Art

This book is a blueprint for artists looking to engage with activist movements with a persistent longevity and a reminder that art has the power to be more dangerous than words.

Front Lines: A Lifetime of Drawing Resistance is Susan Simensky Bietila's story of her six decades as a movement artist and activist and a lifetime of artistic collaborations rooted in her activist experience. Growing up during McCarthyism, she rejected the nationalist masculinity of elite art and conformist culture and found feminism and collectivism as new forms of resistance. She became an artist in the New Left, creating illustrations for radical underground publications including RAT, Subterranean News, and comics for the anarchic World War 3 Illustrated.

With more than one hundred images, Front Lines documents her art on the page and in action featuring protest banners and giant puppets of birds and fish carried in the streets, masks of notorious dictators for street theater, posters pasted on walls and hung in radical spaces, community art builds, and more. Visual storytelling and detailed captions contextualize and bring to life her work with movements including antiwar protests during the Viet Nam era, Indigenous led antimine and antipipeline struggles, water protection, immigrant rights, anticorporate globalization convening, protests against the state and capital, Palestinian liberation actions, and collaborations with groups throughout the Great Lakes region and beyond. She agitates from the roots and the front lines to this day.

Life’s stories are always prone to disruption and digression, thwarting the neat storybook narrative we love so much.

Almost all of our stories follow the same basic pattern: beginning, middle, end: exposition, action and climax. It’s a neat and tidy way of telling a story. But life’s not like that, is it? Life is not neat and tidy, it doesn’t obey the rules. Life’s stories—like the stories told here in But, personal and impersonal, historical and contemporary—are punctuated by disruption, derailment, and digression.

Stories where the good guys lose. Stories where the bad girls win. Stories that just stop in the middle. Stories that fizzle out or simply never get going. Stories that don’t make sense. Stories that start where they should end and end where they start. Stories that go round in a cyclical loop, forever. Unfinished stories. Unstarted stories. Stories that stutter and mumble, that cough and splutter.

That’s what we have here in this book: real stories, that do all of the above. That’s why this book is called But. Because the but is there to disrupt the easy normality of the way we tell our stories. This book is a collection of stories about real lives, real people, and real life. Stuttering, wayward, disjointed, funny, ridiculous, and unplanned.

Life’s stories are always prone to disruption and digression, thwarting the neat storybook narrative we love so much.

Almost all of our stories follow the same basic pattern: beginning, middle, end: exposition, action and climax. It’s a neat and tidy way of telling a story. But life’s not like that, is it? Life is not neat and tidy, it doesn’t obey the rules. Life’s stories—like the stories told here in But, personal and impersonal, historical and contemporary—are punctuated by disruption, derailment, and digression.

Stories where the good guys lose. Stories where the bad girls win. Stories that just stop in the middle. Stories that fizzle out or simply never get going. Stories that don’t make sense. Stories that start where they should end and end where they start. Stories that go round in a cyclical loop, forever. Unfinished stories. Unstarted stories. Stories that stutter and mumble, that cough and splutter.

That’s what we have here in this book: real stories, that do all of the above. That’s why this book is called But. Because the but is there to disrupt the easy normality of the way we tell our stories. This book is a collection of stories about real lives, real people, and real life. Stuttering, wayward, disjointed, funny, ridiculous, and unplanned.

Rediscover the most insightful and incendiary cultural commentaries from a leading figure in the revival of Surrealism.

Surrealism, Bugs Bunny, and the Blues is a collection of Franklin Rosemont’s writings on popular culture over a period of more than forty years. Rosemont, a self-taught scholar, poet, and artist, playfully uncovers the sometimes hidden-in-plain-sight writers and artists who managed to be both popular, vernacular, and in their own ways profoundly revolutionary.

Rosemont skillfully weaves together what most would regard as unlikely threads. The labor culture of the nineteenth-century anarchist movement gains new meaning when connected to the famed Chicago musicians of blues and jazz. His interests from childhood extended from his favorite animators and comic art—Mel Blanc and Tex Avery, Scrooge McDuck, Mighty Mouse, Krazy Kat, Smokey Stover, and Powerhouse Pepper—to nineteenth-century drug-taker Benjamin Paul Blood, or the barely remembered best-selling utopian writer Edward Bellamy. Palindromes and other wordplay counted along with radical environmentalism, modern dance alongside the “mad” self-taught writer-artist Henry Darger.

