Interference Archive is having a spring cleaning yard sale!
We’ve been culling some of our books to make room for new cool stuff, and we’ve got a lot of Justseeds art to sell too. Plus some odds and ends of clothing, equipment, etc.
Come on by!
June 9th and 10th, 11am-5pm
at the Archive (131 8th St. #4, Brooklyn, NY 11215)
Come watch Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times and Berthold Bartosch’s The idea at the Interference Archive
Thursday, May 24th, 2012
Doors 7:30pm, Films start at 8pm
Interference Archive 131 8th St. Brooklyn, NY 11215
Modern Times (1936, 87 min., dir. Charlie Chaplin)
Charlie Chaplin directed and starred as the “Little Tramp” in this satire of industrialized society. The rampant poverty, unemployment, and corruption of social institutions are revealed as Chaplin stumbles from the assembly line, to political demonstrations, to strikes, and prison. Through his comedic clashes with the powers that be, he refuses to be become part of the machine.
The Idea (1932, 25 min., dir. Berthold Bartosch)
Berthold Bartosch’s animated short is based on the Idea, a woodcut novel by print maker Frans Masereel, pioneer of the “book without words”. It depicts a writer who summons forth an idea, symbolized by a nude woman springing from his head. She escapes into the world to challenge the social order. Bartosch, (who collaborated with Lotte Reiniger on The Adventures of Prince Achmed) used innovative techniques to produce ethereal special effects. The film’s haunting score was the first to use an electronic instrument, the ondes Martenot.
Jenna Freedman, librarian at the Barnard Zine Library, and Josh MacPhee, founder of Interference Archive, discuss the evolution of feminist print culture. They trace its trajectory from activist poster making, offset printing, and graffiti in the late 1970s and early 80s to the rise of the feminist zine in the 90s.This program is free with Museum admission.
(image: London graffiti, 1980. Photo by Jill Posener)
![Thursday, March 22nd, 7PMInterference Archive, 131 8th St. #4, Brooklyn, NY 11215[F/G/R trains to 4th Ave./9th St.]Adrien from Les Cafards presents:Political Stories and Situations in France or France under global debt threat, seen from a suburb, in between squatted houses, political issues, housing, money and social problems, everyday life, autonomous struggles, and dreams to occupy the entire city.
Adrien will present on the situation in Paris as well as show a number of short films:
“I’m from Paris and while passing through New York I want to take the occasion to share a small panorama of radical politics from France—autonomous practices and struggles. It can be about sharing some questions and tensions inside social movements outside institutional politics, and inside a small community of activists mostly living in squatted houses in an eastern suburb of Paris. It can be about sharing a map, a panorama of radical politics in France inside movements and in the time—that can be very long sometimes—between them.With some successes and failures, we try to organize to keep away monetary necessities, stupid jobs, part-time contracts, economic pressure. We reach for a bit more freedom, more time, and somehow, by any means we can find, take down the capitalist system… We try to fight against huge urban projects, housing evictions, police practices—in order to build community forces against the crushing metropolis. We try to open and defend spaces for organizations, a social center (for example) in which we can have meetings, meals, shows, and where we can meet, share our situations, our problems, to sort out collectively our pressures and problems.The situations, questions and challenges we face in France are not separate from what happens here, so let’s talk about it!”](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0w21iJBjW1r66q3to1_1280.jpg)
Thursday, March 22nd, 7PM
Interference Archive, 131 8th St. #4, Brooklyn, NY 11215
[F/G/R trains to 4th Ave./9th St.]
Adrien from Les Cafards presents:
Political Stories and Situations in France or
France under global debt threat, seen from a suburb, in between squatted houses, political issues, housing, money and social problems, everyday life, autonomous struggles, and dreams to occupy the entire city.
Adrien will present on the situation in Paris as well as show a number of short films:
“I’m from Paris and while passing through New York I want to take the occasion to share a small panorama of radical politics from France—autonomous practices and struggles. It can be about sharing some questions and tensions inside social movements outside institutional politics, and inside a small community of activists mostly living in squatted houses in an eastern suburb of Paris. It can be about sharing a map, a panorama of radical politics in France inside movements and in the time—that can be very long sometimes—between them.
