Historical accounts of HIV/AIDS in the UK seldom look beyond the "official" government public campaigns or the work of larger London-based organisations. Nor have the graphic output and communication strategies employed by diverse community groups, activists, and small charities during the eighties and nineties been analysed extensively. Article in On curating, Issue 42: WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT AIDS COULD FILL A MUSEUM: Curatorial ethics and the ongoing epidemic in the 21st Century. Published online and in print format. This issue focuses on HIV, culture and curation, edited by scholar and organizer Theodore (ted) Kerr. The print and online issue features over 40 contributions—including essays, conversations, visual projects, reprints, and personal reflections—from artists, activists, academics, and writers from around the world, exploring AIDS-related culture in the 21st century, through four themes: forgetting, seeing, collecting, and making, all of which reflect on both the historical turn in contemporary AIDS cultural production, and the ongoing need to keep an eye on the present.
The story of AIDS in the UK through an examination of the health promotion materials designed to combat it. From grass-roots flyers to government funded public messages, how did visual metaphors, innovative formats and advertising copy reflect prevailing social attitudes and medical knowledge? Talk given as part of series of events related to the exhibition, HIV/AIDS: Controlling and Eradicating A Modern Epidemic.
This article analyses the imagery used in 6 advertising case studies that represent gay men's relationships; from the Health Education Authority, a pharmaceutical company and gay organisations. What makes an image 'convincing'? How can this affect the way that the health promotion messages are received? Commissioned for The Everyday Experiment (sampling the design, the queer and the politics in the everyday) Issue 1: Relationships, Andrew Slatter (editor/publisher) London 2010.
Women's Design + Research Unit poster contribution to 'Art of Protest' exhibition, 8–19 January 2018, the Platform Gallery, Kingston School of Art, in association with the Alternative Art School. Curated by Dr Cathy Gale.
In the run-up to International Women's Day 2014, the Women's Design + Research Unit (WD+RU, UK) and Women of Graphic Design (WoGD, USA) ran a unique Twitter collaboration. Taking the year's theme 'inspiring change', we set ourselves a 48-hour Twitter challenge. Our goal was to help us better understand some of the very real challenges women face in graphic design and equally, to celebrate women who have inspired change; for example, through projects, teaching or mentoring. We asked our friends, colleagues, as well as the broader design community to help us by reTweeting but also by actively participating in our Twitter conversations. We presented our findings and responses at the Design Culture Salon: 'What are the gender politics of contemporary design practice?' (7 March 2014, 7:00 - 8:30pm, V&A, London) Further details here: http://designculturesalon.org/ The Twitter conversation was run from 4-5 March by @WomensDesign and @wofgd using the hashtags: #womensday #graphicdesign
Organised in collaboration with Ruth Collingwood and Monica Sajeva from the LCC Library. To mark the 50th anniversary of '1968', a year of global protest and unrest, the Design Activism Research Hub (DARH) is staging an exhibition/intervention in the LCC Library with related events for UAL students and staff during the month of May. (See below for details and dates.) 1968 was the year that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and of riots in over a hundred US cities. It was the year that two winning US athletes made a silent protest at the Mexico Olympics medal ceremony with the 'black power' salute, an image that ricocheted around the world. It was the year that Soviet Russian troops invaded Czechoslovakia bringing an end to the 'Prague Spring' as well as of the 'Tet Offensive' which seriously undermined the US's ill fated and barbarous war in Vietnam. And of course it was the year of the 'events of May' – the extraordinary student and worker uprisings in France — with their proliferation of graffiti and radical posters produced in occupied art school studios (Atelier Populaire). It is often these that are the focus for anniversaries of 1968, especially in the context of visual communication. However the focus of the DARH exhibit is London. It was a time of a growing radical ferment in this city too, ranging from protests about the Vietnam War and Britain's complicity with apartheid regimes in Southern Africa, to myriad forms of activism around urgent home grown issues: housing, racism and workers struggles. And there was student revolt in London too with occupations at LSE, Croydon and Hornsey School of Art, as well as the formation of 'revolutionary' student organisations and 'anti-universities'. London's black power movement was gathering ground with new groups, publications and protests. 