# It Lives! Zombie Modernism and White Supremacy in Canadian Graphic Design Culture

> By Stephan Rosger. A multimedia essay of text, collage and video, first published in print in the first edition of An Imperfect Index.

It Lives! argues that Canadian graphic design still worships a 1960s modernist "golden era," through projects like Canada Modern and the film Design Canada, without questioning whom it excluded or harmed. Through artifacts like the government booklet Living in the New Houses, it asks designers to count modernism's colonial side as part of Canadian design history.

## Read and watch

- [The essay](https://itlives.ca/): full text with footnotes and bibliography, about a 15-minute read
- [The video essay](https://youtu.be/p1WEezb7tm4): the whole essay as one narrated film

## Key sources

- Jeffery Keedy, "Zombie Modernism," Emigre #34 (1995)
- Martha Scotford, "Messy History vs. Neat History," Visible Language (1994)
- Erika Ashley Couto, "The Eskimo Rental Housing Program (1965-69): A Case Study in Cold War Authoritarian High Modernism," MA thesis, Concordia University (2015)
- Living in the New Houses, Education Branch, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (c. 1968)

## Author

- Stephan Rosger, writer, researcher and designer, Canada
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/roswerks/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanrosger/