Armed by Design: Posters and Publications of Cuba’s Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (OSPAAAL)

Interference Archive, Lani Hanna, Jen Hoyer, Josh MacPhee, Vero Ordaz, Sarah Seidman

Armed By Design Armed By Design
Armed By Design
$40.00

A stunning full-color, multilingual (Spanish, Portuguese, French, and English) exploration of the profound graphic and intellectual legacy of the Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America (OSPAAAL) for internationalism, solidarity, communication, and art among movements today

This book reflects on the intersection of graphic design and political solidarity work of OSPAAAL, the Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Based in Havana, Cuba, OSPAAAL produced nearly 500 posters, magazines, and books beginning in the late sixties. Their output provides one of the most robust examples of political design ever seen; it offers a wealth of opportunities for thinking about how design is—and could be—deployed today in the search for more egalitarian social transformation.

Armed By Design brings together artists and thinkers from around the world whose work has been impacted by the legacy of OSPAAAL. These contributions reflect on impacts of OSPAAAL’s work on regional movements, including in the Arab world and Korea, design iconography, the evolution of tricontinentalism, our present-day relationship to OSPAAAL posters as a commodity, and authorship and reproduction.


PRODUCT DETAILS

  • While we’re excited to foster more conversations about the legacy of OSPAAAL, this project has also been an opportunity for us to experiment with the method and practice that OSPAAAL followed in their publishing work. While their headquarters in Havana generated an impressive level of content, they also partnered with printers and publishers in other parts of the world to generate other language editions and to print for foreign distribution.

    When setting out on this project, we asked ourselves: how can the practice of publishing with others be a way to build political solidarity? To explore this, we’ve developed relationships and connections through el rebozo editorial and tumbalacasa ediciones in Mexico and sobinfluencia edições in Brazil, as well as individuals in Québec and France, to have translate and copyedit all content into four languages. This has been an opportunity to ask ourselves: what does political translation look like? How do we collaborate on projects across contexts that have wide resource disparities? How do we continue conversations about OSPAAAL in a way that builds on their commitment to liberation?

  • Printing something like this is expensive, but it’s also an opportunity for us to think about how solidarity is part of the economics of our project. Our goals right now are: (1) to make this book available to readers across North America at a price that is affordable to them, and (2) to make this book available for our publishing partners in other countries to print and distribute at a price that is manageable for their local markets.

  • Preorder your own copy for a discounted price of $35; preorders will ship on December 1, 2024.

    Do you work at a library, museum, or other type of institution that has a budget for purchasing books? Please consider purchasing this title at our $50 institutional preorder price.

    Add a solidarity copy! Purchase your copy for $70 in order to support someone else also receiving an affordable copy. Preorders will ship on December 1, 2024.

    Do you work at a bookstore or radical infoshop? We would love your support on this project! Email us at armedbydesignbook@gmail.com if you’re interested in preordering a case of books, or if you’d like to chat about other types of (named) solidarity sponsorship opportunities for this publication.

Author: Interference Archive, Lani Hanna, Jen Hoyer, Josh MacPhee, Vero Ordaz, Sarah Seidman
Publisher: Common Notions
ISBN: 9781945335143
Published: January 2025
Format: Paperback
Size: 7.0 in X 10.0 in
Page count: 304
Subjects: Arts & Politics / Internationalism / Solidarity


About THE AUTHOR

Interference Archive is a community-supported archive of social movement history in Brooklyn. Interference Archive é um arquivo de história de movimentos sociais apoiado pela comunidade no Brooklyn, Nova York. Interference Archive est une archive de l’histoire des mouvements sociaux. Elle est soutenue par la communauté et est située à Brooklyn, New York.

Lani Hanna is on the faculty of Arts and Culture at University of Amsterdam in Global Arts Culture and Politics. She has a PhD in Feminist Studies at University from California, Santa Cruz with a designated emphasis in Critical Race and Ethnic Studies.

Jen Hoyer is a New York City based library and archives worker. She is the Technical Services & Electronic Resources Librarian at City Tech Library within the City University of New York. She is the coauthor of The Social Movement Archive (Litwin Books, 2021).

Josh MacPhee is a founding member of the Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative (Justseeds.org) and Interference Archive, a public collection of cultural materials produced by social movements (InterferenceArchive.org). He is the author of An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels, and coeditor of Signal: A Journal of International Political Graphics and Culture. He regularly works with community, social justice organizations, and unions building agit-prop and consulting on cultural strategy.

Vero Ordaz focuses on collaborative work in which she brings together her backgrounds in oral history, American Studies, and Labor Studies. She is a higher education administrator at the CUNY Graduate Center, where she works for a research center focused on socioeconomic inequality, and is also an active rank-and-file member of the PSC-CUNY union.

Sarah J. Seidman is a historian and curator who works as the Puffin Foundation Curator of Social Activism at the Museum of the City of New York, where her exhibitions include Activist New York and many others. She holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from Brown University and is completing a book on the connections between the Black liberation movement and the Cuban Revolution.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction
Lani Hanna, Jen Hoyer, Josh MacPhee, Vero Ordaz, Sarah Seidman

PART ONE
On Tricontinentalism
Sarah Seidman

Third World Struggle in Motion: Alfredo Rostgaard’s Design for OSPAAL
Josh MacPhee

Introduction to the Visual Index of the Tricontinental
Lani Hanna and Rob McBride

PART TWO
As Big as the World: An Interview with Jane Norling
Lani Hanna, Vero Ordaz, and Jane Norling

Cuba and the Revolutionary Option in the Arab World
Nate George

The Winged Horse of Global Solidarity: OSPAAAL Posters and the North Korean-Cuban Alliance
Sohl Lee

Influences Between US and Cuban Poster Art
Lincoln Cushing

PART THREE
The Carlos Vega Collection of OSPAAAL Posters
Jesse Maceo Vega-Frey

Hero Genesis in OSPAAAL Posters and Cuban Comics
Javier Gaston-Greenberg 

The OSPAAAL Posters and the Halo Effect
Ernesto Menendez-Conde

Passafronteras: Notes on Archives, Tricontinental Graphic Action, and Solidarity
André Mesquita

Armed by Design Portfolio

Between Two Worlds: A Conversation with Joseph Orzal
Joseph Orzal

Additional Reading
Index by Nation
Backmatter

NOTE ON IMAGES

Image included in the publication are sourced from Tricontinental, fully attributed in each of the captions accompanying the images, and include references for originally unattributed photographs.

Errata: Image photography on the following pages should have been credited to Lincoln Cushing/DocsPopuli.org—34, 75, 107, 140, 144, 146, 153, 156, 160-161, 166, 189-205, 213, 215, 217, 220, 221, 243, 269, 270, 291.