
Justseeds Artists' Cooperative is a decentralized,
worker-owned cooperative
A worker cooperative is a cooperative owned and self-managed by its workers. This control may mean a firm where every worker-owner participates in decision-making in a democratic fashion, or it may refer to one in which management is elected by ...
of thirty artists throughout North America. Justseeds members primarily produce handmade prints and publications which are distributed through their website and at conferences and events related to social and environmental movements. Members also work individually as graphic designers for and within a broad swath of social and environmental activist causes in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. As a collective body, Justseeds has produced several gallery exhibitions of both print work and collaborative sculptural installation.
History
Justseeds was founded in 1998 by member
Josh MacPhee
Josh MacPhee is an artist, curator, stonemason and activist living in Brooklyn, New York.
Career
Josh MacPhee's work as a socially-engaged artist and designer focuses on production and distribution of political graphics. Originally from Hollis ...
as an internet-based store and distribution point for graphics that MacPhee, his friends, and associated groups were producing. Following the 2006 collapse of ''
Clamor'' magazine, which was then handling Justseeds mail-order distribution, MacPhee sought to organize several artists with which he already had a working relationship into a cooperative entity that would expand to include other artists with equal stakes in the new project. Originally launched as Justseeds/Visual Resistance Collective in 2007, the name has since been shortened to Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative.
Justseeds ran a distribution center, consisting of their online store and an internal archive, from the basement of a private home in Portland, Oregon from 2007 until 2010. In May 2010, operations were moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Organization
Justseeds is a
worker-owned
A worker cooperative is a cooperative owned and self-managed by its workers. This control may mean a firm where every worker-owner participates in decision-making in a democratic fashion, or it may refer to one in which management is elected by ...
, cooperatively structured business entity. However, the organization's internal structure is similar to many grassroots activist collectives in the U.S., with a concentration on
consensus decision making
Consensus decision-making or consensus process (often abbreviated to ''consensus'') are group decision-making processes in which participants develop and decide on proposals with the aim, or requirement, of acceptance by all. The focus on es ...
. Although the business entity is registered in the state of Pennsylvania, where the shipping office for the internet store is located, active Justseeds members are spread across several locations within North America. Inter-cooperative communication happens primarily online, and mission-oriented discussions and project generation occur at occasional large group gatherings.
Justseeds is usually identified as a collective organization of graphic printmakers, however individual artists within the organization also work autonomously from the group as educators, writers, sculptors, designers, and in puppet theater. Individual members have published books, fanzines, and other graphic works which are informally included within the Justseeds rubric, including the journal ''Signal'' (Dunn, Macphee, PM Press) and the ''Celebrate People’s History Book'' (MacPhee, Feminist Press 2010). ''Firebrands: Portraits from the Americas'' (
Microcosm Publishing
Microcosm Publishing is an independent publisher and distributor based in Portland, Oregon. Microcosm describes itself as having "a reputation for teaching self-empowerment, showing hidden histories, and fostering creativity through challenging c ...
, 2010) was their first collective publishing endeavor.
As of March 2020, the members of Justseeds are:
Favianna Rodriguez
Favianna Rodriguez (born September 26, 1978) is an American artist and activist. She has self-identified as queer and Latina with Afro-Peruvian roots. Rodriguez began as a political poster designer in the 1990s in the struggle for racial justice i ...
,
Josh MacPhee
Josh MacPhee is an artist, curator, stonemason and activist living in Brooklyn, New York.
Career
Josh MacPhee's work as a socially-engaged artist and designer focuses on production and distribution of political graphics. Originally from Hollis ...
,
Meredith Stern
Meredith Stern (sometimes using the pseudonyms "Merry Death" or "Merry Def") is an artist, musician and disc jockey living in Providence, Rhode Island.
Biography
Stern went to George School for high school. She later graduated Cum Laude from T ...
,
Melanie Cervantes
Melanie Cervantes (born in Harbor City, CA) is a Xicana artist and activist based in the Bay Area.
Background
Cervantes grew up in a small city in the South Bay area of Los Angeles, CA. Her father was a paper box printer and her family's pov ...
,
Jesus Barraza
Jesus Barraza is a print maker and graphic artist who started working as a layout editor in 1994 of the Xicana oppositional newspaper La Voz de Berkeley. He worked as a graphic designer for student groups at UC Berkeley, community organizations ...
,
Dylan Miner
Dylan Miner is an American artist and assistant professor at Michigan State University.
Art
As an artist, Miner has exhibited widely, including the Institute of American Indian Arts, the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Nat ...
, Nicolas Lampert,
Jess X. Snow
Jess X. Snow (Chinese: 陈雪; born 1992) is a Chinese-Canadian filmmaker, public artist and poet.
Biography
Biography
Jess X. Snow's parents immigrated from Nanchang, China to Canada after the Cultural Revolution. From 2009 to 2013, Sno ...
