Speaker 1: Oh hey, it's your friend's new boyfriend who makes really
Speaker 1: good onion dip ali Ward. Come along with me if
Speaker 1: you will to Anaheim, California, to little place called wonder Con. Now,
Speaker 1: if you have heard of the annual Comic Con convention
Speaker 1: in San Diego, wonder Con is kind of like its younger,
Speaker 1: scrappier little sister, and it takes over Anaheim for a
Speaker 1: few days every spring, with like tens of thousands of
Speaker 1: people in this big convention center full of booths and
Speaker 1: comic book art and film stalls and collectibles and artists
Speaker 1: like making and signing work. Also adults and capes. Join me,
Speaker 1: all right, we're in front of the fountain at wonder Con.
Speaker 1: So far, we've seen a Loki. I've seen a Westworld lady. Oh,
Speaker 1: there's a one own a writer from Beetlejuice costume in
Speaker 1: the red the wedding outfit. Oh, with a Beetlejuice accompaniment.
Speaker 1: We've got a lot of Pokemons. We've got some Star
Speaker 1: Trek outfits, plenty of those. That's a Captain America, but
Speaker 1: he's in Mexico.
Speaker 2: Oh I love that.
Speaker 1: Check that out. That guy's Captain Mexico.
Speaker 2: He's my favorite one so far. I love the Captain Mexico.
Speaker 1: It's like Halloween, but it's in March, and no one's
Speaker 1: dressed like a hot dog. Everyone's specific and I like that.
Speaker 2: I loved it. Now.
Speaker 1: Another perk was that I was there to moderate a
Speaker 1: panel with a dear, dear friend see Andrew Hall or
Speaker 1: Andy Hall, who you may remember from an episode we
Speaker 1: did in twenty twenty one about his environmental nonprofit. He
Speaker 1: founded it. It's called Functional Magic, and it commissions these
Speaker 1: really incredible artists to create gig poster style artwork that's collectible.
Speaker 1: And because of that episode we did and y'all ologies listeners,
Speaker 1: that first print run he did in twenty twenty one
Speaker 1: sold out and Functional Magic was able to donate twenty
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars to the Coalition for Rainforest Nations. And
Speaker 1: just as I note, Functional Magic was then known as
Speaker 1: the draw Down Design Project, but has since been renamed
Speaker 1: and Andy says that Functional Magic is dedicated to spreading
Speaker 1: this unapologetic hope about our shared future via pop art
Speaker 1: that they put out into the world. So we'll link
Speaker 1: that original episode in the show notes because it's a
Speaker 1: great look at climate solutions and staying proactive with optimism.
Speaker 1: So Andy organized a panel at wonder Con about activist
Speaker 1: poster art and I was more than game to help.
Speaker 1: I was like the time the place I'm there. Also
Speaker 1: on the panel was some named Carol Wells, and she
Speaker 1: is the founder and executive director of the Center for
Speaker 1: the Study of Political Graphics, which is amazing. It's this
Speaker 1: archive in Los Angeles that collects and preserves and documents
Speaker 1: and exhibits posters relating to these movements of social change.
Speaker 1: How many posters they got, They got over ninety thousand posters.
Speaker 1: So if you have ever had a message you wanted
Speaker 1: to get across to strangers or a passion that you
Speaker 1: wanted to scream from the rooftops, but you know that
Speaker 1: art goes farther, this episode is for you, so free admission.
Speaker 1: Let's get an update on Functional Magic's work, which involves
Speaker 1: a launch this week of a T shirt line that
Speaker 1: is gorgeous. And let's soak up the decades of history
Speaker 1: of activism art with Andy and Carroll. As we cover
Speaker 1: some history of protest art, different approaches graphically, who it
Speaker 1: speaks to camouflage among ads? Where does street art go
Speaker 1: to be archived? Propaganda, the tiniest, mightiest posters, collectible gig
Speaker 1: posters for the climate, and how the anti war movement
Speaker 1: galvanized so many artists. Also short warning, we do discuss
Speaker 1: a few images of war photojournalism in this episode, So
Speaker 1: get in. We're going postering with this field trip to
Speaker 1: wonder con, activism and art. Welcome to the best panel
Speaker 1: all weekend. I'm so excited to be here. My name
Speaker 1: is Ali Ward, and I host a podcast called Ologies,
Speaker 1: and I always loved to start off by finding out
Speaker 1: where your passion comes from, So I would love to know, Carol,
Speaker 1: where did you first get a spark for political posters
Speaker 1: and activism.
Speaker 3: Well, actually, I've always been passionate about art, and then
Speaker 3: high school civil rights movement, I became passionate about social justice,
Speaker 3: Vietnam War, etc.
Speaker 4: Etc.
Speaker 3: I became an art historian, but I taught about the
Speaker 3: art of the rich and powerful by day, and I
Speaker 3: protested the institutions of the rich and powerful on the
Speaker 3: street so on weekends. I really like her, but they
Speaker 3: weren't connected until I was hired to collect posters of
Speaker 3: the New Revolution in Nicaragua in nineteen eighty one by
Speaker 3: a professor at Ucla who collected posters for years.
