Alt history Pt. II

>> Cumulus Press’s latest book collects the art
and activism of Quebec’s past 40 years

POSTER BOY: David Widgington

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

In a curious coincidence, another exhibit featuring the ephemera of protest movements past (and present) is opening in Montreal. The first was an exhibit of McGill media and communications professor Marc Raboy’s collection of Quebec’s radical press, which opened two weeks ago at the university’s Rare Books library, written about in this paper last week. The second is the launch of a book of posters from Quebec social movements next week, published by Montreal’s Cumulus Press.

The two are separate, of course, vastly so. The McGill exhibit is largely under glass, and focuses on periodicals; the book, however, contains 659 reproductions of posters, signs and flyers, the kind that flash and burn after their immediate usefulness is gone. But thanks largely to the Centre de recherche en imagerie populaire (CRIP), at UQÀM’s media studies department, an impressive archive has been collected and for the first time published in a single attractive volume.

“CRIP were the first to see the importance of archiving and keeping copies of these posters,” says David Widgington, Cumulus’s publisher and the book’s co-editor. “They’re very ephemeral. There’s no evidence left that an event took place afterwards—these elements of history are very fleeting.”

Widgington, who until a few years ago counted himself active in a number of social causes, provided a few posters of his own, but doesn’t consider himself a pack-rat. Instead, he relied on friends and allies to provide him with some raw materials they might have had.

“I sent a call-out to the activist community at large, saying that I was looking for posters, and that if anyone had any, I’d like to see them,” he says. “I managed to get about 300 posters in two months—it was a really good reception.”

With Montreal’s long and colourful history of social activism, that shouldn’t come as a surprise. From the earliest days of the mid-1960s—which Widgington says involved mostly sovereignty-related causes and election posters for the Rassemblement pour l’indépendence nationale, the precursor to the PQ—to today—with anarchist anti-election-period posters—the book winds its way through the province’s vibrant and energetic stream of politicized mobilization. Its nine chapters cover unions, elections, women, international solidarity and community groups, each with its own range of artistic merit.

“The quality varies,” says Widgington. “Some are pretty crappy, but others are amazing.” Some of the better ones were created by well known Quebec artists like two-time Academy Award-winner Frédéric Back and silk-screener Gitano. Others are more crude, he says, but not without their own place in the book.

“Graphically or artistically, they aren’t important, but they are important because of what they say,” says Widgington. According to him, the posters represent the “democratization of public space.

“They’re demonstrations of public expression, which we see so little of because public space has been co-opted by corporate media.”

Of course, a book about posters needs its own poster. And that’s where Publicité Sauvage came in. His budget tapped with the book’s production, Widgington approached the local postering and design firm with a sponsorship request. They complied, as did the book’s cover designer, Chester Rhoder, who converted it into poster-size, as did a printer, all gratis.

“It was all easier than I thought. But maybe it was easy because it was such a natural idea,” he says.

Picture This! Posters of Social Movements in
Québec (1966-2007) will be launched Wednesday,
Feb. 13 at the Écomusée du fier monde (2050 Amherst),
5–7 p.m. For more info, see www.cumuluspress.com