Browse Books

Reconstructing the American Dream
Life Inside the Tiny House Nation
Over the past decade Tiny Housing has become something of a viral sensation in the US. From Instagrammable enclaves for young professionals to vast municipality-supported schemes seeking to address homelessness tiny house sites are proliferating across the country.
This book takes a look at life inside the ‘Tiny House Nation’ shining an intimate light on a phenomenon widely celebrated in the mainstream media. The book presents textured narrative accounts from and striking images of Tiny Home residents their homes and communities while analysing the broader socio-economic structures shaping their lives. In so doing it paints a compelling and complex picture of a trend at the crossroads of several key social cultural and economic shifts at a pivotal moment for America’s housing future.
Fundamentally this is a book about paradoxes. The paradox of tiny housing offering freedom from the constraints of capitalism whilst at the same time remaining embedded within capitalist systems. The paradox of those who ‘go tiny’ both choosing an alternative lifestyle and those who are pushed into tiny housing as a consequence of limited choice. The paradox of Austin Texas as both a countercultural enclave and hyper-capitalist tech haven. And the paradox of tiny house ethoses in Austin as both centring community and shared assets and individualist libertarianism. These paradoxes do not necessarily sit in opposition to one another but are all bound up in the complexity of what tiny housing has to offer as an alternative way of living.
Despite its unattainability for all but the most privileged the American Dream - the home-owning society the suburban bliss the white picket fence - remains emblematic of the residential Good Life. But in the decades since the turn of the millennium the dream has been shrunk down expectations of a decent home literally reduced. Whilst for some this has led to forms of freedom and fulfilment it has also contributed to the normalisation of cities so outrageously expensive that all people can afford are miniature homes on the urban periphery. As this book shows both impacts of tiny housing are equally true and one does not cancel out the other. Tiny housing embodies an important societal crossroads. In some respects it offers an alternative to the prevailing housing status quo. In others it demonstrates what options have already been taken away from us.
from the Introduction
‘In the rest of this book we’ll lead you through our exploration of tiny housing in Texas. We’ll start in the next chapter by introducing some of the places and people we encountered on our travels to set the scene. Then the ‘pathways’ chapter examines the various conditions and journeys through which people end up living tiny. As you’ll see our attempt to produce a diagram of pathways to tiny living escalated into the production of a fully blown board game. We describe this diagrammatic board game to show the complex and nuanced personal and structural circumstances that lead people into tiny housing. From there we go into three empirical chapters focusing on economies of tiny living the materiality of tiny housing as domestic spaces and community culture. We then draw the book to a close and speculate about what tiny housing means for the future of domestic life especially in relation to the American Dream.
‘Throughout the book our descriptions are accompanied by photographs taken by Cian Oba-Smith who accompanied us on our first trip to Texas in 2022. The hype around tiny housing is undoubtedly driven in large part by the aesthetic cultures surrounding it. Tiny homes are the picturesque boutique upmarket cousin of mobile homes and trailers. They are distinguished from these other types of small housing as we’ll argue in this book specifically by their aesthetics. Anyone who ventures into the world of tiny housing for more than five minutes will see how thick this aesthetic culture is. From beautifully curated Instagram pages to countless coffee table books to Etsy shops dedicated to crafted tiny house merchandise a key part of living tiny is enjoying and embracing its aesthetics. By working with Cian we were able to focus (literally) on these aesthetic dimensions of tiny housing. However we were also able to capture some of what’s not presented in promotional tiny house materials; the constraints the challenges and the complexities that come along with the joy and the freedom. We’re positioning this book as something of a disrupted coffee table book. On an initial flick through it might not look too different to the photography books that valorise tiny living but you’ll already know if you’ve read this far that our approach is more nuanced. Our attempt has been to expose the ‘real’ Tiny House Nation. Not to attack it not to deny its beneficial impacts for a huge number of people but to inject some nuance into the debate so that we can take forward the positives of tiny living without normalising the negatives.’