Speaker 1: So very very brief sidebout here. So the Nicaraguan Revolution
Speaker 1: started in late nineteen seventies with an uprising against this
Speaker 1: family dynasty dictatorship and then and the rise of the
Speaker 1: socialist leaning Sandinista National Liberation Front and then the subsequent
Speaker 1: opposition to them by the contrast, which was a right
Speaker 1: wing militia.
Speaker 5: So Carol at the time was working to collect that
Speaker 5: activist art on behalf of a professor.
Speaker 2: And a poster changed my life.
Speaker 3: And I wasn't interested in the political poster before, and
Speaker 3: in that moment I literally had an epiphany and became
Speaker 3: addicted to political posters.
Speaker 5: Where was it?
Speaker 1: Were you standing on the street? Was it in a
Speaker 1: train station? Was it in a newspaper?
Speaker 3: We were living with a family and we went to
Speaker 3: the women's movement and they were having a big demonstration
Speaker 3: and had a fresh delivery of posters for most Women's March,
Speaker 3: and I gave one to the family we were living with,
Speaker 3: and she put it on her living room wall, and
Speaker 3: she was like the local healthcare person. And one neighbor
Speaker 3: comes in with her eight year old son, nine year
Speaker 3: old son, and the two women go off.
Speaker 2: I'm alone in the living with the son. He's uninterested
Speaker 2: in me, but he's looking around the room.
Speaker 3: He'd never been there before. The poster all of a
Speaker 3: sudden grabshi and he walks over to it. And I
Speaker 3: watched him mouth the words on the post, which in
Speaker 3: English would say in constructing the New Country, we are
Speaker 3: becoming the new woman. And I watched them trying to
Speaker 3: figure out. I'm sure you never figured it out, but
Speaker 3: that was the moment of my epiphany. That was the
Speaker 3: moment I realized that's how posters work. You're gone about
Speaker 3: your daily life and something breaks through the bubble that
Speaker 3: we all have around to get through the day, and
Speaker 3: it makes you ask a question. Whenever you ask a question,
Speaker 3: you're not the same person you were before you asked
Speaker 3: the question. I dropped my dissertation, which was three quarters
Speaker 3: the way through my medieval architecture. My life totally changed.
Speaker 1: So this poster with very simple line art and just
Speaker 1: a few basic colors. This kelly green background, the tanned
Speaker 1: brown of a South American woman's skin, and she's holding
Speaker 1: a basket full of red coffee berries. This art was
Speaker 1: made by a feminist organization which arose as part of
Speaker 1: the Santanonistas, and Carol seeing that little boy reading it
Speaker 1: and absorbing it made her realize the power of grassroots artwork. Okay,
Speaker 1: we know posters work, we know that they capture O
Speaker 1: eye tension, we see them, But in your opinion, how
Speaker 1: do they work?
Speaker 2: Why do they work? Well? They make us look at
Speaker 2: the world in a different way.
Speaker 3: And as far as quantifying it, I mean, think out
Speaker 3: how many millions of dollars will spent on advertising, and
Speaker 3: then many ways a poster or anti advertisement their counter advertisement.
Speaker 3: But they work in the same way, and we were
Speaker 3: surrounded by image overload. The trick is not just knowing
Speaker 3: that images work, but finding an image that will break
Speaker 3: through all the other images and attract your attention.
Speaker 1: Just real quick, how valuable is marketing? Exactly? What's the
Speaker 1: street value of a message?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 1: How much is spent globally on advertising every year? I
Speaker 1: wonder this. Companies spend an average of twelve percent of
Speaker 1: their revenue back into marketing and according to this one
Speaker 1: big data aggregator, nine hundred and seventeen billion dollars went
Speaker 1: into advertising globally last year, and the US spent the most,
Speaker 1: more than the next six biggest spenders combined, and we
Speaker 1: know from social media are eyeballs and attention is worth
Speaker 1: a shitload of money. But why make art that is
Speaker 1: selling a concept or a movement? Are you reinforcing what
Speaker 1: someone already thinks, are you completely changing how they feel
Speaker 1: or think about something, or are you polarizing them another direction?
Speaker 1: Where do you think activism and art take our brains?
Speaker 2: It's all of the above.
Speaker 3: The people who agree with you need to know that
Speaker 3: they're not alone. Then you have to also reaches out
Speaker 3: to the people who have made their mind up. They
Speaker 3: are only getting one perspective, so it makes them sing, oh,
Speaker 3: there's more than one way of looking at it.
Speaker 2: And then there's.
Speaker 3: The folks that are not going to agree with whatever
Speaker 3: you say, no matter how you say it. But every
Speaker 3: once in a while you do reach someone and they
Speaker 3: start questioning what they never questioned.
Speaker 1: What are historically some of the posters that have changed
Speaker 1: the world or that were really big in movements.
Speaker 3: Well, I actually did an article on five posters that
Speaker 3: change the world.
Speaker 2: Well, there you go, so.
