriated or altered to make statements about a variety of contemporary issues.
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 6 12 – 4 pm
Symposium: Saturday, June 20, 2009 2-4 pm
The Center for the Study of Political Graphics, students and faculty in the Designing the Political course at Otis College of Art and Design, will discuss the dialogue between the original art and the contemporary protest poster.
¡Vivan las Guerreras de Oaxaca!
Posted June 1, 2009 by jmacphee in Justseeds & Member Projects
A look behind Tim Simon's new Celebrate People's History Poster (taken from his blog Some News, Mostly Propaganda):
I recently completed a two color poster for the awesome Celebrate People's History poster series distributed by Justseeds. The CPH posters are a venue for radical artists to highlight social movements and examples of popular resistance that are often left out of most historical narratives. Below is the finished version of the poster I created and I want to use this post to go into a little more depth about where the imagery comes from and why I chose it. Links for more info and where to purchase the poster follow.
CONCEPT BACKGROUND
As I began work on this project at the end of 2007, I chose to focus on the uprising in the Mexican state of Oaxaca during the second half of 2006 that took control of the state capital for six months. It has since been compared in scale and importance to the Paris Commune. The uprising began when state police attempted to violently evict an encampment of the teachers' union in the center of the city that had been protesting the corrupt and repressive regime of Oaxaca governor Ulises Ruiz. When the people of the city rallied in defense of the teachers and drove the police and state government out of the city, the demonstration quickly exploded into a full on uprising against neoliberalism and the traditional power structure of Mexican politics. More specifically, I chose to highlight the crucial role that women –many of them self-identified 'housewives'– played in sustaining the rebellion and opening up new possibilities for radical liberation.
A close friend of mine, Barucha Calamity Peller, was one of the few independent journalists in Oaxaca during the uprising and she spent much of her time documenting the rebellion from the front line barricades that protected the liberated city from attack by the state. At the height of the uprising there were upwards of 3000 active barricades in Oaxaca city and many towns and municipalities in the surrounding countryside had joined the movement to kick out Ulises Ruiz. After the movement was brutally crushed by the federal government at the end of November, she returned to the states with an amazing collection of photos and testimonials from participants in the movement. Barucha and I worked together on the concept for the CPH poster and we used her images and interviews as inspiration.
Meshed Histories: The Influence of Screen Printing on Social Movements
Posted May 28, 2009 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
Lincoln Cushing has just published a new short article entitled "Meshed Histories: The Influence of Screen Printing on Social Movements" on the AIGA site. Here's the first couple paragraphs, and click on the link at the bottom to read the rest.
Just like clothes or cars, media can come in and out of fashion. Screen printing—or serigraphy, as it’s called in finer art circles—has been a standard commercial process for more than a century. As a reproduction technique, it has many wonderful qualities. It requires very little in terms of equipment, and even that can be easily made by hand; it is easy to teach and to learn; and it’s very well suited to very short runs of large format objects. It seems like an obvious choice when looking for ways to create prints for the public. Yet there have been at least two periods in history when screen printing was “discovered” by artists—the first was in the United States during the mid-1930s, under the Federal Arts Project of the Works Progress Administration (FAP/WPA), and the second time during the 1960s.When Public Art Ruled
Between 1935 and 1943 the FAP/WPA was the first, and so far, the last, great effort to put public funding into the arts. It was primarily designed to provide jobs for unemployed artists—at the beginning, 90 percent of the artists had to come from the relief rolls. As an important secondary impact it brought art and artists to the breadth of America. Teaching how to make art was a national priority, and printmaking was an obvious approach. However, conventional art techniques such as lithography or engraving posted pedagogical and technical challenges, and screen printing quickly emerged as a productive choice.
read the rest here.
Emma and Sylvia Back in Stock!
Posted May 27, 2009 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
After years of being out of stock, and people continually asking for them, I've started to reprint some of the older Celebrate People's History posters. I'm excited to announce that two of the most popular are now reprinted and available again, Ben Rubin's Emma Goldman poster, and John Gerken's Sylvia Ray Rivera!
My original hope was to reprint an old poster every other month for 2009, but two things have gotten in the way. On the downside, sales have dropped a little, so I don't have the cash flow to stick to that schedule. On the upside, I have been getting lots of great proposals for new posters, to the extent that for the first time ever I have a backlog of designs waiting to print. Given limited cash, and lots of new posters on the ready, I think I'll be focusing on getting the new ones out for the rest of the year. If there is an old People's History poster you would like to see back in stock, let me know, and I'll see about reprinting it in 2010. If you are an artist/designer and have an idea for a new poster, let me know as well!
Signs of Change-Inspired Teens in PGH
Posted May 13, 2009 by mary_tremonte in Inspiration
Sex Education for All by Shira Rascoe
More radical teen printmaking totally!
Pittsburgh's CAPA (Creative and Performing Arts) High School students in Shannon Pultz's printmaking class visited the Signs of Change exhibition at the Miller Gallery in February. Students designed images inspired by the show on issues they are personally passionate about (sound familiar?) and learned relief printing to create these posters.
Some of them were particularly timely, as Shira Rascoe says of her print: "When I was creating my poster, many people in Pittsburgh were in the process of convincing the Pittsburgh Public Schools to adopt a comprehensive sex education curriculum, meaning not just abstinence. I feel that it is crucial for the safety of my peers to teach teenagers about contraception. The peeled banana with the condom on the bottom symbolizes exposure versus protection. Luckily, the PPS has now adopted an Abstinence Plus policy."
Here are a few more examples.
Mayday Berlin!
Posted May 12, 2009 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
Our friend Sandy K. from Image-Shift sent us a communique of links and images to their recent poster project for Mayday Berlin. The project consisted of two sets of posters. The first set consisted of 6 posters, each one with a single large pink letter on white background, the letters: K, R, I, S, E, !, spell out CRISIS! in German. Each letter also has another word it stands for, K for Kapitalismus, S for Solidarität, etc. I've roughly translated the text from each poster below (with online translators, so sorry it is a little rugged!). The second set are all white text on blue background, and are specific information about the Mayday events in Berlin.
There are more photos of the posters pasted up around Berlin here and here.
Friendly Fire: Afghanistan
Posted May 11, 2009 by jmacphee in Art & Politics
The Friendly Fire Collective in the Bay Area have been churning out some cool propaganda of late, most recently the Afghanistan poster seen below. You can download a high res pdf of the poster here. They have a ton more graphics here.
Think Galactic Poster
Posted May 10, 2009 by jmacphee in Justseeds & Member Projects
I just finished up the poster for Think Galacticon 2009, a radical political Sci-Fi convention held bi-annually in Chicago. This year it's going to be the weekend of June 26-28 at Roosevelt University. You can find out all about it here.
Anti-Police Brutality Show LA
Posted May 9, 2009 by jmacphee in Events
A handful of Justseeds artists (and tons of other good folks) are in this show coming up in LA:
Stop the Armed Forces
An Exhibition of Conscious Art and Music Against Police Brutality
Friday May 15th
8pm - 2am
2323 East Olympic Blvd
Los Angeles, 90021
Open Gallery May 16th, Noon - 6pm
Artists include:
Jon-Paul Bail, Brianna Lengel-Bail, Alison Smith, Tim Holgerson, Louis Hennings, Jesus Barraza, Melanie Cervantes, Ryan J. Saari, Taarna R. Grimsley, Paul Barron, Favianna Rodriguez, Frank Zio, Chuck Sperry, Ron Donovan, Emory Douglas, Contra, Yem, Ritzy Periwinkle, John Carr, Karen Fiorito, Hit+Run, 2Cents, 2Rabbits, ABCNT, David Kietzman, Josh MacPhee, Mear One, Vyal, and more...
CPH in London
Posted May 8, 2009 by jmacphee in Justseeds & Member Projects
The Celebrate People's History Poster Series is currently on display at the 56a Infoshop in London. 56A is one of the longest running anarchist social centers in London, I first visited back in 1994(!!), and it's still kicking. They have a bookshop, archive, food coop and bike fix-it space. If you're in London, stop by and check it out: 56A Infoshop, 56 Crampton St., London SE17 3AE UK.
Free Xero: A Re-discovered Inspiration
Posted May 6, 2009 by erik_ruin in Inspiration
I was flipping through various comics anthologies the other day (looking for wordless comics for a friend's thesis project) when i rediscovered the work of Carol Moiseiwitsch. I remembered her bold scratchboard imagery & dark sardonic wit always standing out in comics collections like Twisted Sisters, but had never seen much of her work beyond that. So imagine my delight when i discovered a whole site of her images- comics, paintings, posters etc., all available for non-profit use! I was also impressed to see Carol continuing to create relevant, charged graphics in reaction to current struggles in Palestine, Oaxaca and elsewhere.
I highly encourage everyone to check out the striking work of this dedicated and under-appreciated radical artist!
New Atenco Poster
Posted May 4, 2009 by jmacphee in Art & Politics
Our friends at La Furia de las Calles in Mexico City just sent along this intense new Atenco poster. Click continue below the poster for a letter by Atenco political prisoner Gloria Arenas Agis:
Oakland youth prepare for May Day march and rally
Posted May 2, 2009 by Jesus_Barraza in Inspiration
May Day: Youth Prepare from Betty Bastidas on Vimeo.
In preparation for May 1st Immigrant Rights mobilization in Oakland youth gathered for a banner making party to paint graffiti banners, screen print bandanas, posters, and t-shirts. It was great to see so many black, brown and red youth gravitate to the two screen printing stations we set up. They quickly learned the process and took over, teaching each other how to screen print. The youth painted three banners, screen printed about 50 posters, cut a stencil and sprayed 20 posters and made about a dozen shirts. Betty Bastidas and some youth from Huaxtec helped document the event, you can see the video below.
The workshop came a week after a conversation with Lincoln Cushing, we talked about the re-emergence of screen printing as a social movement medium. I think it is important to help spread the medium to as many youth as we can as well as other printmaking mediums. It was great seeing all the art produced by youth at the May 1st march in Oakland and I hope that this trend continues and we have more youth making art in the community.
Hot Off the Presses #3
Posted May 2, 2009 by jmacphee in In the News
Inkworks, one of our favorite worker-owned print shops, has just release issue #3 of their Hot Off the Presses newsletter. And this issue's artists of the month are Justseeds own Jesus Barraza and Melanie Cervantes!! You can see the entire issue here, jump straight to Melanie and Jesus here, or check out a small write up on Mayday and Mayday posters here.
Agitate! Educate! Organize! Book Release
Posted May 1, 2009 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
Lincoln Cushing's new book on American labor posters is finally out!:
Agitate! Educate! Organize!
American Labor Posters
Lincoln Cushing and Timothy W. Drescher
$24.95, Cornell University Press, 2009
East Bay book release premiere
Thursday, May 7, 2009 6:30-9:00 PM
Alliance Graphics, 1101 8th St, Berkeley, CA (510) 845-8835
Hosted by Alliance Graphics / Middle East Children’s Alliance
San Francisco release premiere
Wednesday, May 27, 2009 7:00 PM
Modern Times Bookstore, 888 Valencia St.
This is a fundraiser for Modern Times -
all proceeds to support the store
Here's the copy for the book:
Despite the existence of labor images going back to some of the earliest examples of representational art, very little has been done in this country to acknowledge the contribution labor posters have made to our national culture. Other countries, including Germany, England, and Australia, take this genre seriously, but ironically it has been up to foreign scholars to produce some of the best research and successful publications on our own culture. The few books that treat these posters are either broader art exhibit catalogs or illustrated sections of books on specific labor themes, such as the history of the Industrial Workers of the World. No single U.S.-published title exists which offers a broad survey of this specific art form. The graphics themselves have experienced the general fate of other “oppositional” cultural documents, where low social status has resulted in public neglect.
Printing with Pittsburgh Teens!
Posted May 1, 2009 by shaun in Justseeds & Member Projects
This week saw the culmination of a project I've been working on the last couple of months alongside Mary Tremonte (also of Justseeds), Pittsburgh artist (and beekeeper) Ashley Brickman, and Jenn Knops from University of Pittsburgh's Street Law program. As agents of the Warhol Museum's Education Department, we worked with three "Theory of Knowledge" classes at Schenley High to create posters about current social justice issues.
We started by taking the classes on a field trip in late February to see the "Signs of Change" exhibit while it was on display at the Miller Gallery in town. The students had to pick images from the show to discuss with the group, and began thinking about how to communicate through poster design. Over the course of the next several weeks we held discussions about current events, helping the kids focus on problems they saw in the world and researching them to gain a better understanding of the issues they felt were important. Jenn brought in a lot of information on international human rights for the students to chew on, and once they broke into groups we started going over some design fundamentals, using imagery from some Justseeds artists along with the "how to" design chapter at the beginning of Josh and Favianna's "Reproduce and Revolt" (a great, encompassing primer on fundamentals of clear graphic design). The kids set to work collaborating on their designs, combining their experience at "Signs of Change" with their own knowledge and opinions. The best part, of course, is the actual printing of the posters, which happens in a day-long field trip for each class to Artist Image Resource (AIR)! There they screen print their poster designs and learn the whole process firsthand! Besides getting some amazing posters printed and having fun doing it, I'm really proud of how this project worked out, and it's amazing watching the kids' eyes open to the possibilities of printing! In the coming weeks the students must find places in the city to hang their posters (storefronts, schools, etc) in order to spread their messages. Check out our Flickr album for more images of the students making their posters...
Capitalism Breaks My Heart
Posted April 30, 2009 by jmacphee in Art & Politics
I just got this great poster image from Sue Simensky Bietila in Milwaukee, check it out. This is a high res file, so download and use in your town!:
Favianna in Toronto
Posted April 29, 2009 by jmacphee in Justseeds & Member Projects
Here's a really nice write up on Favianna's recent trip to Toronto, from the Rabble website. Click here.
Built For Collapse
Posted April 29, 2009 by k_c_ in Justseeds & Member Projects
I created this image in the last few hours of the Justseeds installation, at UW-Milwaukee. I'm kind of obsessed with current economic events. So I decided to make a poster about it. The text came out of some discussions that Roger and I were having during the collaboration. Condos and high-end development projects have been a high priority for NYC's current mayor Michael Bloomberg, one that I reference in this image is the Atlantic Yards.
The Atlantic Yards is a mega-development project designed by Forest City Ratner a company with close relationships to powerful NY politicians as well as the NY Times. The company wishes to build a basketball arena and 13 towers, mostly residential, near downtown Brooklyn. There are so many problematic factors to this project like traffic congestion, desire to use eminent domain, community displacement, request of
"Federal Stimulus" money, and so much more. You can find a ton of information on blogs like NoLandGrab.com and Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn and Atlantic Yards Report to name a few.
I felt like referencing the renderings of this development project was appropriate in highlighting how overdevelopment of cities, like Brooklyn, has led to economic crisis. Construction combined with predator lending and stretching potential homeowners beyond their means has brought us to the stage of crisis that we are experiencing.
One hope of mine is to make this into stickers, for the front door of every new condo in NYC. If you are interested in using this image, gimme a holler, I can pass along a high-res file.
In thinking about my next image, maybe it will be about the wealth extraction from the majority of the populace to a small percentage of bankers, er, the ruling class?
Here's a flick of my friends loft, where I was fortunate enough to be able to borrow and use as a printing studio for this run. Thanks Jesse!
Paper Politics Syracuse
Posted April 25, 2009 by jmacphee in Justseeds & Member Projects
Back in December the Paper Politics exhibition I curated was hung at the Red House in Syracuse. I got a bunch of photos from the show, but realized I had never posted them here. So below are some flicks of the show. I'm working out the details for a couple more showings of the exhibition now, and I'm definitely look for more venues. If you know of a good space for the show in your town or city, let me know!
Also, I'm working on a new catalog/book of all the work in the show. The first edition of the catalog has been sold out for a couple years. This new book will be published by PM Press and should be out in the Fall.
Signs of Change Reception Friday
Posted April 22, 2009 by jmacphee in Events
SIGNS OF CHANGE:
SOCIAL MOVEMENT CULTURES 1960s TO NOW
April 5, 2009 - June 5, 2009
Troy Night Out Reception: April 24 5pm - 9pm
at The Arts Center of the Capital Region
265 River Street, Troy NY, 518-273-0552
In Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures 1960s to Now, hundreds of posters, photographs, moving images, audio clips, and ephemera bring to life over forty years of activism, political protest, and campaigns for social justice. Curated by Dara Greenwald and Josh MacPhee as part of Exit Art's Curatorial Incubator, this important and timely exhibition surveys the creative work of dozens of international social movements.
Organized thematically, the exhibition presents the creative outpourings of social movements, such as those for Civil Rights and Black Power in the United States; democracy in China; anti-apartheid in Africa; squatting in Europe; environmental activism and women's rights internationally; and the global AIDS crisis, as well as uprisings and protests, such as those for indigenous control of lands; against airport construction in Japan; and student and worker revolution in France. The exhibition also explores the development of powerful counter-cultures that evolve beyond traditional politics and create distinct aesthetics, life-styles, and social organization.