Find all these and much more, exploring the inventory of Franklin Rosemont’s discoveries and his luminous, unpredictable exploration of himself. An introductory essay by Abigail Susik and an afterword by Paul Buhle frame his work and life.

Signal weaves a story of how culture is central to social transformation, both yesterday and today.

This ongoing series is dedicated to documenting and sharing political graphics, creative projects, and cultural production of international resistance and liberation struggles.

Highlights of the ninth volume of Signal include:

• Hell No, We Won’t Glow: Selections from the Anti-Nuclear Power Discography by Dirk Bannink and Sean P. Kilcoyne
• They Have Calluses on Their Tongues. We Have Calluses on Our Hands. Davide Tidoni interviews Italian artist and self-appointed worker communicator Pietro Perotti
• Click to Edit: Print on demand and the aesthetics and means for production of the far right by Alex Lucas
• Creative Freedom behind the Iron Curtain Aaron Terry explores the film posters of the

Signal:08 collects and connects the culture and politics of international Black Power publishing, the 1960s anarchist and antimilitarist illustrations of Vera Williams and Liberation magazine, memorializing those murdered by anti-Sikh violence in India, the agitprop of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the aesthetics and politics of a reenactment of the largest rebellion of enslaved people in US history.

Crossing continents and communities, print and performance, Signal weaves a story of how culture is central to social transformation, both yesterday and today.

Highlights of the eighth volume of Signal include:

• Writing for the Revolution: Publishing and Designing Black Power Books by Andrew Fearnley
• Hope in the Midst of Apathy: Liberation magazine and the Covers of Vera Williams by Alec Dunn
• Most of My Heroes: Stamps in Memory of Anti-Sikh Violence by Vijay S. Jodha & S. Ravi
• Our Code of Morals Is Our Revolution: Agit Prop Travel Documents of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
• Slave Rebellion Reenactment: An Interview with Dread Scott by Josh MacPhee

This Is Not a Photo Opportunity is a street-level, full-color showcase of some of Banksy’s most innovative pieces ever.

Banksy, Britain’s now-legendary “guerilla” street artist, has painted the walls, streets, and bridges of towns and cities throughout the world. Once viewed as vandalism, Banksy’s work is now venerated, collected, and preserved.

Over the course of a decade, Martin Bull has documented dozens of the most important and impressive works by the legendary political artist, most of which are no longer in existence. This Is Not a Photo Opportunity boasts nearly 200 color photos of Banksy’s public work on the walls, as seen from the streets.

Disguised as a book of innocent postcards, Slingshot is a dangerous collection of Eric Drooker’s most notorious posters. Plastered on brick walls from New York to Berlin, tattooed on bodies from Kansas to Mexico City, Drooker’s graphics continue to infiltrate and inflame the body politic. Drooker is the author of two graphic novels, Flood! A Novel in Pictures (winner of the American Book Award), and Blood Song: A Silent Ballad. He collaborated with Beat poet Allen Ginsberg on the underground classic Illuminated Poems. His provocative art has appeared on countless posters and book covers, and his hard-edged graphics are a familiar sight on street corners throughout the world. Eric Drooker is a third-generation New Yorker, born and raised on Manhattan Island. His paintings are frequently seen on covers of the New Yorker and hang in various art collections throughout the U.S. and Europe.

Signal is an ongoing book series dedicated to documenting and sharing compelling graphics, art projects, and cultural movements of international resistance and liberation struggles. Artists and cultural workers have been at the center of upheavals and revolts the world over, from the painters and poets in the Paris Commune to the poster makers and street theatre performers of the recent Occupy movement. Signal will bring these artists and their work to a new audience, digging deep through our common history to unearth their images and stories. We have no doubt that Signal will come to serve as a unique and irreplaceable resource for activist artists and academic researchers, as well as an active forum for critique of the role of art in revolution.