Speaker 3: And the first one is actually very graphic. So I
Speaker 3: just want to warn everybody it's a lot of dead bodies.
Speaker 3: It was during the Vietnam War. I'm probably one of
Speaker 3: the oldest people in this room, but during dinner, the
Speaker 3: war was shown every night on the six o'clock news.
Speaker 6: Two Americans were listed as dead. One was a machine
Speaker 6: gunner and the second his company commander who took over
Speaker 6: the machine gun from his fallen comrade and was killed himself.
Speaker 6: Thirteen Gis were wounded. Four enemy soldiers were counted among
Speaker 6: the casualties.
Speaker 3: So everybody was eating their dinner while we would see
Speaker 3: these stories literally seeing pictures of war, of murder, of
Speaker 3: death and dying, and this particular massacre done by US
Speaker 3: troops over five hundred women and children, mainly a few
Speaker 3: old elderly men. No guns were found. Over a year later,
Speaker 3: Seymour Hirsch, who's an independent journalist who still breaking news,
Speaker 3: he uncovered it and the photograph, you know, New York Times,
Speaker 3: Life magazine, they all showed this photo and Mike Wallace
Speaker 3: on sixty Minutes interviewed one of the soldiers and he
Speaker 3: asked the soldier and babies, and the soldier answered, and babies.
Speaker 7: Men, women and children, men, women and child and babies
Speaker 7: and babies.
Speaker 2: Why did you do it?
Speaker 3: Why did I do it?
Speaker 2: Because I felt like I was ordered to do it.
Speaker 4: Well at the time, I felt like I was doing
Speaker 4: the right thing what I did.
Speaker 7: You're married, all right?
Speaker 3: Children?
Speaker 6: How can a father of two young children shoot babies?
Speaker 2: I don't know what's just for now things.
Speaker 1: This legendary color photo was taken at the scene by
Speaker 1: Army photographer Ron Haileburrow, and it shows this rural dirt
Speaker 1: path through and otherwise green grassland. And in this dirt
Speaker 1: road are a pile of over twenty victims of this
Speaker 1: Meli massacre, including many children. And the photo showed the actual,
Speaker 1: real horrors of the war, imagery that news outlets may
Speaker 1: have shielded from viewers, kind of like the deluge of
Speaker 1: images you may have seen daily on social media of
Speaker 1: gods and families and children killed in the last year
Speaker 1: and a half in Palestine. I know my algorithm was
Speaker 1: showing them to me all the time. And for more
Speaker 1: on that, you can see our Genocideology episode with doctor
Speaker 1: Dirk Moses. But yes, back to Vietnam and babies. A
Speaker 1: group of New.
Speaker 5: York artists, activists from the Artworkers Coalition took the image
Speaker 5: and superimposed the words and babies and babies.
Speaker 3: And the Artworker's coalition have made fifty thousand copies of
Speaker 3: this and it kept it alive. The photo itself made headlines,
Speaker 3: but if it bleeds, it leads in the next week
Speaker 3: there's another photo. But the poster carried in all these
Speaker 3: demonstrations kept it before the public, and the majority of
Speaker 3: people believed the lies that the US government was saying
Speaker 3: until this photo. They did not want their tax money
Speaker 3: doing this. That plus the grassroots organizing, and you don't
Speaker 3: have just the picture without the organizing. So all of
Speaker 3: these thousands of people who were demonstrating and protesting and
Speaker 3: students who are going on strike, we use this picture
Speaker 3: and others and basically that's what started to change the
Speaker 3: public sentiment about the.
Speaker 1: War during that period, the sixties and the seventies. Did
Speaker 1: you find that a lot of the art and activism
Speaker 1: was anti war?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: Yes, so at the time. In addition to civilians, many
Speaker 1: military veterans, especially since there was a draft, were also
Speaker 1: part of this anti war movement. And Carol says that
Speaker 1: there's no right or wrong approach. Not all activism is
Speaker 1: poster sized and depicts grim realities. And then she advances
Speaker 1: a slide here which is a simple, almost crude kind
Speaker 1: of crayon looking art. It's got a bright yellow background
Speaker 1: with a thick black line art drawing of a sunflower
Speaker 1: and handwritten lettering that reads war is not healthy for
Speaker 1: children and other living things. And it's called Primer. It's
Speaker 1: by artist Lamrain Schneider, and it debuted in its original
Speaker 1: form as a miniature painting just two inches by two
Speaker 1: inches for an art show in nineteen sixty five, and
Speaker 1: it became so wide spread and iconic and image that
Speaker 1: Schneider donated all the rights to the image to the
Speaker 1: anti war nonprofit Another Mother for Peace, and it raised
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of dollars for the anti war effort.
Speaker 1: I know this one, in particular is meaningful to you.
Speaker 1: You're wearing a necklace with this art engraved on it,
Speaker 1: so you carry this with you around your neck. Can
Speaker 1: you describe why this poster meant so much to you,
Speaker 1: why it's left such an eu.
Speaker 2: It's interesting. At the time, it was everywhere.