1968 was also the year of the Conservative MP Enoch Powell's infamous 'Rivers of Blood' speech, which gave succor to the already endemic racism in Britain — and ever more reason to organise against it. (The Labour Government responded to Powell's sentiments with Commonwealth Immigration Act 1968). The London Squatters Campaign was born in 1968, the harbinger of a movement that would grow exponentially in the 1970s. Tenant activism was on the rise with huge marches and rent strikes. (1968 was also year of the Ronan Point collapse, a newly built social housing tower block in Newham). Localism became one of the new radicalisms. 1968 was just one year after homosexuality had been 'decriminalized', and the slow respectable campaigning for legal rights would soon be challenged by the more radical analysis and approach of the Gay Liberation Front. A Women's Liberation Movement was on the brink of emergence. This swell of diverse activism, only hinted at above, generated numerous pamphlets, leaflets, newssheets and posters, produced by whatever means available: duplicators, offset litho, screen printing and which contributed to the diverse alternative radical culture of the time. It was the year that the London listings magazine Time Out magazine started (which had a dedicated section for 'agitation') as well as when the radical newspaper Black Dwarf was launched. New radical and community activist printing shops were set up, such as Poster Workshop in Camden Town and Notting Hill Press in west London. Agit-Prop was formed, a radical information service which also did street theatre as the Agit-Prop Street Players. There were activist film groups in London too, such as Cinema Action, Amber and the Angry Arts Society (See below for details of 68 film night: Agitate-Propagate-Reel!). Print culture though was especially crucial to the dissemination of information, arguments and rallying cries. Recall it was pre internet, social media, and the wide spread availability of video recorders! The exhibition will display a range of this material including pamphlets, magazines, books and newspapers loaned from Bishopsgate Archives, the Feminist Library and from DARH members own collections. These will be shown in the glass display cases on the library bridge. Copies of some of these items as well as more contemporary materials will be available for browsing in the central area in front of the library reception desk. Library staff will be showing a selection of related stock items and DARH have created a series of 'shelf interventions' to highlight further sources within the library. The exhibition coincides with the release of the first book about the above mentioned Poster Workshop who operated between 1968-71. Their posters provide a near index of social and political struggles of the period and we will be displaying some reproductions, alongside other posters produced in a workshop for students led by members of the Propagate Collective. This display will be along the main right wall as you enter the library. (Here we will also show one of Cinema Action's films, GEC). To celebrate the publication of Poster Workshop's book, we are hosting a 'mini' launch and Q&A with ex-members for LCC and UAL staff and students in the library. Copies of the book will be on sale at the event. Agitate-Propagate-68! Exhibition Opening and Poster Workshop, 1968-71 Book Launch Thursday 3 May 2018, LCC library, 5.30 – 7.30pm 5.30pm: Exhibition opening and tour 6pm: Poster Workshop book launch and Q&A (The exhibition runs from 1 to 31 May 2018) Agitate-Propagate-Reel! Thursday 24 May, MLG06A, LCC, 6 – 8pm 1968 themed film night co-organised by Screen School PhD candidate Mario Hamad, more information to follow but it is promised to include a screening of Cinétracts (1968) on a 16mm film projector. STUDENT WORKSHOPS: Agitate-Propagate-Print! Wednesday 2 May This is a limited number sign-up screen-printing poster workshop for students on BA/MA Graphics and Illustration courses (now full). The workshop will be run by members of Propagate Collective, with ex-members of Poster Workshop joining in. It will take inspiration from the political visuals and techniques of the late 1960s ad-hoc protest poster making that spread across many parts of the globe at the time, notably in France in the Atelier Populaires set up in occupied art school studios, but also in the Camden basement of the above mentioned Poster Workshop. The most successful posters produced will form part of the display in the library. This workshop is supported by a SEEF Award. Agitate-Propagate-Read! Tuesday 22 May 2.00-3.30pm Ruth Collingwood and Monica Sajevo from the LCC library team will be running a student workshop with publications from the exhibition and the library's extensive zine collection. Further information to follow.