Although histories of political groups and counter-cultures have been written, and political and activist shows have been held, this exhibition is a groundbreaking attempt to chronicle the artistic and cultural production of these movements. Signs of Change offers a chance to see relatively unknown or rarely seen works, and is intended to not only provide a historical framework for contemporary activism, but also to serve as an inspiration for the present and the future.
Sponsored by iEAR Presents! and Humanities@Rensselaer
Here is some more info on the show:
The Miller Gallery
Exit Art
Justseeds Prison Portfolio graphics in Use
Posted April 12, 2009 by nicolas_lampert in Justseeds & Member Projects
Good to see that some of the graphics from the Justseeds Prison Portfolio project are finding their way onto fliers and the covers of periodicals. The portfolios that were donated to groups organizing against the prison industrial complex each came with a cdr of all the images from the portfolio - plus prison justice related images from Reproduce and Revolt (a book of copy-right free graphics available through Justseeds / co-edited by Josh and Favianna.)
Here are examples of three. If you know of more, send us an email. Additionally, there are a few remaining copies of the portfolio left for sale on our site that help us recover the cost of creating 100 portfolios.
Signs of Change Troy
Posted April 7, 2009 by jmacphee in Events
I just got back to NYC from installing Signs of Change upstate in Troy. Here's the info for the show (please stop by if you're in the area!), and below are some photos from the install.
Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures 1960s to Now
Reception: April 24, 2009 5:00-9:00 PM
Exhibition runs from April 5, 2009 - June 5, 2009
The Arts Center of the Capital Region, 265 River Street, Troy NY, 518.273.0552,
Sponsored by iEAR Presents! and Humanities at Rensselaer
In Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures 1960s to Now, hundreds of posters, photographs, moving images, audio clips, and ephemera bring to life over forty years of activism, political protest, and campaigns for social justice. Curated by Dara Greenwald and Josh MacPhee as part of Exit Art's Curatorial Incubator, this important and timely exhibition surveys the creative work of dozens of international social movements. Organized thematically, the exhibition presents the creative outpourings of social movements, such as those for Civil Rights and Black Power in the United States; democracy in China; anti-apartheid in Africa; squatting in Europe; environmental activism and women's rights internationally; and the global AIDS crisis, as well as uprisings and protests, such as those for indigenous control of lands; against airport construction in Japan; and student and worker revolution in France. The exhibition also explores the development of powerful counter-cultures that evolve beyond traditional politics and create distinct aesthetics, life-styles, and social organization. Although histories of political groups and counter-cultures have been written, and political and activist shows have been held, this exhibition is a groundbreaking attempt to chronicle the artistic and cultural production of these movements. Signs of Change offers a chance to see relatively unknown or rarely seen works, and is intended to not only provide a historical framework for contemporary activism, but also to serve as an inspiration for the present and the future.
Review of “Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures 1960s to Now”
Posted April 6, 2009 by nicolas_lampert in Justseeds & Member Projects
Posted below is the long version of an exhibition review of Signs of Change that I wrote for the April/May issue of Left Turn.
800 Images, Histories, and Struggles: A Review of “Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures 1960s to Now”
For radical artists and activists, the first experience of walking into Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures 1960s to Now at Exit Art is like a kid walking into a candy store. Where to begin? Everything looks good. The walls of the 5000 square foot exhibition space are covered with an array of posters, prints and flyers from over five decades of social and environmental movements from around the world. Additionally, a row of tables that occupies the center ally of the gallery contains hundreds of items of ephemera, and video projections and monitors are strategically placed throughout the gallery showing documentation of numerous artists and art collectives. All told, upwards of eight hundred examples of activist art are presented.
A short list of some of the movements addressed within the show include the Black Panther Movement, the American Indian Movement, the squatters movement in the US and Europe, political liberation movements in Africa, anti-Apartheid movements in South Africa, democracy movements in China, global environmental and anti-nuke movements, anti-Vietnam War movements, Chicana/o farm worker movements, the Zapatista uprising, global AIDS activism, and Reclaim the Streets.
The show was curated by two Brooklyn-based artist/activists Dara Greenwald and Josh MacPhee through the Exit Art Curatorial Incubator Program. MacPhee largely focused on the prints and posters and Greenwald on the films and videos. Together, they also organized an ambitious program of panel discussions, film screenings, and screen-printing workshops. All told, Greenwald and MacPhee turned Exit Art into an epicenter of art and activism for the duration of the shows run from September 20 - December 6th. The result is arguably one of the more vital and interesting political art shows to emerge in a long time -- a show that raises key questions and insight regarding the art of social movements, the role of artists in these movements, and the complex and sometimes contradictory practice of exhibiting radical art within large-scale retrospective shows.
Prison Nation Exhibition in San Marcos
Posted April 5, 2009 by jmacphee in Art & Politics
Prison Nation:
Posters on the Prison Industrial Complex
America has more than 2 million people in prison, more than any other country in the world. Prison Nation addresses many critical issues: the prison-industrial complex, the death penalty, Three Strikes, racism, privatization, torture, and re-entry into the community.
Prison Nation: Posters on the Prison Industrial Complex was produced by the Center for the Study of Political Graphics, Los Angeles, CA. The CSPG collects, preserves, and exhibits posters relating to historical and contemporary movements for social change. Political posters inspire discussion and action through provocative imagery and language. On display at the Kellogg Library 3rd floor gallery February 9 - April 30, 2009, free and open to the public during all library hours.
Kellogg Library 3rd Floor
California State - San Marcos
333 S Twin Oaks Valley Road
San Marcos, CA 92096
760.750.4378
(image by John Jennings)
STEN at the House of Love & Dissent
Posted April 4, 2009 by jmacphee in Events
Our friends at the House of Love & Dissent in Rome are putting on an exciting new show, an evolving installation by street artist Sten (along with comrades Lex and Lucamonte). My Italian is not so good, but it sounds like they'll be covering the space with a growing number of giant wall posters, building an environment focused on images of a woman that has the power to heal the world. The show is called PO-STErN, and initial images look pretty cool.
Hugh D'Andre
Posted March 28, 2009 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
Inkworks Press has just put up a nice write-up on Bay Area artist Hugh D'Andre, with a number of nice images of his work, including a half dozen posters he has done for the San Francisco Anarchist Bookfair. Check it out here. You can see more of Hugh's work here. A large percentage of Hugh's work is Creative Commons licensed and free for people to download, remix and reuse.
Up Against the Wall - Berkeley Posters from the 1960s
Posted March 26, 2009 by jmacphee in Events
This show looks like it's going to be great, mark your calendars!:
Up Against the Wall - Berkeley Posters from the 1960s
Exhibition 4/19 through 9/26, 2009
the Berkeley Historical Society
1931 Center St.
Berkeley, California (510) 848-0181
Opening April 19, 3:00-5:00 PM
As 1950s America woke up from the deep chill of McCarthyism and the Cold War, a new genre of popular culture blossomed in the streets of Berkeley during the mid-1960s. Spurred by the success of local rock and counterculture posters, political posters were vibrant public documents that promoted a wide range of social issues. This exhibition documents Berkeley's unique role in the evolution of this medium, and includes examples of works on such diverse issues as gay liberation, people's health care, opposition to the Viet Nam war, support for political prisoners, demand for alternative educational models, and community control of police. The show covers the "long 1960s" (1964-1974) and explores the complex interaction between local activists, artists, publishers, and distributors that made this cultural explosion possible.
Curated by archivist and poster scholar Lincoln Cushing, this exhibition is drawn from a unique private Berkeley collection of over 25,000 political posters assembled by Free Speech Movement activist Michael Rossman.
CPH Re-Use
Posted March 22, 2009 by jmacphee in In the News
Chris from 56A Infoshop in London just sent me a hilarious conversation going on over at UK Indymedia regarding a poster which re-purposes my Durruti Column Celebrate People's History poster. Anarchist Militias, indeed.
May ’68 in Paris and the Student Movement in Ljubljana, 1968–1972
Posted March 13, 2009 by jmacphee in Events
For our far flung friends in Eastern Europe, if you can, a trip out to Ljubljana for this exhibition seems well worth it!:
May ’68 in Paris and the Student Movement in Ljubljana, 1968–1972
Posters, Film, and Photographs
29 January – 22 March 2009
International Centre of Graphic Arts (MGLC)
Grad Tivoli, Pod turnom 3
1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
The protests and strikes by students and workers in Paris and other French cities in May and June of 1968, which challenged the traditional values of society and destabilized the regime of Charles de Gaulle, left an indelible mark on the history of the second half of the twentieth century. The protests, which soon spread across the world, encompassed Yugoslavia as well, including Ljubljana. French artists, some inspired by Guy Debord, acted as a kind of propaganda machine for the uprising. They occupied universities, established people’s studios, became agitators and activists, and exhibited their work on the streets and in factories.
The exhibition will present around eighty posters, loaned by the Centre de la Gravure et de l’Image imprimée in La Louvière, Belgium. They were created for the events in Paris, and their image has become synonymous with the urban struggle. The student movement in Ljubljana, from 1968 to 1972, will be documented by a film by Majda Širca, as well as the student newspapers Tribuna and SP (standing for slovensko podzemlje – “the Slovene underground”), leaflets and announcements, and photographs by Tone Stojko, Edi Šelhaus, and Žare Veselič, from the Museum and Galleries of the City of Ljubljana and Slovenia’s National Museum of Contemporary History.
Origins of the Peace Sign Fist
Posted March 9, 2009 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
I'm sure there are more political graphics nerds like me out there, as well as people smart enough to know that the history of our images gives us great insight into how people organize, visualize and make social change. Thankfully we have Lincoln Cushing, political poster archivist extraordinaire. His Docs Populi site is chock full of amazing bits of graphic history and knowledge, including a new piece on the history of the Peace Sign Fist, as developed in connections to the 1970 US Student Strike. Check it out here!
Red Feds CPH Poster Released
Posted March 8, 2009 by jmacphee in Justseeds & Member Projects
Jared Davidson, the artist behind the Garage Collective in Christchurch, New Zealand, has designed the latest Celebrate People's History Poster. His poster, Red Feds, is a celebration of early labor union organizing in New Zealand, and discusses the connections between New Zealand radical labor and the Industrial Workers of the World. I asked Jared to write up a bit about the inspiration behind the poster, and he sent along this text, which was also published in the New Zealand Labor History Project. Give it a read and check out the poster:
I never wanted to be a graphic designer — at least not in the traditional sense. An important part of my artistic practice has been to explicitly avoid the design industry and all that it encompasses — advertising, profitability, marketing, consumption, and ultimately, the advancement of our current exploitative and illogical system: capitalism. By setting myself up independent of this mainstream conception of design, I've been lucky enough to participate in projects which have been far more worthwhile and productive than encouraging profit margins, consumer culture and an elitist design minority. Work for the Labour History Project — in the form of the Blackball '08 and May '68 posters — as well my recent poster for the 'Celebrate People's History' project initiated by Justseeds (a collective of USA-based printmakers and illustrators) relects the sort of artistic endeavours I see particular value in.
As my interest in the role graphic and cultural work can play in political agitation and education has grown, I've come into contact with other like-minded practitioners at home and abroad. Justseeds Visual Resistance Artists' Co-Operative, like myself, realise that cultural production plays an integral role in the continuation of the values and systems that prevail today — including our sense of identity, and equally important, our understanding of history. Hence the 'Celebrate People's History' project — an ongoing collection of educational and agitational posters designed to illustrate aspects of our past which are often marginalised, overlooked and outright ignored.
When I was asked to contribute to the project I immediately knew that I wanted to concentrate on an aspect of Aotearoa's past, or more specifically, our vibrant labour history. A poster on the 'Red Feds' and the influence of the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) in Aotearoa seemed a natural choice.
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!"
City from Below poster pt. 2
Posted February 20, 2009 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
I don't think mine is as cool as Icky's, put here's my City from Below poster. Go to the conference!!!
Activist Print Open Studio at Signs of Change
Posted February 18, 2009 by mary_tremonte in Critical Mass Art
Images from Signs of Change Winter Harvest Reception, January 23, 2009
Join local printmakers and activists at a special Activist Print Open Studio, this Thursday, 5-8pm, at the Signs of Change exhibition at the Miller Gallery in Pittsburgh.
ACTIVIST PRINT OPEN STUDIO >>>
Thursday, Feb. 19, 5-8pm
@ Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh
Free and open to the public
Screenprinting open studio provided by Artists Image Resource + The Andy Warhol Museum. Observe printers in action, roll up your sleeves and print posters promoting local issues, or bring $5 and create a screenprint from images that you provide.
The Cherokee Writing System
Posted February 18, 2009 by jmacphee in Justseeds & Member Projects
I wanted to announce the release of a new Celebrate People's History poster! The Cherokee Writing System was designed by Frank Brannon, Jr., who runs his own letterpress studio SpeakEasy Press in Dillsboro, NC.
The Cherokee Writing System was developed in 1821 by Sequoyah. Frank was interested in doing a poster about Sequoyah's syllabary after researching the Cherokee Pheonix, the first newspaper that used the writing system, as well as the first Native American newspaper. After studying and giving talks on the subject, Frank realized how few knew about Sequoyah and his work. Frank says, "I felt the Celebrate People's History poster series was the perfect way to get out the word to the people on his story. That's what compelled me to write." He also says letterpress printing normally means a small audience. Making a CPH poster was a way to translate few copies of a poster on Sequoyah to a larger audience.
You can learn more about Frank and SpeakEasy Press at www.speakeasypress.com.
Street Art and Social Movements
Posted February 17, 2009 by jmacphee in Street Art & Graffiti
So, here is the English version of the article I had published in Zapruder magazine. This is a much longer version, very much still in process. I'd love to hear what people think, so please comment if you read it!
Street Art and Social Movements
Josh MacPhee
In most societies, very few people have access to the mechanisms of mainstream media creation and distribution. Most of us have little to no input into the barrage of headlines, advertisements, news briefs and billboards we consume everyday. As such, this visual landscape often feels more like a system of control than a source of useful information. When these "legitimate" systems of communication fail individuals or groups in a society, people often turn to illegal ways of communicating with both each other and the system attempting to control them. Graffiti and street art have long existed as a safety valve for individuals to vent their anger and frustration, whether in the form of scrawling angry messages on bathroom stalls or pasting posters on the windows of government buildings. But it is when the vast majority of people begin to feel that they have no other outlet to communicate, that the media channels open to them are uni-directional and they are on the receiving end of a string of lies and half truths, that street art can act as an antidote to our visual space being used as a social control mechanism. There have been many of these moments, when street art becomes truly democratic and hundreds, or thousands, of people flood the streets with their messages in the form of posters and graffiti. It is at these times that people begin to look to the streets, and to their peers, to find explanations for their condition, not corporate television, state radio, or ruling class newspapers. I'm going to discuss four historical examples here; Paris in May 1968, Nicaragua in the late 1970s, South Africa in the early 1980s, and finally Argentina from 2001-04.
Part I: France
In Paris, in May and June of 1968, there was a student and worker revolt that brought France to the brink of revolution. Accompanying this revolt was a groundswell of creative street expression, especially in the form of graffiti'd poems and slogans and rapidly mass-produced silkscreened political posters. The posters often responded to the direct material reality of what was happening on the streets and in the factories, while the graffiti was largely more poetic and metaphysical, speaking to its readers on a much more emotional level. This counter-narrative written on the street not only attracted people because of it's graphic power or sense of humor, but also because there were days at a time when the workers in French TV, radio and press were on strike. The walls were literally the only place to get the news.[1]
Poster Critique + Discussion of Visual Strategies for Resisting the Prison Industrial Complex
Posted February 5, 2009 by jmacphee in Events
Tamms Year Ten and Mess Hall are holding another event related to the Justseeds Prison Portfolio, a poster critique and discussion of aesthetic strategies! I wish I was in Chicago, because this is exactly what I'm into, trying to discuss and suss out how to improve the effectiveness of our visual propaganda. If you are in Chicago, check this out:
Poster Critique + Discussion of Visual Strategies for Resisting the Prison Industrial Complex with Dan S. Wang & Laurie Jo Reynolds
Saturday, February 7 at 6:30pm
Mess Hall
6932 North Glenwood Avenue
Chicago, IL 60626
Tamms Year Ten is hosting an open discussion of the prints in the Justseeds poster portfolio — each which critiques the "prison industrial complex." Let's talk about which images are effective for you--and use this as a basis for considering the visual and rhetorical strategies in the movement. We want to learn from the decisions made by these artists, and then we want to work with you to consider the very real representational problems we face as a movement!
- How do we depict the experience of long-term isolation? Or communicate the experience of long-term incarceration?
- What visual language will help us to imagine the abolition of prisons? To urge rehabilitation over punishment?
- Can commonly used motifs—fists through prison bars/broken chains/doves/barbed wire/slave ships/prison stripes—still work? Are new metaphors required?
