|
Showing 1 - 5 of
5 matches in All Departments
Usable Pasts zeros in on two periods in the United States that saw
the state increase its financial support for socially engaged works
of culture. In the 1990s the political artworks by Suzanne lacy,
Rick Lowe, and Martha Rosler helped usher in an era of social
practice art, while in the 1930s saw the creation of the leftist
Cultural Front and its proliferation of experiential theatre,
modern dance, and photography. By analyzing these trends and their
relationship to one another this book unpicks the mythic and
material afterlives of the New Deal in American cultural politics,
and in so doing writes a new history of social practice art in the
United States. From teenage mothers organising exhibitions that
challenged welfare reform, to communist dance troupes
choreographing their struggles as domestic workers, Usable Pasts
addresses the aesthetics and politics of these attempts to
transform society through art in relation to questions of state
formation.
Usable Pasts addresses projects dating to two periods in the United
States that saw increased financial support from the state for
socially engaged culture. By analysing artworks dating to the 1990s
by Suzanne Lacy, Rick Lowe and Martha Rosler in relation to
experimental theatre, modern dance, and photography produced within
the leftist Cultural Front of the 1930s, this book unpicks the
mythic and material afterlives of the New Deal in American cultural
politics in order to write a new history of social practice art in
the United States. From teenage mothers organising exhibitions that
challenged welfare reform, to communist dance troupes
choreographing their struggles as domestic workers, Usable Pasts
addresses the aesthetics and politics of these attempts to
transform society through art in relation to questions of state
formation.
|
|