Contemporary Revolutions : Turning Back to the Future in 21st-Century Literature and Art

"Returning to revolution's original meaning of 'cycle', Contemporary Revolutions explores how 21st-century writers, artists, and performers re-engage the arts of the past to reimagine a present and future encompassing revolutionary commitments to justice and freedom. Dealing with histories of colonialism, slavery, genocide, civil war, and gender and class inequities, essays examine literature and arts of Africa, Europe, the Middle East, the Pacific Islands, and the United States. The broad range of contemporary writers and artists considered include fabric artist Ellen Bell; poets Selena Tusitala Marsh and Antje Krog; Syrian artists of the civil war and Sana Yazigi's creative memory web site about the war; street artist Bahia Shehab; theatre installation artist William Kentridge; and the recycles of Virginia Woolf by multi-media artist Kabe Wilson, novelist W. G. Sebald, and the contemporary trans movement."--Bloomsbury Publishing. Cover Half-title Title Copyright Contents List of Figures Notes on Contributors Part One: Beginnings Introduction: The Past in the Present: Temporalities of the Contemporary 1. Recycling Revolution: Re-mixing A Room of One’s Own and Black Power in Kabe Wilson’s Performance, Installation, and Narrative Art Part Two: Recycles: Aesthetics of Unsewing and Blacking Out 2. Stitch Works: Ellen Bell’s Unpicking Aesthetics and Victorian Women’s Creative Labor 3. Making It Niu : Blacking Out Albert Wendt’s Pouliuli the Tusitala Way Part Three: Revolutions: Arts of Resistance 4. Curating the Syrian Revolution Online 5. A Thousand Times No! : Spray Painting as Resistance and the Visual History of the Lam-Alif Part Four: Restages: Palimpsests of the Past 6. The Folds of History in William Kentridge’s Black Box Theatre: Sampling German Nazism and Colonialism 7. The Revolutions of Antjie Krog’s Lady Anne: A Chronicle in Verse Part Five: Rereads: Then, Now 8. Repair Work, Despair Work: W. G. Sebald’s Contending Modernisms 9. On Rereading Woolf’s Orlando as Transgender Text Index "An exploration of how 21st-century writers, artists, and performers forge a new concept of contemporaneity, this book shows how their work re-purposes fiction, poetry, and paintings of the past. Returning to revolution's original meaning of 'cycle', Contemporary Revolutions examines how African, European, and Middle Eastern literature and the arts addresses the violence and inequities of the present. Friedman brings together essays on a broad range of artists and topics: artists including Kabe Wilson, fabric artist Ellen Bell, graphic designer Sana Yazigi; writers such as W. G. Sebald and poet Selina Tusitala Marsh and their reworking of authors Virginia Woolf and Albert Wendt; and traumatic occurrences from Nazism to the Syrian Revolution -- Provided by publisher