If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution

This experimental children’s book narrates cross-species practices of survival across the Indonesian archipelago, centring the perspectives of local animals such as endangered monkeys, cosmopolitan rats, migrant sparrows and fugitive dogs. Written in the form of a play, its six episodes ground the readers in the animals’ struggles and aspirations as they go about their daily lives and face the consequences of postcolonial erasure, ecological destruction and capitalist expansion. While the stories unfold, their interconnected existences become an archive of uncertainties, where the fate of many different creatures, humans included, is inseparable from each other. As a script for intergenerational transmission, the book thoughtfully combines dialogues, songs and drawings, with contextualising essays and extensive notations. Through these different modes of reading, children and adults alike will learn about cross-species solidarity and rebellious movements, but also about disappearing Indigenous cosmologies, and the brave women who wove cloths around the mountains in eco-political resistance.

Continuities and ruptures between the early Soviet (c.1917) and late state socialist (c.1980s) periods are examined through detailed discussions of a wide range of women’s artistic practices, including Liubov Popova, Varvara Stepanova, Tina Bara, Sibylle Bergemann, Věra Chytilová, Natalia LL, Dora Maurer, the Erfurt Women Artists’ Group, Běla Kolářová, Evelyn Richter, Zorka Ságlová, and many others. Featuring over one hundred images of works ranging from costume sketches and stage maquettes, to photographs and film stills, the book offers a sweeping study of over seventy years of women’s artistic production and is meant for any reader engaged at the intersections of feminist and (post-)socialist art histories.

‘Adrian Piper: Performing Objects I Have Been, 1972–2018’ is a collection of documents from, or potentially relevant to Adrian Piper’s performance ‘Some Reflective Surfaces’ (1975–76) edited by art historian and curator Rhea Anastas. In this early live piece, Piper dances under spotlights to Aretha Franklin’s ‘Respect’, additionally staging video feedback and filmed images of herself dancing, and two sound recordings – ‘Respect’ itself, and a voice-over narrative. ‘Some Reflective Surfaces’ was produced in New York in the Fine Arts Building, New York University in 1975 and then at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1976. The performance has not been staged since. The documents of ‘Some Reflective Surfaces’ include writings by, and audio transcripts of Piper. The publication is illustrated with photographs of Piper’s performances and other works.