Speaker 3: It was probably the most widely reproduced poster during the
Speaker 3: Vietnam War done by Another Mother for Peace, and it
Speaker 3: was used basically to fund workshops in high schools against
Speaker 3: ROTC and against enlisting, so that was really using it
Speaker 3: to help organize.
Speaker 2: Originally it was two by three inch. Oh that's tiny,
Speaker 2: that's like tiny, And.
Speaker 3: It was submitted to a contest and lost, and she
Speaker 3: made cards out of it, and another Mother for Peace
Speaker 3: saw and asked if they could use it as their logo,
Speaker 3: and the rest is history, and so they will it
Speaker 3: up into that size poster, made medallions, stickers, bumper stickers, patches.
Speaker 3: I mean, the pendant that I'm wearing is the same
Speaker 3: shape and approximate size as a dog tag, so the
Speaker 3: gis would wear it with their dog tags. It became
Speaker 3: a very powerful statement. And then the organization gave the
Speaker 3: Center for the Study of Political Graphics permission to reproduce
Speaker 3: it during the Iraq War and a friend of mine
Speaker 3: kept coming in and buying them. I said, wow, you're
Speaker 3: just really giving them out. She says, no, I have
Speaker 3: one in my front yard and it keeps getting destroyed.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: And I had never thought that that poster could piss
Speaker 3: people off, because you know who's going to object to
Speaker 3: wars not healthy to children and other living things.
Speaker 1: Is it important to have icons or archetypes or imagery
Speaker 1: that's familiar to someone like with comic book art.
Speaker 5: You know, we're at wonder con here.
Speaker 1: What is the role of comics and the style of
Speaker 1: comics in political and social activism?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: Well, I think what you said about the familiarity is
Speaker 3: a key point. Unlike a corporate ad, which has usually
Speaker 3: a huge budget and a lot of time to come
Speaker 3: up with what they think is an effective ad, political
Speaker 3: poster artists generally act really quickly. George Floyd, for example,
Speaker 3: that poster gets made immediately immediately because it's demonstrations the
Speaker 3: next day. And in case like George Floyd, you'd have
Speaker 3: a portrait. But in other cases it's really helpful to
Speaker 3: have something that looks familiar but not quite. So you'll
Speaker 3: see comic strip characters, you'll see advertisement, you'll see fine
Speaker 3: art incorporated in so it looks like a commercial, and
Speaker 3: then all of a sudden.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, that doesn't look like a commercial.
Speaker 1: Carol advances aside to show these early two thousands ads
Speaker 1: for Apple's then brand new device called an iPod, and
Speaker 1: these ads always featured a brightly single colored background, maybe
Speaker 1: in a golden rod yellow or a royal blue or
Speaker 1: a magenta, and a black silhouette of someone hot dancing
Speaker 1: while holding their innovative small little white box of an
Speaker 1: iPod with their iconic white ear buds on the cord.
Speaker 1: Who remembers this right, Yeah, before anyone had iPods, it
Speaker 1: was like that. That was the life everyone wanted to live.
Speaker 3: And the ad hasn't been used in over a decade.
Speaker 3: It's the same journalist that I mentioned, Simo Hirsch, also
Speaker 3: uncovered the torture in Abu Gray Prison in Iraq, which
Speaker 3: was run by the US military. Again, not supposed to happen,
Speaker 3: and US isn't supposed to do that. Other people are tortures,
Speaker 3: we are not, but this obviously put.
Speaker 2: Lied to that. And there were many, many, many photographs.
Speaker 1: And around the same time, and this was early in
Speaker 1: the Iraq War, the US Army and the CIA committed
Speaker 1: violations of human rights laws against those detained at Abu
Speaker 1: Gray Prison. Now, there was this one leaked image which
Speaker 1: you may or may not remember. It was a photo
Speaker 1: of a prisoner in a dark blanket like poncho and
Speaker 1: a pointed hood and he's balancing on a box. Both
Speaker 1: arms are outstretched to the side and you can see
Speaker 1: electric shocking wires dangling from his arms. And this photo
Speaker 1: was nicknamed the hooded man and with just a few
Speaker 1: graphic design tweaks, maybe blurw your eyes a little, and
Speaker 1: that image was this really eerie echo to the glossy
Speaker 1: consumerism literally plastered all over the world at that time.
Speaker 3: That photo became very iconic, I think because of its
Speaker 3: religious connection. And so there was an artist on the
Speaker 3: East coast, both of these pseudonyms. There was an artist
Speaker 3: on the East Coast and the one in la There
Speaker 3: were two guys. They called themselves Folkscheo Graphics, also a pseudonym,
Speaker 3: because they were afraid to be sued by Apple. I
Speaker 3: kept telling them, no, no, no, you won't be sued
Speaker 3: because it's fair use, and it's a political poster.
Speaker 2: It's free speech.
Speaker 3: Oh, you're not trying to sell an imitation of an
Speaker 3: iPod AD. You're not trying to sell anything at all.
