AgitPoP. Episodes in the circulation of Cuban posters worldwide during the sixties and seventies

ISABEL PLANTE

Lisboa

Conferencia; Congreso internacional Through, From, To Latin America. Networks, circulations and artistic transits from the 1960s to the present; 2017

Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Nova Universidade de Lisboa

Conferencista invitada en el Congreso internacional Through, From, To Latin America. Networks, circulations and artistic transits from the 1960s to the present, en la Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Nova Universidade de Lisboa, 27 y 28 de noviembre de 2017. Organizado en colaboración por los grupos de investigación ?Transnational Perspectives on Contemporary Art? del Instituto de História da Arte/FCSH-NOVA, ?Art in a Global Perspective? del Centro de Investigação e de Estudos em Belas-Artes/ FBAUL y ?Decentralized Modernities: art, politics and counterculture in the transatlantic axis during the Cold War/ MoDe(s)? de la Universidad de Barcelona. Conferencia: ?AgitPoP. Episodes in the circulation of Cuban posters worldwide during the sixties and seventies"On the upper left side of a photograph by Bruno Barbey, one can notice three vertical posters glued on one of the walls inside the Institut d?Études Politiques, during student occupation in May 1968. The posters show inscriptions such as ?Viet Nam? or ?Black power? as well as a visual language which differs from that of the posters with photographic portraits of Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and Mao on that same wall. The vertical posters were produced by the Organización de Solidaridad de los Pueblos de Asia, África y América Latina (OSPAAAL) and probably had arrived in Paris folded inside the Tricontinental, a magazine which this organization had been publishing and sending to distant subscribers by mail since 1967.Conceived in revolutionary Cuba, those trilingual posters were meant to be disseminated worldwide. They frequently resemble pop art or even psychedelic prints, linked to either the imaginary of the ?American way of life? or the Californian counterculture. Pop was a contemporary, attractive and ductile visual style to convey vernacular themes, and particularly suitable to address the public sphere, from which most of the poster?s motives came from: daily life, mass media, consumption society or political conjunctions.Born from capitalism at the end of the nineteen century as an advertising devise for products that were not of first necessity, posters single out from other graphic design outputs because of their visual preeminence, their usage for outdoor public spaces, and their effectiveness to communicate with passersby. In the sixties, in parallel to their traditional use, there was a peak of posters linked to new cultural and political practices by the youth, who would begin to cover the walls of domestic indoor spaces with printed images in order to make them their own.By the end of the sixties, several cultural and political institutions born from the Cuban Revolution were producing posters to promote their activities and ethical values: the already mentioned OSPAAAL, but also the Departamento de OrganizaciónRevolucionaria, the Instituto Cubano de Amistad con los Pueblos (ICAP), the Consejo Nacional de Cultura, the Casa de las Américas, and the Instituto Cubano de Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (ICAIC). The dissemination of posters within Cuba seems to have been a key factor in the transformation of national public spaces and in the identification of the people with different state programs. However, many of these posters also contributed to build up the image of the revolutionary Cuba abroad.This conference will share some findings from a current research project about the circulation of Cuban posters worldwide ?inside a magazine, as part of exhibitions, or printed on books or magazines in different languages. I will present several significant episodes that allow us to think of posters in terms of esthetic-political interventions of an ephemeral but public art which transcended national frontiers and projected its effects throughout the world. The question of the conditions for the international circulation of Cuban posters from the mid-sixties onwards appears to be decisive for understanding their consolidation as an emblematic visual production of a Latin America with a revolutionary vocation.