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A collective celebration
AgitPop: activist graphics, images and pop culture
London Print Studio (425 Harrow Road, W10)
To 31 May 2008
Admission free
Reviewed by Manny Thain
THE POSTERS facing the street signal the start of
the AgitPop exhibition before you even enter London Print Studio. One
for women workers, a community association dance, a squatters’ ‘benefit
bop’, Broadwater Farm Defence Campaign, the death of Colin Rock at Stoke
Newington police station in the late 1980s, a satire on old Labour
leaders James Callaghan and Dennis Healey. Most impressive, next to the
main door, is a large collage: France, May 1968.
On 16 May 1968 students and staff at the École
Nationale Supérieure de Beaux Arts in Paris occupied its studios,
setting up the Atelier Populaire as part of the revolutionary movement
sweeping through France. The students declared: "Posters are weapons in
the service of the struggle and are an inseparable part of it. Their
rightful place is in the centres of conflict, that is to say, in the
streets and on the walls of the factories."
The posters were produced quickly, using simple
techniques: silk-screen, lithographs and stencils. Members of the
atelier held a general assembly every day to discuss and argue out the
slogans and designs. ‘Nous sommes le pouvoir’ (we are the power) is a
red paint silhouette of workers on newspaper pages. Striking. Direct.
‘Université populaire – oui’, is a call for an end to the elitist
university system. Another announces: ‘Mai 68, début d’une lutte
prolongé’ (start of a long struggle). ‘La chienlit, c’est lui’ (the
mess/shit-in-the-bed, that’s him) points to a cartoon profile of General
Charles de Gaulle (there’s no mistaking that nose). De Gaulle had
denounced the students as ‘chienlit’.
The immediacy is still there. But that is not down
to good design alone. Context is important. The ever widening gap
between rich and poor, the deteriorating lives of working-class people
facing cuts in public services and pay, students deep in debt, and the
exposure of capitalist economic crisis are all raising with added
urgency the need for radical change today.
In the 1960s, of course, socialism was much more
widely accepted as a viable alternative to the capitalist system. There
was plenty of room for debate and conflict over what kind of socialist
model might work but the general ideology was defended by mass
organisations linked to the working class and millions of individuals,
too.
Although May 1968 provides the reference point,
AgitPop has wider aims, the press release saying it "celebrates the
changing art of utopian rebellion and activism in this exhibition". So
the exhibition is not made up solely of overtly political or left-wing
material. It traces the emergence of a counter-culture from the 1960s.
It is a mixed bag. On display is the copy of Oz magazine which led to an
infamous obscenity trial in the high court. The offending cartoon
depicts Rupert the Bear in an act of sexual intercourse. It is explicit.
It is puerile. It is a two-dimensional bear.
Magazines such as Oz and International Times (which
became IT after legal threats from The Times) were never mass
circulation publications, but the point the exhibition is making is that
they provided a sense of identity for the developing underground.
Prosecutions through obscenity trials and drug busts by a paranoid
establishment gave the counter-culture much wider publicity than it
could have generated itself.
Although such publications were part of a
radicalising scene, they also dragged a lot of old baggage with them. On
display is a two-page article on female sexuality. It appears to be a
serious article. But the text is laid out on a pornographic image of a
woman, completely negating anything constructive which might be in the
article. Whatever the intention, all that is denigrated here is women’s
sexual integrity. That is reactionary.
The exhibition is very much a local/global mix. Part
international perspective it also throws a spotlight on this area of
west London and the role it played in the development of counter-culture(s).
The area was notorious for Rachman landlords: slum conditions with high
rents, extorted with violence and intimidation. It was also one of the
centres for migrant communities in London, especially Irish and
Caribbean. Facing discrimination and exploitation, community collectives
developed to provide social and economic support and, when necessary,
self-defence.
John Phillips, curator of the exhibition, makes the
link between France and west London: "Perhaps the greatest contribution
that the Atelier Populaire made to the development of radical
communication, that is to say the dissemination of information and
messages counter to the dominant ideology, was the idea that it is
possible to just set up a studio and do it". London Print Studio began
in the early 1970s along those lines. And that decade saw the growth of
Notting Hill carnival, the rise of feminist politics, squatters’ groups
and punk rock, all of which were reflected in the area’s music and
graphic material.
To illustrate this, the exhibition throws into the
mix photographs of the construction of the Westway motorway (built in
the wake of the Notting Hill riots), Martin Luther King at a local
meeting, CND marches and beat poets. There are psychedelic posters of
Jimi Hendrix, for legalising cannabis, a jazz gig at the Roundhouse
organised by North Saint Pancras Labour Party. There are posters
advertising punk and reggae gigs in the late 1970s. Along with the
exhibition is a free soundtrack, including many tracks from the
mid-1970s and into punk and reggae: Pink Fairies, Junior Marvin, Sex
Pistols, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Tapper Zukie.
‘Outspan: South Africa’s bitter fruit’, is a
reminder of the anti-apartheid struggle and the big-business links with
that brutal, racist regime. There is a poster depicting abandoned
buildings: ‘If it’s empty take it’. The stark demand, ‘Coal not dole’,
is from the 1984-85 miners’ strike. A portrait of Margaret Thatcher is
brown and metallic, a rusting iron lady. There are some stunningly
beautiful posters from Cuba: ‘Cancion Protesta’, a stylised rose, a
thorn dripping blood.
In an essay to accompany the exhibition, Damon
Taylor makes the point that the Havana office of the American
advertising agency, J Walter Thompson, went over to the revolution,
bringing "the visual sophistication of commercial advertising to the
‘revolutionary tools’ of political communication". This is remarkable.
Then again, revolutions are remarkable events
turning the existing order upside down. The main agency for change is
the organised working class because of its collective economic power and
social cohesion. Swept along the workers’ tide are many intermediate
layers: scientists, technicians, professional people, artists, etc.
After the Russian revolution, for example, the leading avant-garde
artists fell over themselves to support the revolution – using the
resources made available by a nationalised, planned economy. (This early
creative dynamism was short-lived, however. Alongside the rise of
Stalinist totalitarian rule, came censorship and repression, the
suffocating grip of bureaucracy.)
The exhibition brings us up to date, asking what the
future of grassroots propaganda is now there is such wide, individual
access to digital technology. The premise of AgitPop is that what was
vital to May 1968, Cuban revolutionary propaganda, and the community
activism of the 1970s and 1980s was the way posters were produced out of
collective effort in small-scale studios by politically engaged people.
Indeed, the exhibition seems to lament the passing
of the poster in the internet age. But is news of its death premature?
Or is the individualisation of protest connected with the current
relatively low level of mass industrial and social action by
working-class people?
Whatever the answer, this small exhibition is a
chance to see some excellent political and social commentary from the
last 40 years. There is little in the way of explanatory material which
allows the graphics to speak for themselves. On the other hand, that
means that a working knowledge of those years is helpful in putting the
exhibits into context. Ultimately, for all the advanced technology
available, the working class cannot take power online. It will come down
to industrial action, political organisation and community mobilisation.
The most refreshing aspect of this exhibition is its celebration of
collective action.
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