Wearing Our Questions || Sticking On Our Mottos

For the latest session of Free Home University in Castiglione d’Otranto, we produced a series of agit-prop materials, responding and openly refusing the current wave of racism, hatred and xenofobia. Through a limited edition of t-shirts and stickers with some of our crucial questions, we initiated an informal mutual-aid fund to support those facing emergencies during the harder and harder process of seeking asylum in Italy.

Artists who participated in FHU donated their designs, and we encourage more to take part as we dream to create a small initiative, an alternative ‘start up’ with our friends who struggle to find a job and ways of living in Fortress Europe.

Here it’s our initial series:

- What is the Sound of Freedom? What is the Sound of Justice? (emerging from FHU sessions led by Ultra-red in 2015);

- No to Racism (head banner of the public performance that concluded the FHU session led by LaToya Manly-Spain and Dani D’Emilia in 2017);

- What’s there to Learn? (key question it became also the call for Self-Education for Self-Educators Conference in 2018 and the Free Home University Workbook published in the occasion of our 5th birthday. Graphic work by Nikolay Oleynikov);

and, last but not least, the fresher one came from artist\refugee Babi Badalov’s iconic series of textiles and graphic works:

- Refugees Welcome, Refugees Will Come (2019) which is also the motif of the mural Babi painted for the Murali Rurali common collection in Castiglione.

After an 8th inspiring edition of Notte Verde festival, organized by Casa delle Agriculture and dedicated to the ecological crises, we have received photos from many people proudly wearing our session’s titles, mottos, questions and statements.

To our surprise our stickers were well attached on suitcases, notebooks, cars, street signs, phone booths, bus stops, and many bar walls form St Petersburg to Lecce, from Tiggiano and Nardò to Paris and Utrecht.

It’s time for guerrilla tactics and mutual solidarity. Again.

Friday, Kolyan and Ebrima from No-to-Racism Salento tactics group at the FHU agit-prop stall with artists' t-shirts. Late night at Notte Verde. 31.08.2019