Loki Design and The Public are excited to announce the Toronto launch of issue 13 of Four Minutes to Midnight. Based in Montreal, Four Minutes to Midnight is an experimental literary arts zine working at the intersections of typography, poetics and radical politics. Issue 13 features visual art, writing and design from a diverse host of contributors, including the Dutch design studio Experimental Jetset, performance artist and author Jacob Wren, Montreal photographer Vo Thien Viet, Toronto writer and editor Hilary Rexe, and Montreal visual artist and collagist Madame Gilles.

Thematically, the issue emerges out of the editors’ experiences of the Quebec student strike, but is not specifically about it, reflecting more on the poetics of 10 years of community organising, designing and publishing, making music, and strolling through gentrifying neighbourhoods in opposition to neoliberal capitalism.

http://2356.lokidesign.net/2014/05/four-minutes-to-midnight-issue-thirteen/

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The evening will feature a conversation between FMTM editor and designer, Kevin Yuen Kit Lo, and Sheila Sampath of The Public Studio, moderated by Patricio Davila. Having long admired each others work, this conversation will provide an opportunity for the speakers and audience to explore ideas around art and activism, and the challenges and rewards of running an activist design studio.

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Sheila Sampath has been crafting creative for social good since 2003. She has a background in grassroots, community-driven anti-oppression activism, around which she centres her approach to graphic design and popular education as Principal and Creative Director of The Public. She is the editorial and art director of award-winning magazine, Shameless—Canada’s feminist voice for young women and trans youth, and is actively involved in local art and music communities, playing in Toronto band, Tu Suis, and serving on the board of the South Asian Visual Arts Centre. She is an instructor at OCAD U, a member of the British Council’s TN2020 Network and a fellow of the Royal Society of Artists. Her work as a designer has been widely recognized and awarded and her political writing has been published internationally. Her first book, Letters Lived, was published by Three O’Clock Press in the fall of 2013.
http://thepublicstudio.ca/

Kevin Yuen-Kit Lo is a Montreal-based graphic-designer, community organiser and educator. He runs the independent design studio Loki Design, specialising in work in the community and cultural spheres, publishes the zine Four Minutes to Midnight, and teaches in the department of Design and Computation Arts at Concordia University.

As a community organiser and activist, Kevin is engaged on multiple levels within grassroots organisations in Montréal and beyond. He is a founding member of the Howl Arts Collective, a member of Artivistic, a board member of Archive Montreal and a long-standing jury member with Memefest.
http://www.lokidesign.net/