Happy Labor Day. I wrote a Wikipedia article about the gay, anarchist, anti-profit publishing collective Come!Unity Press (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Come!Unity_Press) after stumbling across a poster they printed in 1971.
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The Signal Journal of International Political Graphics and Culture published an interview with an early member of the C!UP collective in issue 5. You can borrow it for free from the @internetarchive: https://archive.org/details/signaljournalofi0000dunn/page/n3/mode/1up
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I was curious how the anarchists went from operating a printing press for a group of Quakers in exchange for free rent to running the whole shop. Turns out it came down to conflicts over topics including their nudism and a "political prisoner" (kitten) named Kropotkin.
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There’s another story from an early member of the collective to be found in the comments of a site called The People’s Graphic Design Archive: “They liked th[e rainbow ink] effect so much that they charged extra to print plain black ink”.
#archives #ArchiveSpelunking #LGBThistory
Come!Unity
ComeUnity Press began as an early-70s New York City working/living environment centered round a 24-hour open access print shop run by a gay anarchist collective (with more than a hint of hippyness) - its permanent members at the time were lin & mercurethere was a certain prou
People’s Graphic Design Archive (peoplesgdarchive.org)
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Have you tried reaching out to Paul Soulellis and seeing if they'd be willing to free license that pic (and maybe other historic photos)?
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@Infrogmation good idea! i doubt he owns the copyright to the photo, he could potentially help determine if it's public domain (which i suspect it is)
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@molly0xfff I've wanted to make a modern version of community memory but I'm not sure where I'd put it.
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@j2kun library, perhaps?
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Damn, that lead me down the rabbit-hole of the political protest posters at the Oakland Museum of California (https://collections.museumca.org/?q=category/2011-schema/art/political-posters). Some great stuff there.
Nice vocabulary flex on palimpsestic, something this printing/graphics nerd did not know.
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Robert Pickeringreplied to Molly White last edited by
@molly0xfff
Where can we read more about the kitten named Kropotkin?!? -
@molly0xfff thank you for reading and sharing! and I’m so happy that you made a C!UP Wikipedia entry.
I actually just visited the Community Memory papers at the Computer History Museum archive in California a couple of weeks ago. There’s so much there. Would love to chat more!
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@soulellis would love to!
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Molly Whitereplied to Robert Pickering last edited by
@robertpi all i found was the brief mention in the Signal interview!
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@darryl_ramm thank you Dimension 20
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@molly0xfff Now I'm imagining a Wikipedia editor as a character. A very knowledgeable druid who can pacify angry characters by talking to them, sometimes eventually putting them to sleep, or on the other win any argument they want to, wearing down the opposition until they just leave.
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@darryl_ramm that's just me in real life