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SHORTLISTED FOR THE PUSHKIN HOUSE BOOK PRIZE 2018 From a renowned graphic artist and activist, an incredible portrait of life in Russia today What does it mean to live in Russia today? What is it like to grow up in a forgotten city, to be a migrant worker or to grow old and seek solace in the Orthodox church? For the past eight years, graphic artist and activist Victoria Lomasko has been travelling around Russia and talking to people as she draws their stories. She spent time in dying villages where schoolteachers outnumber students; she stayed with sex workers in the city of Nizhny Novgorod; she went to juvenile prisons and spoke to kids who have no contact with the outside world; and she attended every major political rally in Moscow. The result is an extraordinary portrait of Russia in the Putin years -- a country full of people who have been left behind, many of whom are determined to fight for their rights and for progress against impossible odds. Empathetic, honest, funny, and often devastating, Lomasko's portraits show us a side of Russia that is hardly ever seen.
For fans of Joe Sacco, a panoramic, stunningly illustrated account of Russia and the post-Soviet space by an anti-Putin artist exiled from her homeland. Even before Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, dissent in Russia was an increasingly elusive commodity. Since then it has been effectively banned, as Russian dissidents are assassinated, imprisoned, or forced into exile. The result is that, both at home and abroad, the experience and texture of Russian society have become difficult to grasp. What is actually happening in Russia and the former USSR today? The Last Soviet Artist offers a vivid, original, brilliantly illustrated answer. Banned from exhibiting her work at home, Victoria Lom...
"Other Russias is the brilliant first collection of graphic journalism by artist and activist Victoria Lomasko. A fixture at Moscow's protest and political trials, Lomasko illuminates the inequality and injustice at the heart of contemporary Russian society. Not content to remain in the capital, she travels the country, visiting schools in dying villages; interviewing sex workers in foundering industrial towns; teaching art to children at juvenile prisons--all while drawing their stories. Her portraits give voice to Russia's many voiceless citizens and allow readers to see them as she does: with dignity, compassion, and love. Other Russias is an urgent and poignant work by a major talent"--Back cover
A dynamic and devastating memoir about the cycle of trauma caused by addiction within one family From a child’s-eye view, Travis Dandro recounts growing up with a drug-addicted birth father, alcoholic step-dad, and overwhelmed mother. As a kid, Dandro would temper the everyday tension with flights of fancy, finding refuge in toys and animals and insects rather than in the unpredictable adults around him. He perceptively details the effects of poverty and addiction on a family while maintaining a child’s innocence for as long as he can. King of King Court spans from Travis’s early childhood through his teen years, focusing not only on the obviously abusive actions but also on the daily ...
Traces of the Great War is a remarkable, original collection of 18 thought provoking graphic short stories bridging the past and present. Internationally-acclaimed comic book artists, graphic novelists and writers, all of them explore the continued relevance and resonance of the First World War and its legacy in our lives today, creating emotion and reflexions.
If farce follows tragedy, what follows farce? Where does the double predicament of a post-truth and post-shame politics leave artists and critics on the left? How to demystify a hegemonic order that dismisses its own contradictions? How to belittle a political elite that cannot be embarrassed, or to mock party leaders who thrive on the absurd? How to out-dada President Ubu? And, in any event, why add outrage to a media economy that thrives on the same? What Comes After Farce? comments on shifts in art, criticism, and fiction in the face of the current regime of war, surveillance, extreme inequality, and media disruption. A first section focuses on the cultural politics of emergency since 9/1...
I Was Never Alone or Oporniki presents an original ethnographic stage play, based on fieldwork conducted in Russia with adults with disabilities. The core of the work is the script of the play itself, which is accompanied by a description of the script development process, from the research in the field to rehearsals for public performances. In a supporting essay, the author argues that both ethnography and theatre can be understood as designs for being together in unusual ways, and that both practices can be deepened by recognizing the vibrant social impact of interdependency animated by vulnerability, as identified by disability theorists and activists.
Making Another World Possible offers a broad look at an array of socially engaged cultural practices that have become increasingly visible in the past decade, across diverse fields such as visual art, performance, theater, activism, architecture, urban planning, pedagogy, and ecology. Part I of the book introduces the reader to the field of socially engaged art and cultural practice, spanning the past ten years of dynamism and development. Part II presents a visually striking summary of key events from 1945 to the present, offering an expansive view of socially engaged art throughout history, and Part III offers an overview of the current state of the field, elucidating some of the key issue...
Brutally honest and fearless, Poverty Safari is an unforgettable insight into modern Britain, and will change how you think about poverty. The Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller Winner of the Orwell Prize. Named the most 'Rebellious Read of the 21st Century' in a Scottish Book Trust poll Darren McGarvey, award-winning author and presenter of BBC series The State We're In has experienced poverty and its devastating effects first-hand. He knows why people from deprived communities all around Britain feel angry . . . So he invites you to come on a safari of sorts. But not the kind where the wildlife is surveyed from a safe distance. This book takes you inside the experience of poverty to show how the pressures really feel and how hard their legacy is to overcome. Arguing that both the political left and right misunderstand poverty as it is actually lived, McGarvey sets out what everybody – including himself – could do to change things. 'Another cry of anger from a working class that feels the pain of a rotten, failing system. Its value lies in the strength it will add to the movement for change.' - Ken Loach, director of Kes
Theodor Adorno's famous aesthetic theory was not merely a theory of the aesthetic; it also made a wider claim about the aesthetic implications of all theory. At the same time we have to deal with aesthetic objects and events in which an aesthetic theory is inherent, which show themselves as art. From both sides--theory and aesthetics--a link can be made to the etymological meaning of theōria, which understands the theoretical as a seeing or perspective. Featuring lucid essays by major thinkers, the book examines this link, focusing equally on the aesthetic implications of theory and the theoretical implications of aesthetic events.