We'll be talking about prison-related issues, but we hope that this event will be of interest to all artist-activists bedeviled and/or charmed by the problem of producing movement art which translates our political passions into visual form, renders visible the (often unacknowledged) problems of the present, and/or serves as an irresistible invitation to join us in our efforts to get free. We also invite you to bring other anti-prison movement ephemera (t-shirts, posters, stickers) for discussion!
http://www.chicagoartistsresource.org/visual-arts/node/19026
Ghost Posters
Posted February 5, 2009 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
Roman from InCUBATE recently turned me on to a really cool project that recently came out of Cuba. Cuba since the Revolution has had an amazing culture of poster production, which has been especially strong in the realms of international revolutionary propaganda (the posters of OSPAAAL), and film promotional posters created by a couple different agencies. For years every film that played in Cuba, weather a domestic one or a foreign release had a poster produced to promote it, almost always silkscreened, and usually always the same size, the exact size to fit in all the kiosks that line the streets in Havana. [For a good intro to Cuban posters, check out ¡Revolucion! by Lincoln Cushing]
Anyway, Roman told me about this great project called Ghost Posters, which is a collection of 25 silkscreened movie posters for Cuban movies that were never made, either because the manuscripts for the films were censored or funding fell through. Each poster is made by a different Cuban graphic artist, and there are some really pieces. It's a great concept, and the posters are touring around. They were recently on display at Rutgers University in NJ, but I missed them. The project has a website, but it doesn't list any future venues.
CSPG: Call for Masterpeaces posters
Posted February 3, 2009 by mary_tremonte in Calls for Art
MasterPeaces: High Art for Higher Purpose
June 6 - 27, 2009
Da Vinci Gallery
Los Angeles City College
855 N. Vermont Avenue
Los Angeles, California 90029
323.953.4000
In conjunction with Otis College of Art & Design- Integrated Learning Project
The Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG) is asking artists, organizations, and activists for poster submissions for our next exhibition, Masterpeaces: High Art for Higher Purpose. From Dada to Punk, from anti-war movements to feminism and ecology, high art has been repeatedly incorporated into a visual language that ranges from the iconoclastic to overt protest. MasterPeaces will show how works by Leonardo, Michelangelo, Munch, Ingres, Delacroix, Picasso, Lichtenstein, Warhol and many others have been parodied, appropriated or altered to make statements about a variety of contemporary issues including censorship, disabled rights, ecology, HIV/AIDS, homophobia, war, and women's rights. Through annotations it will also introduce the viewers to the historical context of the original work, thus expanding viewers' visual literacy. Masterpeaces will premiere June 2009 in Los Angeles. Your posters will impact and educate a large audience of artists, community activists, university and high school faculty and students.
Submission deadline: March 20, 2009
By donating your posters, they will become a part of CSPG's unique archive that will be accessible to the general public and researchers for years to come.
Criteria for Posters:
1. Must be produced in multiples such as silkscreen, offset, stencil, litho, digital output etc.
2. Must have overt political content.
Photos from “Artists Against the Prison Industrial Complex” exhibition in Madison
Posted February 1, 2009 by nicolas_lampert in Events
Above are photos from the “Artists Against the Prison Industrial Complex” show that took place on January 30, 2009 at Project Lodge in Madison, Wisconsin. The exhibition was organized by Wisconsin Books to Prisoners (a project of Rainbow Bookstore) and over 70 works of art were on display (including the Justseeds portfolio project, other prison related images from Justseeds artists, art by prisoners, and art by local Madison artists. As well, spoken word artists from the First Wave Spoken Word and Urban Arts Learning Community, including Sophia Snow and Alida Carlos Whaley performed and inspired us with their words.
The opening was packed with people from Madison, Milwaukee, and beyond and the organizers did an incredible job in bringing everyone together and using culture as a tool to combat the prison crisis.
The organizers from Wisconsin Books to Prisoners kept the focus of the evening on activism and reminded us that the State Government in Wisconsin bans used books from being mailed to Wisconsin prisoners and urged people to phone the Governor’s office at 608-266-1212; the WI DOC Administrator at 608-240-5104; and the WI DOC secretary at 608-240-5055 to voice their objections.
To learn more:
http://www.rainbowbookstore.org/b2p
To contact one of organizers of the show:
Camy Matthay: maha@chorus.net
Also check out Community Connections -- a volunteer organization that does a myriad of programming and prison/family support work with inmates at the Oakhill Correctional Institution (OCI) in Oregon, WI.
http://communityconnectionswi.org/index.php?option=com_simplefaq&Itemid=62
Not My Government
Posted February 1, 2009 by jmacphee in Art & Politics
My friends over at Not My Government have been consistently churning out political posters and anti-police brutality propaganda for years. Head over to their site and check out what they've been up to, and support the cause!
Pre-war Japanese Political Posters
Posted January 31, 2009 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
In doing research for Signs of Change my friend Sabu Khoso sent me a great link to the Ohara Institute for Social Research, which has an amazing web page of 1920's-1940's Japanese political posters, mostly from labor organizations. Look at it HERE. Sara Lewison just reminded me about it, so I thought it would be good to post here and let other people take a peek. There's over 1000 posters to look through! No English translations for most yet, but supposedly that's on the way. There is English background info HERE.
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.
Unsung: The Story of RC Tomilson
Posted January 29, 2009 by Jesus_Barraza in Posters & Prints
I just finished this poster for my friend Pepe Urquijo for a documentary film he is working on about RC Tomilson, a reggae artist from Jamaica. He has been working on the film for a few months and screened a rough cut at the Balazo 18 in the San Francisco Mission District. Pepe is going to go back to Jamaica this Spring to finish up the film and to help him fundraise for his trip we designed and printed this poster. To find out more about Pepe's film and upcoming showings look him up on Facebook and make him your friend.
Colectivo Cordyceps/Taring Padi in DF
Posted January 19, 2009 by jmacphee in Events
Another hot political graphics show in Mexico City, organized by our friends down their. Check it out:
Exposicion de Grafica Radical y de Protesta
Exponen:
COLECTIVO CORDYCEPS con obra grafica radical de denuncia, de Mexico DF.
TARING PADI un colectivo de grafica de protesta, desde Java Central
Indonesia.
Bandas Invitadas:
DE DON SON, grupo de Son Jarocho de Mexico DF.
Lugar:
LA CHINAMPA DE IXTACALCO,
Plaza de San Matias o Jardin Hidalgo #10
Barrio de la Asuncion, Pueblo de Iztacalco
A un costado del Kiosko.
Calzada de la Viga, esq. Avenida Hidalgo.
Peceras
Metro Xola o Metro Iztacalco.
Tel. 5633 2502
Fecha y Hora:
Viernes 23 de Enero 2009, a las 7:30pm
Para mas informacion:
chinampaixtacalco@gmail.com
cordyceps@riseup.net
shit_swimmer@riseup.net
"Izena duen guztia omen da"
http://espora.org/furia/
Siamo tutti Palestinesi
Posted January 17, 2009 by jmacphee in Street Art & Graffiti
Our friend Marco delli Santi from Rome's House of Love and Dissent just sent over this design he created, he's planning on printing them out of mirror sticker paper and putting them up around Italy. If you're interested in doing that as well, you can download the file here.
Privatizing the Commons: The Commodification of New Deal Public Art
Posted January 16, 2009 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
Lincoln Cushing has written a great article on posters produced in the 30s and 40s by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and how they are being "borrowed" by designers and how their value has exploded in the art market. It's published on the AIGA website. The entire article can be read here, and for the lazy, here's the first couple paragraphs:
With the United States economy spiraling down the drain, there’s been a renewed interest in the New Deal projects of the 1930s and 1940s as potential models of how to once again make big government good government.
Justice for Palestine
Posted January 15, 2009 by jmacphee in In the News
Jared Davidson from the Garage Collective in New Zealand has created a poster for a local protest in Christchurch, NZ. He's also been blogging about the NZ response to Gaza on Garage Collections.
New Poster: Boycott the Bloodshed!
Posted January 11, 2009 by Favianna_Rodriguez in Art & Politics
I am working on a poster about Divestment in Israel as well as informing consumers what they can do to pressure Israel to change its policies. The poster is a collaboration with the group, INCITE, Women of Color Against Violence.
This poster will soon be printed and made available by February 1st. Israel has been the largest annual recipient of direct U.S. economic and military assistance since 1976 and the largest total recipient since World War ll. Israel receives about $3 billion in direct foreign assistance each year, which is roughly one-fifth of America's entire foreign aid budget.
Corporations also support Israel. BOYCOTT: MOTOROLA, VICTORIA'S SECRET, STARBUCKS, MCDONALD'S, Ben N Jerry's, Blockbuster Video, Burger King, Coca Cola, Domino's Pizza, Haagen Dazs, Heinz, Hertz, Holiday Inn, Hyatt, Marriott, Raddison, KFC, L'oreal, Donna Karan, Johnson & Johnson, MCI, Monster Cable Products, Planet Hollywood, Pizza Hut, Pepsi, Sara Lee, Taco Bell, Sportmart, Subway, Toys R Us, Tower Records, UPS, Vanity Fair
More info here
ACLU Poster Contest
Posted January 11, 2009 by Favianna_Rodriguez in Posters & Prints
There is a poster contest by ACLU, deadline on January 18th. The theme is RESTORE AMERICA. Their website reads: "Join the socially conscious design community in creating a poster that depicts the transformation of America into a country that holds its leaders accountable; that strives to restore eroded civil liberties; that works to change policies that are unconstitutional." Visit the ACLU website for more information.
Solidarity with Bolivia
Posted January 5, 2009 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
I designed this poster as the centerfold of the new Northeastern Anarchist magazine, which should be out in the next couple weeks. Figured I'd give everyone here a sneak peek:
Solidarity With Palestinian Struggle
Posted December 31, 2008 by Jesus_Barraza in In the News
In Solidarity with the National Day of Solidarity with Palestinian People I started working on this poster, I am linking two files that can be downloaded and printed on both 8.5x11 (download here) and 11x17 (download here) so people can put them up in their offices or windows.
I have been been a strong supporter of the Palestinian struggle for sovereignty and land rights. Native people have been struggling for the same thing as Palestinians across the Americas for hundreds of years, people continue fighting to regain control of their ancestral lands and the right decide their future.
¡Que viva Palestina Libre!
¡Que vivan Los Zapatistas!
¡Que viva Evo Morales!
Housing for All poster
Posted December 13, 2008 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
Jared Davidson of the Garage Collective in New Zealand sent over this poster about a housing struggle in his local community, Christchurch. The suit in the image is Mayor Bob Parker. You can read more about it here.
Rod Out of Wind
Posted December 12, 2008 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
Many of you have likely heard that news that Illinois Governer Rod Blagojevich was caught trying to sell Obama's old Senate seat! It's good to know the Democratic party hasn't changed too much, very comforting. Ray Noland of CRO has made a new poster about it, and put it online as a pdf for people to freely download and reproduce. You can download it here.
Digna Rabia flyer
Posted December 9, 2008 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
Another flyer making use of Justseeds art, this one for the Digna Rabia events in Oaxaca Mexico, using the EZLN Celebrate People's History Poster!!
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....
Toronto Portfolio Show
Posted December 8, 2008 by jmacphee in Justseeds & Member Projects
thought people might be interested in the flyer for the Toronto showing of our Voices from the Outside prison print portfolio.
Signs of Change Closing Today!
Posted December 6, 2008 by jmacphee in Events
Today is the last day to see Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures 1960s to Now in NYC!!! Over 1000 posters, flyers, photos, videos, audio and ephemera from social movements around the world. Come by today and check it out if you haven't seen it yet:
Exit Art
475 10th Ave. (10th Ave. & 36th St.)
New York, New York
(the 34th Ave stop on the A/C/E train is only a couple blocks away)
And we're gearing up for the show to travel to Pittsburgh. It opens on January 23rd at the Miller Gallery at Carnagie Mellon University.
(installation photos by Kevin Caplicki)
Taller Tupac Amaru Holiday Open Studio
Posted December 4, 2008 by jmacphee in Events
If you are in the Bay Area, check out our new Justseeds members Taller Tupac Amaru at their Holiday Open Studio this weekend!!!
Taller Tupac Amaru Holiday Open Studios
(Melanie Cervantes, Jesus Barraza, & Favianna Rodriguez)
December 6 & 7, 2008
11 am - 6 pm
Taller Tupac Amaru Art Studio
1505 33rd Ave.
Oakland, CA
ARTE• TAMALES • BEER• LIVE PRINTMAKING DEMOS
Join us in Celebrating our 5 year Anniversary! 2008 has been a busy and exciting year and we would love to celebrate with good food, music, community and great art. Our Taller spent the year supporting grassroots organizing, traveling, teaching, building and participating in various collaborations, exhibitions and artist residencies.
Come check out our new work!
Prints! Radical Art! T-Shirts! Books! Printmaking Demos! Live Art and More!
The Biggest Middle Finger
Posted December 1, 2008 by k_c_ in Inspirations
Here's some photos of a poster a friend made about the CUNY budget cuts.
"There's only one thing left to do...STOP THE BUDGET CUTS!"
From what I hear
...the big things that are pissing people
off... the tuition increase and the rise in pay for the Chancellor,
the fact that the budget gets cut the same amount as prison budgets go
up...
There is a bunch of information at the Building the 21st Century CUNY site.
Justseeds Print Show at the Brecht Forum
Posted November 24, 2008 by jmacphee in Justseeds & Member Projects
JUSTSEEDS
Political Print Show and Art Sale
December 4th, 6-9pm
The Brecht Forum
451 West St, NYC
(the West Side Highway, btw Bank & Bethune Sts.)
Directions
The show will be up from 12/04/08 to 01/23/09
Justseeds/Visual Resistance Artists' Cooperative is a decentralized community of political artists who have banded together to support each other and social movements. We believe in the power of personal expression in concert with collective action to transform society.
This exhibition is an opportunity to view and purchase over 50 different handmade prints by more than a dozen artists. All art will be for sale, much of it for $25 and under. Perfect socially conscious holiday gifts for friends and family!
Graphic Work wants to tour!
Posted November 23, 2008 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
Last year my friend Zoeann Murphy and I organized a show of 40 contemporary labor posters called Graphic Work: Imaging Today's Labor Movement. The Workforce Development Institute (WDI) in Troy, NY is trying to find more venues to hang this show, as well as distribute copies of six of the posters we did large-scale offset print runs of. Below is a letter from Teri Jones of WDI. Give it a read, and if you can think of any venues that might be interested in displaying the exhibition, drop her a line! If you are at a workers center, community center, union hall, etc., also get in touch with her to get copies of the posters to hang in your space!:
Friends, The American labor movement has an amazing history of graphic production, creating some of the most effective political images in the history of this country. However, work and workers, along with the labor movement, are often depicted as experiences of the American past: paintings of Joe Hill, photographs from the early1900s of children working in factories, historic strikes and Rosie the Riveter. Today’s workforce looks dramatically different from the majority of images used to depict labor. To address this issue we asked innovative artists to create posters that depict contemporary jobs, the people that do them and the issues workers now face. What we found was startling. Most young politically engaged people don’t realize the American labor movement still exists and, if they do, they have little or no relationship to it. We found that now, more than ever, it is important to create new images of labor. Graphic Work: Imaging Today’s Labor Movement is an exhibit of poster designs curated by Josh MacPhee and Zoeann Murphy. It was sponsored by the Workforce Development Institute, Bread and Roses Cultural Project ll99SEIU, and JustSeeds.org. The posters comprise a beautiful beginning to a new wave of labor art. We invite you to participate in the dialogue about today’s workers and the issues they face by displaying Graphic Work posters in public spaces. There are sets of six 19”x25” posters available free of charge, as well as the opportunity to host an exhibit of all 40 pieces. You can view more posters at http://wdiny.org/unseenamericaposters.html and contact me any time for free poster sets or information on organizing an exhibit. In solidarity, Teri Jones Cultural Program Assistant Workforce Development Institute 24 Fourth Street Troy, NY 12180 (518) 272-3500 x121 tjones@wdiny.org www.wdiny.org www.bread-and-roses.com www.justseeds.org posters above by Josh MachPhee, Art Hazelwood, and Nicole Schulman
Paper Politics in Syracuse!
Posted November 19, 2008 by jmacphee in Events
The Paper Politics show is still tearing up upstate New York! It open at the Redhouse Gallery in Syracuse tomorrow night. If you're in the area, check it out! Almost 200 political prints from around the world, with work from all the Justseeds artists, as well as tons of other great printmakers like BSAS Stencil, Christopher Cardinale, Tom Civil, Sue Coe, Amos Kennedy Jr., Jesse Purcell, Favianna Rodriguez and Nicole Schulman.
Paper Politics
Opening Reception: November 20th 5-8pm
Redhouse Arts Center
201 South West St.
Syracuse, NY 13202
El Taller de Gráfica Popular online portfolio
Posted November 15, 2008 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
Libros Latinos, a San Francisco bookstore specializing in Mexican, Latin American and Caribian books, has just put up an online portfolio of 40 different Taller de Gráfica Popular (TGP) posters. The TGP, whose most active period was from its founding in 1937 to the 1960's, was an organization of artists, primarily print makers, who used their skills to help develop and promote Leftist social movements. The posters on the Libros Latinos site are all for sale and pretty pricey, which begs the question of whether the images stay up once the objects are sold, so go take a peak here while you can! Those already well versed in the work of the TGP might want to check out the Gráfica Mexicana archive, which has over 3000 prints and posters archived, but a limited number of images.
