TPS

Born in the eye of the popular storm of 19th and 20th December, the popular workshop on serigraphy was collectively founded in February 2002. Since those days, it is a group of people that have worked together, printing T-shirts and papers that refer to protest, social struggle, righteous wrath, repression, etc. “This is how we reached the crowd, when, really, the crowd was already within us” quote.

The images draw a cartography that permeates agreements but also the differences that are in the social and political organizations. “The mission was to take the workshop to the streets and socialize, the working process allowed us to build up a relationship, a kind of art of participation” quote.

At present, although we think it is far too easy to give a social answer before concrete and acute threats, we consider that this answer will be broader and stronger if the first layers of this dispute are well established, thus we believe continuous work is necessary.

The Popular Serigraphy Workshop was made up by a group of artists in March 2001, it was formed from the activities being developed in the various “asambleas populares”/people’s assemblies/ that emerged as a result of the riots and the upheavals of December 2001. From the very beginning, it found its own dynamics, probably by chance, when printing a T-shirt amidst the putting up of posters during a street protest, that event drove everybody crazy and since then, the Popular Serigraphy workshop takes place in struggling contexts to undertake the same task; printing any kind of garment with the images that reflect the political mood of the protest. It is an attempt to provide the struggle with the identifying image of the moment and the place where the protest takes place.

The Popular Serigraphy Workshop is made up by ten artists approximately, who work printing images and slogans in the very core of protests, homage acts and social assurance acts. Since March 2002, TPS has been characterized by putting up posters in the streets along the demonstrators. In that context, thousands of posters, T-shirts, jumpers, scarves and all kind of items the people wore were printed. The demand was very high. Some people even have started to collect the items of different events along the year and the street protests, mainly since the “great homage act” paid for the picketers murdered on 26th of June, at Pueyrredón Bridge.

TPS and the Popular Assembly of San Telmo, at Dorrego Square.

The Popular Serigraphy Workshop was born as an activity of the Popular Assembly of San Telmo, on the initiative of three fine artists: Magdalena Jitrik, Mariela Scafati and Diego Posadas. TPS’s is a way of accompanying the move of the assemblies with artistic activities, to which they belong, from the beginning of the popular revolt of 19th and 20th December 2001.
The first activity of TPS was an open serigraphy class at Dorrego Square where posters were printed to call the neighbors to take part in a reflection session, before the act of “rejection of the coup d’etat of 24th March 1976” in its 26th anniversary. TPS went on making images to accompany the activities of the Popular Assembly of San Telmo, printing at Dorrego Square, some days before 1st May 2002, the slogan that read “struggle for another 1stMay”. In that event, the workers of the recovered Brukman factory, invited TPS to take part in the act that was held in front of the factory along with the popular assemblies and groups of employed and unemployed workers and other recovered factories like Zanon Ceramics. In this occasion, to “another 1st May struggle” another slogan was added: “together with Brukman and Zanon, we demand state-owned factories and workers’ control” this was especially asked by the workers.