Raised Fist Review: Punk Music

Who among us who #1 goes to see bands, and #2 has the physical ability, has never raised a fist at any show ever? Rock. The. Fuck. On. Right??!! These raised fists show up in punk flyers from the 90’s and GUESS WHAT: the 90’s are back, y’all. Positive Force | http://raisedfist.femmetech.org/items/show/51 Positive Force was… Continue reading Raised Fist Review: Punk Music

Delicious Coffee In a Raised Fist

Catalog items: Expresso La Forza label | New Harvest Coffee logo | Baristas Rise Up Today we’re going to talk about my favorite thing in the morning, afternoon, and early evening: coffee. Even though I feel complicated about the use of raised fists for logos, I accept all things about coffee. It’s GREAT there are other hyper… Continue reading Delicious Coffee In a Raised Fist

Raised Fist[ing]

Raised fists in activist settings symbolize strength, unity, resistance, and community. Fists themselves have additional meanings: often one thinks of hitting or violence, but to the queer community an additional meaning lurks pruriently behind the surface. After raising for LGBTQ rights throughout the 1980s, and for AIDS activism in the 1990s, a confluence of fists and safer sex rhetoric emerged visually through the production of images of raised fists in gloves in the late 2010’s.

Reuse, Repurposing, and Capitalizing on Raised Fist images

Boss Revolution: Logo from IDT Telecom, Inc.

TODAY’s FISTS: Boss Revolution | Underdogs As raised fist images are used over more decades and with a broader variety of political meanings, the attentive viewer notices this icon used for advertising and marketing purposes that may seem to dilute or complicate the original political intentions for which this image is often used. Millenial media… Continue reading Reuse, Repurposing, and Capitalizing on Raised Fist images

Political Art Lectures for 2014

I’m writing to share resources for teachers looking for a NYC-based field trips for classes on art/politics/sociology/archives, etc: INTERFERENCE ARCHIVE ON-SITE TOURS I recently began an appointment as the Resident Scholar at the Interference Archive [www.interferencearchive.org], a public archive of political art ephemera in Brooklyn. See a NY Times article on us here. We offer… Continue reading Political Art Lectures for 2014

Raised Fist Slideshow in Pittsburgh 10/23

The Fist Is Still Raised Slideshow Weds Oct 23, 7pm at The Big Idea Cooperative What do The Lavender Left, Food Not Bombs, radical labor organizers, 1970s feminists, the IWW, Black Power, OWS, anti-imperialist organizing, and fisting have in common? They — and many more — all use illustrations of the raised, clenched fist in… Continue reading Raised Fist Slideshow in Pittsburgh 10/23

My ### Is A Muscle The Size of Your Fist

My Cunt Is A Muscle… is based on the wonderful Your Heart Is a Muscle 1999 woodcut by Dalia Sapon-Shevin, then a member of the Syracuse Cultural Workers, it was made as an inspiration to activists and a response to the state repression experienced during the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in 1999. Dalia’s… Continue reading My ### Is A Muscle The Size of Your Fist

On power

In preparation for the “Queer Power, Queer Vulnerability” talk I gave at the IVYQ conference last week, I’ve been thinking a lot about power… I think about it in many forms and am actually kind of obsessed. I think about resistance, social change, revolution and “people power.” The ways and means from which individuals and… Continue reading On power

Pedagogy: What in Art Makes Change

"Fist" by Frank Cieciorka, 1965

My BIG QUESTION is: how do arts-based cultural works effect change? And the inverse of that is: what is missing in the understanding of the effectiveness of participatory, relational, or socially-engaged art when we want to find cultural resistance within it? What other ways can we think about “effectiveness” or “utility” or the impact of… Continue reading Pedagogy: What in Art Makes Change

Insurgency and Anarchafeminism

 Basically my life is totally great because I decided to make it my part-time job to study how people are collectively, creatively rebellious. Again, this means I look at participatory extralegal systems like socially-engaged, guerilla and performance art, tactical media, forms of DIY/DIWO production cultures, copyleft, and pop-ed. One of my absolute favorite pop-ed/guerilla art… Continue reading Insurgency and Anarchafeminism