What unites 100 artists’ manifestos from across a century and every corner of the globe? The conviction — fierce, utopian, and sometimes dangerous to hold — that art can change the world. Why Are We ‘Artists’? gathers an extraordinary range of voices: activists, surrealists, post-colonialists, socialists, nihilists, and many more. The collection spans the Negritude movement in Africa and Martinique, Brazil’s Mud/Meat Sewer Manifesto, Iraqi modernism, and Australia’s Cyberfeminist Manifesto — documents that are in turn personal, political, angry, sublime, and revolutionary. Several appear here in English for the first time; others were composed under conditions of censorship and brutality; still others point toward a future not yet arrived. As one manifesto puts it: ‘Art is not a luxury. Art is a basic social need to which everyone has a right.’
ISBN 13: 9780241236314
Author: Jessica Lack
