#negative actions
10 Maart: Dag van de Anarchie
March 10: Day of AnarchyPoster (one-sided, mimeographed, 33.8 x 21.4 cm) to announce the protests against the royal wedding procession of Princess Beatrix and Claus von Amsberg, taking place in Amsterdam, on March 10, 1966. Most copies of this poster were distributed as folded pamphlets, inserted in issue 7 of Provo magazine (February, 1966).
Although the poster is unsigned, in ‘Een Teken aan de Wand: Album van de Nederlandse Samenleving, 1963–1983’ (Promotheus, 1983) the design of the poster is attributed to Provo-affiliated cartoonist Willem (Bernard Willem Holtrop, born 1941).
The mirrored letter A obviously (and perfectly) symbolizes the notion of anarchy – but it’s not hard to see, in the mirrored A, also a reflection of the notion of printing itself. After all, most techniques of printing (whether it’s mimeograph, letterpress, offprint, or screenprint) involve processes in which images are either mirrored, turned upside-down or made negative. In that sense, this poster also represents the contrarian nature of printing itself: the idea that positive results can often only be achieved through negative actions.
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