As part of the inaugural Quebec BDS Conference, Artists Against Apartheid is presenting an amazing and unique concert featuring detroit MC Invincible and Cuban Hip Hop ensemble Obsesión. The concert is taking place at le Consulat this Saturday, full details here.

Being a big fan of Invincible’s music, I was honoured to be asked to design the poster for the event and enlisted my good friend Kirsten McCrea to help with the ornamentation, resulting in my first ever 100% hand-drawn poster! (or at least since I finished design school aeons ago…)

I’ll also be a panelist during the BDS conference itself, participating in the artist’s roundtable workshop between 4 and 6 PM on Saturday. I’ll be speaking about Imaging Apartheid and my work for the Palestinian cause from a personal perspective, the role of cultural workers in social justice struggles generally, and Palestine specifically. So please register for the conference or come by for the individual workshops—it promises to be an educational and inspiring weekend.

As part of Pop Montreal John is putting on a For the Sake of the Songs tribute show to the prolific composer and performer Van Dyke Parks this Sunday at le Cagibi.

As always, all proceeds go to the Mile End mission.

We’re very excited (freaked actually!) to present Uncle Bad Touch‘s first Montreal show, with guests Desert Owls and Griefer, this Friday night at La Sala Rossa. The show is a fundraiser to help us put out our next issue which is very nearing completion (also very exciting after a year and a half of hard work!).

So please come on out and show four minutes some love, these bands really rock, and it’s going to be a kick-ass night to remember (or not)!

Facebook event page here.

For those that know me personally, Sept. 3rd will also mark my very last day at Cossette. I’ve decided to leave the day job behind to focus on teaching and my own projects. More on that soon, but for now it’ll be another good reason to celebrate!

Imaging Apartheid, a project I’ve been working on for the last few months is getting set to launch this Wednesday evening at Casa del Popolo. Despite my long-standing beliefs on the issue (and on the implicit ideological implications), taking a vocal stand on this; by calling apartheid apartheid and working actively for the cause of Palestinian liberation, is not an easy position for me to take. Which in my mind, makes it all the more important to do so now, clearly, firmly, and lucidly.

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A quickly designed poster for this Sunday’s Words and Music event, hosted by the one and only Vince Tinguely. My main goal in doing this was to design a poster on the theme of climate change without using a) the globe, b) icebergs/polar bears, c) smokestacks, or d) any shade of green.

Success!

Splatter provided by Sophie Jodoin.

The following is a rough transcript of the presentation (in franglais) I gave last week at Pecha Kucha Night MTL. For those that are unfamiliar with the event’s format, presenters are asked to present 20 slides, commenting on each for 20 seconds, resulting in a fast-paced 6m40s presentation. More details about the event here.

01. This is my desk. The organisers asked me to focus on presenting process work tonight, and I think it’s equally important to always look at context, so here’s my desk, my after-hours working environment, and over the next few slides, I’ll explain a bit about who I am to further contextualise what I’m going to be presenting.

02. Je suis un designer graphique avec des tendances anarchiste. Ça veut dire quoi avoir des tendances anarchistes? Pour moi ça veut dire que je crois fortement dans la collectivité non-hierarchique, je m’alinge avec des luttes minoritaires, et que je suis un romantique sans espoir. Par contre je ne suis pas un member du AIGA, mais je trouvai l’illustration assez drole.

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PKN identity designed by studio feed

I’ll be giving a presentation about Four Minutes to Midnight and its relationship to language/morality at Wednesday night’s Pecha Kucha event. 20 slides, 20 seconds each! Hope to see you there.

Hello, hello!

We’re very pleased to announce that Four Minutes to Midnight will be part of next weekend’s Nuit Blanche festivities in Montréal. As part of a jam packed night/morning curated by Yan Basque at le Cagibi, I’ll be co-performing issue ten’s fugue with Hillary Rexe (more on this sassy/classy lady and her recent contributions to 2356 later) backed by John Stuart and Vincent Tinguely (aka Fingerdog) on guitarzzz, with inky projections by Hoda Adra.

We’ll be performing at 1:45 AM with an encore performance at 3:35 AM. But the whole night/morning promises to be entertaining and enlightening, with a slew of local and international talent, so please come by, grab a drink or two, and share with us a while.

Link to the facebook event page >>

john and jp at expozine. photo by Camille Mcouat

Before it fades too far into memory, check out this photoset of expozine by the talented photographer Camille Mcouat. She really manages to capture the spirit and energy of the event. In browsing through her photos I realise I can’t wait for next year’s edition, even though this year’s only took place a week ago!

Be sure to check out her other work as well, really great stuff!