 Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch. I am Veerun Kumar and today we are going to talk about the role of visual communication, the role of creative posters, agitation propaganda posters in popular struggles and working class struggles across the world. We are going to look into the history of it and what lies ahead. To talk more about this, we are joined by Tinks, who is a visual designer with Trikontal Institute of Social Research. Tinks, welcome to People's Dispatch. Thank you for having me. So, Tinks to start with Trikontal Social Research, Trikont recently came up with a dossier looking into the visual communication and popular struggles, especially talking about the auspal posters, which contributed a lot to the global struggles, the anti-imperialist, anti-colonial struggles across the world. Can you talk more about this dossier and the work which you have done in that? Okay, so maybe just a slight step back about where this dossier is coming from and that is related to also where the Trikontal Institute for Social Research is coming from, is from its very name speaking back to this history of the conference that occurred in 1966 in Cuba, trying to unite the Trikontinents, so the Latin America, Asia, and Africa, and its anti-colonial struggles. One of the things that emerged out of this is the Trikontinental magazine, including there's also the bulletin, which is more news-oriented. But the dossier that we're focusing on looks a little bit at the visual production, not only of the magazine, but the poster productions of the auspal, which is the organization of solidarity with the people of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. And for anyone who's ever had the opportunity to hold a copy of this Trikontinental magazine that was you know, analysis, some theoretical texts, some exchanges between the anti-colonial struggles across the global south. There's something that I think is very immediate about why these magazines are important. You look at the quality of its publication, you look at the visuals that are diverse in various styles, not so much traditional to the kind of socialist, communist, what was hegemonic in the visuals of the time. And also you look at the poster production inside, so there's a little folded piece of poster that is in every issue. And you start asking some questions about how is this produced, and for what purposes it was produced, and who was producing it. And especially one of the point that the auspal posters used to go across the world to various struggles and it used to inspire, and the auspal posters were themselves inspired by these struggles. Exactly, so many of these were internationalists in nature, responding to the needs and the struggles of the time, but they reached a circulation of 50,000 copies per issue. So these were going to countries all over the world. And we have to understand in the moment that Cuba, where this publication is being produced, was under embargo and has been since then. So in terms of material constraints, or including paper, something to think about the material conditions of producing these actual posters and publications is severely restricted. Almost all the paper is important to Cuba, for instance. So to get this kind of volume and have that kind of political commitment to share internationalist news and art for people's struggles is immense, I think, inspiration. And at the same time, with one of the artists from auspal, and many, many different kinds of artists that joined the struggle, was saying that the track consensual magazine and the poster became a way for the Cuban message and the ideological program to be spread around the world where Cubans couldn't go, where diplomats and militants couldn't go. So many of these posters and publications became the voice of the Cuban Revolution. One point which is interesting about auspal is that many of the founding members of auspal, or the artists who joined auspal, were actually people who were engaged in advertisement business, who were working in the advertisement business in the United States. And they had used the advertising techniques in their auspal posters. So this is something which we want to elaborate a bit. Yeah, so I think this was one of the big revelations during this research, is that it's not kind of accidental or something essentially Cuban in the form of the production, but very much speaks its time. So we're talking about in the 1940s and 50s, Cuba had already been a bit of a darling, let's say, of U.S. capital. So a lot of the pushing of multinational corporations in Latin America, particularly in Cuba, but also in terms of the control of the media landscape. So a lot of what we know about today in terms of advertising, like market research, testing products on people, how to see consumer feedback, these things are very much tested in the laboratory of Cuba and on the Cuban people. So there was a very developed means of communication that pretty much overnight in 1959 was taken into the revolutionary project. And this includes a lot of people who were actually trained in the belly of the beast, let's say, through the advertising schools, work through the advertising agencies, and took those skills and kind of turned it against empire itself by contributing to the revolution. So when you look at some of the quality and study some of the quality of the posters and kind of carefulness and sophistication in terms of how much thought went to it, you can see how some of these particular strategies are kind of used towards the revolutionary cause, which is very fascinating. And I think it kind of begs the question for many of us who do visual work on the side of social movements with and for people's struggles, is what are the skills we need today? And how do we turn them towards advancing people's struggles? Because we also live in an age where there's a lot of particular expertise around visual knowledge, around technology, around how things are produced, that we need to harness and turn them against empire itself. There's the saying goes which is that communication is not just about information, it's not just about informing people, it's also about inspiring people. So we see that during that era of what you call as the Cold War era or where there were the numbers, there were numbers of anti-imperialist and anti-colonial struggle. We see various kind of visual communication by popular struggles, whether it's the agitational propaganda posters from Soviet Union or Ospal. We see that there is a kind of inspiration which these posters bring in. But at the same time, which you also talk in your dossier is that both Soviet Union posters and the Ospal posters had some differences in terms of its visual style. Can you talk more on that? Yeah, so I think it's exactly what you said. The kind of dominant and hegemonic socialist imagery at the time was what was called socialist realism that you see and some of the Chinese and Soviet examples that were usually painted in much more realistic style, many things around the proletariat, factory workers, the peasantry and really ennobling, let's say, who are the protagonists of revolutionary classes. You look at the Cuban experience, you don't see that. You don't see the traditional factory workers. You don't see the kind of blood, sweat, and tears of the peasants in the imagery themselves. I don't think it's necessary, I mean, we'll say, trigger by reference is a strong condemnation and so did Fidel around what they would call realism at all costs because they thought that that would be constraining the possibility and imagination of a revolution that was taking place and trigger by a really beautiful quote saying that the