"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 --
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.