Reconstructing the American Dream
Life Inside the Tiny House Nation
Over the past decade Tiny Housing has become something of a viral sensation in the US. From Instagrammable enclaves for young professionals to vast municipality-supported schemes seeking to address homelessness tiny house sites are proliferating across the country.
This book takes a look at life inside the ‘Tiny House Nation’ shining an intimate light on a phenomenon widely celebrated in the mainstream media. The book presents textured narrative accounts from and striking images of Tiny Home residents their homes and communities while analysing the broader socio-economic structures shaping their lives. In so doing it paints a compelling and complex picture of a trend at the crossroads of several key social cultural and economic shifts at a pivotal moment for America’s housing future.
Fundamentally this is a book about paradoxes. The paradox of tiny housing offering freedom from the constraints of capitalism whilst at the same time remaining embedded within capitalist systems. The paradox of those who ‘go tiny’ both choosing an alternative lifestyle and those who are pushed into tiny housing as a consequence of limited choice. The paradox of Austin Texas as both a countercultural enclave and hyper-capitalist tech haven. And the paradox of tiny house ethoses in Austin as both centring community and shared assets and individualist libertarianism. These paradoxes do not necessarily sit in opposition to one another but are all bound up in the complexity of what tiny housing has to offer as an alternative way of living.
Despite its unattainability for all but the most privileged the American Dream - the home-owning society the suburban bliss the white picket fence - remains emblematic of the residential Good Life. But in the decades since the turn of the millennium the dream has been shrunk down expectations of a decent home literally reduced. Whilst for some this has led to forms of freedom and fulfilment it has also contributed to the normalisation of cities so outrageously expensive that all people can afford are miniature homes on the urban periphery. As this book shows both impacts of tiny housing are equally true and one does not cancel out the other. Tiny housing embodies an important societal crossroads. In some respects it offers an alternative to the prevailing housing status quo. In others it demonstrates what options have already been taken away from us.
from the Introduction
‘In the rest of this book we’ll lead you through our exploration of tiny housing in Texas. We’ll start in the next chapter by introducing some of the places and people we encountered on our travels to set the scene. Then the ‘pathways’ chapter examines the various conditions and journeys through which people end up living tiny. As you’ll see our attempt to produce a diagram of pathways to tiny living escalated into the production of a fully blown board game. We describe this diagrammatic board game to show the complex and nuanced personal and structural circumstances that lead people into tiny housing. From there we go into three empirical chapters focusing on economies of tiny living the materiality of tiny housing as domestic spaces and community culture. We then draw the book to a close and speculate about what tiny housing means for the future of domestic life especially in relation to the American Dream.
‘Throughout the book our descriptions are accompanied by photographs taken by Cian Oba-Smith who accompanied us on our first trip to Texas in 2022. The hype around tiny housing is undoubtedly driven in large part by the aesthetic cultures surrounding it. Tiny homes are the picturesque boutique upmarket cousin of mobile homes and trailers. They are distinguished from these other types of small housing as we’ll argue in this book specifically by their aesthetics. Anyone who ventures into the world of tiny housing for more than five minutes will see how thick this aesthetic culture is. From beautifully curated Instagram pages to countless coffee table books to Etsy shops dedicated to crafted tiny house merchandise a key part of living tiny is enjoying and embracing its aesthetics. By working with Cian we were able to focus (literally) on these aesthetic dimensions of tiny housing. However we were also able to capture some of what’s not presented in promotional tiny house materials; the constraints the challenges and the complexities that come along with the joy and the freedom. We’re positioning this book as something of a disrupted coffee table book. On an initial flick through it might not look too different to the photography books that valorise tiny living but you’ll already know if you’ve read this far that our approach is more nuanced. Our attempt has been to expose the ‘real’ Tiny House Nation. Not to attack it not to deny its beneficial impacts for a huge number of people but to inject some nuance into the debate so that we can take forward the positives of tiny living without normalising the negatives.’