With some successes and failures, we try to organize to keep away monetary necessities, stupid jobs, part-time contracts, economic pressure. We reach for a bit more freedom, more time, and somehow, by any means we can find, take down the capitalist system… We try to fight against huge urban projects, housing evictions, police practices—in order to build community forces against the crushing metropolis. We try to open and defend spaces for organizations, a social center (for example) in which we can have meetings, meals, shows, and where we can meet, share our situations, our problems, to sort out collectively our pressures and problems.
The situations, questions and challenges we face in France are not separate from what happens here, so let’s talk about it!”
SQEK Library
A collaboration between Squatting Europe Kollective, House Magic, and the Interference Archive.
Opening Friday February 24th, 6-10pm
Interference Archive, 131 8th st. #4, Brooklyn, NY 11215
(3 blocks from the F/G/R trains at 4th Ave. & 9th St.)
The Archive is also open Sundays, noon-5pm, and by appointment, interferencearchive@gmail.com
The Interference Archive and House Magic have collected and assembled a large-scale library of books, pamphlets, periodicals, and posters produced by and focused on the squatting and autonomous social movements in Europe—beginning in the 1960s and carrying us up to today. This collection of over 250 publications from a dozen countries and in half a dozen languages is one of the most thorough and comprehensive in the United States, and is a treasure chest for researchers, activists, and anyone simply interested in looking at Europe “from below.”
For over 40 years activists in countries across Europe have created and maintained squatting movements which at their core are built on the idea of occupying space. Although taking different forms, these same ideas flourished in the United States over the past six months within the Occupy Movement and the discourse it generated. We hope this library will provide information and incite to U.S. activists about how their contemporaries in Europe are organizing, and what some of their successful strategies have been.
A number of SQEK and House Magic members are in NYC this week. There schedule is listed HERE.
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About Interference Archive:
The Interference Archive explores the relationship between cultural production and social movements. This work manifests in public exhibitions, a study center, talks, screenings, publications, workshops, and an on-line presence. The archive consists of many kinds of objects that are created as part of social movements: posters, flyers, publications, photographs, moving images, audio recordings, and other printed matter. Through our programming, we use this cultural ephemera to animate histories of people mobilizing for social transformation. http://interferencearchive.org.
About Squatting Europe Kollective:
Squatting Europe is a research network focusing on the squatters’ movement. Our aim is to produce reliable and fine-grained knowledge about this movement. Critical engagement, transdisciplinarity and comparative approaches are the bases of our project. The group is an open transnational collective (SQEK) whose members represent a diversity of disciplines and fields of interest seeking to understand the issues associated with squats and social centres across the European Union.
About House Magic:
Over the past thirty years, squatted social centers have sprung up—and become key nodes of global justice organizing—in cities throughout Europe. The disobedient social centers represent a new wave of activism supported by grassroots organizers, artists, and radical intellectuals.The ongoing House Magic project is dedicated to sharing the stories and lessons of the vivid life of these temporary autonomous zones. http://occuprop.blogspot.com/.
Title: Images for the End of the Century: Photomontage Equations
Format: book
ISBN: 1851720324
Author: Peter Kennard
Publisher: Journeyman Press
Printer: Cheney and Sons, Ltd, Banbury
Type of Printing: offset
Binding: stitched paperback
City: London
Country: UK
Year: 1990
Size: 6” x 8.25”
# of pages: 128
Cover design: Mike Ricketts with montage by Kennard and photo credit: Ed Barber
Inside design: unknown (likely Kennard)
Inside artwork/illustration: approx. 90 different black and white photomontages, many full page or multiple pages.
Provenance/Acquisition: purchased
Year Acquired: 2010
Language: English
Condition: good
Subject Tags: photomontage; anti-nuclear; anti-militarism
Additional Information: In addition to a large collection of Kennard’s photomontage work, there is a short written afterward by Kennard. This book was published to coincide with a traveling exhibition of the same name.
