Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
Sinéad in a Malcolm X shirt. Sinéad pregnant and bald and screaming on the cover of The Lion and the Cobra (belly cut off). Sinéad at a pro-abortion rally. Sinéad with the Public Enemy logo painted on the side of her head. Sinéad walking down St. Mark’s Place, her “favorite place in the (...)
I think this photo was taken in August 1989 at a FADA (Forum for a Democratic Alternative) march outside the RDS, Ballsbridge. It was a protest marking the 20th anniversary of British troops taking over the streets of the six counties after the 1969 Battle of the Bogside. Other speakers (...)
The death of Sinéad O’Connor (1966-2023), the Irish, singer-songwriter, performer, activist, actor and memoirist, was announced on July 26. She is probably most well-known for her cover of the Prince song, Nothing Compares 2 U. The hit transformed her career but there is so much more to her (...)
Sinéad O’Connor was more than just a musician. She was a symbol of a changing society in Ireland that made defenders of the status quo incredibly uncomfortable.
Apostles of freedom are ever idolised when dead, but crucified when alive. — James Connolly
The words of James Connolly, (...)
Spirited, defiant and always at the mercy of her mental health issues, the Irish singer will be forever remembered for her pure, clear voice and willingness to speak out on injustice.
Few artists have straddled the boundaries between acclaim, controversy and public affection as effectively (...)
Dave Kellaway reviews the Making Modernism art exhibition at the Royal Academy, London, until the 12th February 2023.
At the start of the 20th century, women were still not allowed to go to official art schools. This exhibition shows how women artists, mostly based in Germany, made (...)
Britain saw his fatwa and internalised it
The year was 1989. It was only when Salman Rushdie took his seat at the memorial service that the lethality of his predicament sank in. The remembrance for the writer Bruce Chatwin on Valentine’s Day was held at a Greek Orthodox Church in Bayswater. (...)
She should be remembered for the sharp clarity of her social vision, as well as for her gorgeous words.
The tremendous literary achievement of our friend Toni Morrison has rightly been the focus of most of the commentary since her passing. However, her political vision — using language to (...)
One of Sweden’s most important and controversial postwar writers who aimed his fire at European imperialism.
The Swedish writer Sven Lindqvist, who has died aged 87, argued that the racist brutality of European imperialism led to the horrors of the 20th century and survived into the 21st. (...)
A Heated Discussion at the GoEast Film Festival
If I could summarize the discussion titled “What Went Wrong in the Nineties” held at the GoEast Film Festival in Wiesbaden, Germany, in April, I would draw on the name of the festival itself to call it: “Go West!” Bringing together an (...)
While there have been strides to widen discussions in art history to include issues like gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity, the corporate marketing of pricey art-history textbooks to American college students produces materials that glaringly omit and/or deemphasize Marxism as an (...)
The term “critical irrealism,” though present and well-known in the spheres of literary and arts scholarship, is unfamiliar to most. But then, so is living in the world of 2018. It is also alienating and in constant violent flux. Which means perhaps there is something for this critical (...)
You can find Aretha Franklin’s teenage church recordings online. She was a star if not the main attraction at her father’s Detroit church, where there were plenty of great singers including the pastor himself. We know in hindsight that she would develop her raw talent to become a music icon. (...)
Filmmaker Ken Loach on populism, the gig economy, and the importance of transnational solidarity in his movies and beyond.
The British film director Ken Loach is one of the most celebrated cinematic voices of our time. A deeply engaged artist and one of a handful of directors to have been (...)
Review of “May the Court Consider Delivering a Guilty Verdict in Accordance with the Dogs’ Law ขอศาลได้พิจารณาพิพากษาลงโทษตามกฎหมา
The missing y
The felicitous treachery of the Thai language makes the word for “law” ever precarious: if kotmaay loses its last letter yo yak, it becomes (...)
When Bertolt Brecht died 62 years ago on August 14, the world hardly knew it was witnessing the passing of one of 20th century’s great poets.
Bertolt Brecht the playwright appears to have overshadowed his other artistic identities nearly completely, though, in truth, Brecht wore more (...)
Much analysis of modern music focuses on lyrical content, but how can we understand modern musical forms? What relation do they have to the capitalist world in which they’ve developed? To answer these questions Kate Bradley interviewed Mark Abel, author of Groove: An Aesthetic of Measured (...)
“Shoah” filmmaker Claude Lanzmann, who died this month, forever changed the world’s understanding of the Holocaust — for better and for worse.
he interminable list of eulogies celebrating Claude Lanzmann since his death — among which we find a significant number of conservative statesmen, (...)
By and large the film industry everywhere is a dedicated supporter of the political establishment; Bollywood, more than a manifestation of the pan-Indian cultural industry, takes the cake.
This has been the case since India’s independence and is not something new. Watch any of Raj Kapoor (...)
It is rare for a translated work to survive the legacy and celebration of the original work. Yet in the case of the twentieth century Indian subcontinent, such is the case with a celebrated novel, namely Abdullah Hussein’s Udas Naslein, published in 1963. The novel, perhaps for reasons of (...)
Twitter
Facebook