Promiscuous Infrastructures are a strategy of resistance within a political and economic environment hostile to creativity. PI are about community building across practices, disciplines, categories and identities. PI are affectionate, trustworthy, anticapitalist, antiauthoritarian, experimental and fun.

Artivistic‘s Promiscuous Infrastructures project continues with a deep collaboration between Artivistic, Skol, and Fuse magazine. We’ve been working very hard over the last few months, as the guest editors for the next issue of Fuse; a special bilingual edition, that engages with the current social uprising in Québec against neoliberal austerity politics. The issue interweaves elements of the material culture and imagery of the strike, while presenting a broad-ranging analysis and contextualisation of the student-led movement. Beyond acting as a document of the strike, we wanted to look at the complex network of issues surrounding it, including a thorough historical critique of the university itself, reports from student struggles abroad, and the role of artistic practice as resistance.

More info here (including some great subscription deals!)

I’m pleased to present this very special guest post by Vancouver-based graphic designer Amy Novak, sharing a series of beautiful images from her collections. Enjoy…

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photo by Thien V.

With news of the cancellation of the Liberal tuition hike here in Québec today; a stunning victory after many months of mobilising and protest by students, and a rare (if nuanced…) victory for our social movements more generally, I thought I would post this image of the poster Sarah Boris designed (with my “art direction”), and I printed during our residency in Dundee.

I had the phrase bouncing around my head for many months, but never found an image/design to resolve it. The #GGI posters I designed were largely inspired by the desire to find a way to use it, ending up as a series of eight posters, yet none of which used the phrase “Coeur Rage”… It took the synchronicity of travelling to Dundee, and meeting with Sarah, for this design to emerge.

When I got back to Montréal, I used the poster at several street protests, and was often stopped by people wanting to take pictures of it. It certainly struck a chord with many people, and I’m very happy that Sarah and I managed to create this work, as a small contribution to the movement, to a summer of love and rage.

I was really excited to notice that my Gaza poster has been included in a post by Rick Poynor over at Design Observer about activist posters. Rick has long been a hero of mine for his longstanding and critical contribution to design writing, so needless to say, I’m honoured to be recognised by him here.

This poster was the initial trigger for the Imaging Apartheid project, which has recently been brought back to life with the hard work of the collective members. More on that very soon…

I’ve just returned from a wonderful 2 week trip to Dundee, Scotland — where I participated in Sarah Boris’s 48 Hour Splash project, and Porto, Portugal — where I kicked back and relaxed. Many thanks to Sarah (and Creative Scotland) for bringing me over there, to Dundee Contemporary Arts for hosting our project, and to Tamara for putting me up in Porto.

I’ll be posting more soon about the poster workshop, but for now, here are some photos documenting my too-short time abroad, edited with dbox’s “intsagrammy” photohsop actions, which I’ve been having a little too much fun playing around with of late.

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I’m a little late posting this, but the results for this year’s Memefest on the theme of Debt are in! I was invited to act as a curator for the visual communication and beyond… categories, and it was a challenging process, with a lot of work to go through, and to be honest, many projects that I felt missed the mark.

The topic, from a communications perspective, was certainly a difficult one, but I was surprised to see so many projects that focused on literal or superficial interpretations of debt, given that David Graeber’s excellent text was central to the festival outlines. I felt many projects subjectivised debt as an individual problem/responsibility related to consumption, ignoring the systemic nature of debt as social relation that was central to the outlines, where it was asked “can we imagine a different relationship to Debt?”

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Leaving town for a little bit with a new camera in hand. Here are a couple test snaps of the neighbourhood taken while strolling tonight, featuring pieces by two of my favourite Montreal street artists.

Roadsworth‘s disappearing tigers.

Harpy‘s Exil.

Stay beautiful Montréal…

Photo by Thien, artwork by Nazik

Basically, DIY works when you’re not alone.

A little shout-out to the Howl! Arts Collective, who’ve come together to create this little gem that we’ll be launching into the world tonight.

Duets for Abdelrazik is an activist project at the core. A musical statement of solidarity with the struggles of people oppressed.

And everything that has gone into this album, from the composing, recording, printing and packaging has come from collaborations with friends and allies, from a community whose art is often inseparable from their work for social change.

Howl is not a record label, and we had no idea how to really do this, but we did it anyways. As I’m stacking up the sleeves, I have to say I’m very proud of our work. Howl was not a record label, maybe now we are.

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