Speaker 3: You're just using it to grab attention. So they both
Speaker 3: hit the streets almost at the same time.
Speaker 1: If you hadn't been born yet, this was in two
Speaker 1: thousand and four.
Speaker 3: And what they did they incorporated the ad into the
Speaker 3: real ad. They incorporated the protest poster into the real ad.
Speaker 3: So when you're walking by, all of a sudden you
Speaker 3: see something familiar in the iPod ad, But what the
Speaker 3: torture image of the hooded man with the wires coming
Speaker 3: from us? It's like culture jamming. But once you get
Speaker 3: it in your head, once you see that, you can
Speaker 3: never see the real ad again without doing a double take.
Speaker 3: Is it the real one or is it the political one?
Speaker 3: So it's absolutely one of the most brilliant political poster
Speaker 3: interjections into popular culture that I've seen.
Speaker 1: So activism art can be tiny. It can be thrust
Speaker 1: overhead in a crowd, it can be wheat pasted on
Speaker 1: city streets, or it can hang up as collectibles. And
Speaker 1: again our twenty twenty one episode with nonprofit environmental art
Speaker 1: organization Functional Magic founder and creative director c Andrew Hall
Speaker 1: aka Andy, he shared that his aim is to use
Speaker 1: beautiful artwork of climate solutions to inspire people in their
Speaker 1: own daily environments, and he piped up to ask Carol,
Speaker 1: I have a question that.
Speaker 7: We could disagree about the details, but broad strokes, whether
Speaker 7: you're a public in or Democrat, there is very little
Speaker 7: appetite in the American public for boots on the ground
Speaker 7: American soldiers and other countries anymore. Do you at all
Speaker 7: think that a lot of that activism was successful. Do
Speaker 7: you take any pride in that? Do you see any
Speaker 7: movement since when you started this work.
Speaker 2: Pride is not a word that I use.
Speaker 3: I think because of what we did, the movement did,
Speaker 3: they got smarter.
Speaker 2: The warmongers got smarter.
Speaker 3: So when Bush starts the Iraq War, no cameras allowed,
Speaker 3: No journalists were allowed.
Speaker 2: When the body bags came home.
Speaker 7: Oh, that doesn't seem suspicious at all.
Speaker 3: They were not allowed. So they've learned, and so we've
Speaker 3: had to become more creative. Also, I don't know who
Speaker 3: said it's the old slogan, but first they ignore you,
Speaker 3: then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.
Speaker 3: So we're in the ridicule fight stage. We've been there
Speaker 3: for quite a while.
Speaker 1: That quote is first they ignore you, then they ridicule you,
Speaker 1: and then they attack you and want to burn you,
Speaker 1: and then they build monuments to you. It's not from Gandhi,
Speaker 1: as many people attribute it to him, but it rather
Speaker 1: is from a nineteen eighteen speech by a union activist
Speaker 1: named Nicholas Klein. Klein such a g he was orphaned.
Speaker 1: He grew up to become an attorney and a labor activist.
Speaker 1: He even wrote for a paper called The Hobo News.
Speaker 1: I was like, what's that demographic hobos? Real hobos And
Speaker 1: apparently it legitimized the identities of unhoused and itinerant workers.
Speaker 1: And it also started the modern street newspaper movement. So
Speaker 1: change needs people, and people are in public and the
Speaker 1: public space needs a street team, no matter what the cause.
Speaker 1: In a timely, last minute edition, this episode is coming
Speaker 1: out on March first, but in a few days, just
Speaker 1: a few days. On March third, twenty twenty five, your
Speaker 1: favorite mythologist, doctor Sarah mac Doctor Sarah McNulty, a squid
Speaker 1: scientist who was also in the Modern Toygo Graphology episodes
Speaker 1: on murals and street art that we put out in October,
Speaker 1: is running a free beginner's guide, a zoom to making
Speaker 1: street art in its open this Monday, March third. It's
Speaker 1: at eight pm Eastern Time, it's at five pm Pacific
Speaker 1: in the US. And on this zoom she's going to
Speaker 1: cover everything that a brand new street artist needs to
Speaker 1: know about getting important messages in front of people in
Speaker 1: the public space. And you can RSVP at the link
Speaker 1: in the show notes. Again, March third, Free zoom pass
Speaker 1: it on to everyone. You know, Sarah's the best.
Speaker 3: One of the important things about the Center for the
Speaker 3: set of political graphics. It's not just that we have
Speaker 3: collected all these posts to show how many struggles have
Speaker 3: been going on for so long. I mean, the immigration
Speaker 3: struggle have been going on forever, the ecollegey's struggle has
Speaker 3: been going on forever, Women's rights have been going on forever.
Speaker 3: We do exhibitions and they show how long people have
Speaker 3: been fighting the same fight.
Speaker 1: Pride festivals have existed for over fifty years, arising from
Speaker 1: the anniversary celebrations of New York City Stonewall riots and
Speaker 1: then blossoming into this full spectrum celebration of rainbow solidarity.