Removing the Educational Silos
Models of Interdisciplinary and Multi-disciplinary Education
This collection was written by educators who are engaging in multi- and interdisciplinary education and are led by curiosities encompassing the collaborative nature of cognitive and kinesthetic engagement and awareness.
The chapters are designed as sources for inspiration replication and adaptation. They are a place to start or continue. Each chapter in varying modalities addresses interdisciplinary course development and implementation in institutions of higher education. The common themes that emerge in the collection include navigating administrative systems and solving the challenges encountered when crossing departments or colleges whether it be regarding listing of courses or the intricacies of course load on each professor.
Many chapters also provide detailed information on the nuts and bolts of the specific course or courses taught including syllabi lesson examples and both formal and informal assessments implemented. Multiple case studies are included in this collection with many chapters providing specific examples of students’ work.
Contributors candidly offer discussions of failures and successes of their interdisciplinary collaborations be it in course design lesson planning or complications brought in by unforeseen pandemics. Most chapters end with a section entitled ‘Lessons learned’ where experiences from the field provide opportunities for growth and continued exploration.
Readers can follow the book from cover to cover or dip in finding the chapters that serve a particular project or teaching endeavour. The varying writing styles and topics are in direct relationship with the exact nature of the inspiration for this text. The over-arching themes of collaboration (diverse backgrounds ideas and skill sets multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity) are the consistent touchstones that create a thematic self-guided journey of exploration through the book.
The chapters offer readers guidance and encouragement to implement some of the approaches described and inspiration to forge their own paths in the world of multi- and interdisciplinary teaching and research. The depth and breadth of collaborative possibilities are exciting and the editors’ goal is to spark further experimentation.
An excellent and practical resource for any educator hoping to teach his or her subject matter through an interdisciplinary approach and for all courses revolving around topics of pedagogy. The key audience will be graduate students and teachers in all stages of education from primary to higher education.

Reframing Berlin
Architecture, Memory-Making and Film Locations
Reframing Berlin is about how architecture and the built environment can reveal the memory of a city an urban memory through its transformation and consistency over time by means of ‘urban strategies’ which have developed throughout history as cities have adjusted to numerous political religious economic and societal changes. These strategies are organised on a ‘memory spectrum’ which range from demolition to memorialisation.
It reveals the complicated relationship between urban strategies and their influence on memory-making in the context of Berlin since 1895 with the help of film locations. It utilises cinematic representations of locations as an audio-visual archive to provide a deeper analysis of the issues brought up by strategies and case studies in relation to memory-making.
Foreword by Kathleen James-Chakraborty
A new volume in the Mediated Cities series from Intellect

Reimagining the Art Classroom
Field Notes and Methods in an Age of Disquiet
This book is for artists teachers and those who prepare teachers. In the field of art and design education there are many theoretical strands that contribute to the practices of teaching and learning in the visual arts. The problem for artist teachers and those who prepare teaching artists is how to frame the diverse methodologies of art and art education in a way that affords divergent practices as well as deep understanding of issues and trends in the field. Teachers need a field guide that provides a contextual background of theory in order to make their own teaching practice relevant to contemporary art practices and important ideas within the field of education. The book in its content and presentation of content is pedagogical; it provides a catalyst and prompt for meaningful and personal artistic inquiry and exploration.
The book describes connections between teaching and artistic practices including the pedagogical turn in contemporary art. As a book for artists and designers it is graphically compelling and visually inspiring. It is designed to be engaging for the practitioner and theoretically robust. A problem with many current texts is that they are written by academics who are often a step removed from the issues of classroom instruction and tend use the language of the scholar which is appropriate for a scholarly journal but can be difficult for other audiences. This book will bridge this divide through its use of design narrative and descriptions of innovative artistic practices. Rather than being a book about “best practice” it is a book about “diverse practices” within art making and teaching.
This field guide to artistic approaches including methods for teaching art frames its arguments around critical questions that artists and art teachers must address such as: What is the role of art and design in secondary education? What will I teach? How do we go about teaching art? How do I know if my teaching is working? What is the role of traditional mediums and methods within contemporary art practices? How can art teachers contribute to the reinvention of schools? How might fluency within a medium be connected to important issues within culture including the culture of adolescents? This book includes examples of approaches that might provoke or inspire artist and pedagogical inquiry. These are approaches that actively engage students in work that disrupts taken for granted conventions about schooling and its purposes. It considers how art and design might transform the school experience for adolescents.

