radical attic

Radical attic / 14–21 May 2015

This is the first exhibition organised by The Design Activism Research Hub (DARH) at London College of Communication. The exhibition features social and political activist material culture, highlighting the histories and memories associated with the items. All the artefacts presented in Radical Attic are contributions from staff and students from University of the Arts London, brought together after a call out for posters, stickers, banners, flyers, badges, pamphlets and other objects kept from demos, flashmobs, direct actions, meetings or radical bookshops. These criteria entirely defined how we curated the exhibition. The intention of this display is not to cover landmark political events, nor to specially discuss design or production qualities. Instead, Radical Attic aims to present the material from the perspective of each contributor to reveal its role in lived political engagement. This is reflected in internationally collected artefacts from Greece to Greenham, Animal Liberation to ACT UP and the alter-globalisation movements to the recent student occupations. The time span of exhibits/memories ranges from the late 1970s to the present year.

Radical Attic offers a glimpse of a historically, and to some extent globally, persistent activist repertoire of haptic and immutable visual communication. Hand-made signs and stitched cloth held high by aching arms, newspapers borne on chests, grubby flyers scrunched in pockets and littering pavements, stickers slipped onto lampposts and toilet doors, masks (plastic or papier-mâché or…) for protection, anonymity and wit. The poster too survives —revives!— as call to action, advice, pure statement or abstraction to be noted, flyposted

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or treasured. Even the pamphlet, picked up at meeting, stall or radical bookshop endures, although new economies of production combined with its more private consumption have rendered it less vital than before. Some of this ‘stuff’, including a share of that shown here, is the output of committed ‘professionals’, but amateurs produced much of it. We suspect none is the result of a master class in how-best-to-get-your-message-across-to-change-the-world. This is not how the visual culture of movements is created. It may be collectively planned or spontaneously decided; in all cases its making, circulation, use and afterlife, feed into the organic material culture of the movement field. As such these mostly ephemeral artefacts and all those like them are part of history in the making, of a movement’s internal symbolic resources, significant to their origination myths and own tales of high and low points, of symbols once cherished, of positions held and contested. Movements peak and trough, appear and disappear, and people move on; it’s the nature of movements. This means that their cumulative and already dispersed material culture scatters further —official archives are rare— and valuable resources for informal pedagogy often lost. We believe that these examples, historical and contemporary, can function as creative inspiration for agitation as well as evidence of visual self-consciousness. We hope that it is also an opportunity to learn more of our own and each other stories in the ongoing attempt to realise a new story.

Design Activism Research Hub

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Jess Baines | Senior Lecturer | Contextual & Theoretical Studies | LCC

‘So long as Women are Not Free’Poster by See Red Women’s Workshop | c1978

This poster was up on the kitchen wall of the shared feminist house I lived in and witnessed many political discussions amongst the women that lived there and our various visitors. It perfectly captured the internationalist socialist feminist sentiment of the 1970s and 80s when freedom was about not just about individual rights but freedom from colonialism, dictatorships and – capitalism!

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Richenda Gwilt | Assistant Learning Resources Manager | LCC

Political Badges1980s

With friends I formed a CND youth group in the 80s, making velvet beanbag frogs to sell at Camden market. I remember discovering one of us belonged to “Revolutionary Youth” who (apparently) were trying to infiltrate CND!

On one of his regular visits to the Soviet Union, my best friend’s dad Yusuf brought back the badge of Lenin as a gift. He was Dr Yusuf Dadoo, Chairman of the outlawed South African Communist Party, living in exile in Muswell Hill. I met Joe Slovo and Oliver Tambo while round to play – at the time, normal; in retrospect, quite something! Through knowing them, I attended ANC and Anti-Apartheid fundraisers and demos through my childhood and beyond.

