The Politically Potent Medium of the Poster

By David Doody
Published on September 1, 2010
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In the past artist Patrick Maun has tackled genocide through “the politically potent medium of the poster” and other mediums in his Genocide Project:

Never again. Throughout history, every country and every people has repeated this simple maxim. Yet genocide continues to happen with a surprising regularity. According to the organization Genocide Watch, the crime is currently occurring in over three dozen countries. While genocide spans human history, I am most interested in modern genocide. The term itself is of recent origin – coined by legal scholar and tireless crusader Raphael Lemkin in 1943.

The Genocide Project is a multi-part artistic exploration of modern violence begun in 2005.

Maun’s most recent poster (Can You Hear Me Now?) for the latest Poster Offensive–a project started in response to the re-election of George W. Bush in 2004–takes on the issue of  “conflict minerals in Africa and our dependence on them for high-tech gadgets, computers and other detritus of daily life.”

Cassiterite, which is the mineral I write about in this poster, is actually being touted as a green solution to tin and other more harmful minerals…. The narratives here show two perspectives of artisanal mining through the eyes of a pro-mining marketing piece, and those of a mine porter.

Images by Patrick Maun.

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