The Art of Demonstration
by Cultural Correspondence
edited by Paul Buhle & Jim Murray
originally printed Summer 1985
Charles H. Kerr is excited to announce that in 2022 we will be publishing an updated and expanded version of The Art of Demonstration, a special comics issue of the radical journal Cultural Correspondence.
We wanted to make the original available for download in time for this summer’s protests, enjoy!
The Art of Demonstration is a practical guide for street actions. Issued in the summer of 1985, the comic prepared young organizers to build a resistance movement, offering not only how-to techniques for making banners, chants, puppets, signs, floats, and music, but also strategy, the where-to and the who-with.
“In Memory of Michael Stewart” by Noon Gourfain
Table of Contents
Nuclear war by Seth Tobocman
Where do we begin? And with who? by Paula Hewitt
Street performance by Seth Tobocman & Charles Frederick
Political dance by Hallie Wanamaker - Down Ket Dance Collective & Paula Hewitt
Political images by Charles Frederick
In memory of Michael Stewart by Noon Gourfain
Banners & placards
Instant printing by Eric
Wearable Political Statements by Lucy R. Lippard w Seth Tobocman
Beginners Graffiti-Propaganda: A how to for the first offender by Seth & Josh
Chalk one up by Herb Perr & Peter Kuper
Artist and founding editor Paul Buhle described Cultural Correspondence (1975–1985)—the title of which honors the Detroit autoworkers’ newspaper Correspondence run by C. L. R. James, Martin Glaberman, and James and Grace Lee Boggs in the 50s & 60s—as "a journal born from the collapse of the New Left and hopes for a new beginning of a social movement” and “a kind of overturning of the philosophical notions behind the [Frankfurt School] critique, and the encouragement of serious studies of Popular Culture as expressions (however mediated and distorted) of mass yearnings for self-understanding and liberation.”
If you would have knowledge about the use of social media, digital security, etc and would like to contribute what you know to the 2022 edition of The Art of Demonstration, contact us! We can’t make any promises but would love to hear your great ideas.
Check back soon for news of Kerr's revised and expanded version!