Title: Romare Bearden in Black-and-White: Photomontage Projections 1964
Format: book
ISBN: 0874271045
Artist: Romare Bearden
Editors: Gail Gelburd and Thelma Golden
Contributors: Foreword by David A. Ross; Conversation with Albert Murray
Publisher: Whitney Museum of American Art (Distributed by Harry N. Abrams, Inc.)
Printer: Herlin Press
Type of Printing: offset
Binding: stitched paperback
City: New York City
Country: New York
Year: 1997
Size: 7.5” x 10”
# of pages: 88
Cover design: Bethany Johns Design, features the Bearden montage The Dove.
Inside design: Bethany Johns Design
Inside artwork/illustration: 36 photographs, 3 of Bearden, 3 of process, and 30 montages.
Provenance/Acquisition: purchased
Year Acquired: 1998
Language: English
Condition: good
Subject Tags: photomontage; African American Art
Additional Information: This is an exhibition catalog for a show of the same name. The book also contains two critical essays by the editors, an conversation between Beardon and Albert Murray, and a selection of Bearden’s poetry.
Title: Mao Tse-Tung
Format: book
ISBN: none
Serial Info: Political Leaders of the Twentieth Century (Pelican series)
Author: Stuart Schram
Publisher: Penguin (“A Pelican Book”)
Printer: Hazell, Watson & Viney Ltd.
Type of Printing: offset
Binding: paperback
City: Middlesex
Country: UK
Year: 1966
Size: 4.312” x 7.125”
# of pages: 352 + 16 inset pages
Cover design: Snark International
Inside design: unknown
Inside artwork/illustration: 29 photo plates on 16 central pages plus 3 maps and reproduction of poem on the inside back cover.
Provenance/Acquisition: purchased at Book Thug Nation
Year Acquired: 2011
Language: English
Condition: used/worn paperback; previous owner’s name embossed on cover
Subject Tags: China; Asia; Communism; Maoism
Additional Information: One of over a dozen Pelican Political Leaders of the Twentieth Century books, all with similar cover design, which slowly evolved and changed from 1966 into the 1980s.
Title: Ho Chi Minh
Format: book
ISBN: 0140211209
Serial Info: Political Leaders of the Twentieth Century (Pelican series)
Author: Jean LaCouture
Translation: Peter Wiles
Publisher: Penguin (“A Pelican Book”)
Printer: The Chaucer Press
Type of Printing: offset
Binding: paperback
City: Middlesex
Country: UK
Year: 1969
Size: 4.312” x 7.125”
# of pages: 272
Cover design: cover photo by Camera Press. No designer listed, but other similarly designed titles in the series attributed to Snark International.
Inside design: unknown
Inside artwork/illustration: n/a
Provenance/Acquisition: purchased at Book Thug Nation
Year Acquired: 2011
Language: English
Condition: used/worn paperback
Subject Tags: Vietnam; Asia; Communism; National Liberation
Title: Plakate
Format: book
ISBN: 3882430931
Author: Klaus Staeck
Publisher: Steidl Verlag
Printer: Steidl
Type of Printing: offset
Binding: perfect
City: Göttingen
Country: Germany
Year: 1988
Size: 4.5”x7”
# of pages: 160
Cover design: Klaus Staeck/Gerhard Steidl
Inside design: Steidl
Inside artwork/illustration: Five photographs of Staeck’s posters in use in public space, 14 images of early works, and 88 images of Staeck’s posters (all poster images are in color if the original poster was).
Provenance/Acquisition: purchased in Berlin
Year Acquired: 2007
Language: German
Condition: good
Subject Tags: photomontage; political posters
Additional Information: Signed by author. A collection of most of Staeck’s political posters from 1970 through 1987, as well as an artist timeline, bibliography, and “several detailed texts by Klaus Staeck give insight into his artistic practice and the organizational structure of his self-distribution model.” (From the back cover.)