Tokyo Book Fair Report
Posted November 4, 2008 by jmacphee in Events
I just got an email from Kei (Irregular Rhythm Asylum) with some links to photos and video of the recent Tokyo Bookfair. Here is a cool video that shows the fair, including a bunch of our posters and even people silkscreening with Reproduce & Revolt images!
Poster show at the Tokyo Bookfair
Posted October 23, 2008 by jmacphee in Events
Dara and I were excited to have Kei and Illcommonz from Tokyo visit us in late September for the opening of the Signs of Change exhibition here in NYC. They have both been involved in actions and movements included in the show, most recently the organization against the G8 summit in Japan. Kei is also connected to the Japanese anarchist archive CIRA Japan, who lent us a handful of Japanese anarchist posters from the 60s-80s for the the exhibition.
While they were here we weighed them down with posters and propaganda from the US, much of it for Tokyo's infoshop Irregular Rhythm Asylum, which is largely run by Kei. I'm excited that Kei has created a small exhibition of my posters, which is being held at the 3rd annual Tokyo Bookfair, which is put together by a handful of DIY, punk and anarchist shops, zines and distros. They are also showing Dara's video Tactical Tourist, a 15-minute look at the Barcelona squatting scene in 2006.
Images from Paper Politics in Cortland
Posted October 21, 2008 by jmacphee in Art & Politics
The Paper Politics show is currently hanging at the Dowd Gallery at SUNY-Cortland in Upstate New York. Andrew Mount, the director at the Dowd sent me these great photos of the show installed. Seems like it's made some ripples up there, upsetting some students who actually asked the administration to remove some of the prints! I'm heading up to Cortland to do a curator's talk on October 28th. Info and directions will be on their website.
Graphic Work in SF
Posted October 20, 2008 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
Back in the Summer Labor Fest 2008 was held in San Francisco, and Graphic Work: Imaging Today's Labor Movement was hung at an SEIU labor hall as part of the festival. Graphic Work is a collection of contemporary labor posters curated by Zoeann Murphy and myself originally collected and hung in NYC back in April 2007. Art Hazelwood helped set it up in the Bay Area, and sent these photos along:
Radical Activism Visual Archive
Posted October 20, 2008 by jmacphee in Art & Politics
Stumbled across a fairly new project the other day, the
Radical Activism Visual Archive (the visual memory of radicality). An interesting ongoing blog/collection of political art images, posters and ephemera collected by Alexis Desgagnés, a Montreal-based academic researching political graphics. None of the images are commented on, simply collected and shown, with an option for viewers to comment.
Amos Kennedy, Jr.
Posted October 14, 2008 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
Amos Kennedy, Jr. is an amazing letterpress printer based in Alabama. I was introduced to his work while living in Chicago, show-card posters a la Hatch Show Prints, but often with a political edge, and biting racial commentary. Amos has a great piece about Rosa Parks in the Paper Politics show. He just got a big write-up in the Tuscaloosa News, and it's well worth a read.
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!
"Sustainable" Art Show in RI
Posted September 30, 2008 by meredith_stern in Posters & Prints
The print show, "Sustainable" will hang in the AS220 gallery in Providence Rhode Island (115 Empire Street in downtown) for the month of November. The show will consist of prints by the Just Seeds/ Visual Resistance Cooperative and more than thirty Rhode Island artists who responded to an open call. Check out information online at as220.org.
Signs of Change opens Saturday!!!
Posted September 17, 2008 by jmacphee in Events
Dara Greenwald and I have spent a good chunk of the last 2 years putting together this large-scale exhibition of the art and culture of social movements. With over 600 posters, 100 photos, hundreds of other pieces of ephemera, and 50 films and videos from over 40 countries, Signs of Change is likely the biggest project I've ever been involved in!
If you are in or around New York City, please come celebrate the opening with us on Saturday night!!!
SIGNS OF CHANGE: SOCIAL MOVEMENT CULTURES 1960s TO NOW
at Exit Art, 475 10th Ave, NY, NY, September 20 - December 6, 2008
1. Opening/About: Saturday September 20, 7-10pm
2. Symposium: Thursday September 25, 6pm-10pm
3. Film/Video Weekend: October 11-13
4. Weekly Video Screenings (Tue-Thurs 3:30, Fri-Sat 5:30) and Live Screen Printing
5. Provo: October 24, 6pm
6. Lenders, Support, Thanks, & Credits
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. The opening will include live screen printing and a visit by the Tactical Ice Cream Unit.
ABOUT: In Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures 1960s to Now, hundreds of posters, photographs, moving images, audio clips, and ephemera bring to life over forty years of activism, political protest, and campaigns for social justice. Curated by Dara Greenwald and Josh MacPhee as part of Exit Art's Curatorial Incubator, this important and timely exhibition surveys the creative work of dozens of international social movements.
Organized thematically, the exhibition presents the creative outpourings of social movements, such as those for Civil Rights and Black Power in the United States; democracy in China; anti-apartheid in Africa; squatting in Europe; environmental activism and women's rights internationally; and the global AIDS crisis, as well as uprisings and protests, such as those for indigenous control of lands; against airport construction in Japan; and student and worker revolution in France. The exhibition also explores the development of powerful counter-cultures that evolve beyond traditional politics and create distinct aesthetics, life-styles, and social organization.
Although histories of political groups and counter-cultures have been written, and political and activist shows have been held, this exhibition is a groundbreaking attempt to chronicle the artistic and cultural production of these movements. Signs of Change offers a chance to see relatively unknown or rarely seen works, and is intended to not only provide a historical framework for contemporary activism, but also to serve as an inspiration for the present and the future.
During the exhibition, there will be ongoing screenprinting workshops with guest artists and activists in collaboration with the Lower East Side Printshop as well as the following programs and events.
Exit Art is located at 475 Tenth Avenue, corner of 36th Street. Exit Art is open each Tuesday through Thursday, 10 am – 6 pm; Friday, 10 am – 8 pm; Saturday, noon – 8 pm. Closed Sunday and Monday. There is a suggested donation of $5.
For more information please call 212-966-7745 or check out http://www.exitart.org/site/pub/exhibition_programs/signs_of_change/index.html
Justseeds Print Show Opens Friday the 19th, Warwick, NY
Posted September 15, 2008 by k_c_ in Justseeds & Member Projects
I grew up in a small town in the lower Hudson Valley. Aside from the small crew of skaters and punks that I hung out with, there was very little "alternative" culture and even less radical politics. I'm super stoked to be bringing the Justseeds Cooperative's artwork to a cafe, run by some friends from high school, in Warwick, NY. It feels good to bring something back to where I used to feel the most sense of "place".
The show will open 7pm, September 19th
at the
Tuscan Café
5 South St .
Warwick, NY 10990
We are hoping to have some live music from Laura Stevenson during the opening. Come check us out if you're in Orange County, NY.
Swoon released on Paper Monster
Posted September 12, 2008 by k_c_ in Justseeds & Member Projects
Swoon has released a print over at Paper Monster
To celebrate the launch of Swoon's fleet of ships on the Hudson river...All proceeds from this print will go to help those involved in the traveling exhibition "Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea"This print the "Switchback Sisters", an edition of 106, is a reduction of the centerpiece of the Swoon installation that is currently at the Deitch space in Long Island City. The last two performances of the Swimming cities of the Switchback Sea will take place Friday Sept 12th and 13th in Long Island City, each starting at 8pm.
Paper Politics Cortland opens 9/09
Posted September 4, 2008 by jmacphee in Events
The Paper Politics show I've organized and have been touring around is heading for a couple dates in Upstate New York. The show is an international collection of over 175 handmade political prints by as many artists. Almost the entire Justseeds crew is represented, as well as tons of other awesome printmakers! If you are in or around central upstate NY, check it out!!!!
Paper Politics
Dowd Fine Art Gallery
September 9th-November 6th, 2008
Opening Reception: September 9th 4:30-7:30pm
Artists’ talk:
Paper Politics - Josh MacPhee: October 28th, time TBA
All exhibitions and events are free and open to the Public.
Solidarity with Mpls Anti-Capitalists
Posted September 1, 2008 by jmacphee in In the News
Here's a poster I designed for the RNC Anti-Capitalist bloc. Find out more about their activities here.
Jura Books Needs a Poster!
Posted August 9, 2008 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
Our friends over at Jura Books, one of Australia's longest running anarchist book shops and community centers, are holding a poster contest! On top of being a book store, Jura also holds one of the best political poster collections in Australia, they've been collecting posters about different Aussie political struggles since they opened their doors. In order to promote themselves and raise money and awareness for their poster collection, they are looking for someone to design a new Jura Books poster. The full details are here:
Calling all imaginative and talented artists and activists! Could you or someone you know create a political poster that can stand alongside the great political posters of the past, and is also meaningful and relevant to the future?
AOUON Archive
Posted August 8, 2008 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
A couple months ago a friend and comrade, Michael Rossman, passed away. I first met Michael 3 or 4 years back while I was in the Bay Area for something or other, likely the Anarchist Bookfair. Michael was a voracious poster collector, buying, finding or peeling any and all political posters off any walls he walked past. He was the founder of the All of Us or None Poster Archive (AOUON Archive), an amazing and huge collection of posters from around the world, with a strong emphasis on Bay Area social movements, including the Berkeley Free Speech Movement (which he was involved in), Black Panthers, Chicano organizing, Native Struggles and many others. He had devised a genius system of archiving his tens of thousands of posters in a small room in his house, putting them in wood file folders that slid in and out of hand-made wooden cabinets that doubled as benches which surrounded the room. Going to Michael's house was like a trip to Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, with Michael excitedly pulling out files and showing off amazing posters from farmworker strikes to Native land occupations. He collected 10 color beautiful silkscreens and down and dirty photocopies, anything and everything went into the folders. And the amazing thing was that of the 100 he pulled out, I might have seen 1 or 2 of them before. This was all new stuff, rarely seen outside of its original usage, and never published in books or traveled in shows.
When Michael died, the responsibility for his collection passed on to Lincoln Cushing, another friend and poster afficianado. I couldn't think of another person better suited to find a home for AOUON. The Oakland Tribune just did a nice piece on Michael, Lincoln and the collection. Give it a read here.
RUST Update: Closing Friday August 1
Posted July 28, 2008 by mary_tremonte in Events
R.U.S.T. (Radical Urban Silkscreen Team), A Summer Project of The Andy Warhol Museum, Artists Image Resource, and Justseeds, is entering its final week of working with Pittsburgh youth to create prints on themes of sustainability and social justice. Students have completed projects on Pittsburgh People's History, Local Food, Bike Advocacy, and are currently completing a project on Prisons.
Images from RUST Local Food activities: visiting Mildred's Daughters Farm and the Market Square Thursday Farmer's Market, Onion Gang, and our inspiration: the KALE SMOOTHIE!
This week, Just Seeds member Erik Ruin is our visiting artist, demonstrating rubylith techniques and working alongside the teens.
RUST is hosting two special events this week: a final installment of Youth Open Studio with a special Movie Night, and a Closing Exhibition & Party on Friday, August 1. Come visit!
Check out the rest of this entry for details and more images
The Missing Plaque Project
Posted July 9, 2008 by nicolas_lampert in Street Art & Graffiti
Fans of the Celebrate People’s History posters and REPOhistory will likely enjoy this project based out of Toronto. Artist Tim Groves spearheads the Missing Plaque Project, which involves wheatpasting text-based posters of lesser known local histories around Toronto. Currently, Tim has created 15 posters with more on the way.
The missing Plaque Project also takes people on guided tours of Toronto! Tours include the Toronto Island tour, the Humber River tour, the textile industry tour, and the anti-poverty tour.
Graphic Work in SF this week
Posted July 6, 2008 by jmacphee in Events
Graphic Work: Imaging Today's Labor Movement is an exhibition of new labor posters I curated with my friend Zoeann Murphy last year, and it has traveled to San Francisco to be part of Labor Fest 2008!
Here's the details:
Opening Reception for Graphic Work: Imaging Today’s Labor Movement
Monday, July 7, 5:30 PM (Free)
SEIU 1021 Hall
350 Rhode Island, Suite 100
San Francisco
The American labor movement has an amazing history of graphic production, creating some of the most effective political images in the history of this country. However, work and workers, along with the labor movement, are often depicted as experiences of the American past: paintings of Joe Hill, photographs from the early1900s of children working in factories, historic strikes and Rosie the Riveter.
Today’s workforce looks dramatically different from the majority of images used to depict labor. To address this issue we asked innovative artists to create posters that depict contemporary jobs, the people that do them and the issues workers now face.
What we found was startling. Most young politically engaged people don’t realize the American labor movement still exists and if they do they have little or no relationship to it. We found that now more than ever it is important to create new images of labor. The posters here are the beautiful beginning of a new wave of labor art.
Graphic work curated by Josh MacPhee and Zoeann Murphy
Sponsored by the Workforce Development Institute, Bread and Roses Cultural Project of ll99SEIU, and Justseeds.org
RUST::: pittsburgh radical youth printshop update
Posted June 25, 2008 by mary_tremonte in Bikes
RUST (Radical Urban Silkscreen Team), pittsburgh's radical youth print collective, is in full swing!
young artist-activists completed their first project, celebrate pittsburgh people's history posters, and have begun a bike poster project, just in time for bikefest. one RUST member created an amazing RUSTy the shark mascot costume!
justseeds member pete yahnke is in town this week as a visiting artist, teaching students the fine art of marmoleum cutting & printing. pete's work can be seen in the windows of RUST for one-week only. this is a great location as it's right behind a bus stop on the main drag downtown, and the work is visible 24-7.
RUST is open to the public tuesday-friday 1-5pm.
wednesday night 5-9pm is youth open studio, open to ages 13-18. print what you want! free!
RUST is a project of the andy warhol museum and artists image resource
www.warhol.org
www.artistsimageresource.org
http://bike-pgh.org/events/bikefest/
Interview with Favianna Rodriguez
Posted June 20, 2008 by jmacphee in Art & Politics
Liam O'Donoghue has also posted a good interview with Favianna Rodriguez on the SF Bay Guardian website. You can check it out here.
Grafica Politica #2
Posted June 19, 2008 by jmacphee in Calls for Art
This just in from Grupo Soap del Corazon in Minneapolis:
Dear Friends,
This September, the Republicans are meeting in Saint Paul, Minnesota, September 1-4, 2008, to nominate candidates for president and vice-president of the United States and to create their political platform.The Republicans, as you may remember, are the ones that brought the citizens of the United States (and the citizens of the world) such delights as the war in Iraq, the current economic recession, flagrantly increased national debt, and a lack of timely response to global warming. They are also creators of the current impasse with national healthcare, the stalemate with NAFTA reform, decreasing immigrant rights, tax cuts for the rich, and blatant, far-reaching government corruption.
So how do you feel about all that? Want to express yourselves? Well, we want to help you.
New Gee Vaucher prints
Posted June 18, 2008 by jmacphee in Art & Politics
I just got an email about two new Gee Vaucher prints that Hard Pressed Studios have put out. For those that haven't heard of her, Gee Vaucher was the visual arts/design member of the UK anarcho-punk band Crass, and her collage style and stencil lettering deeply influenced both punk and anarchist aesthetics. For more info, Erik Reuland interviewed her in our book Realizing the Impossible that came out last year.
According to Hard Pressed: Each print is a one color screenprint, on natural Stonehenge paper. Both notable works are an edition of 50 and each measure 22''x30''. They are numbered, signed by the artist and are $50 each. They were hand printed by Karen Fiorito at Hard Pressed Studios in Los Angeles. You can buy them here.
The "Peace" image maybe new, I'm not sure, but I believe "Onward Christian Soldiers" is from an old issue of Gee's political art newspaper called International Anthem. To be 100% honest, neither of these are my favorite Gee images, but I am really glad her work is circulating again, and hope a lot more people get exposed to her ideas, the politics of Crass, and the history of art, anarchism and social movements.
Shepard Fairey's Image Problem
Posted June 18, 2008 by jmacphee in Art & Politics
Liam O'Donoghue an article online that continues the discussion/critique of Shepard Fairey thats been ongoing online over the past 6-9 months. He's posted his piece "Shepard Fairey's Image Problem" on multiple Indymedias (here's the link to the story on NYC Indymedia.) and I'm going to paste the whole thing below:
As if Wal-Mart didn’t have enough controversies to deal with, imagine the consternation in the PR war room when news hit that the retail giant was selling t-shirts bearing a Nazi SS skull. As the story unraveled, it turned out that Wal-Mart’s designer had ripped off the image from pop art superstar Shepard Fairey, whose reference for the Gestapo logo was 1960’s “biker culture.” Oops.Using the international notoriety of his global “Andre the Giant has a posse” street art campaign as a platform, Shepard Fairey has leveraged his prolific output and iconic, anti-authoritarian style into a mini-empire. Through his ObeyGiant company (Motto: Manufacturing Quality Dissent Since 1989), he churns out screen-printed posters, clothing, and limited-run merchandise including skateboards and laser-engraved watches. His other design company, Studio Number One, specializes in branding, promotional campaigns and “identity systems” for corporate clients including Mountain Dew, Virgin, and Honda. He is also founder and creative director of Subliminal Projects art studio in Los Angeles and uber-hip Swindle magazine. His audience and the value of his work has surged in recent months on the popularity of his now-ubiquitous Obama posters.