Reframing Berlin
Architecture, Memory-Making and Film Locations
Reframing Berlin is about how architecture and the built environment can reveal the memory of a city an urban memory through its transformation and consistency over time by means of ‘urban strategies’ which have developed throughout history as cities have adjusted to numerous political religious economic and societal changes. These strategies are organised on a ‘memory spectrum’ which range from demolition to memorialisation.
It reveals the complicated relationship between urban strategies and their influence on memory-making in the context of Berlin since 1895 with the help of film locations. It utilises cinematic representations of locations as an audio-visual archive to provide a deeper analysis of the issues brought up by strategies and case studies in relation to memory-making.
Foreword by Kathleen James-Chakraborty
A new volume in the Mediated Cities series from Intellect

Radical Intimacies
Designing Non-Extractive Relationalities
An extradisciplinary investigation into the radical potentials of design by the global Memefest network.
This book is an investigation of the key aspects of capitalist domination and resistance to it through design; its five sections explore dialogue power land interventions and radical praxis. Vodeb’s curated chapters engage radical intimacies with design and connects it with media communication and art. Radical intimacies imply a closeness to the world created through our relations which work towards the decolonization of knowledge and the public sphere. The closeness is political as it involves qualities that constitute and enable an alternative and opposition to extractive relationalities imposed by capitalism.
Radical Intimacies connects frameworks on (de)colonization with the work of Memefest a global network of people interested in social change through radical design. Bringing together original written and visual contributions from around the world the collection connects universities practitioners and social movements. This book explores design as a central domain of thought and action concerned with the meaning and production of sociocultural life. Contributors are interested in design that operates outside the dominant social orders narrow disciplines and extractive paradigms and imagines and builds new worlds and social relations.
An inter/ extradisciplinary collection of original works the audience will be academics artists designers and activists and adventurous professionals who are interested in the crossovers between design arts and social change. Students of design art media and communication interested in social change. Higher level undergraduate and graduate students.
Content warning: Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islanders are advised that the following publication contains the words & images of deceased persons.

Re-Choreographing Cortical & Cartographic Maps
Going West to Find East Going East to Find West
A transdisciplinary approach to practice-as-research complete with its own elaborate theory of practice and a set of four multi-year-performance research projects through which the theory plays out. Its methodology is at times ethnographic as Henry Daniel deftly inserts himself and his Caribbean West African ancestry into a series of complex cortical and geographic maps which become choreographic in every sense of the term.
The central argument in the book is based on a claim that human beings are cognitively embodied through their own lived experiences of movement through space and time; the spaces we inhabit and the practices we engage in are documented through cortical and cartographic maps. In short as we inhabit and move through spaces our brains organise our experiences into unique cortical and spatial maps which eventually determine how we see and deal with i.e. ‘become’ subjects in a world that we also help create. The argument is that through performance as a re-cognising and re-membering of these movements we can claim the knowledge that is in the body as well as in the spaces through which it travels.
To demonstrate how the brain organises our experiences of the world according to cartographic (graphically mapping procedures) and cortical (motor sensory and visual functions) mapping and exploring the impact of this mapping to choreographic practice considering how maps might be disrupted or altered by change of circumstances. This is illustrated through scientific creative and reflective approaches to exploring neurological process of embodied experiences as well as the analysis of projects that have utilized this practice thus far.
Audience will include Dance and Performance Studies Scholars; Dancers and Choreographers; Undergraduate and Advanced Students; Researchers

