Propaganda Party: Brooklyn Defense Committee
Saturday, September 22, 2-5pm

Interference Archive and Brooklyn Defense Committee (BDC) are excited to collaborate on a propaganda party. Join us on Saturday, September 22nd from 2-5pm at Interference Archive (314 7th Street, Brooklyn NY 11225) to make posters, a banner banners, buttons, and more. Brooklyn Defense Committee is a group of concerned Brooklyn residents coming together to address the violence of deportations affecting our loved ones and communities. Read more info on our website.

Keeping it Cool! Join us for our fall fundraiser
September 29, 2018, 4:00-9:00pm

Tickets are on sale now! You’re invited to Interference Archive’s (almost) annual benefit. Join us for a fun night filled with friends, refreshments, social movement history, and protest karaoke with Angel Nevarez & Valerie Tevere of Another Protest Song: Karaoke with a Message. Let's celebrate one year in our new home on 7th Street! There will even be special programming for kids in the first half of the evening, from 4-6pm.

Advance tickets are $20 for adults, $5 for kids between 6 and 16, and free for kids under 6. Tickets will be available for $25 at the door.

All funds raised go directly towards one of the most critical supporters of our 30,000+ collection of social movement ephemera–the AC Unit! We owe the final bulk payment on our central AC and we’re raising funds just for that. Our goal is $5,000. It’s really important for our collection to be in a cool, stable environment so that it can live on and be accessed by generations to come.

So join us, bring your cool vibes, and keep Interference Archive chill. There will even be a raffle–get your wallets ready! Read more info on our website.

Beyond the Good Muslim/Bad Muslim Binary: Understanding Islamophobia
Tuesday, September 25, 7-9pm

This interactive workshop with Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan asks participants to engage in and question the narratives that frame the way Muslims are talked about in the West. The workshop will use the British context to explain and ask questions about the way pseudoscientific narratives that stem from colonial times are used to justify today’s racist and dehumanising practices by the state in a range of ways. It asks us to consider Islamophobia beyond the individual’s prejudice or “phobia” and more broadly as a formally sustained and encoded way of thinking about certain people as less human than others, justifying systems and apparatuses of surveillance, the unmaking of citizens and (ironically) the jeopardisation of democracy and increasing authoritarianism that threaten’s everybody’s rights. Read more info on our website.

Interference, Absurdity, Performance, and Political Change: A Workshop Series
Thursdays 7-9pm, September 27-October 18

In this series of (no)work(no)shops, we will collectively discuss ‘the absurd’, how this intersects with political action and performance, and how this relates to the specific context of New York City in 2018. Drawing from a selection of readings and materials from Interference Archive, we will learn about historical and contemporary absurdist/anarchist/dadaist/ni hilist/(t)errorist political performance. Following these explorations, we will build new transgressive, anti-normative characters and creatures and conspire in the creation of new performances and disruptions. Read more on our website; email with RSVPs or questions.

Audio Interference 54: Just Leadership USA

To kick off our fall season of Audio Interference, we’re speaking with folks from the criminal justice reform organization Just Leadership USA about their work to cut the US correctional population in half by 2030. Just Leadership USA empowers people most affected by incarceration to drive policy reform. In this first episode, we interview Marvin Mayfield, Nishan “Prince” Jackson, and Shanequa Charles, three of the folks who are spearheading a city and state wide campaign to end mass incarceration in New York. Listen online

Agitate! Educate! Organize!
Agit Prop in the 21st Century
Exhibition Opening: Tuesday, June 12, 6-9pm
Exhibition Dates: June 12 -- September 30, 2018

Our daily lives are saturated with information; we consume supposedly “neutral” media that implicitly supports existing power structures, yet we simultaneously fear “fake news” without critically analyzing the truths and biases that coexist in every message we see or hear. The reality is that all media has an agenda: for hundreds of years, people have used art, culture, graphics, performance, and design as central elements of social and political organizing across all realms of the political spectrum, to spread information and reimagine reality. This exhibition reflects historic and current uses of agitprop, or agitational propaganda, at the intersection of design and political organizing.

“Propaganda,” from the same root as “propagate,” refers to information that is shared in support of a cause. In modern times, the word propaganda has been weighted with negative connotations; we aim to reclaim the word and highlight the radical potential of propaganda to instigate change. With the Arab Spring, Occupy, Gezi Park, Black Lives Matter, #NoDAPL, and now the resistance to Donald Trump, we’ve seen a new explosion of agitprop. People of all stripes have come out into the streets, placards and banners in hand, wearing T-shirts and buttons, passing out flyers and stickers to protest social injustice. This boost of political ephemera hasn’t been created in a vacuum—since the advent of the printing press and movable type, political slogans and graphics have been part of our daily existence. Politicized communication is the constant accompaniment to people organizing to improve the lives of their families, communities, and co-workers.

Because so much attention is focused on organizing and activism, now is the perfect time to unearth and unpack the history of agitprop. Where does it come from? Who have been its major practitioners? How have the aesthetics and content evolved over time? And, how can we use it to change the world?