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Leila Kassir | Librarian | LCC

Go VegetarianA4 leaflet | 1980s

These 4 sides of A4 with cut-and-paste text and graphics have had an impact on me that has lasted over a couple of decades. I got them when I was working on an animal rights stall in 1980s Liverpool. It is typical of its time; most of the material I have from the 1980s is cut-and-paste, DIY, the message more important than the style (but now looks stylish in its own right). I kept these sheets, despite throwing away so much else, as the phrase ‘live simply so that others may simply live’ was prevalent at the time in various groups and had a huge influence on me far beyond the realms of animal rights, and the cartoon of the woman and baby still comes to my mind when I see certain brands, such as Nestlé, and still prevents me buying them.

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Anon | LCC

international SolidarityVarious flyers and ephemera

‘Solidarity’ with struggles in other countries was always a feature, but you couldn’t possibly give your attention to everything or you’d burn out. In the 1980s, it was about South Africa, Chile, Argentina, and Nicaragua, with ‘benefit’ gigs everywhere.

Men against SexismNewsletter

To be ‘right-on’ meant being anti-sexist, which was difficult if you were a heterosexual man driven by youthful lust. I’d been reading Spare Rib for a while, partly because it was funny, and became aware of the emerging ‘Men’s Movement’. I don’t think anybody took it seriously – and we were politely deterred from going to Greenham.

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Anon | LCC

the alternative SocietyNewsheet

‘The Alternative Society’ was basically six people who were registered periodically as students: they operated off-campus as well as on – putting on plays, forming bands, and protesting about – well – everything. The vibe was punk, but tinged with the tail-end of hippie (this was Devon, after all). They were devoted to an alternative lifestyle in all its forms – very exciting in the context of an overwhelmingly conservative town and university (even if they were resolutely middle class). Plus they had the best drugs. Footnote: when I visited the Crass commune a couple of years later, I was shocked at how tame they were compared to the Exeter crowd.

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Support our irish SistersPoster by See Red Women’s Workshop | c1980

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Support the Women’s Peace camps Poster by See Red Women’s Workshop | 1983

There were huge demos at Greenham Common women’s peace camp in the early 1980s. The wider anti-nuclear movement was massive at this time, due to the terrifying duo of Thatcher and Reagan ramping up Cold War nuclear proliferation. Greenham felt like the radical end of the movement, not so much the demands ‘no cruise missiles’ but the form of action - women giving up their ordinary lives to camp outside the base for months and years in some cases, and non violent direct action. They got a hard time from locals, the police and of course the press. You had to admire them.

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Stop the Strip Searches in armagh PrisonPacket of leaflets on kitchen table | 1983

around the Falls RoadContact sheet | 1983-4

During the early-mid 1980s I made several trips to Belfast mostly as part of the growing International Women’s Day delegations to join the protests outside Armagh Jail. This was where female republican prisoners were being held, who along with the men in Long Kesh, had been denied status as political prisoners. The names of the prisoners were held up outside the jail. Cheers would go up as messages of support came in from liberation movements around the world. There was a huge sense of a just struggle, against the forces of reaction and the fangs of imperialism. Back in London we showed exhibitions, sold papers, set up meetings, handed out leaflets with pictures of babies killed by plastic bullets – Northern Ireland was a testing ground for British ‘anti-terrorist’ tactics – or demands to ‘stop the strip searches’ in Armagh Jail. Mostly this was all looked upon by the general public with horror or anger or at best, bewilderment.

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Louise Gray (Marshall) | PhD student at CRiSAP | LCC

lambeth council’s campaignPamphlets and badges | 1985

These items relate to Lambeth Council’s fight against rate-capping in 1984-85, a policy introduced by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government that limited the amount that councils could raise via the rates it charged the people who lived there. Many councils across England – the so-called ‘loony left’ – refused to set rates in defiance of government policy. In the end they were surcharged. I had just come out of law school and, in early 1985, had fallen into a job at Lambeth Council as a campaigns officer. The badges were ones that we produced and they were handed out at marches, rallies and meetings all over London. Prior to the surcharge and the abolition of the GLC, there had been – in London – a sense that extraordinary social change was possible and that councils, as a basic unit of local democracy, could do much to ameliorate social justice. In Lambeth, we had had a race-relations unit, a police unit, a women’s unit, and a gay and lesbian unit. It sometimes felt as if we were in a new era of civil rights.

