Jan Cohen-Cruz (ed.): Radical Street Performance: An International Anthology (1998)

“Radical Street Performance is the first volume to collect together the writings by activists, directors, performers, critics, scholars and journalists who have documented street theatre around the world.

More than thirty essays explore agit-prop, invisible theatre, demonstrations and rallies, direct action, puppetry, parades and pageants, performance art, guerrilla theatre, circuses.

These essays look at performances in Europe, Africa, China, India and both the Americas. They describe engagement with issues as diverse as abortion, colonialism, the environment and homophobia, to name only a few. Introduced by editor Jan Cohen-Cruz, the essays are organized into thematic sections: Agitating; Witnessing; Involving; Imagining; and Popularizing.”

Publisher Routledge, 1998
Performance Theory series
ISBN 0415152313, 9780415152310
302 pages

Publisher

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Nato Thompson, Gregory Sholette (eds.): The Interventionists: Users’ Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life (2004)

“Art made to attach to buildings or to be given away? Wearable art for street demonstrations or art that sets up a booth at a trade show? This is the art of the interventionists, who trespass into the everyday world to raise our awareness of injustice and other social problems. These artists don’t preach or proselytize; they give us the tools to form our own opinions and create our own political actions. The Interventionists, which accompanies an exhibit at MASS MoCA, serves as a handbook to this new and varied work. It’s a user’s guide to art that is exciting, provocative, unexpected, inspiring (artistically and politically), and fun. From Michael Rakowitz’s inflatable homeless shelter and William Pope.L’s “Black Factory” truck with pulverizer, gift shop, and giant inflatable igloo to the Biotic Baking Brigade’s political pie-throwing, the art of The Interventionists surveys a growing genre and offers a guide for radical social action.

The book classifies the artists according to their choice of tactics: the Nomads, who create mobile projects; Reclaim the Streets, artists who act in public places; Tools for Resistance: Ready to Wear, artists who produce fashion for political action; and the Experimental University, artists whose work engages pedagogy and theory. The accompanying text includes essays by noted scholars putting the work in a broader cultural and social context as well as texts by the artists themselves.”

With contributions by Nicholas Mirzoeff and Ondine C. Chavoya
With graphics by Arjen Noordeman
Publisher MASS MoCA Publications, North Adams/MA, 2004
154 pages

Editor
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Luis Buñuel: My Last Breath (1982-) [Spanish/English]

A provocative memoir from Luis Buñuel, the Academy Award winning creator of some of modern cinema’s most important films, from Un Chien Andalou to The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.

Luis Buñuel’s films have the power to shock, inspire, and reinvent our world. Now, in a memoir that carries all the surrealism and subversion of his cinema, Buñuel turns his artistic gaze inward. In swift and generous prose, Buñuel traces the surprising contours of his life, from the Good Friday drumbeats of his childhood to the dreams that inspired his most famous films to his turbulent friendships with Federico García Lorca and Salvador Dalí. His personal narratives also encompass the pressing political issues of his time, many of which still haunt us today—the specter of fascism, the culture wars, the nuclear bomb. Filled with film trivia, framed by Buñuel’s intellect and wit, this is essential reading for fans of cinema and for anyone who has ever wanted to see the world through a surrealist’s eyes.

Originally published in French as Mon dernier soupir, Editions Robert Laffont, 1982

English edition
Translated by Abigail Israel
This translation first published by Alfred A. Knopf, 1983
Publisher Fontana Paperbacks, a division of Collins Publishing Group, London, 1985
266 pages

Mi último suspiro (Spanish, trans. Ana M. de la Fuente, 1982)
My Last Breath (English, trans. Abigail Israel, 1985)