HappyFt Travels

Original post can be found here.

“Defiant Proclamations”

By Hiya Swanhuyser

Kevin Keating was once known far and wide as the Mission Yuppie Eradication Project; he was accused of keying SUVs in the late 1990s to protest gentrification. Most people thought he was making a complicated point in a humorously dramatic manner, but, of course, opinions varied. In a 1999 San Francisco Chronicle article detailing his arrest and the police ransacking of his home, he was portrayed as a poo-smearing criminal, but even Commander Greg Suhr of the Mission Police Station freely admitted that Keating was “well-read and cerebral.” Don’t you want to see this guy’s art collection? At “Defiant Proclamations,” Keating and other interesting, energetic activists such as muralist Mona Caron and painter Hugh D’Andrade display their political posters. “Radical Posters from the 1960s to the Present” is the show’s subtitle, and other contributors include Jesus Barraza and Melanie Cervantes of Dignidad Rebelde, who have deep roots in the Bay Area’s graphic-arts poster tradition. And word on the cyberstreet is that Vince Dugar has a poster made by 1960s food-freedom group the Diggers.

Tags: cellspace, Politics, radical posters
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Vince Dugar has sent me a few photos of posters and handbills that he and I will hang on the walls March 11. I went by his house last week and got to look through his assorted collections. Many great items, and many other causes and opinions missing (no People’s Park, Free Speech, or Anti-Nuke, etc. items). But he has some amazing gems, including an original SF Diggers’ “1% FREE” poster as well as a bluntly defiant handbill calling for black men to avoid the Vietnam draft. The show will be featured in the SF Weekly Events Cal in a few weeks, and things are moving along well with compiling the work from all the other artists. Enjoy the pics!

Tags: cellspace, Politics, radical posters
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Thanks to Soft Zulah for creating a quick, fun, and compelling flyer/poster image for the upcoming poster exhibit at CELLspace.

Go HERE to read all about the show.

Tags: cellspace, Culture Jamming, Politics, radical posters
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HappyFeet presents
Defiant Proclamations
Radical Posters from the 1960s to the Present

For decades, Bay Area walls have been pasted with bold art and pertinent messages about the politics, practices, and abuses of contemporary mainstream culture and its co-opted voices. Also speaking outside the frameworks of organized labor and left movements, individual artists and collectives have shouted defiant proclamations with ink and paper. Today, political graphics have reached a broad audience via many media sources, hopefully creating a new wave of radical art as well as a redefinition of visual art and it’s usual commodified structures. With a strong history in the Bay Area, this one night only exhibit will feature works old and new, giving a glimpse of the broad range of opinions and styles that have papered walls across the area.

Thursday, March 11
(one night only!)
7 pm to midnight
FREE!

CELLspace Gallery
2050 Bryant St.
San Francisco, CA 94110
www.cellspace.org

Posters, Handbills, and Artifacts From

• the private collection of Vince Dugar
• the Interference Archive (Josh MacPhee and Dara Greenwald)
• the SF Print Collective
• Jesus Barazza
• Mona Caron
• Melanie Cervantes
• Hugh D’Andrade
• Kevin Keating
• Claude Moller
• Soft Zulah

Tags: Politics, radical posters
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(thanks to Laura for this pic from Dachau, Germany)

A month or so ago, I photographed a new stencil in Clarion Alley, the funky painted street by Community Thrift on Valencia St. I wasn’t sure at first if I was going to post the image to Stencil Archive, because for the first time in San Francisco, I had captured a White Supremest logo as negative space. Huh? The “New Right”? Why the hell are they tagging a right wing stencil in Clarion Alley? [I posted the stencil, because people need to know what their icons are and deface them whenever they can.]

Before the Clarion Alley block party, a friend buffed the stencils. I don’t blame him, especially since Clarion Alley is a lefty, Anarcho-Radical zone, with murals that make hate-free political statements as well as critique capitalist society. Before the Block Party, I got word that the SFPD were going to crack down on open alcohol containers during the event. I stopped by the alley early to look for stencils and double check that rumor. Sure enough, a volunteer was making a sign telling people to behave that day. (The SFPD harassed participants by riding motorcycles through the party and did issue open container citations.)

(more…)

Tags: murals, Politics, stencils
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Sunday at the West Fest, a free concert in Golden Gate Park, I threw a new line in my carny spiel: “Just like the SF Diggers gave it all away in the Summer of Love, our games are free. There ain’t no line, and it don’t cost a dime!” The SF Diggers have inspired me many times over with their mad, creative urge to make the word “free” the real deal. They gave food away to the wayward runaways that flocked to Upper Haight, inspiring the Food Not Bombs campaigns. They hustled landlords to get living space and then crammed in as many homeless teens as possible to get them off the streets, and the Huckleberry Youth Programs is a reminder of their work. The SF Diggers threw free concerts in the Panhandle, the West Fest was a quasi-unsponsored (they did have logos all over things) example of that legacy. Finally, the SF Diggers created free stores, where money wasn’t considered. The Really Really Free Markets and Clothing Swaps stand as 21st Century Examples of this idea.

The SF Diggers, for good or bad, were tied to the San Francisco Mime Troupe. On top of all that free culture listed above, there were also many puppet performances, spontaneous art happenings, and wild, tripped out parties. The Mime Troupe gave their shows away for free in parks across the City, and they had to fight for that right, inspiring the SF Diggers (and bringing on the hilarious arrest of some of their giant puppets). On the East Coast, Peter Schumann’s Bread and Puppet Theater also began to throw free performances in New York, Vermont, and beyond. And Luis Valdez and El Teatro Campesino also began free, radical performance from a Mexi-Cali Latino perspective.

(more…)

Tags: free, Politics, Puppets
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