Although Fairey “didn’t get bent out of shape” about Wal-Mart ripping him off, he originally launched his ObeyGiant clothing line because he saw that the Urban Outfitters chain was selling “bootlegged” shirts with his Giant logo. “To see it in there, just ripped off, knowing that somebody just made a bunch of money selling the t-shirts to Urban Outfitters, and here I am, just barely being able to pay my rent was definitely upsetting to me,” Fairey told me during an interview for Mother Jones. “The reason I get pissed off about stuff like that is because I didn’t build up the resonance for that image just to hand it off to someone to exploit.”
Prison Nation Opens
Posted June 16, 2008 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
Prison Nation: Posters on the Prison Industrial Complex opened this past weekend in Los Angeles. A show of prison-related posters collected and organized by the Center for the Study of Political Graphics, it contains dozens of posters created around many prison-related issues, from overcrowding to women in prison, political prisoners to racism in the justice system. I've even got a couple posters in the show!
Prison Nation: Posters on the Prison Industrial Complex
William Grant Still Arts Center
2520 West View St.
Los Angeles, CA 90016
Open Daily: 12-5pm
323.734.1164
Even though the opening has past, they have a huge schedule of events planned, if you are in LA, check some of this out:
Pittsburgh Summer: Youth Radical Print Collective
Posted June 6, 2008 by mary_tremonte in Justseeds & Member Projects
The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pa is working with 14 to 20 year old artist-activists to form a Radical Print Collective.
This Collective will work with Pittsburgh’s social justice and environmental community to create print materials that illustrate social, cultural and civic achievement milestones in Pittsburgh. The Collective will learn printmaking and design techniques and will use these skills to document Pittsburgh’s activist past and present in an effort to effect progressive social change.
Local and national activist artists from the Justseeds/Visual Resistance Artists' Cooperative will be in residence throughout the summer to work with the youth involved in this project and to create an installation.
For more information, contact Mary Tremonte at tremontem(at)warhol.org, 412-237-8356
Reclaiming the "F" Word
Posted June 5, 2008 by jmacphee in Events
The Center for the Study of Political Graphics, a great archive and resource for studying political posters, has just put together a new show:
Reclaiming the “F” Word: Posters on International Feminisms
June 3 - July 3, 2008
Opening Reception:
Saturday June 7, 2008 2-5 pm
Panel Discussion: 3 pm
Panel will include some of the exhibition’s artists and curatorial team.
Special Film Showing:
Monday, June 16th, 2008 at 2 pm
I was a Teenage Feminist, a film by Therese Shechter
(see description of film below)
California State University
Northridge Art Galleries
18111 Nordhoff Street
Northridge, CA 91330
Summer gallery hours are Mon – Fri 12-4 pm
There is no admission charge.
Parking is $5.00.
For further information call 818.677.2156.
Reclaiming the “F” Word refers to women’s movements in the plural—to feminismS—to acknowledge and honor our similarities and differences. The national and international posters in this exhibition reflect a deepening awareness that women’s struggles, women’s leadership and women’s activ¬ism throughout the world challenge oppressive conditions in diverse and creative ways.
Posters from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North and South America explore class, race and gender as they show women at the forefront of struggles for human rights and social change. Powerful graphics depict diverse feminist issues from the suffragettes to the activism of the 1970s to today. The family unit, childcare, labor, ecology, trafficking and violence are just some of the topics covered. Posters show women organizing against the Viet Nam War and against Apartheid in South Africa. They decry the ongoing murders of women in Juarez, Mexico and use of rape as a military weapon in Darfur, Sudan. Reclaiming the “F” Word will broaden the definition of feminism, and inspire women and men, of all ages, to be proud to call themselves feminists.
fierce pussy show at Printed Matter Inc.
Posted May 10, 2008 by molly_fair in Events
Printed Matter Inc.
195 Tenth Avenue, NYC
April 5–May 24, 2008
fierce pussy was a New York–based collective of queer women that emerged in 1991 from the ferment spawned by ACT UP. Promoting lesbian visibility and self-defined identity, fierce pussy helped politicize the urban landscape by wheat-pasting posters, distributing stickers and T-shirts, and "renaming" a number of New York streets after lesbian heroines.Their low-tech aesthetic is exemplified by photocopied posters, which have been reissued in a book published by Printed Matter and are exhibited there above vitrines of related ephemera. Members' childhood snapshots are emblazoned with words like MUFFDIVER and DYKE; the phrase LESBIAN CHIC MY ASS is illustrated with a bathroom-stall-worthy rendering of an ass followed by the words FUCK 15 MINUTES OF FAME. WE DEMAND OUR CIVIL RIGHTS. NOW. Contemporaneous groups such as Queer Nation, Dyke Action Machine, and the aforementioned ACT UP pioneered an activist appropriation of the slick language of advertising, taking a cue from Situationist détournement and the work of Barbara Kruger. fierce pussy's posters share aesthetic kinship with the more punkish 1979 publication Durhing Durhing by Joseph Wolman (founder, with Guy Debord, of the Letterist International), in which random faces are overprinted with Marxist-inflected words.
This kind of contextualization, however, distances the work from the queer bodies that made it, and queer bodies are still not visible enough. Riding that wave of lesbian chic, The L Word now epitomizes self-defined lesbian (with little mention of gender-queer or trans) identity. fierce pussy's book, the most vital part of the exhibition, opens with reprints of three nearly twenty-year-old posters comprising a more diverse spectrum of identities, among them dyke, butch, pervert, femme, feminist, and queer. The pages are detachable and reconfigurable. Just add wheat paste. —Amoreen Armetta
New LA vs. War Prints
Posted May 1, 2008 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
The great event and crew LA vs. War has some new prints for sale to help fund what they are up to. The one on top is by Brandy Flower, and the bottom one by Karen Fiorito. You can get these and a bunch of other great political prints from the Yo! What Happened to Peace? Depot.
Second Annual Mayday Political Print & Poster Art Show
Posted April 15, 2008 by jmacphee in Calls for Art
Calling All Artists!
My friends in Troy are putting on a political print and poster show for Mayday, and you should send in your art! Check it out below:
Second Annual Mayday Political Print & Poster Art Show
A Benefit to Save the Sanctuary for Independent Media
Kismet Gallery, 71 Fourth Street, Troy, NY 12180
This year’s political poster art show is brought to you by the letter F…for freedom: the freedom to display controversial radical art and not be censored by small minded school administrators and petty politicians. Sadly, not everyone here in Troy seems to agree with that idea. This certainly became apparent to us at Kismet after Iraqi born digital artist Waffa Bilal’s video game, Virtual Jihadi, was censored at two art venues in the city. In the video, the artist casts himself as a suicide-bomber who, after learning of the real-life death of his brother in the war, is recruited by Al Qaeda to join the hunt for Bush. The exhibit was originally scheduled to be seen in a gallery at the RPI Arts Department, but administration officials caved into right-wing pressure to shut the exhibit down. The exhibit was then rescheduled to be shown at the Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy. A protest against both the exhibit’s opening and the Sanctuary was organized by the city’s Republican head of the department of public works (who oversees code enforcement). The day after the protested opening, city code officials contacted the Sanctuary to let them know that they were shutting down the Sanctuary for “ongoing code issues”, necessitating closing of the space and its exhibit.
In response to this urgent issue, Kismet Gallery is sponsoring its second annual Mayday Political Print and Poster Art Show. The event will feature some of the finest radical and socially conscious work from artists all around the country. Not only with this kick the corporate ass, but it will also be priced with working people in mind. This year, in light of recent events and in the sprit of Mayday and solidarity with our brothers and sisters at the Sanctuary, we would like to extend a red hand of support and mutual aid by making this year’s event a benefit to reopen the Sanctuary.
Paper Politics in Corpus Christi, TX
Posted April 3, 2008 by jmacphee in Events
Paper Politics, the political print show I've been traveling around the continent has made it's way to Texas! K Space Contemporary opens Paper Politics on Saturday, April 5th.
The exhibit showcases print art that uses themes of social justice and global equity to engage community members in political conversation. All the Justseeds artists are in the show, as well as 175 other artists from the US and around the world. An eclectic collection of work by artists who are primarily activists, as well as artists, whose work may not always be politically motivated, but who wanted to respond to the monumental trends and events of our times.
Opening: Saturday April 5th, 6-8 PM
Free Admission, Food & Drinks
On view April 5th-May 11th
Also:
Woodcut Printmaking Workshop with Paper Politics artist Mike Stephens
Saturday, April 12th, 10Am-1PM
$65 materials fee, call to reserve a space.
LA vs. WAR
Posted March 31, 2008 by jmacphee in Events
LA vs. WAR is a huge anti-war show going up in LA next week! It looks to be amazing, so if you are in the area, definitely check it out!
LA vs. WAR
April 10-13 2008
12 noon to 11pm
The Firehouse
710 S. Santa Fe Avenue
Los Angeles CA 90021
Downtown LA
LA vs WAR schedule:
Thursday, April 10, 2008: 12:00 p.m. - 11:00 p.m.
Friday, April 11, 2008: 12:00 p.m. - 11:00 p.m.
Saturday, April 12, 2008: 12:00 p.m. - 11:00 p.m.
Sunday, April 13, 2008: 12:00 p.m. - 11:00 p.m.
LA vs WAR highlights the travesty of a senseless war now going into its 6th year, giving LA artists a platform to exercise their freedom of speech. Hundreds of artists representing our diverse communities unite in delivering a universal message of peace and understanding, and offering resistance and opposition to the US government's war policies.
LA vs WAR highlights:
- Yo! What Happened to Peace?: posters on display from the international touring peace poster exhibition; live anti-war poster screen-printing demos
- Hit+Run: live t-shirt printing featuring custom artwork from the Hit+Run artist network
- Mark of the Beast: display of corporate-jammed logo spoofs
- Crewest Graffiti & Stencil Art Garden: graffiti artist network doing live graffiti and stencil painting
- Center for the Study of Political Graphics: anti-war themed display from America's premier political poster archives
- Artwork Exhibition: handmade creations by independent local artists
- Universal Peace Altar: a memorial to lives lost in the war created by Ofelia Esparza and Shrine
- Peace in Iraq Photo Project by Azul 213: audience participation photo project to promote peace
- Dublab: music selections created by DJs from the web radio collective
- Lost Film Fest hosted by VJ Scott Beibin: film and video celebration of culture jamming and illegal art
- Light installations and projections: interactive entertainment provided by Todd Lazer
AND MORE...
All ages are welcome and admission is free.
Free Tibet Demo in NYC & beyond
Posted March 24, 2008 by k_c_ in In the News
There have been a lot of activity around the current events in Tibet. A lot of actions focusing on the Olympics in China. One I came across today on the BBC newswire is about the disruption of the lighting of the torch in Greece. 
Even a few months back at "Where Have You Been?"
one story focused on a trip and action at the base camp of Mt Everest.
Recently, in NYC, there were reports of some aggression outside of the Chinese Consulate on 42nd street, leaving injured people and broken glass. People are demanding a stop to the killing in Tibet and a boycott of the upcoming Olympics in China.
This past weekend in NYC, a march passed thru Union Square. Here's some flicks I was able to snatch of the posters and banners. The messaging was really clear in their images and chants, and was a very moving experience as the thousand or so demonstrators moved thru the Union Square Greenmarket.
Oaxaca Resiste!: Print show in Madison, WI. March 27-April 6
Posted March 16, 2008 by nicolas_lampert in Posters & Prints
If your in Madison, Wisconsin in late March, check out a show at the Common Wealth Gallery on the Oaxaca teachers strike uprising. The show features woodcut prints, stencil art posters, photos, and comics.
MARCH 27-APRIL 6, 2008
ASARO (Asamblea de Artistas Revolucionarios de Oaxaca)
& Local Artists Ana Nimos • Steve Chapell • Lester Doré- Michael Duffy • Eric Hagstrom • Miguel Peña & Others
Sunday March 30 • 7-9 PM: Opening Reception
Music by Son Madunza
Tuesday April 1 • 7 PM : Mexican Revolutionary Graphic Art from Posada to the present Gallery Talk by Melanie Herzog, Professor of Art History, Edgewood College
Thursday April 3 • 7PM: New Jill Friedberg documentary Un Poquito de Tanta Verdad (A little bit of so much truth) on people’s takeover of Oaxacan media
Common Wealth Gallery • 100 S. Baldwin St. • Madison, Wisconsin
Gran Fury Interview
Posted March 1, 2008 by jmacphee in Street Art & Graffiti
My friend Sam just sent me this link from Queerty.com to an interesting interview with Avram Finkelstein, one of the members of Gran Fury. Gran Fury was a creative/graphic collective that produced a large amount of the more graphic art and design around the AIDS crisis in the late 80s and 90s, including the Silence=Death graphic, which I would argue is one of the most powerful political graphics of the last 50 years. Here's a quote:
AB: Do you think posters are effective today? There are posters and advertising on every space.AF: I do - I mean, there was advertising then and that was part of the strategy: to intervene on the commercial space with a message that was not commercial. That’s why we chose postering. We decided against doing these flat-footed, didactic Marxist tomes with lots of text and instead chose to do high gloss posters. And, in fact, the design of the poster - we discussed it endlessly and decided to go with what we called “yuppie graphics” - fonts that were popular at the time, so it was deceptive and would draw an unsuspecting bystander into a very serious conversation. It had to work on two levels: you had to be able to see it and think about it as you were whisking by in a cab, but then it had to work on a street level.
Having said that, I don’t think it could ever work in this social landscape, no. I don’t think it would be possible. It’s not so much about having to compete on the media landscape as what public space is now, as opposed to public space then. Public spaces - although there are a lot of people who would argue against it - are largely new media. I don’t really think it’s about the streets. It’s about the internet."
I wish I could share his optimism about the internet. I think it is a powerful communications tool (which is why we are using it for things like this blog!), but it seems like folly to consider it the "new public space." The infrastructure (fiber-optic lines, traffic hubs, etc.) are in the hands of a very small number of corporations. It may be in their interest to allow for a fair amount of open communication and dialog now, but lets not forget their is nothing public about their ownership, it is completely private, with no real checks to even further consolidation.
That said, I enjoyed this interview immensely, only wishing it was longer and more in depth. I'd love to see a serious roundtable conversation between graphic artists involved in the AIDS struggle, and really hear about how they created the images, built the messaging, and assessed the efficacy of their designs.
Street art for the Democratic Party (?) 2008 is off to a rough start
Posted February 12, 2008 by nicolas_lampert in Street Art & Graffiti
Critical thinking and dissent in street art is becoming as rare as politicians who reject corporate America, free trade, prisons, and the two-party system.
Recently, a Chicago art show, Go Tell Mama! has put up stencil work and posters endorsing Obama and Shepard Fairey has created yet another poster to waste more paper, enhance his name and enlighten us with his critique of propaganda images by creating propaganda images.
I am not sure what is more discouraging: the public acceptance of politicians, the massive costs that goes into election campaigns (for a detailed account, see: The Center for Responsive Politics), the culture of politicians as celebrities, street art marketed as hip, Shepard Fairey, or the sneaking suspicion that for the next 9 months, much of the nation will consume their energy on the election, get behind a candidate, and forget that change comes from the bottom up and building opposition movements that confront power.
Call for Entries/ Call for Show Hosts: The Art of Democracy
Posted February 12, 2008 by nicolas_lampert in Calls for Art
The Art of Democracy is a national coalition of art exhibitions (scheduled for the fall of 2008) that addresses the dire state of the political scene in the U.S.
Leading up to the November 2008 national elections, artists from around the country will be creating and exhibiting posters and prints that respond to the election, politics, and governmental policy. The Art of Democracy exhibition seeks to attract other individuals and artist organizations from around the nation to help amplify our messages of civil activism, reform, dissent, and protest.
This is not a single show but an affiliation of shows in numerous cities across the U.S.
To contribute your work to these shows, go to: www.artofdemocracy.org
Relevant contact information is provided for most shows.
Artwork by exhibitors can also be found on:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/art-of-democracy/
We encourage artist to put work up on the Flickr site and create posters. The posters will be exchanged with venues around the country. For more information, contact: info@artofdemocracy.org
Beehive Collective is Searching for New Worker Bees
Posted February 11, 2008 by jmacphee in Events
Just got this in the inbox, the Beehive Collective is looking for people to join their new campaigns:
In anticipation of our most exciting and busy year to date, featuring the launch of two new graphics campaigns, our swarm of eleven is in need of five more workers. We are currently seeking a few passionate and committed organizers, educators, and artists to join us full-time in Maine, at satellite Hive locations, and on the road, beginning as soon as possible.
Please pass this note on to others who might be interested!
