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German 103 writing assignment at SLU – fall 2018 – three examples

In the fall of 2018, St. Lawrence University students in Dr. Brook Henkel’s German 103 class again incorporated contemporary street art stickers from Germany for a writing assignment called “Politische Plakate und Aufkleber in Deutschland” (similar to what his students did in the fall of 2017). As before, I introduced the assignment by giving a brief talk with slides describing the ubiquitous sticker culture in Berlin, focusing on topics such as urban development, gentrification, police authority, surveillance, and identity politics. Students then came to the gallery where I work to look at three sets of original, unused stickers from my…

Competing Narratives

Two small paper stickers found along the same NYC block this morning: The captain of chaos sticker on the top gets a big “NO.” The sticker on the bottom is from a #WalkAway” campaign, created by “former liberal” Brandon Straka.  According to Wikipedia, “The campaign’s stated goal was to ‘[encourage] others to walk away from the divisive left, but also [take] back the narrative from the liberal media about what it means to be a conservative in America.’ As of November 2018, the video had over 400,000 views on YouTube and 1 million on Facebook.” As of today, the video…

NYC and Brooklyn political stickers, January 2019

A sampling: Karla Ann Coté is a photojournalist and videographer who documents protest movements, among other subjects. She was at the Women’s Unity Rally in Foley Square in NYC on Saturday, January 19th. After seeing a “white power” sticker in Potsdam, NY, recently, I found another weird sticker in Brooklyn that states “Q-Anon Is Real” or, with what looks like a Jewish Star of David on the lower left, more likely “Q-Anon Israel.” “Q,” like “Pepe the Frog” in the Potsdam sticker, is also linked to U.S. President Donald Trump. I remember seeing pictures of people at Trump rallies wearing…

“White Power” Stickers in Potsdam, NY

Last weekend, I found four copies of a “white power” sticker stuck on street poles and signs in a small town called Potsdam near where I live and work (a place that gets few stickers, if any). Potsdam and Canton, ten miles down the road, are both college towns in rural, northern New York with four universities and several thousands of students. Canton is the St. Lawrence County seat. Our closest big city is Ottawa, the capital of Canada. I call this part of the state purple after NY Congressional District 21 voted twice for Barack Obama in the U.S.…

Stickerkitty is baaaack!

Hola! Stickerkitty is baaack (yay!) after working for the past 15 months as a senior volunteer for NY-21 Congressional candidate Tedra Cobb. Tedra, a Democrat, didn’t win in November, but the experience was powerful in terms of grassroots community building—something that is sorely needed in the United States right now. Tedra ran an honest, clean campaign, but the numbers in this rural northern NY district favored Republicans by something like 40,000 votes. Aside from Tedra herself, who is incredible, one of the most remarkable aspects of her campaign was her base of 2,000 volunteers who carried petitions, hosted house parties…

Stickers in the classroom: GER 103 – Politische Plakate und Aufkleber* in Deutschland

In the fall of 2017, I worked with a German professor at SLU, Brook Henkel, on a writing assignment for students in his Intermediate German 103 course. In preparation, I had scanned all of the political stickers that Oliver Baudach had given me in 2017 in order to keep the content as current as possible.  (Oli, the founder and director of Hatch Kingdom, is my primary source for political stickers in Germany.) This writing assignment was different than the assignments I did with Marina Llorente in 2012 and 2014 (+ Part I – annotating images) that focused on political stickers…

Montreal Anarchist Bookfair 2017

I went to the 2017 Montreal Anarchist Bookfair last May to look for stickers after having gone to fairs there for that purpose every year from 2012 to 2015 (but missing the one in 2016). The fairs feature book publishers, primarily, but some of the vendors also sell or give away stickers (or offer them as PWYW – pay what you will). Others participating in the fair usually include such groups as the Beehive Design Collective, Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative, and the Quebec Public Interest Research Group at Concordia. Several presentations, hands-on workshops, and an art exhibition are also part of…

Close Up: Hatch Kingdom Sticker Museum

History of the collection and museum Oliver Baudach is the founder and director of Hatch Kingdom (Berlin, Germany), the world’s first and only museum devoted to stickers. He first started collecting stickers in the early 1980s as a young teenager in a small village called Speyer in southern Germany.  He clearly remembers buying a wallet at the time from Skull Skates and finding “one of the best skull stickers [he had] ever seen.”  He subsequently started collecting stickers related to skateboard culture, streetwear, and punk rock bands like the Misfits and the Ramones.  In the 1990s, after graduating from high…

Stickers and Political Graphics in the Age of #45

My complacent little bubble world has been turned upside down since the November 2016 U.S. election of #45 POTUS.  As a result, Stickerkitty blogging has been forced to take a back seat to community organizing, weekly conference calls, and desktop sharing technology apps.  In the last six months, I’ve gotten heavily involved in progressive local and regional politics in New York’s Congressional District 21, an area that spans roughly 15,115 square miles across 12 counties in rural northern NY.  NY-21 is the size of a small European country, I learned, about the same size as Switzerland and a bit smaller…