thisaintgrunge-blog:thisaintgrunge-blog: To communicate with as wide an audience as possible, people
thisaintgrunge-blog:thisaintgrunge-blog: To communicate with as wide an audience as possible, people with anti-establishment ideas have always used whatever materials are cheap and available - from the still-visible graffiti on the walls of Pompeii to the text Martin Luther nailed to the church door in Wittenberg. Under a repressive regime, design is barely a consideration for those whose messages are at best subversive, and at worst punishable. Often, for small groups of like-minded people with limited time, resources and skills, the sheer difficulty - or danger - of publishing their views has left little scope for aesthetic deliberation. Consequently, the constraints of the technology available have tended to dominate the graphic form. The most simple - and safe - reproduction system is copying by hand. This is the way the samizdat (a Russian word meaning “self-published”) worked, the clandestine underground “press” of Eastern European communist countries. Countless hours of painstakingly writing or typing copies of the works of [Alexandr] Solzhenitsyn, Václav Havel and their like have kept the subversive voice alive in the years of stagnation… … In the 1970s, more new technology led to another “default aesthetic” as the photocopier made collage quick and easy to reproduce. The patchiness of its solid images and unavoidably scruffy appearance became a visual shorthand for iconoclasm, something soon to be appropriated by art directors in an attempt to gain street credibility. Thrift, J., 1997. Do-it-yourself. Eye Magazine. (7,26) Autumn issue, p.70. Magazine reference: anon., 1975. Tamagavk 15 No. 1. [magazine cover] -- source link
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