In the US there is a tendency to focus only on the artworks produced within our shores or from English speaking producers. Signal reaches beyond those bounds, bringing material produced the world over, translated from dozens of languages and collected from both the present and decades past. Though it is a full-color printed publication, Signal is not limited to the graphic arts. Within its pages you will find political posters and fine arts, comics and murals, street art, site-specific works, zines, art collectives, documentation of performance and articles on the often overlooked but essential role all of these have played in struggles around the world.

Highlights of the seventh volume of Signal include:

• Philadelphia Printworks: Maryam Pugh discusses the legacy and future of Black political art with John Morrison
• The Vinyl Records of Victor Jara: The world-wide impact of the nueva canción bard documented by Josh MacPhee
• Spectacular Commodities: Mehdi el Hajoui explores the objects of the Situationist International
• The Left Independistas: A fifty year retrospective of the graphics of the Catalan independence movement by Jordi Padró
• Hope in the Midst of Apathy: Vera Williams and the cover art of Liberation magazine by Alec Dunn
• Dario and Maxi: Natalia Revale documents the transformation of a Buenos Aires metro station
• We Will Break Open the Doors That Obscure the Sun: Erik Buelinckx uncovers the graphic work of the anarchist Belgian Expressionist Albert Daenens
• Giving Voice to the Voiceless: Bill Berkowitz interviews California printer and poster maker Malaquías Montoya

Signal is an ongoing book series dedicated to documenting and sharing compelling graphics, art projects, and cultural movements of international resistance and liberation struggles. Artists and cultural workers have been at the center of upheavals and revolts the world over, from the painters and poets in the Paris Commune to the poster makers and street theatre performers of the recent Occupy movement. Signal will bring these artists and their work to a new audience, digging deep through our common history to unearth their images and stories. We have no doubt that Signal will come to serve as a unique and irreplaceable resource for activist artists and academic researchers, as well as an active forum for critique of the role of art in revolution.

Highlights of the second volume ofSignal include:

• Anarchist Manga in Japan
• Breaking Chains: Political Graphics and the Anti-Apartheid Struggle
• Selling Freedom: Promotional Posters from the 1910s
• Street Art, Oaxacan Struggle, and the Mexican Context
• Covering the Wall: Revolutionary Murals in 1970s Portugal
• Røde Mor: Danish printmaking, pop music, and politics

Signal is an ongoing book series dedicated to documenting and sharing compelling graphics, art projects, and cultural movements of international resistance and liberation struggles. Artists and cultural workers have been at the center of upheavals and revolts the world over, from the painters and poets in the Paris Commune to the poster makers and street theatre performers of the recent Occupy movement. Signal will bring these artists and their work to a new audience, digging deep through our common history to unearth their images and stories. We have no doubt that Signal will come to serve as a unique and irreplaceable resource for activist artists and academic researchers, as well as an active forum for critique of the role of art in revolution.

Highlights of the third volume ofSignal include:

• Sonic Internationalism: An Interview with Paredon Records Founder Barbara Dane
• Game of Destruction: Deltor Stencils the Enemies of Socialism by Stephen Goddard
• Organized Artists/Reproductive Resistance: Reflecting on the Medu Arts Ensemble
• Quebec Spring: Striking Culture by David Widgington
• Memories of Revolution: Yugoslav Partisan Memorials by Robert Burghardt and Gal Kirn

Signal is an ongoing book series dedicated to documenting and sharing compelling graphics, art projects, and cultural movements of international resistance and liberation struggles. Artists and cultural workers have been at the center of upheavals and revolts the world over, from the painters and poets in the Paris Commune to the poster makers and street theatre performers of the recent Occupy movement. Signal will bring these artists and their work to a new audience, digging deep through our common history to unearth their images and stories. We have no doubt that Signal will come to serve as a unique and irreplaceable resource for activist artists and academic researchers, as well as an active forum for critique of the role of art in revolution.

Highlights of the sixth volume ofSignal include:

• Basement Workshop: The Genesis of New York’s Asian American Resistance Culture
• Jamaa Al-Yad: An Interview with Daniel Drennan ElAwar
• La Escuela de Cultura Popular Revolucionaria Mártires del 68: Thirty Years of Collective Agitation in Mexico City
• The Appalachian Movement Press
• Adhesing Uprisings, and much more.