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Anon | LCC

lloyds Funds Fascists

It was like Rik in The Young Ones: anybody you disagreed with was a ‘fascist’ (as in, ‘You fascist!’). Lloyds were fascists, and Barclays were fascists (for their connections with South Africa). Today, of course, we know that all the banks are fascists.

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Anon | LCC

Siege of Wapping Fake Banknote | 1986

My memory of Wapping is quite dark. The police behaved appallingly – they would spray protesters with yellow paint and then send in a snatch squad. The violence was horrendous and the bigwigs making speeches on a nearby hill (including Tony Benn) would never denounce it. This is a fake £55 note with Murdoch’s face on it. He was the devil at the time – and I don’t think much has changed down the years.

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Tony Credland | Lead Tutor MA Graphic Design | LCC

March for FreedomPoster | 1986

This poster I pinched from the wall during my foundation course at Harrow College of Higher Education. Clearly attracted to the strong typography (by David King) as I started to focus on graphic design, it stayed on my student wall for years after. The demonstration was massive and the ‘Freedom Festival’ organised by Artists Against Apartheid (an organisation set up by the Specials’ Jerry Dammers and Dali Tambo) on Clapham Common on a bright sunny day, where I picked up the leaflet. These cross over festivals and political events were common in the mid 80’s many funded by the then GLA (Greater London Council), and were good venues for a wider audience to hear about current campaigns and wider political issues.

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Karel Doing | PhD student | LCC

Moll castleFilm and ephemera | 1988

In protest against the planned demolition of a landmark in Arnhem, we occupied the building, formed an artist collective, and started developing an exhibition and a performance. When we heard about eviction plans just before the opening, we threatened with large street fights, calling in our friends from the squatting movement around the Netherlands. The head of police came the next day and offered for us to stay until the next Monday, on the condition that we would leave the premises voluntarily. We took the offer and the event attracted a large crowd, in a last tribute to this rare crossover of art deco and modernism.

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Siân Cook | Senior Lecturer | Graphic & Media Design | LCC

act UP Flyers and ephemera | Late 1980s-1990s In the early 90s I began collecting graphic ephemera related to HIV/AIDS in the UK. I was involved with several NGOs as a volunteer designer at this time and I became interested in the way that HIV/AIDS was represented through visual language. Whilst some of these flyers were collected at demonstrations, the majority came from Gill Cranshaw at ACT UP Leeds who kindly sent me copies of materials produced by various UK chapters of ACT UP. I am currently in the process of making the whole of my HIV/AIDS graphics collection available online at: hivgraphiccommunication.com

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Rebecca Binns | PhD Student | LCC

M11 Protest Photographs | 1994

The street was squatted by the residents who were joined by those protesting at the impending demolition of the houses to make way for the construction of the road. The protest was also against costly and environmentally damaging plans to build a major road through this area in east London. The act of occupying the street created an alternate space for people to live, work (protesting and barricading the houses), hold parties and create art. Sealing the street off from traffic meant this space could be used for outdoor games, gardening/art projects and as a general communal space, with children playing without fear of danger from traffic.

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Anon | Wimbledon / Zine collection | LCC

Stop the M11 linkLeaflets and ephemera | 1994–1995

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Anon | Chelsea

War Report Newsheet | 1991 (the 1990 on front is wrong!)

The ‘first Iraq war’ felt like a game changer in geo-politics. I didn’t quite believe the build up would amount to anything. It came on the back of the collapse of the Soviet Bloc and it felt like now the Cold War was ending the big guns of the US and its allies were turning to the middle east to assert their global dominance and ‘new world order’. The media was unremittingly pro war and it was impossible to know what exactly was going on. I remember dragging myself out of a stranger’s warm bed on a freezing January morning to get to the first big demo. It felt really really urgent.