Speaker 3: And sometimes we win, and sometimes we lose, and sometimes
Speaker 3: one step forward and two steps back the other thing,
Speaker 3: and that it does the posters document the victors that
Speaker 3: we've had. And that's one thing that the corporate media
Speaker 3: does not want us to know. They don't want us
Speaker 3: to know that people have power. You know, people have
Speaker 3: the power as in the Patti Smith soob.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 3: I think that's one of the things that the posters
Speaker 3: actually tell, the stories that we don't learn in school
Speaker 3: and they don't really want us to know.
Speaker 1: And with recent huge cuts in US federal administrations like
Speaker 1: park Services and even epidemiologists at the CDC anything remotely
Speaker 1: related to equity or diversity, and climate scientists at NOAH,
Speaker 1: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, How does the word
Speaker 1: get out? Art can be one avenue, as evidenced in
Speaker 1: the Center for the Study of Political Graphics catalog of
Speaker 1: ninety thousand plus posters. Talk to me a little bit
Speaker 1: about when we started to see environmental activism art. Is
Speaker 1: that something that's only been you know, like since the
Speaker 1: ozone layer started to get fucked or was that like
Speaker 1: way before that.
Speaker 3: We've got posters from the state sixties that are already
Speaker 3: talking about the environmental movement. So there's been an ecology
Speaker 3: movement at least you can date it till the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 3: and it has a stop. I don't think it got
Speaker 3: the attention that it has now because the existential aspect
Speaker 3: of it is like in our.
Speaker 1: Face and now, Andy, I feel like there is also
Speaker 1: a culture of gig posters as fine art and as
Speaker 1: these limited edition collectibles, and what you have managed to
Speaker 1: do is take activism and take art and turn it
Speaker 1: into something that you want to put on your wall
Speaker 1: that is collectible. When you were coming up with the
Speaker 1: styles and the things that you wanted to convey, how
Speaker 1: did you narrow it down? Because there's so many ways
Speaker 1: you could have gone with this, And we'll hear that
Speaker 1: answer in just one minute. But let's put some money
Speaker 1: where our mouths are and we'll make a donation to
Speaker 1: two organizations this week. They should not surprise you. One
Speaker 1: is the Center for the Study of Political Graphics. And
Speaker 1: since we recorded this, the world has gotten even more bizarre.
Speaker 1: Carol sentism just yesterday saying the intense changes that we've
Speaker 1: witnessed in the world since this interview took place, especially
Speaker 1: the rapid dismantling of rights generations have fought for, show
Speaker 1: that the work of the Center for the Study of
Speaker 1: Political Graphics is more important than ever. And by collecting
Speaker 1: and exhibiting the graphics of past struggles and how people
Speaker 1: organized and often won, cspg's posters tell the stories and
Speaker 1: histories that are currently being censored, hidden and denied. So
Speaker 1: we are proud to donate to them and their work.
Speaker 1: And Carol adds that if you have or make human
Speaker 1: rights or protest posters about any issue, or would like
Speaker 1: to display one of their poster exhibitions, please contact CSPG
Speaker 1: at politicographics dot org. And we're also making a donation
Speaker 1: two Functional Magic dot org to keep up the amazing
Speaker 1: work commissioning art that inspires people to seek and fight
Speaker 1: for climate solutions, including a kickstarter which is linked in
Speaker 1: the show notes that's dropping the same day this episode
Speaker 1: is coming out, featuring some gorgeous art for a T
Speaker 1: shirt and you can be a walking billboard for change.
Speaker 1: More about Andy's work in a sect but thank you
Speaker 1: to sponsors of the show for making those donations possible.
Speaker 1: So yes, a quick reminder, after Andy's first episode in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, y'all sold out his collectible climate solutions
Speaker 1: posters depicting electrical power, regenerative agriculture, empowering girls and women,
Speaker 1: and engaging with government, and you helped Andy again raise
Speaker 1: twenty five thousand dollars for the Coalition for Rainforest Nations.
Speaker 1: And then since that episode, Functional Magic has made four
Speaker 1: new prints and one is encouraging voting with a stunning
Speaker 1: hand printed letter based work by Amos Kennedy Paul Junior.
Speaker 1: Another by Violetta Hernandez celebrates plant based diets, cashpar windguards,
Speaker 1: kind of trippy critter filled piece encourages wildland protections. And
Speaker 1: there's a vintage comic style nod to electrifying vehicles by
Speaker 1: Rafa Orico Diaz. And all of these are available at
Speaker 1: functionalmatch dot org. And the kickstarter launch of the t
Speaker 1: shirt art features the work of Kaya Solder, a sub
Speaker 1: California based illustrator and designer and poster artist whose clients
Speaker 1: have included Phish and Primus and Teton Gravity Research. And
Speaker 1: Kaya told me she hopes that her artwork will inspire
Speaker 1: people toward joyful activism and collaboration to make our communities
Speaker 1: and by extension, are world a better place. So Functional
Speaker 1: Magic's kickstarter of her work launches literally today, and this
Speaker 1: is the organization's first foray into that T shirt medium.