, Mary Tremonte, Thea Gahr, Roger Peet, Alec "Icky" Dunn, Pete Yahnke Railand, Shaun Slifer, Bec Young, Chris Stain, Colin Matthes, Molly Fair, Fernando Mati, Jesse Purcell, Chip Thomas, Kevin Caplicki, Kristine Virsis, Lesly Geovanni Mendoza, Mazatl, Sanya Hyand, Paul Kjelland, Aaron Hughes, and Erik Ruin.
Much of Justseeds work is republished in newspapers and on websites following informal
anti-copyright
Criticism of copyright, or anti-copyright sentiment, is a dissenting view of the current state of copyright law or copyright as a concept. Critics often discuss philosophical, economical, or social rationales of such laws and the laws' implem ...
ethics. Justseeds members commonly respond to current social movements by producing free graphics for download and use from their website and blog.
Collective projects
Justseeds has collectively produced several print portfolios and collaborative art installations which differ from the individual members’ projects in that they are considered productions of Justseeds as a collective entity. In the case of the print portfolios, Justseeds regularly works with other outside, affiliated artists.
* Voices From Outside: Artists Against the Prison Industrial Complex (with
Critical Resistance
Critical Resistance is a U.S. based organization that works to build a mass movement to dismantle what it calls the prison-industrial complex (PIC). Critical Resistance's national office is in Oakland, California, with three additional chapters ...
, print portfolio, 2008)
* In the Shell of the Old (collaborative installation, Space 1026, Philadelphia, PA, 2008)
* Which Side Are You On? (collaborative installation,
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase ''universitas magistrorum et scholarium'', which ...
, 2009)
* Resourced (print portfolio, 2009)
* ''Firebrands: Portraits from the Americas'' (book,
Microcosm Publishing
Microcosm Publishing is an independent publisher and distributor based in Portland, Oregon. Microcosm describes itself as having "a reputation for teaching self-empowerment, showing hidden histories, and fostering creativity through challenging c ...
, 2010)
* untitled billboard landscape (collaborative installation, Miller Gallery at
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...
, 2011 Pittsburgh Biennial, Pittsburgh, PA)
* Refuge (collaborative installation, 29th Biennial of Graphic Arts, Alkatraz Gallery: Metelkova, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2011)
* War is Trauma (with
Iraq Veterans Against the War
Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) is an advocacy group of formerly active-duty United States military personnel, Iraq War veterans, Afghanistan War veterans, and other veterans who have served since the September 11, 2001 attacks; who were oppos ...
, print portfolio, 2011)
* Migration Now (collaboration with CultureStrike, print portfolio, 2013)
* Uprisings: Images of Labor (collaborative installation,
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase ''universitas magistrorum et scholarium'', which ...
, 2013)
* Liberating Learning (print portfolio, 2014)
* We Are The Storm (collaboration with CultureStrike, print portfolio, 2015)
* We're All in this Together (collaborative installation with
Interference Archive
Interference Archive is a volunteer-run library, gallery, and archive of historical materials related to social and political activism and movements. It is located in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City, at 314 7th St, Brooklyn ...
,
SUNY Purchase
The State University of New York at Purchase (commonly Purchase College or SUNY Purchase) is a public liberal arts college in Purchase, New York. It is one of 13 comprehensive colleges in the State University of New York (SUNY) system. It was fo ...
, Fall 2017)
Affiliated organizations
There are several organizations with which Justseeds is directly affiliated by the presence of overlapping members:
* Colectivo Cordyceps (Mexico)
* Dignidad Rebelde (Oakland, CA, USA)
* Taller Tupac Amaru (Oakland, CA, USA)
*
Interference Archive
Interference Archive is a volunteer-run library, gallery, and archive of historical materials related to social and political activism and movements. It is located in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City, at 314 7th St, Brooklyn ...
(New York, NY, USA)
* Street Art Workers (USA)
* Howling Mob Society (Pittsburgh, USA)
* Visual Resistance (New York, NY, USA)
* Spectres of Liberty (Troy, NY, USA)
References
Justseeds: About* Mallory Gevaert
Zine Scene: Firebrands Alarm Press, September 1, 2010
* Lawrence
Interviews - Justseeds Arrested Motion, May 4, 2010
* Bonnie Fortune
Justseeds: Art, Activism, and Functional Group Blogging HASTAC, November 18, 2009
* Daniel Tucker
Justseeds: Reminders of Emancipation and Justice Alarm Press, July 28, 2008
* Melanie Maddison
Women of Justseeds Aorta Magazine (pub. date unknown, retrieved 2012-02-12)
Further reading
*{{cite book, last=Perini, first=Julie, title=Uses of a Whirlwind: Movement, Movements, and Contemporary Radical Currents in the United States, publisher=AK Press, isbn=9781849350167, editor=Team Colors Collective, chapter=Art as Intervention: A Guide to Today's Radical Art Practices, year=2010
External links
Justseeds Artists' CooperativeRESOURCED
American artist groups and collectives
Artist cooperatives