PROPAGANDA PROPAGATING ONLINE
RHIZHOME.ORG
by Jonathan Keats
The effects of local politics are global. Warfare isn't limited by national borders; climate change cannot be confined. While the blogosphere has provided the disenfranchised with a platform for discussion and debate, one of the most powerful tools of grassroots communication has remained essentially provincial: Printed on paper and affixed to walls with wheat paste, the propaganda poster is a medium made to stay in place. Propaganda III effectively questions this role by proposing a hybrid future for poster art that relies on the global reach of photo-sharing website Flickr and the universal availability of inkjet printers.
Already nearly two hundred posters from around the world have been submitted to the Propaganda III Flickr Gallery -- administered by San Francisco gallery START SOMA -- with entries from Iran, Croatia, and China joining more conventional fare from England and the United States. Much of it, such as Shepard Fairey's stylish Make Art Not War, is more decorative than polemical, though Francesco Sommacal's rendition of the World Trade Center, with the Nike swoosh as an airplane and the slogan "Just Do It" as a caption, is chillingly unequivocal.
START SOMA will tour prints of all submissions, uncensored, in galleries around the world starting on July 4th, a proof-of-concept in inkjet propaganda.
More provocatively, the ongoing online exhibition suggests the potential for propaganda to evolve, open-source, as it spreads: As digital files circulate freely on the web, global messages can be remixed on any PC to meet local needs..
THE ART OF PROPAGANDA
by Jamie O'Shea
San Francisco’s START SOMA gallery has just announced a traveling international exhibition of modern propaganda art called PROPAGANDA III. Debuting on July 4th at Start’s SF gallery, the show will feature modern propaganda posters by more than 300 artists from around the world.
Following its NorCal unveiling, the show will travel to a host of international cities through 2008 including Milwaukee, Austin, Portland, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, New Orleans, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Denver, Las Vegas, Tehran, Copenhagen, Singapore, Bologna, Rome, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Istanbul, Paris, Prague, and Zurich, for a series of one-day art shows at like-minded galleries and installation spaces.
Interestingly enough, the show’s organizer, JOHN DOFFING, promises that the exhibit is open to submissions by any & all artists and that absolutely “no curation or censorship” will be exercised when assembling the shows. In addition, none of the artwork on display will be available for sale during the shows, but rather only through the participating artist’s private websites.
In Doffing’s words, “This is not a commercial art show, but rather a truly global celebration of free speech and untrammeled freedom of expression.” After the tour has ended, all original artwork will be donated to the Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG) in Los Angeles. CSPG’s growing archive currently contains more than 60,000 domestic and international posters produced in a staggering array of visual styles and printing media, dating from the Russian Revolution to the present. With 95% of the archive dating from the 1960s to the present, CSPG maintains the largest archive of post World War II political posters on Earth.
Stay tuned for more developments as the show moves forth and keep an eye out for a tour date near you…
RESOURCES:
NEARLY 400 SUBMISSIONS FROM AROUND THE WORLD...
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