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Graphic Liberation: Image Making and Political Movements with Josh MacPhee

  • Making Worlds Bookstore & Social Center 210 South 45th Street Philadelphia, PA, 19104 United States (map)

ADVANCED REGISTRATION RECOMMENDED

From the fight against the AIDS crisis to the struggle for Black liberation and international solidarity, Graphic Liberation! digs deep into the history, present, and future of revolutionary political image making.

What is the role of image and aesthetics in radical change? In his most recent book, Josh MacPhee interviews some of the most accomplished international political graphics producers, and through these conversations charts the importance of revolutionary aesthetics as a through line connecting the Black Panthers to the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa to the AIDS organizing of ACT-UP to the Palestinian struggle to organizing against nuclear power and militarism. MacPhee argues that the culture produced by and within social movements is both central to their organizing strategies but also their sense of community and social identity.

Josh MacPhee has created a composite work life that merges elements of designer, artist, author, historian, and archivist. He is a founding member of the Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative (Justseeds.org), the author of An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels, and coeditor of Signal: A Journal of International Political Graphics and Culture. He cofounded and helps run Interference Archive, a public collection of cultural materials produced by social movements (InterferenceArchive.org). He regularly works with community and social justice organizations building agit-prop and consulting on cultural strategy. work. In addition, MacPhee co-edits the publication Signal: A Journal of International Political Graphics and Culture, and this event will also be the release party of the newly published Signal:09.