Graphic Agitation 2 images

It's probably time I got around to writing about some of the work featured in Graphic Agitation 2, the "sequel book" to the Graphic Agitation book I wrote about a couple of weeks ago.  This book focuses more on propaganda covering contemporary issues, such as increasing concern over practices of corporate businesses or government crises from the last 25 years.  Here I picked out the ones which stood out to me most and I felt could be relevant to current research and work.

Corporal criticisms 

Fig 1

These posters stood out for different reasons; the one above was a direct manipulation of the popular Absolut advertisements, where the bottle is usually shown with illustrations in lieu of a label, while the one below does the same for the Nike adverts and their telltale motivational texts.  The Nike one is particularly relevant as I recently read "No Logo" by Naomi Klein, the main bugbear of which is with Phil Knight and the Nike company.  This poster highlights the controversial sweatshop issue which Nike continue to skirt around - the appalling conditions of the sweatshops which manufacture the sportswear brand have been well documented and caused a public outcry around the time this poster was made.  The image of an oriental-looking girl running, while holding what looks like her few belongings, serves a dual purpose of mimicking the usual images of "Nike runners", and showing in a very stark way the reality of the women who work in the garment factories owned by Nike. 

Fig 2

Anti-war criticisms

Fig 3

These works, openly critical about war in various countries, stood out because of the way the visuals were twisted in ways that were visceral, and on occasion also managed to be funny (UNable's mocking of the UN's incapability in combating war issues).  The bloodbath in the image above, created in response to the Israel-Palestine conflict, needs no further elaboration; the same can be said about the "INFANTry" image in which Lippa Pearce highlights the plight of child soldiers used in combat in the middle east.  These images are hard-hitting, and rightly so given the subject matter.  War is the subject which causes the most distress among designers and the public alike, and as a consequence the visuals created have to relate to the distress.  

Fig 4, 5

These postcards (below) were created by Triage Collective during the siege of Sarajevo, which lasted for several years.  The visuals were mostly created based on culture jamming, which was a popular form of graphic protest during the time of the war.  Culture jamming involves taking pre-existing work and adding to it, for example the image of Marilyn Monroe or the bottle of Absolut vodka.  Through using visuals that were already familiar to the public both in Bosnia and in other countries, the artists presented the plight of their country in a way that was palatable.  The scale of death and violence in the country was more than had ever been known; the siege of Sarajevo claimed the lives of almost 14,000 citizens.  It was important to present the struggle in a way that people could relate to and also see some hope, through the act of creating art.

Fig 6

No Guns Please

Gun crime and war-related weaponry is a huge arena for graphic protest, and the examples I found either lampooned them or contrasted guns with imagery that was innocent in order to crank up the shock value.  The humorous image titled "Make Tea Not War" by Karmarama uses a vivid yellow colour scheme and a bizarre image of Tony Blair to capture the attention of the viewer.  Blair's face is instantly recognisable to residents of the UK, America and much of Europe, so was an effective device in emotional and connotative anchoring.  The teacup on his head not only makes him look ridiculous but makes the view of the artist clear - war is stupid.  The "tea" element is of course very British, so resonates with locals of the UK where the poster was made.  

Fig 7

In contrast, an American standpoint on the issue of gun laws is much more emotional in the way that subject matter is handled.  The posters below both feature school children as the main focus - in the US at the time of production there had been various tragic incidents where schoolchildren had lost their lives to criminal gunmen.  The call was to tighten up gun laws for fear of anyone and everyone being able to carry and use a gun - this is illustrated quite eloquently by Art Speigelman's cover for the New Yorker in 1993.  The drawing shows young children of primary school age carrying guns to school with their lunch boxes.  Without any accompanying text, Spiegelman's opinion is still clear - if gun laws are not cracked down on, the idea of anyone carrying guns could become a reality.    The poster on the left by James Victoire is titled "Fair Game in America", which says everything about its message.  

Victoire's target illustrations were a deliberate attempt to show how easy it could be for more children to become victims of gun crime.  

Fig 8,9

Fig 10

This image by Luka Lukova (Figure 10) is clever in its mixed message and needs no further elaboration in the poster.  The dove is the international symbol of peace, made up here by silhouettes of weapons, war vehicles, explosions and soldiers in combat.  Lukova's criticism of the idea that we need the military to enforce peace is clear.  This image is arguably one of the simplest but most effective as the icons could be understood by anyone in the world who is familiar with the visuals of war.

The images I chose from the book have highlighted the use of simple visuals being twisted into having a multi-layered meaning, and the sensitivity (or lack of) that certain issues have to be handled with when being conveyed through art.  The main question this has raised for me is whether people reacted more to the "softer" visuals (the Sarajevo postcards, the dove image in Figure 10) as they were easier to digest, or whether they were shocked into paying attention by the visceral nature of images like the Nike one in Figure 1.  In a society where war is so frequent that we have arguably become a little de-sensitised, do people need to be jolted back into an awareness or do they need to be re-introduced to it in a more gentle way?

References

McQuinston, Liz. 2004.  Graphic Agitation 2.  London: Phaidon Press

Images - all scanned from Graphic Agitation 2

Fig. 2 Abusters Magazine. 2001.  Subvertising

Fig. 10 lukova, Luka. 2001. No title.

Fig. 4  Pearce, Lippa and Miller, Erik.  2001.  Infantry

Fig. 5 Lemel, Yossi. 1995. UNable

Fig. 6 Trio design group, 1993-1994.  Sarajevo postcards

Fig. 3 Lemel, Yossi. 2002. Bloodbath

Fig. 1 Maivyane-Davis, Chaz. 2000.  30 Days of Activism

Fig. 7 Karmarama, 2003.  Make Tea Not War

Fig. 8  Victore, James. 1999.  Fair Game in America

Fig. 9 Speigelman, Art. 1993.  New Yorker cover