Speaker 1: But let's ask Andy how he approaches his organization's activism art.
Speaker 1: Why does Functional Magic make these beautifully designed and commissioned, collectible,
Speaker 1: handmade gig posters to fund climate activism? What inspired him?
Speaker 1: And also why a screenprint?
Speaker 7: Well, screenprint is traditional to gig posters, and I just think.
Speaker 2: They look great.
Speaker 7: It's just a beautiful analog process. And so there was
Speaker 7: an aspect of this where I was creating something that
Speaker 7: I just loved as an art piece, and my idea
Speaker 7: was that I was going to foreground the art. They're different,
Speaker 7: right than the kind of political posters that Carol's talking about.
Speaker 7: They're not message first, and I was hoping that people
Speaker 7: would hang them on their walls and enjoy them and
Speaker 7: get to know the climate change solution a little bit
Speaker 7: that the posters were inspired by. And there's like a
Speaker 7: social contagion thing that they call in activism, right where
Speaker 7: if people get excited about something, someone else will someone
Speaker 7: else will. You know, there is a real narrative in
Speaker 7: the media and even some activists that the energy transition,
Speaker 7: the agriculture transition, a lot of the transitions that need
Speaker 7: to happen are all just painful in austerity and sacrifice,
Speaker 7: and that's not really true. The more I research solutions
Speaker 7: to the climate change, a lot of them just will
Speaker 7: make our lives better, regardless of their missions reduction. Our
Speaker 7: lives will be better if everything's electrified and there's less
Speaker 7: air pollution. Our lives will be better if farming becomes
Speaker 7: regenitive and there's healthier food available, so let's get excited
Speaker 7: about that and work on these things.
Speaker 1: And so trying to put a positive spin on what
Speaker 1: you can do as opposed to what you have to
Speaker 1: limit yourself from doing.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And I don't think it's a spin. I mean
Speaker 7: I believe it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, I think. I mean, I think when it
Speaker 1: comes to propaganda, propaganda kind of gets a bad rap,
Speaker 1: but there are positive aspects of propaganda. Is that correct? Oh?
Speaker 3: I'm trying to redefine propaganda.
Speaker 2: So I mean propaganda.
Speaker 3: We've been taught that what the other side said is propaganda.
Speaker 3: What we say is the truth. Yeah, and the other
Speaker 3: side says the same thing.
Speaker 1: For a deeper dive on misleading or misinformation used as propaganda,
Speaker 1: you can see our recent updated episode on agnetology or
Speaker 1: willful ignorance.
Speaker 2: So I think, yes, everything is propaganda.
Speaker 7: Can we I know we're running out of time, but
Speaker 7: I really want to ask Carol a question.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, go for it, Okay.
Speaker 7: So I know Carol knows this is a super famous poster.
Speaker 1: So this is the now century old poster of a
Speaker 1: white bearded man in a suit and a star spangled
Speaker 1: top hat. Pointing right at its viewer with the word
Speaker 1: I want you for US Army. Kind of like if
Speaker 1: Michaelangelo's Heavenly Creator were younger and had a better jaw
Speaker 1: line and was in business close instead of like a
Speaker 1: celestial bathrobe. Carol's like, I don't know if you heard
Speaker 1: the mic pick that up, but talking about iconography and
Speaker 1: very recognizable faces, we've got a poster of Uncle Sam
Speaker 1: who wants you for the US Army.
Speaker 7: You know, there's like these iconic images that have been
Speaker 7: super successful and you associate with any number of things.
Speaker 7: This is for recruiting. You know, you think of Smoky
Speaker 7: the Bear when you think about forest fires. You can
Speaker 7: think about Rosy the Riveter when you think about selling
Speaker 7: war bonds. I don't think there's been one yet for
Speaker 7: a climate change and do you why do you think
Speaker 7: that is? What do you think about that?
Speaker 3: The closest thing to an icon for the ecology movement
Speaker 3: is in the late sixties, Ron Cobb, who was a
Speaker 3: political cartoonist who then went on to do some of
Speaker 3: the computer graphics the first Star Wars. He developed the
Speaker 3: theta symbol, which part of the explanation of it at
Speaker 3: the time was that it means if we don't deal
Speaker 3: with the ecology now, is going to be deaf for
Speaker 3: the world. So often you'll see the green American flag
Speaker 3: with maybe the peace sign on it. That's more common,
Speaker 3: but it's a challenge for all you artists and graphic
Speaker 3: designers out there.
Speaker 1: Since we are among a pop culture and comic book crowd,
Speaker 1: let's not forget that the Greek letter theta was used
Speaker 1: as an abbreviation for the mythological figure of death Thanatos,
Speaker 1: who inspired the super villain to end them all. Thanos.
Speaker 1: You cute little nerds probably already knew that, but things
Speaker 1: you don't know. Let's hear from the wonder Kron audience
Speaker 1: their questions.
Speaker 4: I was curious what disruptive public art or guerrilla art
Speaker 4: looks like in the more digital world and digital space.
Speaker 4: If you see stuff like that so online disruptive protest art?
