Art is a site of political struggle and creative resistance. Looking at the intersection of art and technology, creativity and commodification, aesthetics and postcapitalism, these books will awaken the radical imagination. All 40% off until February 3rd!
By Peter Kennard
This fully illustrated anthology showcases 50 years of hard-hitting protest art from Britain’s foremost political artist, Peter Kennard.
The book centres around Kennard’s images, photomontages and illustrations from protests, year by year, which provoked public outrage; including Israel/Palestine protests, anti-nuclear protests, responses to austerity, climate destruction, and more.
Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power
By Lola Olufemi
‘We use art to fight political battles in order to create the conditions for unbridled creativity. So that we might all be able to live artistic lives: lives of freedom’.
Feminism, Interrupted is a bold call to seize feminism back from the cultural gatekeepers and return it to its radical, transformative roots. Olufemi shows us that when feminist art bridges the gap between grassroots movements and the theory that commands them, a stronger coalitional politics emerges.
The Hologram: Feminist, Peer-to-Peer Health for a Post-Pandemic Future
By Cassie Thornton
We are a cooperative species. To survive and thrive we build systems of care. One part art, one part activism, one part science fiction, this book is a guide to establishing a radical new approach to health and caregiving in the age of COVID-19.
The premise is simple: three people – a ‘triangle’ – meet on a regular basis, digitally or in person, to focus on the physical, mental and social health of a fourth – the ‘hologram’. The hologram, in turn, teaches their caregivers how to give and also receive care; each member of their triangle becomes a hologram for another, different triangle, and so the system multiplies.
How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic
By Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart
First published in 1971, How to Read Donald Duck by Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart shocked readers by revealing how capitalist ideology operates in our most beloved cartoons. Having survived bonfires, impounding and being dumped into the ocean by the Chilean army, this controversial book is once again back on our shelves.
By Mel Evans
Artwash uncovers the role of Big Oil’s sponsorship of the arts in Britain. Based on years of undercover research, grassroots investigation and activism, as well as performance and cultural interventions, Artwash shows how corporate sponsorship of the arts erases unsightly environmental destruction and obscures the strategies of oil company PR executives who rely on cultural philanthropy.
Dread Poetry and Freedom: Linton Kwesi Johnson and the Unfinished Revolution
By David Austin
In Dread Poetry and Freedom David Austin explores the themes of poetry, political consciousness and social transformation through the prism of ‘living legend’ Linton Kwesi Johnson’s work. In the process, Austin demonstrates why art, and particularly poetry, is a vital part of our efforts to achieve genuine social change in times of dread.
Curationism: How Curating Took Over the Art World and Everything Else
By David Balzer
What is a curator, exactly? And what does the explosive popularity of curating say about our culture’s relationship with taste, labour and the avant-garde? In this vibrant book, David Balzer travels through art history to explore the cult of curation, where it began, how it came to dominate museums and galleries, and how it emerged at the turn of the millennium as a dominant mode of thinking and being.
Art and Postcapitalism: Aesthetic Labour, Automation and Value Production
By Dave Beech
What can art tell us about a postcapitalist future? Art and Postcapitalism argues that art remains essential for thinking about the intersection of labour, capitalism and postcapitalism not insofar as it merges work and pleasure but as an example of noncapitalist production.
Formulating a critique of contemporary postcapitalism, this is essential reading for anyone interested in the real and imagined escape routes from capitalism.
Art after Money, Money after Art: Creative Strategies Against Financialization
By Max Haiven
We imagine that art and money are old enemies, but this myth actually reproduces a violent system of global capitalism and prevents us from imagining and building alternatives.
By exploring the way contemporary artists engage with cash, debt and credit, Haiven identifies and assesses a range of creative strategies for mocking, sabotaging, exiting, decrypting and hacking capitalism today. Written for artists, activists and scholars, this book makes an urgent call to unleash the power of the radical imagination by any media necessary.
Delirium and Resistance: Activist Art and the Crisis of Capitalism
By Gregory Sholette
In Delirium and Resistance Gregory Sholette engages in critical dialogue with artists’ collectives, counter-institutions, and activist groups to offer an insightful, firsthand account of the relationship between politics and art in neoliberal society.
Sholette lays out clear examples of art’s deep involvement in capitalism: the dizzying prices achieved by artists who pander to the financial elite, the proliferation of museums that contribute to global competition between cities in order to attract capital, and the strange relationship between art and rampant gentrification that restructures the urban landscape.
The Situationist International: A Critical Handbook
Edited by Alastair Hemmens and Gabriel Zacarias
Formed amidst the incendiary violence and political turmoil of the 1960s, beyond the barricades, the Situationist International (SI) remains to this day influential in anti-capitalist cultural, political and philosophical debates.
The Situationist International is an up-to-date and comprehensive survey of the SI and its thought. Leading thinkers analyse the SI’s interdisciplinary challenges, its roots in the artistic avant-garde and the traditional workers’ movements, its engagement with the problems of postcolonialism and issues of gender and sexuality.