Description

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What is the purpose of art in a world on fire? Can it be a genuine form of political resistance?

In this exhilarating work, Amber Massie-Blomfield brings together stories of remarkable acts of creativity that have shifted history on its axis, from writer Ken Saro Wiwa combatting oil pollution in Nigeria and British environmentalists taking inspiration from a novel by Edward Abbey to Susan Sontag’s production of Waiting for Godot in besieged Sarajevo and Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit capturing the spirit that drove the civil rights movement. Massie-Blomfield considers the work of artists, writers, musicians, and filmmakers—such as Pablo Picasso, Gran Fury, the Velvet Underground, Alexis Wright, Claude Cahun, and Rabindranath Tagore—alongside collectives, communities, and amateurs who have used protest sites as their canvas and spearheaded movements that have transformed history. Deeply inspiring, it is a powerful testament to the idea that art is not only a salve in the bleakest of times but also can change the world.

About the Author

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Amber Massie-Blomfield is executive director of renowned theater company Complicité. She led the first adaptation of Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead and the radio dramatization of Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising. She lives in London.