Josh Macphee – författare

From the fight against the AIDS crisis to the struggle for Black liberation and international solidarity, Graphic Liberation! digs deep into the history, present, and future of revolutionary political image making. What is the role of image and aesthetic in revolution? Through a series of interviews with some of the most accomplished designers, Josh MacPhee charts the importance of revolutionary aesthetics from the struggle for abolition by Black Panthers, the agitation during the AIDS crisis from ACT-UP, the fight against apartheid in South Africa and Palestine, as well as everyday organizing against nuclear power, for housing, and international solidarity in Germany, Japan, China, and beyond. In twelve interviews, political designer and street artist Josh MacPhee talks to decorated graphic designers such as Avram Finkelstein, Emory Douglas, and more, focussing on each of their contributions to the field of political graphics, their relationships to social movements and political organizing, the history of political image making, and issues arising from reproduction and copyright.

A sweeping and poignant history of community response to the violence of white supremacy and carceral systems in the US, told through interviews, archival reproductions, and narrative.In the summer of 2020, the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Tony McDade ignited a movement that led to the largest street protests in American history. Abolitionist grassroots organizers around the country unified around a clear demand: defund the police and refund our communities. While the majority of the country supported the call to reform the police, what followed was a backlash from mainstream politicians and the press, all but defeating the movement to end the continued violence against Black Americans. Defend / Defund examines the history of how communities have responded to the violence of white supremacy and carceral systems in the United States and asks what lessons the modern abolitionist movement can draw from this past. Organized in a series of thematic sections from the use of self-defense by Black organizers, to queer resistance in urban spaces, the narrative is accompanied by over one hundred full-color images including archival materials produced by Emory Douglas, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and the Young Lords in the 1960s and 70s, CopWatch and the Stolen Lives Project in the 1980s and 1990s, and contemporary material from the Movement for Black Lives, Project NIA, and INCITE!, Defend / Defund shows how deep the struggles for abolition go and how urgent they remain. In addition to full-color reproduction of archival materials, the narrative includes transcripts of interviews with activists, scholars, and artists such as Mariame Kaba, Dread Scott, Dennis Flores, Dr. Joshua Myers, Jawanza Williams (VOCAL-NY and Free Black Radicals), Cheryl Rivera (NYC-DSA Racial Justice Working Group and Abolition Action), and Bianca Cunningham (Free Black Radicals). Each conversation dives into the history of specific struggles with, and organizing against, police and police brutality.

Graphic design and political solidarity work in revolutionary Cuba through the lens of OPSAAAL (Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America) and its cultural production.Armed by Design reflects on the intersection of graphic design and political solidarity work in revolutionary Cuba through the lens of the production of OSPAAAL, the Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America.OSPAAAL developed out of the 1966 Tricontinental Conference in Havana, a meeting of delegates representing national liberation movements and leftist political parties almost exclusively from the Global South. Based in Havana, OSPAAAL produced nearly five hundred posters, magazines, and books beginning in the late 1960s, with most of their work ceasing by the late 1980s. Until 2019, OSPAAAL was a political organization focused on fighting US imperialism and supporting liberation movements around the world through poster production, regularly produced publications, and a series of books featuring the writings of the intellectual leadership of these movements.Armed By Design brings together artists and thinkers from around the world whose work has been impacted by the legacy of OSPAAAL. These contributions reflect on impacts of OSPAAAL’s work on regional movements, including in the Arab world and Korea, design iconography, the evolution of tricontinentalism, our present-day relationship to OSPAAAL posters as a commodity, and authorship and reproduction.This full-color multilingual edition includes ten international contemporary political poster-makers, artists, and designers commissioned to produce OSPAAAL-inspired prints in solidarity with today’s movements: Friends of Ibn Firnas (USA), Yuko Tonohira (Japan/USA), Ganzeer (Egypt/USA), Un Mundo Feliz (Spain), Steven Rodriguez (USA), Dignidad Rebelde, Tomie Arai (USA), Sublevarte Colectivo (Mexico), Jamaa Al-Yad (Lebanon/Worldwide), and A3CB (Japan).

In this short, graphic volume, Josh MacPhee explores the role of music and sound in the student and worker revolt on May 1968 in France through the lens of the vinyl records that emerged out of—and were produced to comment on—the struggle. From the chanson enrages that sung on the barricades, the birth of an independent and politicized music infrastructure in France, the explosive emergence of free jazz and rock scenes, and the enduring legacy and embedding of the sounds and aesthetics of '68 into experimental and pop music to this day, this book shows the impact of liberatory politics and action on our audio landscape.

"Every entry [in Encyclopedia] opens a window onto a different story of creativity and resistance … A totally mind-blowing accomplishment." — Guy Picciotto, FugaziA groundbreaking exploration of the parallel rise of social movements and the vinyl record as the dominant form of music distribution after 1950, alongside a compendium of over 750 record labels that propelled political music and resistance on an international scale. An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels is a compendium of information about political music and radical cultural production. Focusing on vinyl records and the labels that released them, this groundbreaking book traces the parallel rise of social movements in the second half of the twentieth century and the vinyl record as the dominant form of music distribution. Just as the Civil Rights Movement leaps onto mainstream headlines in the early 1960s, the 33rpm “Long Player” and 45rpm single invade people’s stereos. All the major Civil Rights organizations release vinyl records of speeches, movement songs, and field recordings—setting the pace for the intertwining of social movements and sound recordings. This relationship continues through the end of the twentieth century, which marked both the end of apartheid in South Africa and the dominance of the vinyl format.