CJ Reay’s 14 Prayer Quilts Challenge Tech Power — SkimNews
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- CJ Reay spent four months adapting his Black Lodge Press poster designs into 14 Anarchist Prayer Quilts made with felt and appliqué; the effort brought headaches, an eye test and a need for glasses.
- One long quilt declares “May every data centre crumble to dust,” using soft felt and appliqué to set human craft against hard, robotic imagery.
- 1 in 12 worked with Reay last year on banners celebrating the Bradford anarchist social club’s ethos, while Barnsley Civic commissioned a separate textile project inspired by banners made by striking miners’ wives.
- Black Lodge Press is not run as a constant storefront: Reay has 145,000 Instagram followers but opens the web store only a handful of times a year, leaving time for quilts, his allotment and other work.
- Palestine Action’s proscription stopped Reay selling a zine he had made two years earlier, whose artwork declared “Direct action gets results”; he calls the prohibition “absolutely bonkers.”
- Print zines are central to Reay’s push toward underground distribution, a response to Europe’s recent protest clampdown and algorithms shaping political discourse; he says there is “no freedom of speech” on Elon Musk’s or Zuckerberg’s platforms.
- Glastonbury invited Reay to install a real-life anarchist gardeners’ club last year, while the new quilts have inspired his first book, due in January.
Why it matters: Reay’s 145,000 Instagram followers have given DIY spaces a shared visual language, but his fear of becoming the movement’s fixed “Live, Laugh, Love” look shows the tension inside that visibility. Opening his web store only a handful of times a year lets him keep time for textile projects and resist the consumption model he criticises.
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