Graphic Design Histories for Creative Dissent: Archiving and Ethical Challenges (GDHCD)

Lead-PI: Teal Triggs, Royal College of Art

Consortium: Priscila Lena Farias, Universidade de Sao Paulo; Deirdre Pretorius, University of Johannesburg.

Funders: FAPESP, NRF, UKRI

 

Summary:

This project focuses on the graphic objects of street protest for global movements. By defining and critically engaging with histories of creative dissent since the 1950s in Brazil, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, the project reveals graphic design’s capacity both to address and to exacerbate social crises and inequalities. Looking at protests across the political spectrum, the project takes it as axiomatic that ‘democracy’ can be defined in different ways: that liberal left democracy is not the same as populist right democracy, and that both give rise to protest and protest street objects. The project asks: What are the national specificities of modes of visual communication for communities of resistance in Brazil, South Africa, and the UK? How might cultural memory of the development of struggles for democracy support and perpetuate the work of archiving institutions in the future?