socialist realism and I have here would be putting a straight jacket on the artistic expression of the people who are being born and in the process of making themselves. So there was an openness in the Cuban experience to have artists explore styles and new forms that actually both artists didn't have the privilege of doing in the commercial art world and working under the multinational advertising agencies nor in the socialist tradition. So new forms are really being elaborated. So when you look at the styles, there's always current at the time in terms of more commercial art you have psychedelic art, but then next to that you will also have some sort of pre-colonial iconography or looking at some of the African iconography and trying to bring new forms because this revolution was not only in its stages of becoming, but it needed to also take from the many, many, many traditions and histories we come from to creating forms. So I think there is something that is you can feel looking at the poster because of even a newness 60 years down the line, especially for those who make posters, make art, and you think wow imagine having that kind of openness to explore forms, make mistakes in the face of extreme constraints and extreme repression and attacks by empire from all sides. So this is really fascinating inspiring history to learn from for what we can do today. To talk more on the visual communication, we see that now we are in a digital world where digital platforms are growing, people are more into digital modes of communication. One thing which we have seen in last 20-30 years is that somewhere the movements across the world, their investment in creating visual posters, creative visual posters, inspiring visual posters are somewhere reached a stagnation. Do you agree on this or you think that there is there is still kind of, or SPAL or the socialist realism kind of post, socialist realism kind of posters are still being created or new forms are being created among the movements? I would say absolutely, there's a kind of space I think that has been given up in terms of what is the fight of the visual over the visual in the battle of ideas. I know that we live in an age where we are inundated with visuals and in a way probably visual literacy is higher in many senses in terms of people's expectations of the quality just because of this inundation. But in the midst of that where the ideology is or where the political project is is unclear and I think it's a space, this dossier is also a bit of a provocation of how we can enter that battle and not give up the space of the visual because we have, this is certainly, for instance I'll use this example of the dossier, this is certainly a study of where we come from to understand a little bit about how over the process is what inspired this kind of production but it's not necessarily just remaining in a romantic we must do as the Cubans did. But for us it's a challenge to think how do we engage in this struggle today, the tools might look different, maybe not every struggle is on the street posts of what poster it is, it's maybe more on the phones and the computers in many parts of the world now. But where is the ideological belief that this is a worthwhile area for our struggles and how do we also bring back a lot of these people who are skilled as artists or desire self-trained or not and bring them to the side of the people's struggles and contribute their skills to people's movements. I mean I think it's a question and it's an open one that this dossier is trying to provoke and I think try continental and our network of designers and artists that we're trying to develop is also trying to invite what could that look like for us today, what kinds of forms of organization we need to do, how do we exchange our strategies and ideas. I think the challenge is also reflected when we see that in last 20-30 years how the capitalist industry has made propaganda as something which is negative but its own advertisement comes as something which is positive but what it does is the same, the propaganda and the advertisement does the same but how the whole capitalist world has been successful through visual communication in changing the narrative and saying that the capitalist idea of advertisement is positive. So I think this whole debate is also been reflected here. Exactly and I think I mean especially for those engaging in the English language to reclaim the word propaganda might be a good first step of saying I mean it is about exactly as you said it's about engaging in a field of ideas and engaging in that battle and a battle of the narrative and what is the idea and the project and what is possible. So call it advertising, call it propaganda, call it inspirational art or whatever you want to but the objective should be the same and I think one of the things that is great about projects like People's Dispatch is one of the things I learned about the Cuban experience is the contact that a lot of these artists had directly with people's struggles because it is not an abstract solidarity and we can talk about internationalism is not an abstract idea. It's an action, it's a verb, it's in practice and I'll give one example of the head of the propaganda department, René Medeiros. He was sent at some point during the Vietnam War for months to march alongside the revolutionaries on the Ho Chi Minh Trail so really toiling with the soldiers on the paths and he came back with a series of beautiful and paintings about what was the people struggle on the ground that kind of militancy and commitment and discipline we should think of you know artists in that way and how that kind of contact with people struggles maybe we don't all have to march for months on the ground but that direct contact with people struggles through and through avenues like you know People's Dispatch they're connecting us to the ground is that vitally important because there are projects that are being in the process of becoming as Cheydo is saying. So thanks to end this discussion let's look into the ospal posters again and the tricontinental dossier can you bring out some of the examples which you really think are close to you has really inspired you while doing this research I think one of the things that someone who's been making you know posters and designs for various kinds of movements for some time now what was really inspiring was learning about the process and the seriousness that these artists in in collaboration with the communist party that they were taking direction from in connection with different kinds of liberation struggles like I've mentioned and the kinds of exchanges around ideas and representations that existed is really fascinating and it's a kind of model and inspiration for us to think about today and how to bring back to our movements and regain that kind of seriousness in production posters why is this symbol something we are fighting over why this color why these fonts why do these things reach to people how do these communicate our ideology or a message or our program that kind of exchange and is fascinating and exciting especially when we think about the accelerated pace that production exists now we have a lot more tools most people can be designers with with a you know a simple cell phone in their hand or a piece of paper and pen you know there's the tools have really advanced and diversified but trying to create spaces where those conversations have happened are happening and dialoguing means we create better art that reaches reaches people in terms of the hearts their minds and and the project we are pushing forward so I think that's more of a general example and I hope we can take some of those lessons forward