Nothing good to say...
The last text page from Harsh Patel's Graphic Design in the Dark Age.
It's been a long time since my last post! It's frustrating how quickly one(I) can fall out of a writing habit, and especially with the blogging format, how hard it is to start back up. There seems to be a feeling/need to explain the gap, which I suppose is what I'm trying to do here. Except I'm also trying not to do it, cause that was the point of getting off of social media in the first place (partly).
I've had a lot of ideas for posts over the last few months, but didn't have the time or inclination to develop them further. But I did have a nice family trip to Vancouver where I discovered it wasn't the cultural wasteland I always pictured it as, a bunch of long and deep conversations with my friend C, reread a book and realised it was more brilliant than I thought, continued to struggle against the bureaucracy of the university, made a big decision about heading to Houston for a talk (will this be the last time I visit the US? Stay tuned to find out!), and am slowly finding some ways to re-engage with the horrors in Gaza. (While we're at it, please donate here or here and a million other places). I've made a couple new prints/posters I hope to get printed in the next month. Taichi and Baji. Therapy. And a bunch of other stuff... It's fucking hot out there and we had a run of big, red moons from the climate fires, both beautiful and apocalyptic.
I thought about how beautifully anarchistic a simple idea like sliding scale/NOTAFLOF is, and how that scaled while I was running my studio. The small wins when ideas and practices get normalized without being (completely) coopted and what if they could be re-inscribed with their innate critical and radical potential?
Also some random thoughts back to Toscani's Benetton campaigns from the 80s/90s. Good, bad, both? Didn't realize he died earlier this year. Some good teaching material for the fall.
And also, Bukele is Palestinian??? (How did I not know that) Damn... Skin folk ain't kin folk for real.
So, yeah, no explanation here, but just an attempt to (re)build a habit. As I told my student the other day, if you're not writing, you're not thinking. More soon?