Signal is an ongoing book series dedicated to documenting and sharing compelling graphics, art projects, and cultural movements of international resistance and liberation struggles. Artists and cultural workers have been at the center of upheavals and revolts the world over, from the painters and poets in the Paris Commune to the poster makers and street theatre performers of the recent Occupy movement. Signal will bring these artists and their work to a new audience, digging deep through our common history to unearth their images and stories. We have no doubt that Signal will come to serve as a unique and irreplaceable resource for activist artists and academic researchers, as well as an active forum for critique of the role of art in revolution.

Highlights of the first volume ofSignal include:

• The Future of Xicana Printmaking: Alec Dunn and Josh MacPhee interview the Taller Tupac Amaru (Favianna Rodriguez, Melanie Cervantes, and Jesus Barraza)
• The Adventures of Red Rat: Alec Dunn interviews Johannes van de Weert
• Hard Travelin’: A photo essay with IMPEACH
• Early 20th-Century Anarchist Imprints
• Mexico 68: The Graphic Production of a Movement: Santiago Armengod interviews Felipe Hernandez Moreno
• Adventure Playgrounds: A photo essay
• Designing Anarchy: Dan Poyner interviews Rufus Segar

Signal is an ongoing book series dedicated to documenting and sharing compelling graphics, art projects, and cultural movements of international resistance and liberation struggles. Artists and cultural workers have been at the center of upheavals and revolts the world over, from the painters and poets in the Paris Commune to the poster makers and street theatre performers of the recent Occupy movement. Signal will bring these artists and their work to a new audience, digging deep through our common history to unearth their images and stories. We have no doubt that Signal will come to serve as a unique and irreplaceable resource for activist artists and academic researchers, as well as an active forum for critique of the role of art in revolution.

Highlights of the fifth volume ofSignal include:

• The Club de Grabado de Montevideo: Georgia Phillips-Amos unearths printmaking under dictatorship
• Three Print Collectives: Alec Dunn interviews Friends of Ibn Firnas, A3BC, and the Pangrok Sulap collective
• Survival by Sharing—Printing over Profit: Josh MacPhee interviews Paul Werner about the history of New York City’s Come!Unity Press
• The Pyramid's Reign: Analyzing an enduring symbol of capitalism with Eric Triantafillou
• Empty Forms—Occupied Homes: Marc Herbst looks at the intersection between movement design and the struggle for housing in Barcelona
• Discs of the Gun: A trip through music and militancy in postwar Italy by Josh MacPhee

Signal is an ongoing book series dedicated to documenting and sharing compelling graphics, art projects, and cultural movements of international resistance and liberation struggles. Artists and cultural workers have been at the center of upheavals and revolts the world over, from the painters and poets in the Paris Commune to the poster makers and street theatre performers of the recent Occupy movement. Signal will bring these artists and their work to a new audience, digging deep through our common history to unearth their images and stories. We have no doubt that Signal will come to serve as a unique and irreplaceable resource for activist artists and academic researchers, as well as an active forum for critique of the role of art in revolution.

Highlights of the fourth volume ofSignal include:

• Imaging Palestine: Rochelle Davis and Emma Murphy take a look at Palestinian Affairs, one of the PLO’s major publications
• Fighting Fire with Water: Lincoln Cushing discusses the Bay Area Peace Navy’s large-scale visual interventions
• The Walls Speak Even If the Media Is Silent: Tennessee Watson documents a project made in response to the violence in Juárez
• Revolutionary Continuum: Jared Davidson cracks open New Zealand’s Kotare Trust Poster Archive
• Kommune 1: Michael McCanne teases out the early years of West Germany’s militant counterculture
• Illustrating the 3rd World: Josh MacPhee interviews Max Karl Winkler, book cover designer for Three Continents Press
• Dynamic Collectivity: Ryan Hayes traces the history of Toronto’s Punchclock Printing Collective

A radical feminist history and street art resource for inspired readers! This book combines short biographies with striking and usable stencil images of thirty women—activists, anarchists, feminists, freedom-fighters, and visionaries.

