Reciproca is a motion graphics homage to the Futurist and Constructivist art movements of the early 20th century. Constructivism in particular, would build a crucial foundation for agitprop, graphic design, and public art in general. Decidedly moving away from the painterly, the use of stark typography, a black, white, and red color palette, primary geometric shapes, iconography, and photomontage – arranged amid angular patterns and motifs, became key signifiers for these artists, and influenced communication arts for the next century.From the rapid-flashes of almost subliminal radical propaganda, a mid-tier level of diagonally-directed sloganeering, to the longer-standing bold and direct tenets, the core elements of Reciproca are delivered in an uptempo procession of kinetic typography. Animated duochrome arrows simultaneously accentuate and transmit the typography, as well as the iconography, throughout the composition. The repetitive slogans driven along the arrow pathways are Mutual Aid, Mutual Support, and Volunteer Cooperation, and summarize the fundamental theme of Reciproca.
The fifteen tenets are grouped into five main principles, and each is indicated with its own pertinent icon and a relevant brief in spanish. An icon for the whole of five principles is presented as a pentagonal ideogram with an eye at the center; symbolizing the awareness of class struggle.
*NOS QUEREMOS MUTUAMENTE*
*COLABORAR EN VEZ DE COMPETIR*
*ÉRAMOS IGUALES EN NUESTRA COMUNIDAD*
*NUESTRAS VIDAS SON MÁS IMPORTANTES QUE LA PROPIEDAD*
+ The icon is a decades-old symbol that represents direct action and solidarity.
*ORGANIZAMOS PARA EL CAMBIO*
+ The icon is derived from the flag of the United Farm Workers labor union. It quickly became the de facto flag of the Chicano Civil Rights Movement, which held a prominent presence with students on Auraria Campus, as well as worker movements in Denver in the 1970s.
The background is a monochromatic photomontage; a swirling sea of halftone-affected portraits melding into each other. This is an expression of the diversity of voices, bodies, and spaces, with solidarity and intersectionality of poor and working class people.
The influence of Futurism in this composition is the movement’s youthful energy, speed, and desire for cultural rejuvenation, as well as the application of a periodic revealing of a principal icon inspired by Futurist geometric motifs. This icon appears between the procession of each tenet, and appropriately symbolizes a transformation phase: a momentum for change, a transition inspiration, and the will to regenerate.
A third primary icon that re-emerges throughout is an ideogram of consciousness as a dualistic process of unfolding. Paralleling the dialectical monism of Mayan philosophy, Taoism, and Pico della Mirandola’s Hermetic philosophy, the perspectives of self and other – the duality of agency and mutuality – are reconciled into a unified whole. Hierarchies are dissolved into holarchies. The will of the autonomous individual is crucial, and yet fundamentally dependent upon the mutual aid of the community in which they exist, and thus the direct action onto the larger holon from which the previous is united and nested.
This fractal unfolding of self-similar wholes within larger wholes is a balance of power enabled by the sensitivity resulting from the Golden Rule. The authority of the Will of the individual is justified through the radical act of Love, and Love is further manifested through larger nested holons.