As part of Qpirg’s Study in Action series, I’ll be participating in a workshop/conversation with Vincent Tao on the political role of design, specifically looking at the practice of design from a (materialist) socialist perspective. I’m looking forward to the opportunity to give form to some of the ideas that have been bouncing around my head for a while.
As part of this year’s Toronto Design Offsite festival, LOKI will be presenting a collaborative exhibition with Studio JayWall. I met Jay at the AMC conference last summer in Detroit, and I’m excited to get to work with him on this exhibition that merges our interests in typography and the dynamics of cities.
Reading/Writing the Junction is a documentary project that examines and reimagines the signage and lettering of the Junction neighbourhood, as an oblique commentary/criticism on gentrification and urban change.
The collaboration also extends to the brilliant JP King at Paper Pusher, who will be producing the series of risograph prints that will be exhibited/distributed as part of the show.
The exhibition opens on Jan. 21 (fb event here), and runs until the end of February. Hope to see you there!
Bowl full of Memefest badges from the last few years.
It feels next to impossible to synthesize the experience that was this year’s Memefest at this point, however it seems important to provide at least a cursory overview of what happened in Melbourne a few weeks back, while it’s still fresh in my memory. It was an intense and deeply transformative experience for me, and I hope the following words and images might do it a bit of justice.
Artist Alana Hunt, Sam Burch from the Brisbane Aboriginal Sovereign Embassy, and Oliver Vodeb of Memefest opening the symposium, articulating the themes of Radical Intimacies and Decolonization.
The event kicked off at Swinburne University with 3 days of “extra-disciplinary” symposium presentations on design, media, art and activism. Over 30 presentations from local and international participants took place, with an incredible diversity of subject matter, between theory and practice, from the personal to the political.
Two days ago, I arrived in Melbourne, Australia, after an insane 30-hours of travel, to the generous hospitality of Oliver Vodeb of Memefest and his lovely family. We’re now at Swinburne University setting up for the extradisciplinary symposium/workshop/direct action that starts tomorrow, tied to this year’s theme of Radical Intimacies. It’s quite hard to get a handle on the fact that I’m now halfway across the world, having conversations about radical design practice with Oliver again, conversations that we’re continuing from the last time we met up in the Netherlands almost 4 years ago. Plus ça change…
I’m very honoured to be here, presenting amongst an impressive international crew of communications experts, activists, and artists. I’m particularly excited to be working with Memefest and members of BASE (the Brisbane Aboriginal Sovereign embassy), and look forward to learning about the aboriginal context of resistance here. BASE was instrumental in organising against the G20 summit in Brisbane last week, and I’m hoping to be able to lend my skills to their struggle, and will certainly be bringing some powerful knowledge back home.
My presentation will address ideas around material culture and resistance, with a particular focus on the Quebec Student Strike of 2012. It feels good to be able to share knowledge drawn from our local movements and moments of social upheaval, and I hope it will be relevant here, and spark an interesting dialogue. I’m also happy that I had the opportunity to meet up with Decolonizing Street Art before leaving Montreal, and that I managed to bring some amnazing gifts from them to communities here.
Everyone I’ve met so far has been fantastic. It’s been great to reconnect with Tom Liacas, a culture jamming collaborator from way back in the day (circa. 2001). I’ll be here for another 8-days, and will try to keep the blog updated, or at the very least, I’ll be posting frequently on LOKI’s facebook page.
PS. Unlike the G20 leaders, I have yet to find any koalas. Those bastards always take everything first…
This year’s Memefest deals with a theme very close to my heart, and one that has been on my mind a lot lately; the abject failure of dialogue (or as Memefest founder Oliver Vodeb puts it, “what if dialogue is fucked?”.
Ever since I published my Graduate Certificate thesis back in 2002, through the work I do with Four Minutes to Midnight, and in how I’ve engaged with my studio practice, a dialogic approach has always been central to my work and belief system. It’s something I’ve consistently argued for as a model for social change work and as a visual design approach.
Within this span of time we have seen the reification of social media in our lives, identity/branding practices redefined as conversations and storytelling, connectivity and crowd-sourcing. On the flipside, within our social movements, we’ve witnessed the popularity and prevalence of Occupy-style organising (GAs, working groups, consensus, “non-violence”). Oftentimes, “dialogue” is expressed as an end goal in itself. Meanwhile it can be easily argued that the (western) psyche is more fragmented than ever, isolated and compartmentalised through all this dialogue, and genuine social solidarity seems harder and harder to build across movements. Not to mention the gross failures of dialogue at the geo-political level. Part of me would like to think, it is nothing more than a process of general commodification (because that’s enough to deal with!), but what if it’s something deeper, something intrinsic. Yes, what if dialogue is fucked? Where does that leave us?
The festival/friendly competition is open to all (students and non-students), with several categories for submissions: Visual Communication, Critical Writing, and Participatory Art (Beyond…). I will be curating/judging the Visual Communications category this year, and am really looking forward to seeing all the work submitted.