Title: L’Utopia della visione: fotomontaggi Sovietici, 1917–1950 [The vision of Utopia: Soviet photomontages, 1917-1950]
Format: book (exhibition catalog)
ISBN: 8849206186
Editor: Federica Pirani and Simonetta Tozzi
Contributors:
Publisher: Gangemi Editore
Printer: unknown
Type of Printing: offset
Binding: sewn
City: Rome
Country: Italy
Year: 2004
Size: 8.75”x9.5”
# of pages: 112 + covers
Cover design: Raffaella Ottaviani from the work “Young Aviator” (1933) by Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova
Inside design: unknown
Inside artwork/illustration: 108 full color plates (some originals were black and white) by over 20 artists, including Dmitriev, Galadzev, Kislov, Klucis, Kovrigin, Krucenych, Kudojarov, Kulesov, Lissitzky, Rodchenko, Senkin Stepanova, Tellingator, Temin, Tereshenko, Šifrin.
Provenance/Acquisition: gift from Molly Fair and Jesse Goldstein, acquired on their trip to Rome in the Fall of 2011.
Year Acquired: 2011
Language: Italian
Condition: good
Subject Tags: photomontage; soviet art
Additional Information: An exhibition catalog from the exhibit of the same name held at the Museo di Roma–Palazzo Braschi in 2004. A solid collection of some familiar, but also many lesser known works of Soviet photomontage. Contents: Presentazione by Gianni Borgna; “Introduzione” by Maria Elisa Tittoni; “Il fotomontaggio nel periodo sovietico 1917–1950” [The photomontage in the Soviet period 1917-1950] by Serguei Bourassovskii and Alexandre Lavrentiev; “Catalogo”; “Biografie.”
Title: Klipp Till: Politiska Fotomontage [To Cut: Political Photomontage]
Format: book
ISBN: 9170141088
Author/Artist: Christer Themptander
Contributors: Inger Fredriksson, Bengt Olvång, Christer Andersson
Publisher: Arbetarkultur
Printer: Tryckeri AB Västermalm, Sweden
Type of Printing: offset (2 color, black and spot red)
Binding: hardcover (no dustjacket, as issued)
City: Stockholm
Country: Sweden
Year: 1980
Size: 8”x11”
# of pages: 152
Cover design: Christer Themptander
Inside design: Ulf Castelius and Christer Themptander
Inside artwork/illustration: Over 85 images of Themptanders montages, most full page, many duotoned, as well as images of the montages in use, photos of Themptander, one of his exhibitions, and an illustrated history of political photomontage.
Provenance/Acquisition: purchased
Year Acquired: 2011
Language: Swedish
Condition: good
Subject Tags: photomontage; political art
Additional Information: Christer Themptander (b. 1943) is the most well known and published political collagists in Sweden. He began school studying advertising, but decided to turn those tools against the establishment instead. There are some aesthetic similarities between Themptander and his German contemporary, Klaus Staeck. Contents: “Samtal med Christer Themptander” [Conversations with Christer Themptander] by Inger Fredriksson; “Det politiska fotomontagets historia” [The political history of photomontage] by Inger Fredriksson; “Bild—Motbild” [Image-Contrasting Image] by Bengt Olvång; “Utdrag ur brev” [Excerpts from letters] by Christer Andersson; “Liten bruksanvisning för fotomontage” [Small manual for photomontage] by Christer Themptander; “Fotomontage 1970–1978”; “Litteraturförteckning m m” [Selected bibliography etc].
The Interference Archive explores the relationship between cultural production and social movements. This work manifests in public exhibitions, a study center, talks, screenings, publications, workshops, and an on-line presence. The archive consists of many kinds of objects that are created as part of social movements: posters, flyers, publications, photographs, moving images, audio recordings, and other printed matter. Through our programming, we use this cultural ephemera to animate histories of people mobilizing for social transformation.
The Interference Archive Open House, and opening of “Riot to the Sound of Their Own Desire: Punk Feminisms,” on Friday December 16 was a huge success! We had over 100 people come through the space, check out the show, read punk feminist zines from the collection, explore the archive, and hang out. Here are some photos taken by Molly Fair.
Kevin and Molly returned to the archive in October with over fifty posters they collected in their travels across Italy, Germany, and especially the former Yugoslavia. Here Kevin shows off some of what he picked up along the way, including posters from other European countries donated to the archive by people tabling at the Serbian ZAF (Zrenjanin Antifa Festival), a large annual gathering of European anarchists and anti-fascists organized in Zrenjanin, the sixth largest city in Serbia.