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“Qui a peur d’une femme?” (“Who’s afraid of a woman?”) Poster by Gérard Paris-Clavel (Ne Pas Plier) | 1995

Over the summer of 1997 I spent a month working with Gérard Paris-Clavel at his studio in Ivry-sur Siene, Paris. We mainly worked on producing hand-outs and posters for demonstrations to raise awareness about the situation in Algeria. Acknowledging that the situation was complex, Ne Pas Plier (a collective of writers, artists, photographers and designers) decided to set up weekly public discussions in the Place du Chàtelet throughout the summer of 1997 under the title “Je ne sais pas quoi faire, mais je vais le faire!”. We fenced of the whole square each week using “Existance Resistance” tape, off which hung these posters and texts. I found this use of strong designed posters and images to create a safe environment for debates and discussion inspiring, something we took on into RTS and other demonstrations in London.

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Gift of MasksMasks | 2001

We arrived a month in advance of the FTAA ‘Summit of the Americas’ with a network of artist and designers determined to use their skills to help prevent the summit meeting taking place. We set up a Mask Factory and started working with local activist groups and art students in Quebec and Montreal. The city had made the wearing of face masks illegal, so we decided we would mass produce ‘gifts of masks’ for the expected 20,000 protesters. Raising the issues of carnival, anonymity and health (due to 5,000 tear gas canisters later being used). We (Along with John Jordan, Djen Whitney & Brian Holmes) managed to build a screenprinting/production area and produced 4,000 masks in yellow, orange and red. Parcelled them up and gave them away on the streets, one of many artistic interventions over the weekend.

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Karen Elliott | MAGD LCC

Reclaim the Streets, london Newspaper | 2001

Each of these newspapers were put together and printed in editions of 20,000 in the days running up to major RTS street parties. We worked through the nights, writing, editing, drawing, and designing. Searching for printers brave enough to print (as previous editions had been seized by the police), and building a network of distributers. The papers were handed out to commuters giving our version of events and issues, countering the usual media accusations of rent-a-mob, eco-terrorists.

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Jack Blake | Senior Lecturer | BA (Hons) Graphic & Media Design | LCC

May day ProtestPhotographs | 2000

These photographs were taken during the May Day protests in 2000. They document part of the demo where activists scaled lampposts raising banners and others detail the guerrilla gardening activity in Parliament Square. My memories of this day are still very vivid and powerful. The collective planting of seedlings and saplings with hundreds of people was full of hope and empowerment. People came prepared with plants, watering cans and makeshift tools. Children, parents and people of every age reappropriated the square with both a symbolic and pragmatic action. For several hours people reclaimed the square and planted hundreds of plants, but the next day it was wiped clean by the authorities.

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Sam and Annie Body | LCC

indymedia, london Flags | 2003

These flags along with t-shirts were screenprinted at Camberwell College in the evenings after teaching, some of the prints came out faint so we had to hand paint over them. They were used on many action and demonstration, along side leaflets and stickers, to tell people about the indymedia site, why it existed and how to use it. As a collective in London of 10-15 people we could cover most events happening in the capital and the old London website remains a good archive of politics at that time. Unfortunately as many personal accounts have now drifted to corporate owned Facebook and Twitter, although reaching a wider audience, it is harder find out what happened and what the issues were on any given demonstration.london.indymedia.org.uk

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Kostis Kounadis | MA Illustration and Visual Media | LCC

2008 Greek RiotsPoster | 2008

The poster was created by the social centre Aftodiacheirizomeno steki Ano-Kato Patision in Athens during the December 2008 protests. The protests took over several cities in the country after the police shooting of the fifteen-year-old student Alexis Grigoropoulos in the district of Exarcheia in the centre of Athens. The poster utilises an image of a broken window from riots and the lyrics of a popular Greek song of the 1960s which translates “I will break this world that is made of glass and I will build another – new society”. I remember the poster on the walls during the events but I found and collected the poster during a visit to the social centre’s archive, 6 years after the riots. Many suggest that the riots were a forerunner to the protest events that would follow until the current period of the economic crisis in Greece.