It offers a subversive portrait history which refuses to belittle the military prowess and revolutionary drive of women, whose violent resolves often shatter the archetype of woman-as-nurturer. It is also a celebration of some extremely brave women who have spent their lives fighting for what they believe in and rallying supporters in climates where a woman’s authority is never taken as seriously as a man’s. The text also shares some of each woman’s ideologies, philosophies, struggles, and quiet humanity with quotes from their writings or speeches.

The women featured are: Harriet Tubman, Louise Michel, Vera Zasulich, Emma Goldman, Qiu Jin, Nora Connolly O’Brien, Lucia Sanchez Saornil, Angela Davis, Leila Khaled, Comandante Ramona, Phoolan Devi, Ani Pachen, Anna Mae Aquash, Hannie Schaft, Rosa Luxemburg, Brigitte Mohnhaupt, Lolita Lebron, Djamila Bouhired, Malalai Joya, Vandana Shiva, Olive Morris, Assata Shakur, Sylvia Rivera, Haydée Santamaría, Marie Equi, Mother Jones, Doria Shafik, Ondina Peteani, Whina Cooper, and Lucy Parsons.

Paper Politics: Socially Engaged Printmaking Today is a major collection of contemporary politically and socially engaged printmaking. This full-color book showcases print art that uses themes of social justice and global equity to engage community members in political conversation. Based on an art exhibition that has traveled to a dozen cities in North America, Paper Politics features artwork by over 200 international artists; an eclectic collection of work by both activist and non-activist printmakers who have felt the need to respond to the monumental trends and events of our times.

Paper Politics presents a breathtaking tour of the many modalities of printing by hand: relief, intaglio, lithography, serigraph, collagraph, monotype, and photography. In addition to these techniques, included are more traditional media used to convey political thought, finely crafted stencils and silk-screens intended for wheat pasting in the street. Artists range from the well established (Sue Coe, Swoon, Carlos Cortez) to the up-and-coming (Favianna Rodriguez, Chris Stain, Nicole Schulman), from street artists (BORF, You Are Beautiful) to rock poster makers (EMEK, Bughouse).

Getting Up for the People tells the story of the Assembly of Revolutionary Artists of Oaxaca (ASARO) by remixing their own images and words with curatorial descriptions. Part of a long tradition of socially conscious Mexican art, ASARO gives respect to Mexican national icons; but their themes are also global, entering contemporary debates on issues of corporate greed, genetically modified organisms, violence against women, and abuses of natural resources.

In 2006 ASARO formed as part of a broader social movement, part of which advocated for higher teachers’ salaries and access to school supplies. They exercised extralegal means to “get up,” displaying their artwork in public spaces. ASARO stands out for their revitalizing remix of collective social action with modern conventions in graffiti, traditional processes in Mexican printmaking, and contemporary communication through social networking.

Now they enjoy international recognition as well as state-sanctioned support for their artists’ workshops. They use their notoriety to teach Oaxacan youth the importance of publicly expressing and exhibiting their perspectives on the visual landscape.

This unique and unashamedly DIY book follows the runaway success of Banksy Locations and Tours Vol.1 by rounding up the rest of Banksy’s UK graffiti from the last five years. It includes over 100 different locations and 200 color photographs of Banksy’s street art; information, random facts, and idle chit-chat on each location; a full walking tour of his remaining work in Bristol, England; and snippets of graffiti by several other artists.

Visit the locations in-person, or get your slippers on and settle back for an open-top bus ride though some of Banksy’s best public work.

When it comes to art, London is best known for its galleries, not its graffiti. However, not if photographer Martin Bull has anything to say about it. While newspapers and magazines the world over send their critics to review the latest Damien Hirst show at the Tate Modern, Bull, in turn, is out taking photos of the latest street installations by guerilla art icon Banksy.

In three guided tours, Martin Bull documents sixty-five London sites where one can see some of the most important works by the legendary political artist. Boasting over 100 color photos, Banksy Locations and Tours Volume 1 also includes graffiti by many of Banksy's peers, including Eine, Faile, El Chivo, Arofish, Cept, Space Invader, Blek Le Rat, D*face, and Shepherd Fairey.

U.S. edition has locations updated and 25 additional photos.