The Outset Partners Grants Programme 2021 awarded an Impact Award to this joint initiative between the Bibliothèque Kandinsky and the Centre Pompidou. The project brought together international experts to question how to build a collection of militant documentary sources and artworks and to better understand the relationship between critical, politically committed publications and today’s artistic and graphic practice. This research-driven project explored activist practices in art at the height of decolonisation processes, liberation struggles from the late 1950s to the 1970s and tricontinental ambitions, investigating militant graphics, periodical magazines, posters, zines and propaganda ephemera.
The project aimed to bring together these publications and alternative graphic designs in non-European and non-aligned cultural contexts, to create a global rereading of contemporary art history through the prism of liberation struggles. By addressing productions yet unexplored, from the collections of the MNAM (Musée National d’Art Moderne) and the partners associated with the project, the focus was on analysis and creating dialogue around the emancipation struggles of the second half of the 20th century.
This project drew on the expertise of international partners, including the INIVA Stuart Hall Library in London, the Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis, the Beaux-arts de Paris, La Contemporaine (an inter-university library attached to the University of Paris Nanterre) the Freedom Archives of San Francisco and the Center for the Study of Political Graphics of Los Angeles (CSPG). They recognised the importance of sharing their experience and knowledge through collective workshops as part of the project to produce a methodology for dealing with such documents. Their expertise also made it possible to better know and analyse the material production of these committed prints and to understand the practices of their authors (artists, graphic designers, etc.)
The steering committee consisted of:
- Thomas Bertail, research coordinator, Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris.
- Mica Gherghescu, responsible for research and scientific programming, Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris.
- Nicolas Liucci-Goutnikov, curator, head of the Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris.
Timeline and events:
2021-2023: Pedagogical workshops with the students of the École des Beaux-arts and the University of Paris 8 from the ephemeris collections of the Kandinksy Library and editions of individual and collective works made by the students.
2023: Recruitment of a research engineer, Jil Daniel, graphic designer and PhD in Aesthetics from Rennes 2 University.
28 June-3 July 2023: Galérie 3 of the Centre Pompidou - documentary showcases composed of the collections of the Kandinsky Library around the following themes: counter-cultures, emancipation struggles and the Cuban Third World. These documentary showcases were presented as part of the eighth instalment of the festival "Moviment" which showcased weekly unpublished collections of the National Museum of Modern Art and proposed performances and public events.
29 June 2023: Roundtable conversation at Centre Pompidou: ‘Cultures graphiques de la contestation’.
2024: Collective publication project - manual for the creation and conservation of activist prints - with the participation of project partners, associate researchers and students from Paris-8 University and the École des Beaux-arts de Paris.
March 2024: Study days at the Centre Pompidou (announcement of the programme and future participants).
Jil Daniel, Parapluie, un journal de la presse publication