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Adriana Eysler | Lecturer in Contextual and Theoretical Studies | LCC

anti-austerityStickers | 2010

In autumn 2010 a student movement sprang up to oppose the proposed hike in tuition fees, and the Tory cuts to the public sector more generally. Many universities were occupied and became centres for frantic organising and mobilising, discussions of political issues and the collective production of protest props and media. Out of this context emerged Arts Against Cuts, a loose group of mainly art students and artists. The group held a variety of creative protests itself (most notably at the Turner Prize ceremony, against the cuts to the arts) and encouraged the production of agitprop, such as these stickers. They were generated through an open call-out for images, anybody could submit something. There was no ‘curation’, no unified style, no logo of the ‘organisation’ (AAC) in the corner – it was totally democratic. A first and then second print run were organised. The stickers were then distributed at organising meetings, uni occupations and protests, spreading around quickly and popping up in many spaces throughout the city. Some of the stickers can still be found on campuses and in streets – after all they are still relevant.

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arts against cuts ‘long weekend’Flyers | 2010–11

In December 2010 and March 2011 national demonstrations against the Tory tuition fee hikes and cuts were held by student organisations and trade unions. In preparation for these demos Arts Against Cuts organised a series of ‘long-weekends’ at Goldsmiths College, ULU and Camberwell College of Art. These were two-day events that turned the universities into spaces buzzing with activity

- from the making of protest props and placards to discussions, skill shares and workshops around protest tactics and legal briefings. The weekends generated a sense of collective excitement, urgency and solidarity, which helped us face the depressing climate of austerity and the police kettles.

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anti-cuts demo Flyers | 2011

On 26 March 2011 the TUC held a national demonstration against the cuts. Amongst the sea of agitprop material that was produced to mobilise people to attend, these flyers stuck out to me because of their fantastic humour, crude execution and non-affiliation. They were made by people at the Really Free School, a self-organised space for (really) free learning and making which during that time squatted a series of buildings in central London to create space and draw attention to the housing crisis. I actually photocopied and put up the flyers with the crocodile in local housing estates before March 26.

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Tzortzis Rallis | PhD student | LCC

Occupy PublicationsNewspapers and Magazines | 2011-12

The occupational movements that started in 2011 as a reaction to the worldwide economic crisis generated a plethora of publications. These were disseminated physically in occupations, demonstrations and actions, but also digitally in the international online networks. Organised by the protesters, the publications proposed alternatives to the narratives of the mainstream media, underpinned citizen journalism and extended agitational visual languages. As a designer and participant of the anti-austerity movements in Greece and the UK, I developed an interest in printed media for dissent in times of the widespread internet and the digital age. By the beginning of 2012, I had collected numerous publications, such as The Occupied Wall Street Journal, Tidal, Occupied Chicago Tribune, Occupy Gazette and The Occupied Times of London.

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Paul Glavey | Lecturer in Contextual and Theoretical Studies | LCC

tuition Fees ProtestBanner | 2012

The banner was made for UCU pickets at LCC and for the 2012 march over university fees. I appropriated Honoré Daumier’s Gargantua (and a couple of cartoonists’ images) and made this banner in advance of union and student protest and strikes in 2012. In Ireland (where I’m from) we don’t have the same depth of tradition of political satire and union banners that exists here and I wanted to try my hand at making something for those protests that references both a view of the government and these wider traditions.

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Tzortzis Rallis | PhD student | LCC

labour club Neas Smyrnis Posters | 2012 – present

Labour Clubs are self-organised spaces of workers, unemployed and students that aim to provide mutual support, cultural events, education but also health care. These structures emerged in several cities in the Greece as an alternative response to the period of economic crisis following the summer of 2011 and the movement of the squares. Labour Clubs do not provide charity but they focus on forms of practical class solidarity that can be summarised in the slogan used in one of their posters “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”. Since 2012, I co-designed several graphic material for the Labour Club in Nea Smirni in Athens. Most of those were posters designed to be flyposted on the streets as well as to be shared online in order to engage a wide audience in the activities of the Labour Club.