Exhibition at LCC as part of the London Design Festival Alternative do-it-yourself (DIY) publishing in the UK is often assumed to have started with photocopiers and punks. However, counterculture and grassroots movements from the mid-1960s onwards generated an explosion of alternative 'not for profit' print and publications, frequently produced by amateurs using basic technologies. Much of this was consciously infused with notions of autonomy and anti-specialism. The mid-60s were a contradictory period of political, creative and social turbulence, a moment when radical ideas were in ferment and hopes for change were high. The experimental and creative energies generated by the counterculture stimulated a proliferation of DIY or self-sufficient activity that spread across the expanding field of the alternative left: from 'happenings' to free schools and communes. Within the pages of the underground/alternative press there is clear evidence of how DIY or 'self-help' activities provided a significant component of countercultural sensibilities and practice. 'How To' articles, sharing and 'demystifying' uncommon knowledge, were a regular feature, and all manner of self-help handbooks could be obtained by mail order or found in alternative bookshops; how to build things, grow things, fix things, take or make drugs, meditate, print and squat. There were also articles and handbooks about how to navigate the unavoidable parts of 'the system', notably the law and the welfare state. It was not just that people could do it for themselves, where possible outside of 'the system' of experts and institutions, but that others could also do it to build 'the alternative society'. At the same time we find in the pages of the underground press biting satire and critique of capitalism, militarism and consumerism. The four publications shown here offer a glimpse into this new upsurge of left voices and causes of protest, specifically the feminist movement, the anti-war and nuclear disarmament movement, as well as radical art and alternative living. This mini-exhibition will be followed by a larger exhibition in 2018, which marks the 50th anniversary of 1968, the year that was the highpoint of 60s era youthful revolt in many parts of the world. Captions: Shrew – August / September issue, Volume 5 No.3 1973 Shrew was the magazine of the Women's Liberation Workshop, a collectivist federation made up of smaller autonomous local women's liberation groups. Many were 'consciousness-raising' groups, with their own character, agendas and affiliations. Shrew ran regularly between 1969 and 1974, had a circulation of about 5,000 and sold very cheaply either by mail order or in women's centres and sympathetic bookshops. Each issue of the magazine was produced by a different local or special interest group that had total freedom in all aspects; content, layout, images and overall design. There was a Shrew collective of representatives committed to helping with the production. As the production of each issue was rotated, the contents and aesthetics of the magazine were incredibly diverse. Shrew represented the sense of empowerment associated by feminists in 'doing it for themselves'. From the collection of The Feminist Library (www.feministlibrary.co.uk). —————————- Hapt – Issues 26 & 27, 1970 Started by a small collective connected to the English Diggers Hapt was a DIY hand-printed counter-culture magazine. Produced between December 1967 and May 1971, running for 27 issues, Hapt was legal-sized, stencil duplicated, with silk-screened covers and centrespread, printed on rough paper in editions of up to 400. It was distributed for free by post, at alternative bookshops and in radical spaces. The UK edition was written and co-ordinated by a small team of seven, initially based in London before later moving to set up communes in Bournemouth and Stroud. There were sister Hapt communes in Holland, Argentina, Belgium and Switzerland. Hapt promoted a DIY culture synonymous with their commune lifestyle, encouraging writing from their readership and sharing knowledge about their means of production through a comprehensive description of the screen print making process. —————————- Resistance – Committee of 100 bulletin – Vol 3 No.4 Apr & 9 Dec 1966 & Vol 4. No 2 June 1967 In 1960, in response to the increasing sense of frustration over the limitations of tactics used by such groups as the Campaign Against Nuclear Disarmament, anti-war activists led by Bertrand Russell launched the Committee of 100. This more militant organisation sought to step up resistance to the UK government policy on weapons of mass destruction by calling for and engaging in mass non-violent resistance and civil disobedience, such as large sit-down demonstrations. In 1962 the group re-launched itself on a decentralised basis, made up by 13 regional Committees organising actions in London and at military bases across the country. Resistance was a bulletin published by the Resistance Working Group in Birmingham and London. It provided information and updates about the movement to the Committee's membership and other related anti-war groups. —————————- King Mob Echo – Issue 1, April 1968. King Mob emerged out of a coming together of members of the English section of the Situationist International and a network of London based cultural radicals in 1968. It went on to become a short-lived but influential radical group that engaged in subversive actions often involving carnivalesque, Dada-esque costumes and humour, such as infiltrating Selfridges at Christmas time dressed up as Santa, handing out the store's toys as 'presents' to children, which resulted in the spectacle of store employees and police desperately snatching toys out of crying children's hands. The group announced their actions through hand-distributed leaflets and word of mouth and between 1968 and 1970 published 5 issues (issue 4 was never published) of King Mob, a glued-together magazine. The first issue, King Mob Echo, included a translation of part of Raoul Vaneigem's 'The Revolution of Daily Life'.
Exhibition of protest and social movement material culture, highlighting the histories and memories associated with the items, from Greece to Greenham, Animal Liberation to ACT UP and the alter-globalisation movements to the recent student occupations.
