Josh MacPhee in conversation with Kevin Yuen Kit Lo
Sounds like Solidarity: A Conversation with Josh MacPhee
Saturday, October 4, 2025, starting at 5 PM.
Free and open to all. Conversation in English, live translation via Zoom will be offered.
This event will be an opportunity to hear from graphic designer, artist, and cultural worker Josh MacPhee. Drawing on his research for the book Strike While the Needle is Hot: A discography of Worker’s Revolt this conversation will be focused on the intersections of art and activism–specifically the role music and songs have played in labour movements. Whether it be songwriters in a Fiat factory or miners in the music studio, musicians and workers have a long history of co-creating a popular culture of resistance.
Josh will be in conversation with local designer, professor, and activist Kevin Yuen Kit Lo.
This event is taking place in collaboration with arts in the margins and with support from La Conféderation des Syndicats Nationaux and the Social Justice Centre at Concordia University.
Organization
Arts in the Margins advances equity, diversity and Inclusion via innovation in arts presentation, production and training. Our focus is on creative musical works in often over-looked genres by and for historically marginalized communities.
Flux Festival is a Montreal experimental music festival. The second annual edition will take place from October 1 to 11, 2025 offering a unique mix of concerts, workshops, roundtables and launches configured around performance, place and politics.
Partners
Josh MacPhee is a designer, artist, and archivist. He is a founding member of the Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative (Justseeds.org) and co-editor of Signal: A Journal of International Political Graphics and Culture. He has authored or edited more than a half dozen books about the intersection of cultures and politics, most recently Strike While the Needle Is Hot: A Discography of Workers’ Revolt (Common Notions, 2025). For over 20 years he has organized the Celebrate People’s History poster project. He co-founded and helps run Interference Archive, a public collection of cultural materials produced by social movements (InterferenceArchive.org). In addition, he regularly works with community groups, social justice organizations, and unions building agit-prop and consulting on cultural strategy.
Kevin Yuen Kit Lo is Assistant Professor of Communication Design and Visual Culture in the Department of Design and Computation Arts. He works at the intersections of graphic design, cultural production, and social change with a research focus on publication practices and social movements. His research is invested in exploring the tensions between material and relational studies of design as a means of fostering greater social and political autonomy.
Kevin founded the graphic design studio LOKI in 2014, working alongside community organizations, non-profits, cultural and educational institutions, unions, artists, researchers and activist groups, as part of broader movements for social change. The studio has worked on campaigns to stop racial profiling, designed protest graphics for anti-racist and anti-colonial social justice movements, created online platforms for critical journalism and supported the cultural production of marginalized writers and artists through the design of publications, exhibitions, and collaborative works.
Kevin holds an MA in Typographic Design from the London College of Printing (UAL). Prior to founding LOKI, he worked in interactive design, advertising and fashion. He is a member of the Memefest network and the Justseeds artist co-operative. Kevin is the author of Design Against Design: Cause and consequence of a dissident graphic practice (2024) with Set Margins’ Press.
For any questions or requests concerning accessibility to the event or our gallery space, please contact James Goddard via email or by phone at 514-842-9686. For general accessibility information, please visit our dedicated page. We are committed to creating an inclusive and welcoming space for all.
Considering ongoing COVID-19 and flu transmissions, please note that mask wearing is strongly recommended during events.