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Jordi Blanchar | Camberwell College of Arts Shop

“Me Busco la Vida” (Making Ends Meet) Video | 2012

I traveled to Barcelona with a double intention. On the one hand to film interviews with people directly affected by the crisis and the so-called ‘austerity measures’. On the other, to participate in the 4 day long International Gathering of Creative Activism. During, before and after the general strike, I asked people how the crisis affected them and how they dealt with it on a personal and a political level. The result is this video where students, workers, and unemployed who are also artists, activists and demonstrators are talking about fear, insecurity and anxiety in everyday life. However, they also explain how they are developing new models of grass-roots organising and creative tools for resistance and protest.

Credits: Jordi Blanchar, Camera, Interviews and Subtitles. Co-Editing with Yossarian. A Syndicate Films production: vimeo.com/syndicfilms

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Kostis Kounadis | MA Illustration and Visual Media | LCC

Squat ForeverPoster | 2012

The poster was designed by a friend, Petros Voulgaris (from Indyvisuals design collective), in solidarity with the celebrated Villa Amalia squat in Athens which was evicted by Greek police in December 2012. This occupation had a 22 years history of community organising, political and cultural events as well as strong anti-authoritarian and anti-commercial ideology. I kept the poster cause Villa Amalia(s) was a space where we grew up, a significant part of our lives!

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Lazaros Kakoulidis | MA Graphic Branding and Identity alumnus | LCC

595 Women cleanersPosters | 2012–2015

The three posters were distributed by a group representing 595 public workers who were sacked by the Greek Ministry of Finance in September 2013. They have been unemployed following the government’s decision to fire them in order to give their jobs to private contractors, with no financial benefits for the state. As a response, the cleaners campaigned and occupied the space outside the ministry building. Throughout their campaign, the red rubber gloves became their symbol and it took the form of three posters (gesture of victory, raised fist and stop) by the graphic designer Dimitris Arvanitis. In October 2014 I met a few members of the group at their occupation in the centre of Athens and I bought the posters, donating to their ongoing campaign. After twenty months on the streets, the cleaners won back their jobs on May 11, 2015, three days defore Radical Attic opened!

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the PrEP debatesPoster design by Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner and Huw Lemmey | ACT UP London | 2014

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this man’s mouth spreads diseasePoster Design by Rui Verde | ACT UP London | 2015

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Anon | CSM

Student OccupationsPosters and flyers

I was outraged to hear about the university’s proposed closure of Foundation courses. For me Foundation had been a really great experience, a year of experimentation and of exciting new inputs. Without the Foundation course I would not have had the chance to apply for a BA to become a graphic designer!

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A member of B.A.G.A.G.E. | Camberwell College of Arts

#ReclaimBrixton Banner | 2015

This banner was produced by the Brixton based group B.A.G.A.G.E. (Brixton Action Group Against Gentrification and Evictions) for the anti-gentrification #ReclaimBrixton protest that took place on Saturday 25th April 2015. As Brixton's social diversity is driven out by lack of truly affordable housing, local businesses are driven out by increasing rents and redevelopment schemes that benefit national & multinational businesses, council estates being demolished and social services shut down, a coalition of housing campaigners in the borough came together with small shops being priced out of Brixton Arches, and residents trying to defend libraries and other local services, to create an anti-gentrification movement to Reclaim Brixton. The protest was also a celebration of the local community, its diversity, culture, life and resistance.

Design Activism Research Hub (DARH) is:

Jess Baines / Siân Cook / Tony Credland

Adriana Eysler / Leila Kassir / Tzortzis Rallis

info: darh.myblog.arts.ac.uk

contact: [email protected]

Radical Attic took place at Lower Street Gallery

London College of Communication,

Elephant and Castle, SE1 6SB

14 — 21 May 2015

This catalogue was Riso printed

by DARH on recycled paper

DARH extend thanks to:

All those who sent us material for the exhibition

Alice Clark and Moose on the Loose

Russ Bestley for his encouragement

LCC Research Fund

radical attic

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