Removing the Educational Silos
Models of Interdisciplinary and Multi-disciplinary Education
This collection was written by educators who are engaging in multi- and interdisciplinary education and are led by curiosities encompassing the collaborative nature of cognitive and kinesthetic engagement and awareness.
The chapters are designed as sources for inspiration replication and adaptation. They are a place to start or continue. Each chapter in varying modalities addresses interdisciplinary course development and implementation in institutions of higher education. The common themes that emerge in the collection include navigating administrative systems and solving the challenges encountered when crossing departments or colleges whether it be regarding listing of courses or the intricacies of course load on each professor.
Many chapters also provide detailed information on the nuts and bolts of the specific course or courses taught including syllabi lesson examples and both formal and informal assessments implemented. Multiple case studies are included in this collection with many chapters providing specific examples of students’ work.
Contributors candidly offer discussions of failures and successes of their interdisciplinary collaborations be it in course design lesson planning or complications brought in by unforeseen pandemics. Most chapters end with a section entitled ‘Lessons learned’ where experiences from the field provide opportunities for growth and continued exploration.
Readers can follow the book from cover to cover or dip in finding the chapters that serve a particular project or teaching endeavour. The varying writing styles and topics are in direct relationship with the exact nature of the inspiration for this text. The over-arching themes of collaboration (diverse backgrounds ideas and skill sets multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity) are the consistent touchstones that create a thematic self-guided journey of exploration through the book.
The chapters offer readers guidance and encouragement to implement some of the approaches described and inspiration to forge their own paths in the world of multi- and interdisciplinary teaching and research. The depth and breadth of collaborative possibilities are exciting and the editors’ goal is to spark further experimentation.
An excellent and practical resource for any educator hoping to teach his or her subject matter through an interdisciplinary approach and for all courses revolving around topics of pedagogy. The key audience will be graduate students and teachers in all stages of education from primary to higher education.

Remembering Paris in Text and Film
This new book explores aspects of Paris from the time of Baudelaire within the context of nostalgia and modernity. It seeks to see Paris through written texts and movies from the outside and as both concrete reality and a collection of myths associated with it.
This collection of essays contains original research on the intersections of several disciplinary approaches to Paris and modernity. It is designed to make these complex concepts speak to an academic audience but also to an undergraduate readership. It will therefore create intersections and problematize what are otherwise considered the remit of single disciplines.
The book springs from two interdisciplinary courses on Paris and modernity – Paris at Dawn which looks at modernity in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and Paris at Midnight which looks at left-bank culture following the Second World War – coordinated by Associate Professor Alistair Rolls (French studies) and Professor Marguerite Johnson (classics and classical reception) at the University of Newcastle Australia.
While it is driven by original research notably by examining the intersections of any number of disciplinary lenses and positions on Paris and modernity it is also designed to make these complex concepts understandable for a wider readership including undergraduates. It will therefore create intersections and problematize what are otherwise considered the remit of single disciplines (with their monoliths and taxonomies); at the same time it will also provide clarity and importantly make logical links between for example the past and present myth and reality poetry and history and various schools and movements including psychology poetics poststructuralism and critical theory classical reception feminism and existentialism. All contributors are academics working in the School of Humanities and Social Science who have contributed to the development and delivery of these twinned courses.
Remembering Paris investigates Paris as an urban and poetic site of remembrance. For Charles Baudelaire the streets of Paris conjured visions of the past even as he contemplated the present. This book investigates this and other cases of double vision tracing back from Baudelaire into antiquity but also following Baudelaire forwards as his poetry is translated received and referenced in texts and films in the twentieth century and beyond.
Primary readership will be academics educators scholars and students – both undergraduate and postgraduate. The chapter structure and the relatively classic choice of authors and filmmakers is well suited to course use.
Many universities are now turning to interdisciplinary courses which combine historical cultural literary and artistic approaches to thematic studies. This book therefore will also be of interest to academics teaching courses on French language literature and culture; literary studies; film studies; cultural studies; women studies gender studies; LGBTQ+ studies; even human geography.