The deadline for submissions is September 20th! Learn more and submit your work here.
Toronto (+1 Montreal, +1 NYC via Tennessee) AMC crew returning to the Wayne State parking lot
Last weekend I attended my first ever Allied Media Conference in Detroit, Michigan. I was deeply inspired (and a little overwhelmed) by both the conference and the city itself, and hope to be back for the next edition. The AMC brings together thousands of participants engaged in media activism, a large percentage of whom also present sessions and workshops, and truly is a network of networks. It being my first conference, I don’t feel like I’m well positioned to attempt to describe it, in all its diversity and complexity, but I thought I would share some notes all the same, to document and provide touch points moving forward back in Montreal.
The Sessions
I participated in fewer sessions than I intended to, the pace was far faster than I had imagined, and I often felt I needed a break to absorb and reflect afterwards, rather than rush to the next one. I spent a lot of time hanging out in the Future Design Lab practice space, or wandering the Wayne State grounds, chatting with people and sharing stories. As the weekend progressed, the Future Design lab filled with images and texts, mind maps and posters (and wormholes!), it was a beautiful thing to observe this rich accretion of ideas.
This week I’ll be heading to Detroit to participate in the 16th Annual Allied Media Conference. I’m very excited, and slightly nervous, to be presenting a caucas/workshop on Designing Cultures of Resistance.
Extending from the talk I gave at Howl’s Art, Anarchism and Social Movements panel, I want to continue to explore the concrete aspects that surround the practice graphic design, or a specific designed object, and discuss how they can contribute to building a healthy and vibrant culture of resistance (to neoliberal capitalism). My angle comes from a bit of a Neo-Marxist perspective, and the aspects I’ll be looking at are: Materiality and Affect, the contexts of Production and Distribution, (Visual) Language and Identity. Typed out like this, it seems a bit daunting and a bit vague, but the goal is to not be overly theoretical, to ground it in concrete objects and experiences, and most importantly, to engage and listen to what others have to say.
I’m really looking forward to taking in as much as I can of what the conference has to offer, to meet so many great people doing such amazing work, and to get the chance to build something together…
I’m copying + pasting their network principles below, because they’re beautiful and righteous, and they’ll give you a good idea of why I’m so stoked. See you in Detroit!
We are making an honest attempt to solve the most significant problems of our day.
We are building a network of people and organizations that are developing long-term solutions based on the immediate confrontation of our most pressing problems.
Wherever there is a problem, there are already people acting on the problem in some fashion. Understanding those actions is the starting point for developing effective strategies to resolve the problem, so we focus on the solutions, not the problems.
We emphasize our own power and legitimacy.
We presume our power, not our powerlessness.
We spend more time building than attacking.
We focus on strategies rather than issues.
The strongest solutions happen through the process, not in a moment at the end of the process.
The most effective strategies for us are the ones that work in situations of scarce resources and intersecting systems of oppression because those solutions tend to be the most holistic and sustainable.
Place is important. For the AMC, Detroit is important as a source of innovative, collaborative, low-resource solutions. Detroit gives the conference a sense of place, just as each of the conference participants bring their own sense of place with them to the conference.
We encourage people to engage with their whole selves, not just with one part of their identity.
We begin by listening.
Please join us this Thursday, June 12th at librairie Formats for the official Montreal launch of Issue 13 of Four Minutes to Midnight. Though we recently held an intimate launch party amongst friends during the Howl Arts Festival, I’m excited to be partnering up with Formats for this, and to introduce the project to their network of artist-run centres.
In conversation with John last night, it struck me again that we’ve been doing this for ten long years, from London and Montreal, from Brixton and Mile End. Over that time we’ve promoted and published an astonishing collection of artists, writers, musicians. It’s been quite a journey, and there are far too many people to thank, but I think the best way is to just keep doing what we’re doing, and getting it out there the best we can. Or someone can bring us a cake to share…
I’m very excited to announce that I will be participating in the upcoming 16th edition of the Allied Media Conference in Detroit this summer. It’s an event that I’ve heard a lot of great things about, but haven’t had the opportunity to participate in until now. In their own words:
“The AMC is a collaborative laboratory of media-based organizing strategies for transforming our world. The AMC is a network of networks – social justice organizers, community technologists, transformative artists, educators, entrepreneurs, and many others — all using media in innovative ways.”
On the invitation of Toronto-based designer and community organiser Una Lee, I’ll be hosting a session entitled Designing Cultures of Resistance as part of the Future Design Lab. Though, I’m still working out all the details, what I want to address with participants is the ways in which (graphic) design can contribute to community building, beyond its role as a direct communications tool. In other words, how does design operate in affective and strategic ways to build solidarity within and between communities of resistance?
I’ll be writing more about the AMC, and my participation within it, soon. But for now, I wanted to humbly ask for a little grassroots support in order to get me and our crew of artist/activists from Montreal to Detroit. The Future Design Lab has set up a simple fundraising page, please check it out, and if you can, spare a little change for social change.
Donate to the Future Design Lab.
