An archive of Palestine solidarity posters and publications from Japan and Germany 1970s–1990s.
During the residency at AGIT, the Yosomono¹ Time Brigade will lay the groundwork and first iteration of the Naka Internationalist Liberation Archive (NILA): an online archive of posters and brochures dating from the 1970s to the 1990s from three private collections by friends in Japan and Germany, comrades who were, and still are, active in the internationalist anti-imperialist Free Palestine movement. Collections covered are the Misako Nagasawa collection (Tokyo), the Birgit Sommer collection (Cologne), and Kollektivbibliothek (Berlin).
These materials were, and remain, important nodes in the network of internationalist solidarity, friendship, art, and family bonds that connect the movement in the Japanese and German radical left to Palestine. For example posters designed by Vladimir Tamari, Palestinian artist, inventor, writer, filmmaker who lived in Tokyo; posters for exhibitions of Palestinian art and craft, organised by activists in Japan, or films on the Palestinian struggle by Japanese filmmakers, some of whom were involved with the resistance. This archive will form the basis for an internationalist memory praxis, with materials serving as time travel vessels and networks through which community knowledge and vernacular history expand, towards a free Palestine.
To offer context for the posters in the archive, the project will conduct research on selected items (focusing on posters and brochures) and gather commentary (e.g. oral history interviews) by the original archivists and comrades active in those local movements and activist circles at that time, or close comrades, friends, and relatives who are keeping their work alive. Besides the posters, the project will also archive other materials such as flyers, printed newsletters, brochures, interviews on cassette tapes, etc and pass them on to Palestinian-led specialised collections.
Throughout the residency period, there will be a series of events and gatherings, such as screenings, talks, workshops, and a reading group on anti-colonial liberation from internationalist and anarchist perspectives. A selection of the original posters and other materials from the three source collections, as well as contemporary original related artworks will be presented in a curated exhibition at AGIT's space. The physical holdings of the Naka Internationalist Liberation Archive (NILA) can be consulted at AGIT upon appointment. By weaving testimony, archival fragments, and dialogical exchange, the series will build a counter-archive accessible to all.
¹ 余所者 yosomono = “elsewhere person” in Japanese
Image Caption
Poster: Palestine Day – Tokyo
Courtesy of Misako Nagasawa collection (Tokyo)
Artist/Designer: Burhan Karkoutly
Language: Japanese, Arabic
Year: Circa 1983
Publisher: Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)
See translation here