Current Positions Available:
- Archivist/Documentarian (Mountaintop Removal Mining campaign)
- Graphics Campaign Coordinator (Mesoamerica Resiste)
- Education Coordinator (Mountaintop Removal Mining campaign)
- Illustration Collaborator (pen & ink, Mountaintop Removal Mining campaign)
- Distribution, Networking & “Pollination” Coordinator (core Hive position)
Detailed descriptions at www.beehivecollective.org
SUMMONING A NEW QUEER REALITY
Posted January 28, 2008 by nicolas_lampert in Posters & Prints
Check out this amazing poster project that celebrates radical queer history. The posters were created by the Chicago group "Chances Dances" and each poster features a portrait, a quote from the person celebrated and a brief bio.
The Chances Dances website notes that “These masks portray a selection of radical queers and allies, some from the past and some from the present, some recognized and others hidden. We hope their lives and work will inspire current and future generations to SUMMON A NEW QUEER REALITY! We offer these masks as symbols of power through knowledge and community through history! Please pass it on!”
Posters can be downloaded at their site and include posters of:
* Pedro Almodóvar
* Gregg Araki
* James Baldwin
* Sadie Benning
* Claude Cahun
* Chrystos
* Jackie Curtis
* Angela Davis
* Vaginal Davis
* Divine
* Leslie Feinberg
* Michel Foucault
* Jean Genet
* Felix Gonzalez-Torres
* Audre Lorde
* Harvey Milk
* Cherríe Moraga
* Mimi Nguyen
* Adrienne Rich
* Marlon Riggs
* Sylvia Rivera
* Bayard Rustin
* Annie Sprinkle
* Sylvester
* Urvashi Vaid
* John Waters
* David Wojnarowicz
for more info: http://www.chancesdances.org/pride07/masks.html#_self
Check out Secret Door Projects!
Posted January 15, 2008 by meredith_stern in Posters & Prints
Hey folks!
Check out my friend Jean Cozzens and the website she is working on! She makes gorgeous prints and also has done some rad collaborative work- like building cardboard cities in galleries and libraries with children large and small!!!! http://www.secretdoorprojects.org/
Interview with Lincoln Cushing
Posted January 11, 2008 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
A nice short interview with political poster archivist and artist Lincoln Cushing just popped up on the PLAZM magazine site. It's definitely worth the quick read, check it out here, and below is a short quote:
"It seems that you have been busy with research into Chinese political posters from the GPCR, and the survey of the archives of Inkworks Press, the worker-owned cooperative press in Berkeley. Are there any other historical poster movements that you've become interested in lately?
I’m interested in ALL of them lately, especially the connections between them and the gaps in scholarship. The sad fact is that we really know so little about these poster movements. Few people are aware of the numerous poster workshops that sprang up in the U.S. right after the 1970 National Guard murders at Kent State and Jackson State. Even “iconic” poster history is barely scratched – who knows that the art students who made the Paris 1968 posters were, in fact, screenprinting for the first time? They hadn’t been taught this technique in school, but it was the right medium for the moment. I didn’t know this until a colleague, Gene Marie Tempest, conducted some interviews with participants in 2007."
Lincoln also has his on site, Docs Populi, which has a huge collection of information and images on the history of political graphics, from Chinese and Cuban posters, to the cultural production of the labor movement, to the history of the use of the graphic fist in US political movements.
Swoon/Stain/Poloroid Kid Video
Posted January 10, 2008 by jmacphee in Events
A very cool little video about these kids recent show in Paris, check it out here.
A Response to OBEY Plagiarist
Posted December 14, 2007 by jmacphee in In the News
It's taken me a long time to get this together, but I wanted to throw my ideas into the discussion around the artwork/plagiarism of Shepard Fairey that has been spinning around the web. For those that might not know, Shepard Fairey is the creator of the "Andre the Giant has a Posse" sticker campaign, which became a long running series of "Obey Giant" posters. Mark Vallen, a Los Angeles-based artist (who created some of my favorite street posters from the early LA punk scene), recently published a long critique of Fairey on his blog, Art For A Change. What I'm writing here directly relates to Mark's piece, so if you haven't read it, give it a look here.
Mark's write-up came out of a long discussion that has been going on between a number of politically-motivated artists and archivists about Fairey's work. Throughout the whole process of discussion it has seemed clear that we have been coming from parallel but divergent positions, with different parts of the larger issues at hand being more or less important to each of us. Mark is clearly concerned with social and political potentials of ART, and believes Fairey's wholesale "theft" of historical images cheapens the potential for art to make change in the world. Lincoln Cushing, an artist, archivist and author who has been involved in the discussions, is very concerned with how plagiarism hurts efforts to empower our communities with their own revolutionary art history. However, he also supports strategic use of existing copyright law, and recently got Fairey to pay retroactive royalties on a t-shirt with Cuban artwork appropriated without credit. Favianna Rodriguez, also involved, has been particularly frustrated with Fairey's use of and profiting off of the art of people of color, and the images of the struggles of people of color, while he has had to pay none of the costs for having to live as a person of color in this society or world.
"Reclaiming the F Word" Call for Entries!
Posted December 11, 2007 by meredith_stern in Calls for Art
Here is a call for entries from the Center for the Study of Political Graphics, located in Los Angeles, California.
"Reclaiming the F Word" Submissions Deadline: December 15, 2007
This show will open March 2008 at the Art Galleries, California State University, Northridge.
The Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG) is asking artists,
organizations, and activists for poster submissions for our upcoming exhibition
entitled Reclaiming the “F” Word--Posters on International Feminism. This
exhibition will feature posters about the ongoing struggle for women’s rights
showing us that feminism must not be treated like a dirty word.
http://www.politicalgraphics.org/pdf/Call%20for%20F%20Posters.pdf
Call for Submissions! War in Iraq!
Posted December 7, 2007 by meredith_stern in Calls for Art
Call for Entries: Deadline January 12, 2008
"Experiencing the War in Iraq"
An Artist Curated, Multi-Media Exhibit of Art about the War in Iraq
(Following text is copied from the call for entries):
What does it mean to experience this war firsthand,
in combat, or as an Iraqi civilian? What does it mean to
experience it from a distance, or on television? How can we
in America reconnect to the reality of war? Are there shared
visions of peace despite cultural and religious differences? The
work will be selected on artistic merit and look to include as
many perspectives as possible, beyond politics.
Check out more details and download a submission form at the following link:
http://reconnectus.org/downloads/ReconnectUS_CFE_dataset_0001.pdf
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
Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History
Posted December 4, 2007 by meredith_stern in Events
Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History
Traveling Exhibit! Arriving in New York at CUNY Graduate Center
Opens: December 10th, 6:30 - Recital Hall
To read the article in it's entirety: http://www.friendlyagitate.net/category/art/
This text lifted directly from their website:
The SDS Comic Show, a traveling exhibit drawing upon the book Students for a Democratic Society: a Graphic History, will be open at the CUNY Graduate Center in December. Come see the exhibit and join us for a book signing and panel discussion for Students for a Democratic Society: a Graphic History, scripted by Harvey Pekar and others and edited by Paul Buhle, editor of the 1960s SDS magazine Radical America. Harvey Pekar, real-life star of the award-winning film and the book series American Splendor (and sometime Letterman Show guest), will deliver a talk on comics and politics, followed by a panel including Buhle, former SDS-NY regional officer, Weatherman Jeff Jones, and members of the New SDS.
Defend the SF8
Posted November 26, 2007 by jmacphee in Events
This friday in New York City there is a benefit event in support of the San Francisco 8. The SF8 are eight former Black Panther Party members and active supporters (now ages 56 to 72) who were arrested last January on charges related to the 1971 killing of a San Francisco police officer. Some of these men faced virtually identical charges almost 35 years ago—charges that were dropped after it was revealed that police torture had extracted the “confessions” used to justify the case.
Now the case is back on, based on the same flawed evidence. The judge has released the 6 bail-eligible defendants on bond, and I was able to see them speak in San Francisco a couple months ago at a benefit event put on for them by Freedom Archives and the San Francisco Print Collective that was also a book release event for Emory Douglas. The SF8 were incredibly humorous, humble, thoughtful and moving to a man, I was very impressed.
Of course I was not able to meet the 2 defendants who are not eligible for bail. They are political prisoners Herman Bell and Jalil Muntaqim. Both have already served more than 34 years in New York state prisons. This new case charges them again with actions for which they are already serving time.
Former Black Panther Minister of Information and propagandist Emory Douglas is one of many cultural workers that has done a lot to support the SF8. He has created a special poster to raise funds for them, it is intense (and it is the top image in this post). You can buy a silkscreened or offset printed version here and support the struggle.
The Production Unit's The Long Distance Runner
Posted November 19, 2007 by jmacphee in Events
The Celebrate People's History posters are included in a new exhibition organized by The Production Unit called The Long Distance Runner. The show is at Den Frie Udstillingsbygning in Copenhagen, Denmark. If you are in Denmark, definitely check it out, they are deeply influenced by one of my favorite filmmakers, Peter Watkins.
Here's some info on the show from the curators:
The Production Unit is a network of artists from Sweden and Denmark working with narrative experiments, the construction of history and media critique. The exhibition at Den Frie Udstillingsbygning will be the first public presentation of their archive THE The Long Distance Runner, which includes both collaborative and individual projects as well as works by a number of other international artists. The show is part of Den Frie Udstillingsbygning’s focus on self-organisation and collectivism and gives an example of how a group of younger artists works collaboratively across languages and nationalities. The artists of The Production Unit are Petra Bauer, Nanna Debois Buhl, Kajsa Dahlberg, Sara Jordenö, Conny Karlsson, Runo Lagomarsino and Ditte Lyngkjær Pedersen.
The Long Distance Runner is comprised of projects, which in various ways discuss current political and cultural questions as well as historical events. The different parts constitute a series of discussions related to communities and publics with emphasis on questions concerning nationality, identity and language. The material varies in form covering video installations, poster projects, sound-based work, photography and various publications produced by the members of the group and artists as Josh MacPhee, Carlos Motta, Jenny Perlin, Hito Steyerl and Ylva Westerlund.
A central part of the presentation of The Long Distance Runner is Peter Watkins film La Commune from 1999. Through its’ controversial form the film challenges prevailing notions of documentary film experimenting with an unconventional way of discussing the historical event of the Paris Commune in 1871 and the relationship between subject, community and revolutionary action.
The exhibition is open daily from 10am to 5pm Thursday 10am to 9pm
Free guided tours Saturday and Sunday at 3pm
Den Frie Udstillingsbygning
Oslo Plads
DK-2100 København Ø
Tlf. +45 3312 2803
www.denfrie.dk
Art for a Democratic Society
Posted November 13, 2007 by jmacphee in Calls for Art
Excited to see this in my inbox, the crew over at Not My Government are trying to put together a Bay Area project similar to the Street Art Workers:
In collaboration with Not My Government, Art for a Democratic Society announces an open call to all visual artists in the Bay Area interested in creating a social/political poster zine. Our goal is to get ten different artists to make one poster each, with the final product being ten 18"x24" posters, probably printed one color on newsprint.
Once we have the crew of artists together, we will all collectively decide the theme of the poster zine. Possible themes include: health care, war, police brutality, opposing the "new Jim Crow," etc. The process of poster design and printing can be done collectively or individually. A skill-share will be organized to help any or all of the artists involved in the project.
If interested please contact us at:
art4democraticsociety [at] earthlink.net
Please tell us your name, email, phone number, what days and times you would be available to meet, and a little about yourself - your background, interests, skills, etc. Artists at any level of experience are welcome.
SAW in the news
Posted November 11, 2007 by jmacphee in VR Projects
We live in a very, very strange world. The Street Art Workers have had a little blurb about them published in the Oct/Nov issue of the Indian edition of Elle Decor Magazine?!?!?
Check it out:
Breakdown's Nuclear Poster Series
Posted November 9, 2007 by jmacphee in Posters & Prints
Australian activist artists and designers extraordinaire Breakdown Press (Tom Civil & Lou Smith) have just released their 3rd political poster series, this one around nuclear power and waste. I was lucky enough to have one of my designs chosen, along with 16 other artists and designers. Breakdown prints thousands of newsprint booklets of their posters (similar to the Street Art Workers project) and then distroes them world-wide, as well as pastes them up on the streets. Check out Breakdown Press, and the new poster set here.
For those in Melbourne, check out the launch party on Tuesday November 13th at The Artery, 87-89 Moor St Fitzroy, from 6pm-8pm.
Europe Communique #5: Berlin
Posted October 29, 2007 by jmacphee in Art & Politics
Josh and I spent a short 4 days in Berlin. We went to this beautiful city primarily to look at the poster collection at the Papier Tiger Archiv. Papier Tiger is a political archive started in the early 80s, combining collections and papers from several squats and autonomous social movements. It settled in a building in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin. As we walked down the block to find Papier Tiger, there was one building completely covered in ivy and vines, this was obviously our spot. It was nice to visit an archive that originated out of the social/political movement and still kept strong symbiotic ties to it. It's in a few tall cozy rooms with floor to ceiling bookshelves with organizational folders categorized by large topics and sub-categorized down to the very specific (ie- feminism, 80s, Rote Zora group, documents). The staff was helpful and friendly (a nice change) and the place is open to browsing or research.
As I said Josh and I went to look at the posters and they are housed in a stack of flat files, also organized by movements (ie-squatting West Berlin, squatting east Berlin, feminism, int'l. solidarity S. America). A lot of posters and it was nice to be able to pull out a whole stack and dig through them. (Many of the posters have been cataloged in a recent book called: "vorwärts bis zum nieder mit: 30 Jahre Plakate unkontrollierter Bewegungen"). Papier Tiger is open to the public two days a week (Monday & Thursday from 2:30-6 PM, and they have a women's day on Friday. They are located at 25 Cuvrystrasse in Kreuzberg. for more info: http://archivtiger.de/).
On our way to the archive Josh and I wandered by a bookshop, Josh wanted to go in, I was a little hesitant as we both had our giant bags with us and that place looked crowded, thin rows between bookshelves but also giant piles of books all over the place. We did go in to Prometheus Antiquariat (Wrangelstraße 48, also in Kreuzberg), and it was a fortuitous piece of dumb luck, as it specializes in lefty books and also in art books, posters and prints. Generally the books in stacks off the floor weren't for sale and the books on the shelves were, and after an initial bit of skepticism the owner warmed up to us and gave us an amazing tour of collections in his shop. The prices were reasonable and we both walked out with a pile of books that was a fraction of the amount we would have gotten if we didn't have to lug around a bunch of shit in already over-burdened bags (and backs!).
Berlin (I think) is a beautiful city that we had a nice time walking around and exploring. As opposed to other cities we went to it seemed to spend very little on graffiti abatement so there was a ton of stencils and tags with a wide range in quality and interest (as expected). Also some pretty grand permission pieces, building sized murals that were pretty fucked up and psychedelic looking. I was particularly entranced by the sets of courtyards in buildings that had bike shops and children's theaters and playgrounds and gardens. Also the crows in Berlin were different then any other crows I've seen, larger and they had a little gray vest around their wings and heads. Quite handsome!
We went to the offices of image-shift and met founder Sandy Kaltenborn. Image-shift is a graphic design firm that has done work for social movements in Germany, work that is really striking and engaging. Applying in some ways the ideas of revolutionary creativity to graphic work, so the images are engaged are rigorous in ways that a lot of didactic work never is. We spent an afternoon discussing political graphics with Sandy and looking over a lot of the work he's done, and it was enlightening, critical and fun. Josh and I hope to translate some of his writing about political graphics into English and also to interview for a future book project.
We also hung out with two of the folks from Pony Pedro in their beautiful workshop space. Pony Pedro works mostly in silk-screen posters, but figures out ways to make them engage in the city, community and in public space in interventions that are both clever and gentle (sorry for the run-on sentence). 
We looked through a pile of their work including a recent book/poster project where kids from the primarily immigrant neighborhood that they work in went out and took pictures and then Pony Pedro blew up the images and made giant beautiful half-tone posters and a very handsome bound book. This is just the tip of the iceberg with their projects, well worth checking out, so check it: www.pony-pedro.de
The Pony Pedro-ers sent us up to the 'world famous Fleirscherei' which was a store front shop and silk-screen workshop up by where we were staying. Home of the 'No style crew fuckers' this was total art fuck mess of space (in the best way), they had cool prints, t shirts and homemade books for sale (including an awesome black book of berlin street artists, all silk-screened, and the variety and style in it was really cool and diverse). They were nice and let us peek around their extensive and cavernous back rooms and printing areas. Fleischerei: Torstrasse 116 (in the Mitte, right by the Rosenthaler Platz U-bahn stop)
OK, I think that's all from Berlin, more communiques coming soon!
-Icky
The Graphic Imperative
Posted October 23, 2007 by jmacphee in Events
For anyone in Los Angeles or planning to visit over the next couple months, it's well worth a trip to check out this political graphics exhibit:
THE GRAPHIC IMPERATIVE: International Posters for Peace, Social Justice & the Environment, 1965 to 2005
at the Luckman Gallery at Cal State L.A., October 27 – December 15, 2007
I got to see the show at Mass Art in Boston, and there is a lot of really great work that would otherwise be difficult to see, including posters by Tom Ungerer, Klaus Staeck, Ester Hernandez, the Guerilla Girls, Gran Fury, Felix Beltran and Lex Drewinski. I was excited to see all of the material together and think about half of the work is extremely strong. I was disappointed by the lack of context for the work, as much it comes from very specific political contexts but little of that is explained in the exhibition. By stripping the work from it's context, the exhibition sometimes feels simply like a shopping mall for designers to pick up the next hip, "authentic" style. It seems like some of that might be corrected with the discussion series they've planned to go along with the exhibit.