Speaker 1: Great question, Yeah, our memes protest art.
Speaker 3: I think the word that got me was thistive because
Speaker 3: when you're looking at your computer screen or your phone
Speaker 3: and you're looking at all these images and they're all
Speaker 3: over the political map, and then you go on to
Speaker 3: the next one, you're not doing anything. It's a very
Speaker 3: passive way of receiving information, and you really is talking
Speaker 3: about an economic level of having access to.
Speaker 2: A phone or a computer.
Speaker 3: Paper posters are actually still used more and more because
Speaker 3: you can't carry your computer screen in a demonstration. You
Speaker 3: can't plant your computer screen on your lawn, you know,
Speaker 3: So paper is still being used. Now, what the computer does,
Speaker 3: what the internet does, what social media does, it makes
Speaker 3: it very easy to transmit the posters. I think this
Speaker 3: started with Occupied did a lot of free downloads, and
Speaker 3: so you have artists make the posters and then whoever
Speaker 3: likes that one or that one or that one, they
Speaker 3: just download and print themselves.
Speaker 1: And Carol is referring to Occupy Wall Street, which is
Speaker 1: a series of protest against income inequality in the fall
Speaker 1: of twenty eleven. And now Carol also has plenty of
Speaker 1: poster download resources and we'll link them on our website.
Speaker 3: Then the Immigration Movement in Alto, Arizona, they did a
Speaker 3: lot of free downloads. Just Sees is a great organization.
Speaker 3: And when a poster is on a wall in a
Speaker 3: market or in a library, you're going there because you're
Speaker 3: going to use those facilities. And all of a sudden
Speaker 3: you see something you weren't expecting to see and that's
Speaker 3: really the power of the poster.
Speaker 7: Well, I just really want to thank you. It's so
Speaker 7: exciting for me, as someone who's just starting this and
Speaker 7: trying to be as effective as I can be, to
Speaker 7: have this resource, and I can't thank you enough for
Speaker 7: keeping that going.
Speaker 1: Thank you all for being here and having this chat
Speaker 1: with us. Thank you both for letting me ask you
Speaker 1: so many questions.
Speaker 7: Thanks Ali, so.
Speaker 1: Ask activist people artistic questions and make a poster use
Speaker 1: your voice. Thank you against so much, Carol and Andy
Speaker 1: for orchestrating this, and again we have links to the
Speaker 1: Center for the Study of Political Graphics and to Functional
Speaker 1: Magic in the show notes, and also a link to
Speaker 1: Andy's kickstarter for Functional Magic with gorgeous new T shirt
Speaker 1: designs by Kaya Sotder. Check those out. We'll also link
Speaker 1: the social media for both organizations. We are at Ologies
Speaker 1: on Instagram and Blue Sky. I'm at Aliward on Both
Speaker 1: smologies are shorter kid friendly episodes and their own feed
Speaker 1: their linked in the show notes. We have Ologies merch
Speaker 1: at Ologiesmarch dot com, and to support the show, you
Speaker 1: can join our patreon at Patreon dot com. Slash Ologies.
Speaker 1: Thank you to Aaron Talbert, who admins Theologies podcast Facebook group.
Speaker 1: Aveline Malick makes our professional transcripts. Kelly ar Dwyer makes
Speaker 1: the website. Noel Dilworth is our wonderful scheduling producer. Susan
Speaker 1: Hale managing directs the whole Shebang. Jake Chafe is an
Speaker 1: editor on The Decks and lead editor producer of this
Speaker 1: field trip episode. Who also did additional reporting and some
Speaker 1: writing is Mercedesland of Maitland Audio. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for taking the lead on this one. Nick Thorburn wrote
Speaker 1: the theme music. And if you stick around until the
Speaker 1: end of the episode, I tell you secret. And I'm
Speaker 1: proud to tell you. I started reading a book for
Speaker 1: fun last night and I got like a ways into
Speaker 1: it and tbh wasn't enjoying the vibe, and I was like,
Speaker 1: but I should finish this. This would be a good
Speaker 1: book to put on my to have read list, even
Speaker 1: though it was just for fun. And then I remembered,
Speaker 1: we're all going to die. I don't know how much
Speaker 1: longer I have left. Something could fall out of the
Speaker 1: sky beat me right in the head and guess what,
Speaker 1: no one will ever be standing over my casket like
Speaker 1: stern face, reading from a spreadsheet of the books I
Speaker 1: did or did not finish reading for fun. So I
Speaker 1: stopped reading this book picked up a different book. I
Speaker 1: loved it, no regrets. My problem is I feel rude
Speaker 1: to the book I'm putting down. But guess what, no
Speaker 1: one has to know. There's a book for everyone out
Speaker 1: there anyway, Just read a book for fun. Times are tough,
Speaker 1: so it's okay to escape a little bit into a book.
Speaker 5: Okay for by Pachadermistology, homeology, crypto zoology, lithology, yeah, zeminology, meteorology, pathology, nathology, seriology, filology.
Speaker 1: I've got something to say.