From Below: Poetry and Social Justice
Thursday, April 26, 7-9pm

How do we make the world we want to live in? How does art help us re-imagine social and political reality? We want to answer these question by exploring the places where poetry and political activism intersect — and, maybe just as crucially, interrogating places where they don’t. From Below is a poetry and discussion series that aims to get this conversation started. Join us for our inaugural event featuring poet and disability rights activist Cyrée Jarnelle Johnson and interdisciplinary creator Lynn DeSilva Johnson. Read more on our website.

La Lutte Continue…The Struggle Continues …Lotta Continua…La Lucha Continúa…
Exhibition Dates: April 29–May 26, 2018
Opening: Sunday, April 29, 2-8pm

An exhibition and event series about the 50-year-legacy of the global uprisings in 1968.

1968 was a time of explosive global protest. May ’68 might be synonymous with the general strike in France and the Situationists who inspired it, but mass uprisings and occupations that year reached every corner of the globe, with millions of people rising up to build power in pursuit of liberation on their own terms. From Italy to Mexico, from Japan to the United Kingdom, from the United States to Yugoslavia and well beyond, students and workers demonstrated in mass numbers, held strikes, and occupied their universities and factories. The state’s response to these anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-imperialist movements was one of brutal repression.

The composition, methods, goals, and achievements of these various movements were far from uniform, but often aligned. They centered on students and workers, rejected the old structures of unions and political parties, embraced intergroup solidarity and collective decision-making, and produced enduring art and propaganda. In studios and on the street, militants utilized time-honored methods of communication, but the generous use of screen printing by Paris’ Atelier Populaire [People’s Workshop] put the technique on the map as a key visual tool of global resistance movements.

The events of 1968 represent one of the last major instances of truly global protest. In the immediate aftermath, political structures and social relations transformed, and the uprisings’ successes and failures prompted, informed, and bolstered burgeoning feminist, LBGTQ, anti-colonial, and Black Power movements, setting the stage for the radical 1970s. Key tactics of liberation—and repression—were developed and shared in this period; fifty years on, the traces of 1968 remain visible in the battles still being fought today. 1968 speaks to the power of utopian visions to spur radical action, and to the necessity of reimagining what is possible.

Visit our website for more information.

Mayday Propaganda Party
Sunday, April 29, 2-6pm

Join us on the Sunday before Mayday for a Propaganda Party featuring militant 1968 graphics revamped for contemporary struggles. We’ll be screenprinting, block-printing, sign making, and button making. Bring ideas, shirts, fabric for patches, and anything else you want to contribute.

Feminist Urbanism
Wednesday, May 2nd, 7-9pm and Saturday, May 5th 3-6pm

As New York City becomes increasingly polarized and unequal, displacement and lack of opportunities have become daily struggles for most of its dwellers. Within this context, various resistance practices attempting to conceptualize alternative forms of producing and appropriating space have been working to reclaim our Right to the City. How can we develop an urban experience through a feminist lens? The goal of this two-part workshop is to create a collective definition of Feminist Urbanism using Interference Archive´s material.

Wednesday, May 2nd, 7-9pm
During the first session, we will discuss texts on urban theory, urban development, and feminist perspectives on space as a product of intersecting social relations, the creation of the commons, and the capitalist organization of work.

Saturday, May 5th 3-6pm
On the second day of the workshop, we will review a selection of feminist manifestos from artists and feminist radical groups, as well as pamphlets from Interference Archive´s collection. Following that, we will start drawing the boundaries, principles and key aspects that define Feminist Urbanism, to create a collective entry in Wikipedia.

NOTE: We recommend that attendees complete the readings for the discussion before the workshop. Please email info@interferencearchive.org to RSVP and get the readings.

Help us out...we need a first aid kit!

We're low on medical supplies, and we could really use a first aid kit -- paper cuts in the archive are no joke! Do you have a spare lying around? Let us know!

image: KingaNBM [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], from Wikimedia Commons