Europe Communique #1: Ungdomshuset
Posted October 18, 2007 by jmacphee in Art & Politics
Icky and I are traveling around Europe and have been meeting with some great people and learning about some amazing art and activist projects. Here's our first missive about a struggle going on in Copenhagen:
While in Copenhagen we learned about a huge struggle going on now around the Ungdomshuset, which was the "youth house," a squatted community center for mostly punk and anarchist kids. As far as we understand, the city sold the building to a religious group who evicted them, which led to days of rioting back in the spring. Since they have torn the whole building down and are now trying to sell the land.
The location of the former squat is a sad blank spot in the landscape now, with both the building and the garden that were in the back completely destroyed and removed. The address of the building was 69 Jagtvej in the Nørrebro neighborhood, and now the entire city (and I mean the ENTIRE city) is covered with graffiti that says "69." The memory of Ungdomshuset is everywhere you look.
The kids came up with a plan to squat another building, and publicly advertised the date, time and place they would do it for months, having huge build up events almost every week, demonstrations of 5000 kids taking over different streets. One of the big things we noticed was that each event was advertised with tons of large scale posters, most full color and amazingly designed.
Finally last week came the announced day and something like 15,000 kids came from all over the country and occupied the building, and just sat down and refused to leave. It took the police hours to drag them out and after they finally did, the chief of police said the police would no longer fight the kids or deal with the kids, and it was a problem for the politicians, and they needed to solve it...so the movement forced a split between the cops and government, which seems pretty interesting...
Here is the Ungdomshushet website in English.
Paper Politics
Posted October 18, 2007 by jmacphee in Events
October 18 – November 17
Crossman Gallery
University of Wisconsin-Whitewater
Opening remarks by exhibiting artist Colin Matthes and reception: October 18th from 5-7 pm
Here's what the gallery has to say about the show:
This exhibit has been organized by Josh MacPhee and will showcase print art that uses themes of social justice and global equity to engage community members in political conversation. The exhibit has been displayed in other venues across the country, but will be augmented by regional artists for the exhibit here. Because of its accessibility and reproducibility, activists have long used print art as a communication tool in struggles for freedom and social equality. The bold graphic qualities made possible by printmaking techniques are used to communicate with and educate broad audiences all over the world.
The hand-printed works in the show speak of matters that are vital to understanding the world today. Some of the subjects include opposition to war, solidarity with struggles around the world, destruction of the environment, corporate control, police brutality, homelessness, and gender inequalities.
Printing Against the Grain
Posted October 9, 2007 by jmacphee in Events
Icky and Josh from Justseeds are heading to Europe, and have some events planned...If you happen to be in Copenhagen:
presentation in YNKB
LØRDAG 13 OKTOBER KL. 15/Saturday October 13, 2007, 3 pm:
Josh MacPhee
PRINTING AGAINST THE GRAIN
Activist printmaking from 1960s to now
In 1960’s, just as Andy Warhol was reinventing silkscreening as a fine art tool, printmaking was also being reinvented elsewhere for very different purposes. Activists, organizers, revolutionaries and political artists were using silkscreening, stencils, and block prints to create cheap, eye catching and easy to distribute political posters.
From French students and workers in 1968 to Chicano community workshops in the late 60’s to Italian and German Autonomists in the 70’s to Act Up in the 80’s, printmaking has taken a sweeping democratic turn in the last 40 years. This presentation shows over a hundred images and follows the political, social and aesthetic development of this activist printmaking.
Mexico's Walls Exclaim: "The revolution of the 21st Century will arise in Oaxaca"
Posted August 29, 2006 by in Posters & Prints
For decades, teachers in Oaxaca, Mexico, have conducted strikes to demand educational reform from the federal and state government. Some of the teacher's demands include living wages, sanitary schools, text books, and more public school facilities. Historically, these strikes have lasted short periods of time and caused minimal or no disruption to the state's economy. The government, except for minor concessions, has been able to ignore the teacher's strikes and their demands
An independent journalist, referred to by the Mexico Solidarity Network as an "unidentified Chicano," reports:
May 15, 2006: It's National Teachers Day in Oaxaca. And the leadership of Oaxaca's 70,000 teachers representing Section 22 of the National Teachers Union declared that if there was no further movement in their negotiations with the government, then the following week "would see a state-wide strike by Oaxaca's school teachers" and that "This one will be different than all the previous strikes"...May 22-24, 2006: 70,000 Oaxaqueño school teachers go on strike. And the first indications that this was to be a "different" kind of strike were immediately apparent in and around the city's historic centre. There, for the first time, the teachers, in the thousands, erected a tent and awning city, occupied day and night in the Zocalo and in the streets surrounding the Zocalo. It's a peaceful occupation of the city's center, but it is also immediately apparent that more teachers are coming into the occupied area on a daily basis. And these teachers are not just from the City of Oaxaca. They're swarming in from the outlying villages and towns in the Valley... (Mexico Solidarity Network Weekly News and Analysis, August 21-27, 2006)
The teacher's strike, their encampments, their independent media infrastructure, and their continuous mass mobilizations (marches reaching up to 300,000 people) have been perceived as a serious threat to Mexico's dominant political and economic order. In the early morning of June 14, 2006, the state attempted to crush the teacher's movement by launching an army of several thousand uniformed and plain clothed state and municipal police in an all out attack against the teachers. Police violently destroyed the encampments and scattered the teachers throughout the city.
Within two days, the teachers released the names and photos of 12 teachers and 3 students who were killed and/or disappeared during the attack. The government denies the charges. To date, it is confirmed that five union members have been shot and killed by police.
Since the June 14th attack, teachers and their sympathizers have taken the city center back. They have rebuilt their encampments, their radio stations, their newsletter circulation, and their barricades. The mass mobilizations continue and, following a police attack on independent radio stations, they have been complimented by another effective tactic, the occupation of main stream media centers. From here, the teachers have promoted their most recent and immediate demand, the resignation of Oaxaca Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz.
Government repression also persists. Police continue to attack and kill members of the APPO, a recently formed network of organizations sympathetic to the teachers strike and dedicated to removing Governor Ortiz from power. On August 22, 2006, police attacked APPO members who were guarding commercial station La Ley 710, killing Lorenzo San Pablo Cervantes, head of the education sector of the state Department of Public Works and an APPO sympathizer.
For more information check out these websites:
narconews.com (English)
Mexico Solidarity Network News and Analysis (English)
Indymedia, Mexico (Español)
Indymedia Mexico, Desalojo Oaxaca (Español)
Centro de Medios Libres, DF (Español)
Indymedia, Chiapas (Español)
To learn more about the historical context of Mexico's teachers movement, come to a special movie screening of Granito de Arena. August 31st, 8pm. Times Up!, 49 East Houston (bet. Mott and Mulberry)
Granito de Arena: Award-winning Seattle filmmaker, Jill Freidberg (This is What Democracy Looks Like, 2000), spent two years in southern Mexico documenting the efforts of over 100,000 teachers, parents, and students fighting to defend the country's public education system from the devastating impacts of economic globalization. Freidberg combines footage of strikes and direct actions with 25 years worth of never-before-seen archival images to deliver a compelling and unsettling story of resistance, repression, commitment, and solidarity.
The pictures in this post were taken by Sasha Hammad. Thank you to her.
New posters at Just Seeds
Posted July 1, 2006 by in Posters & Prints
Josh McPhee's radical art distribution project, Just Seeds has a whole host of new work available, including two new posters by members of Visual Resistance. Josh is a good friend of VR and we're excited to have a few of our own featured on Just Seeds. Big collaborative projects between VR and Just Seeds are in the works!
A different version of Kristine's Solidarity image is also available for $10 from us as a promotional poster for If They Come for You in the Morning, the July 27-28 art show we're planning to support our friend Daniel McGowan.
Here's the full June update from Just Seeds:
Another busy busy month at www.justseeds.orgThis month there has been an explosion of new prints and posters!
I've personally produced two new prints for the site. First a large 5 color stencil entitled Free the Land. It's 23"x35" and on nice thick cardstock. Second, a reworking of an older image, Prisons Don't Work. This one is a two color stencil thats 21"x23".
I've also got a whole pile of other new pieces! First, two new silkscreened posters by the Montreal-based Anti-Capitalist Ass Pirates, Army of Lovers and Beast Infection. In addition, the two older prints of theirs, Out Against the War and Surveillance are back in stock. Pick 'em up before they're gone again!
Kristine Virsis (an associate of the New York City collective Visual Resistance) brings us her Solidarity print, a gorgeous 2 color silkscreen. All money from the sale of this print goes to the Daniel McGowan Defense Campaign to help Daniel, one of the activists caught up in the recent government witch hunt for radical environmental activists. More info can be found about Daniel's case here: http://www.supportdaniel.org
And last, but definitely not least, for the prints, we have a new Estacion Libre poster by Canek, also a member of Visual Resistance. This 3 color silkscreen helps benefit the Estacion Libre organization, which works to bring activists of color on solidarity trips to Chiapas.
We've got one new book this month, finally after months of trying, Lynd Ward's Gods' Man is available. Lynd Ward was an amazing american political printmaker, and is best known for his books without words. Sort of the american equivalent of Frans Masereel, Gods' Man was Ward's first novel without words, originally published in 1929. This is seminal stuff, get this and learn some political printmaking history!
Check all these out at www.justseeds.org/new
A Call for May Day Art
Posted April 19, 2006 by in Posters & Prints
Following the momentum of massive March 25th mobilizations, student walkouts, and April 10th's historic day of action for immigrant rights, comes the call for El Gran Paro Americano (The Great American Boycott). May 1st is a day for global action against upcoming anti-immigrant legislation and in favor of universal amnesty. Across the country, a broad network of immigrant rights groups, labor unions, workers associations, student groups, and collectives of all sorts have announced calls for a general strike, boycott, no sales or purchases, walkouts, marches, and actions in financial centers and at anti-immigrant corporations throughout the country. Groups throughout Latin America, such as Mujeres Creando and La Otra Campaña, have called for a boycott of all American products as well as actions in solidarity with the North American immigrants movement. Here is a selection from a call by a California based organization, ActionLA.org
On May 1, we are calling No Work, No School, No Sales, and No Buying, and also to have rallies around symbols of economic trade in your areas (stock exchanges, anti-immigrant corporations, etc.) to protest the anti-immigrant movements across the country.
We believe that increased enforcement is a step in the wrong direction and will only serve to facilitate more tragedies along the Mexican-U.S. border in terms of deaths and family separation. We will settle for nothing less than full amnesty and dignity for the millions of undocumented workers presently in the U.S.
Visual Resistance would like to offer our own call. A call for artwork to promote and support the actions of May 1st. We welcome art by organizations, collectives, or individuals. Whether you are a professional graphic designer, a fine artist, or just someone with a lot of heart and passion that needs expressing, please, SEND US YOUR ART! We will be posting submissions for free download on a separate and more permanent page. Our hope is that this archive of imagery will help contribute to an aesthetic expression of ideas and actions to stop government aggression against immigrant communities.
The graphic above, by schock at riseup d0t net
El Otro Lado: People of Color in the U.S, the Zapatista Movement and Collective Struggles
Posted April 13, 2006 by in Posters & Prints
In 1994, the dawn of the North American Free Trade Agreement, indigenous peasants in Chiapas, Mexico took the world by storm by rising up in revolution. The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional) emerged from the mountains and jungles to say NO to corporate globalization, neo-liberal colonialism, and the exploitation of indigenous people, women, the poor, and the oppressed. In 12 years, the EZLN has become a major voice in the international struggle against capitalism and neo-liberalism, and an inspiration and hope to struggles throughout the world.
Estacion Libre, a US based collective of People of Color, has been building with the Zapatista movement for over eight years. Through delegations to Zapatista communities, and a continued presence of a peoples space in Chiapas, hundreds of U.S. based community activists andorganizers from communities of color have visited, shared with, and learned from the Zapatista movement. These lessons are brought home - back to community struggles against gentrification, police brutality, incarceration, racism, sexism, homophobia, and economic exploition. By sharing tactics and dialogues with the Zapatistas, we strive to create sustainability throughout communities of resistance here in the U.S., with hopes that we can defeat the monster of capitalism and corporate globalization here, in the brain of the beast.
General Program
- Discussion on the Liberation Struggles of People of Color and intersections with the Zapatista Movement (Ashanti Alston)
- Reflections on the Zapatista Movement, the Sixth Declaration, and What Solidarity Means for US Estacion Libre (Mixpe, Olmeca, etc.)
- Arts and Activism workshops (Spiritchild, Olmeca, Mixpe, etc.)
- Performance by Mental Notes and Olmeca
Tour Calendar
Tuesday, April 18th: Ashanti at Rethinking Solidarity, NYC, Brecht Forum, 7:30pm.
Thursday, April 20th: UMASS, Amherst.
Saturday, April 22nd: Philadelphia, LAVA (4134 Lancaster Ave.), 12 noon.
Saturday, April 22nd: Estacion Libre fundraiser in East Harlem, 9:30 pm.
Monday, April 24th: Smith College. Workshops at noon and 4pm. Performance at night.
Wednesday, April 26th: Rethinking Solidarity, NYC, Blue Stockings Bookstore, 7pm.
Thursday, April 27th: Brown University, Third World Center, Informal Lounge (68 Brown St.), 9pm -12am.
The first image above was created by Gina Szeto. The second image was created by Canek Pena-Vargas. Both are available to download and edit as needed to promote the tour.
Bios for Event Participants:
Ashanti
Ashanti Alston has devoted his life to struggling against racism and
oppression, and to building and participating in multigenerational,
multiracial, grassroots movements of resistance. Born in Plainfield, NJ in
1954, Ashanti saw and experienced what most black youth did then and still
see today: poor-quality housing, unemployment and lack of job
opportunities, and schools that squelched students desire to learn. He
became politicized at an early age and was one of the founding members of
the Plainfield, NJ chapter of the Black Panther Party. He was also a
member of the Black Liberation Army.
Through intensive studying with the Panthers, Ashanti began a career in
self-teaching, popular education, and grassroots organizing through direct
engagement with people about their experiences. He has continued this work
during the 12 years he spent as a political prisoner, and living in
Brooklyn in the years since his release. Through published writing, formal
teaching jobs, participation in conferences and lectures, and membership
in grassroots organizations, Ashanti has developed his scholarship and
shared his critical analysis with young and old organizers, activists, and
students around the country. He has spoken throughout North America on the
past, present, and future of liberation struggles and the role of
community.
Ashanti has served as the Northeast Regional Coordinator for Critical
Resistance, a national organization working for the abolition of the
prison-industrial complex. Currently, Ashanti is a member of Estacion
Libre, a National people of color collective inspired by and in dialogue
with the Zapatista movement of Chiapas Mexico. Ashanti is also a board
member for the Institute for Anarchist Studies. He authors the zine
Anarchist Panther.
Jo Anna Mixpe Ley
Poet, storyteller, popular educator, artist, dancer, spiritual advisor to
the stars, and revolutionary warrior Mixpe has been a lecturer in
Chican@ Studies at UCLA, and a teacher of culturally empowering,
politically inspiring words and movements to young people throughout Los
Angeles and the Western Hemisphere. She is currently one of the
co-coordinators for Estacion Libre in Chiapas Mexico - whose objective is
to open a space of dialogue between people of color struggles in the U.S.
and the Zapatista communities.
In her time in Chiapas, Mixpe has covered the political situation through
written and radio commentary, documenting activities of the military and
policing during the Red Alert. She has built relationships with the
autonomous Zapatista communities and shared art, music, movement, and
struggles. Recently, Mixpe has served as a support for the Otra Campana of
the Zapatista movement, and has coordinated the first delegation between
U.S. based Women of Color activists and the revolutionary women of the
Zapatista movement.
Through her work, she struggles for continued solidarity with autonomous
communities, collectives, and minds. Her poetry and prose engages
narratives and oral histories of borders, the colonization and liberation
of bodies, always connected to the experiences of her communities and her
families. She can breakdown the intersection of racism, classism, sexism
and homophobia inside and outside of movements, without breaking you in
the process.
Olmeca
Artist, teacher, organizer, vagabond, traveler, and revolutionary - Olmeca
has been the co-coordinator of Estacion Libre in Chiapas, Mexico since May
2005. During his time in Chiapas, Olmeca worked with Zapatista communities
reporting on military and police incursions during the summer 2005 Red
Alert, teaching arts and skill sharing workshops, sharing the struggles
of People of Color in the US with Zapatista communities, and supporting
and observing the discussions around the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon
Jungle and the Otra Campana of the EZLN.
In the occupied territory of the United States, Olmeca is a driving force
in the fusion of music and community organizing. He worked to establish
APC the Autonomous Peoples Collective a collective of community
organizers. Artists, and musicians in East LA, and has engaged with
countless grassroots struggles for community liberation through his voice
and his music, including the Coalition of Imokalee Workers.
Olmeca is a 7-year veteran in the Los Angeles music scene. Olmeca's unique
lyrical style, bilingual rapping skills and unique song writing, has
gained the respect of his peers. He has rocked the mic with the legends of
the LA underground Hip-Hop scene (Freestyle Fellowship, Abstract Rude and
Living Legends) as well as the greats from the Latin Alternative scene,
(Roco from Maldita Vecindad, Fidel Nadal and others).
His redefining and all encompassing song writing skills contain a focused
and undaunted political and cultural message. This calls for the decoding
of genres in music and, with that, the media and the system all together.
Unwilling to separate art with politics, Olmeca has contributed to many
grassroots movements as a participant, organizer and artist. Because of
this, his music has come to be known as, musica de los pobres or peoples
music. Olmeca calls for the niñ@s de la tierra to not only become
critical of
the system, but also to begin the process of deconstruction through
reflection and action.
His album, Semillas Rebeldes will be released in March 2006 by Nomadic
Sound System.
Spiritchild
Spiritchild, a member of Escation Libre and the Movement in Motion Artists
and Activists Collective was born in Harlem and raised in The Bronx. He is
a founder of Mental Notes - a Hip-Hop Jam Band. Mental Notes has gained a
reputation as a new innovative sound throughout the New York City Night
Club Scene and has performed at such legendary venues as CBGBs, Knitting
Factory and Nuyorican Poets Café. For Spiritchild, Mental Notes is not
just a Hip-Hop Jam band that creates music, it is an outlet for political
expression.
During the Anti-War Movement that was re-ignited after September 11, 2001,
Spiritchild collaborated with artists, activists, and students to
establish Movement In Motion Arts Collective - a creative drive in the
struggle for peace, justice and social awareness. In the name of
information, Movement in Motion offers energy and rhythm to the global
peace movement. Prompted by the present threat to civil liberties, they
formulate creative spaces in NYC to share alternative news and information
and by supporting other networks of informed activists. They fight for our
constitutional right to rally and protest. Most importantly, they come out
to help like-minded people dance. Members of Movement in Motion have
traveled to Venezuela, India, Palestine, Mexico, and South Africa to build
music and movement with struggles around the globe.
Spiritchild has also been active in exposing and educating the youth
through Hip-Hop. As a youth educator, Spirichild has worked with kids
throughout New York, teaching them the fundamentals of music, writing and
how to Rap.
Borf Endorses Grad-Student Worker Union!
Posted November 25, 2005 by in Posters & Prints
Well, maybe not exactly. But he (borf) should!
Graduate student workers at NYU have been on strike for two weeks now. In 2002, NYU Graduate Assistants (TA's and RA's) were first in the nation to secure their right to unionize at a private university. Since then, Bush appointees to the National Labor Relations Board have reversed their decision to acknowledge grad-student workers' right to unionize. NYU is no longer obligated to recognize their union. Since the grad-student worker contract expired in August, NYU administrators have capitalized on this opportunity by spending thousands upon thousands of dollars to crush the three year old union.
Without a grad-student worker union, NYU's administration will have a blank check to implement unilateral decisions that affect TA and RA working conditions and undergraduate learning conditions whenever they want. Class sizes can increase, wages can decrease and health care can be cut without the university being held accountable to any kind of democratic process. This will solidify an already wide spread corporate model in universities around the country. For more information, check out this indepth analysis offered by proffessor Alan Sokal.
Graduate and undergraduate students are pissed and have taken their frustrations to the street. The poster above was designed by undergraduate photo students. It appropriates and subverts one of NYU's many advertising designs. The poster encourages students to call NYU President Sexton to demand he negotiate with the union now.
Here is another sticker, by a grad-student worker group called Nerds on Strike!
For more pictures visit NYU inc.'s photo archive.
For up to date information about the grad-student worker strike visit www.nyuinc.org
Benefit poster for Katrina victims
Posted September 12, 2005 by in Posters & Prints
From the Northland Poster Collective:
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina we have produced a poster (by Northland artist Ricardo Levins Morales) that seeks to capture the sadness and the anger that this moment calls forth. the poster will benefit relief efforts by way of the Southern Partners Fund. Based in Atlanta, the fund has relationships with grassroots groups throughout the region and is governed democratically. They are able to respond to needs as they arise in the full range of affected communities. Please take a look at this image and pass along word of it to others who may appreciate it.
Nothland is a great resource for posters and other political art, see Ricardo Levins Morales' Katrina memorial poster here. Remember too that you can contribute directly to grassroots organizations doing on-the-ground work with hurricane victimes here.
Call for Posters on Prison-Industrial Complex
Posted July 12, 2005 by in Posters & Prints
Brandon Bauer sent us a call from the Center for the Study of Political Graphics for poster art related to the prison-industrial complex. The CPSG is a great institution that documents and supports contemporary political artists and the exhibition they're planning sounds wonderful.
Check out the text of the call below, or download a PDF version here. And don't forget the other two great projects that are still seeking submissions: Street Art Workers and Josh MacPhee's Reproduce and Revolt!.
WANTED: Posters on the Prison Industrial ComplexThe Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG) will premiere an exhibition on the Prison Industrial Complex at the Watts Towers Art Center, Spring 2006. CSPG is asking artists, organizations and activists for poster donations to help develop this exhibition.
We also are looking for artists to make posters for organizations doing prison work. The United States has the largest prison population in the world—over two million inmates. In California, 32 prisons house over 160,000 men and women at an annual cost of $6 billion. Since the 1970s, the rate of most serious crimes has dropped or remained stagnant, yet prisons have been filled at double capacity. People of color, the poor, the illiterate, the mentally ill, youth, and women are the primary occupants. One in three black men between the ages of twenty and twenty-nine will spend time in prison or jail. The majority of those entering prison are convicted on non-violent drug charges.
Under the California three-strikes laws, many prisoners are serving life sentences for petty theft convictions. In California, 80% of incoming prisoners are returning on parole violations. The number of women in U.S. prisons multiplied more than seven times between 1980 and 2003, from 13,400 to over 100,000. Valley State Prison for Women, in Chowchilla, California, holds over 3500 women—twice its capacity—and is the largest women’s prison in the world. This phenomenal growth is due to mandatory drug sentencing laws, conspiracy provisions, a dysfunctional parole system, inadequate legal representation, and huge profits made by the multinational corporations servicing the prisons.
The posters in CSPG’s prison exhibition will cover many of the critical issues surrounding this system of mass incarceration including: the death penalty, Three Strikes, racism, women’s right to self defense, access to education and health care, sweatshop labor, divestment, privatization,
torture, and re-entry into the community.
Posters should be submitted by January 30, 2006. Criteria for posters CSPG collects: 1). It must be produced in multiples such as silkscreen, offset, stencil, litho, digital output etc. 2). The poster must have overt political content. If you would like to create a poster for an organization doing prison work or to donate posters, please contact:
Center fo rthe Study of Political Graphics
8124 West Third Street, Suite 211
Los Angeles, CA
90048-4039
tel: 323.653.4662
fax: 323.653.6991
email: cspg@politicalgraphics.org
www.politicalgraphics.org
With more than 50,000 posters, the Center for the Study of Political Graphics has the largest collection of Post World War II graphics in the U.S. Through traveling exhibitions, online photo albums, internships, and volunteer opportunities CSPG actively shares this valuable resource with a broader public. CSPG is reclaiming the power of art to educate, agitate and inspire action.
Image at top from the Street Art Workers' 2002 campaign, Art vs. Prisons.
Street Art Workers: Call for Art
Posted June 14, 2005 by in Posters & Prints
We're kickin' off a new project with the Street Art Workers (SAW), a national collective of printmakers, stencil artists, graffiti writers and designers who use the streets for art and activism. The previous poster project themes were entitled, Whose Media?, Utopia / Dystopia, and Art vs. Prisons.
The call for this year's project is now up at streetartworkers.org/call:
SAW wants to look at how globalization has affected our lands and how people are fighting back. How has it affected land in the cities — especially housing? How has globalization impacted land and workers in the countryside with farming, mining, drilling, logging and other resource extraction? What are the connections between land struggles in the global south, indigenous nations and the industrialized north? What are some of the connections between the landless peasants movement of Brazil and the squatter movements of Europe and North America? What links together the struggle against dams in India, hydroelectric projects Canada and water privatization in Latin America and South Africa? How are farmers and campesinos resisting industrial agriculture, like biotechnology and GMOs (genetically modified foods), in the U.S., Mexico and India? What organizing strategies have worked and hich ones have failed?These questions are a starting point. We want to see more questions from you and some hard-hitting answers. We want powerful ideas and inspirational art that we can broadcast directly to the streets in 2005.We want posters that build connections between international struggles and actual organized projects with high profile publicity.
We especially want to see multilingual submissions and work from the perspective of women, Third World communities and indigenous/First Nations. We suggest that artists collaborate with grassroots, social change organizations of their choosing to make posters. We want posters that are both imaginative and relevant to “on the ground” organizing around issues of land, housing and globalization. Working with an organization is not required, but it is encouraged.
The deadline is September 1, 2005 --- designs will be curated and printed in Winter 2005-6 and wheatpasted in Spring 2006. Full details on the submission process and specs for designs are available here. For more information, visit streetartworkers.org or email streetartworkers[at]gmail.com.
Stencilists take on Wal-Mart
Posted June 2, 2005 by in Posters & Prints
A group of activists hit Fayetteville, Arkansas with stencils, spraypaint, and posters to protest Wal-Mart's annual shareholders' meeting. The good news is that the posters look great, and the action made the local news. The bad news... they got caught:
Police said five men and one woman used glue early Wednesday to stick posters that criticized Wal-Mart on several campus buildings. One of the posters said "Everyday Low Wages," and the other said "I Will Eat Your Town and Smile."Officers said the group also spray-painted anti-Wal-Mart slogans on campus. University police spokesman Gary Crain said he is used to seeing small problems in the past during the annual Wal-Mart shareholders meeting, as well as and during other events on campus.
An account from one of the arrested is on up on Austin Indymedia:
At approximately 4 in the morning, 2 nights before the Wal Mart Shareholders Convention, some associates and I were working on an art project around Bud Walton Arena, site of the upcoming Walmart Orgy. We were stopped by some “Walmart-Loss-Prevention Officers” and UAPD, who proceeded to question us about our activities, which might have included some wheatpasting and graffitti in Walmart territory....As the UAPD made clear to me and my comrades, “if you are ever on the UA again, especially when Walmart is here, we will take you immediately to jail.” What good neighbors...Always.
Protests against Wal-Mart's shareholders' meeting are being coordinated by Against the Wal Coalition. Wal-Mart's labor practices --- notably sexual discrimination, union busting, and low wages --- and it's creeping threat to local communities are well documented.
See the news report about the action here. Wal-Mart Watch is the best place to start getting information on Wal-Mart; perhaps the most exciting activist project I found through their resources page is the Los Angeles Superstore Ordinance, and there are many more.
Great job to the people who made the posters --- next time, don't get caught!
New Celebrate People's History Posters
Posted April 21, 2005 by in Posters & Prints
4 new People's History Posters have been created by artists Aprille, Brandon Bauer, Beith Pucinella, and Swoon. Don't just hang them on your walls at home. If you're feeling motivated, make photocopies and put them up in public places. They look amazing lined up on construction walls.
The image of the little boy in Swoon's cochabamba poster can also be found near the El Puente murals. Check it out here.
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)
New Celebrate People's History posters
Posted March 2, 2005 by in Posters & Prints
Josh MacPhee's radical distro site, JustSeeds.org recently got a new look, and more importantly, new stuff. Three new posters from the consistently wonderful Celebrate People's History posters are included in the update:
The Celebrate People’s History poster series is an on-going project producing posters that focus around important moments in “people’s history.” These are events, groups, and individuals that we should celebrate because of their importance in the struggle for social justice and freedom, but are instead buried or erased by dominant history. Posters celebrate important acts of resistance, those who fought tirelessly for justice and truth, and the days on which we can claim victories for the forces of freedom. In the past 7 years over two dozen posters have been produced on a variety of subjects, from the Battle of Homestead to Fred Hampton, Mujeres Libres to Jane, an underground abortion collective.These posters have been and will continue to be posted publicly (i.e. wheatpasted on the street, put up in peoples’ home and storefront windows, and used in classrooms) in an attempt to help generate a discussion about our radical past, a discussion that is vital in preparing us to create a radical future. I have also been using this project to create a loose network of artists interested in creating radical public art and showcasing the work of lesser known artists that want to create art that is functional, carries a social message, and doesn’t get buried at the bottom of the heap of the capitalist “art world.”
Check out the new site and read more about CPH here. You can also always pick up copies of the posters at Bluestockings bookstore in the L.E.S.
Coke Kills!
Posted February 15, 2005 by in Posters & Prints
Dont Buy Coke! The largest Coca Cola union in Colombia has called for an international campaign against Coke to stop its violence against workers, which has included a half-dozen murders at one plant alone in the mid-1990’s. Reports of these crimes sparked a historic lawsuit against the Coca Cola Company and their Colombian bottler by the International Labor Rights Fund and the United Steelworkers of America on behalf of the Colombian union.
Coca-Cola has formally stated that the “Company does not anticipate supporting in any way any form of ‘independent fact-finding delegation to Colombia,’” and has even refused a preliminary meeting with the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), an objective monitoring group created by college and university administrations, students and labor rights experts.
There is also an intense struggle being faught by people in India against the Coca-Cola Company.
An independent media website called Inida Resource Center charges that Coca-Cola is guilty of:
- Causing Severe Water Shortages for Communities Across India
- Polluting Groundwater and Soil Around its Bottling Facilities
- Distributing its Toxic Waste as "Fertilizer" to Farmers
- Selling Drinks with Extremely High Levels of Pesticides
I downloaded the above photo from the Indian Resource Center photo page. The photo features anti-Coke demonstrators who clashed with police in Mehdiganj, India.
Currently, there are many local students working to get coke banned from their campuses and to get their school administrations to endorse an investigation by the WRC into the allegations of violence in Columbia.
Here are some visual resources (poster and flyer designs) that have been used to rally oposition against Coke. If you want to start organizing around this issue, or if you already have, please feel free to download these images or to send us images you've made yourself.
I got most of these images from www.cokewatch.org and www.killercoke.org. These websites are also a great way to find out updates on the anti-Coke campaign.
Inauguration posters & links
Posted January 18, 2005 by in Posters & Prints
The cruel absurdity of Bush's November triumph will be hitting overdrive this Thursday. With military-grade security preparations and a series of celebrations with decidedly Orwellian themes, it's seems appropriate that the two artists whose posters we feature here are both experts in dark humor.
The first set of posters are not specifically related to the inauguration, but they might as well be. The good folks at Un Mundo Feliz / A Happy World sent these to us a while back:
The second set of posters is from D.C.-based Mike Flugennock:
For more information on counterinaugural protests, check out counter-inaugural.org, Turn Your Back On Bush, and Anarchist Resistance. For breaking news during the inauguration, keep your eye on DC Indymedia.
Previous entries on counterinaugural posters, see here and here.
Toxic World Posters, by Mayimbe
Posted December 21, 2004 by in Posters & Prints
"Think globally, act locally. With this mantra in mind and living in a city that's mostly supported by resources from every other corner of the world, I find it difficult to live well, work well, and help bring justice. As if those things weren't enough, add to this a dependacy on money to survive. Sometimes the conflicts come to a head and make absurd moments like these. But we all gotta start somewhere..."
-mayimbe-
Click thumbnails for 8.5x11 posters in JPG format.
Counter-inaugural Poster
Posted December 19, 2004 by in Posters & Prints
Here is a poster that might come in handy for organizing against the inauguration.
This poster was featured in the last issue of the Radical Anarchist Tabloid (RAT), a great new publication. The RAT is free and available at radical bookstores, info-shops and community centers around the city.
If you are interested in learning more about protests, actions and events against the inauguration, a good place to start is www.counter-inaugural.org
Check out the New York Rat's site to download their current issue.
Counterinaugural
Posted December 8, 2004 by in Posters & Prints
Here are some graphics for the counter inaugural. Soy un pocho sin verguenza, notorious for messing up Spanish translations. If you find any mistakes in the bilingual flyer, please let me know and I'll fix it.
Peace
-Canek
New Poster from Nicole Schulman
Posted November 10, 2004 by in Posters & Prints
"In my post-election rage I cranked out one piece.... You're welcome to use it on the website, wheat pasting etc. There will be more to come...
In solidarity,
Click on the image for an 11x17 poster in PDF format.
Posters by Beta Minus 001
Posted November 9, 2004 by in Posters & Prints
"Beta Minus 0001 is an enemy of the state and the status quo. Through his art he attacks the time honored American traditions of nationalism, fascism, militarism, consumerism, sexism, racism and apathy."
Click on the images for 8.5 x 11 posters in jpg format.