The Return of Twin Peaks
Squaring the Circle
In 2017 twenty-five years after its initial release a new season of Twin Peaks shook the world of television.
This new book is a detailed analysis of the third season of the television series and aims to elucidate some of the meanings of Twin Peaks: The Return and explain these in terms of philosophical mythological and spiritual approaches. It focuses on the third season of Twin Peaks but also refers to the first two seasons and to the film Fire Walk with Me.
Divided into three sections the book first examines the third season as expanded storytelling through the lens of Gene Youngblood's theory of synesthetic cinema intertextuality integrationist and segregationist approaches in the realm of fiction and focuses on the role of audio and visual superimpositions in The Return. It goes on to question the nature of the reality depicted in the seasons via scientific approaches such as electromagnetism time theory and multiverses. The third and final section aims to transcend this vision by exploring the role of theosophy the occult and other spiritual sources.
The author’s focus on the role of spirituality and science in Twin Peaks is what distinguishes this book from other works on the famous television series. The work of a scholar who is also a fan the book should appeal to any hard-core Twin Peaks viewer.
Foreword by Matt Zoller Seitz editor-at-large at RogerEbert.com and the television critic for New York magazine.
This will be essential reading for fans of Twin Peaks and academics writing about it.
Also of interest for students with an interest in philosophy religion science or spiritualism in visual and popular culture.

Radioactive Documentary
Filming the Nuclear Environment after the Cold War
How have nuclear issues been covered in documentary since the end of the Cold War? This original new book explores how the sometimes elusive sometimes dramatic effects of uranium products on the landscape on architecture and on social organisation continue to show up on-screen maintaining a record of moving images that goes back to the early twentieth century.
It is the first book to analyse independent documentary films about nuclear energy - it suggests an approach to documentary films as agents of change.
Each chapter of this book focuses on one of ten different documentary films made in Europe and North America since 1989. Each of these films works the material and the ideological heritage of the nuclear power industry into visions of the future. Dealing with the legacy of how ignorance and neglect led to accidents and failures the films offer different ways of understanding and moving on from the past. The documentary form itself can be understood as a collective means for the discovery of creative solutions and the communication of new narratives. In the case of these films the concepts of radioactivity and deep time in particular are used to bring together narrative and formal aesthetics in the process of reimagining the relationships between people and their environments.
Focusing on the representation of radioactive spaces in documentary and experimental art films the study shows how moving images do more than communicate the risks and opportunities and the tumultuous history associated with atomic energy. They embody the effects of Cold War technologies as they persist into the present acting as a reminder that the story is not over yet.
Primary readership will be academics and students working in environmental communication and in environmental humanities more broadly. For students of independent film or documentary it will also provide a clear picture of contemporary themes and creative practice.

Red Creative
Culture and Modernity in China
This book brings together multiple strands of debate around the cultural creative industries and contemporary capitalism China’s position in global capitalism the future of modernity and new ways of thinking about culture and cultural policy. Clearly written and engaging it is the first study to provide a critical lens on creative industries discourse and to bring it together with detailed historical and social analysis.
It analyses the ongoing development of China’s cultural industries examining the institutions regulations interests and markets that underpin the Chinese cultural economy and the strategic position of Shanghai within that economy. Explores cultural policy reforms in post-colonial China and articulates Shanghai’s significance in paving China’s path to modernity and entry to global capitalism. In-depth and illuminating this book situates China’s contemporary cultural economy in its larger global and historical context revealing the limits of Western thought in understanding Chinese history culture and society.
This book is aimed at a broad educated audience who seek to engage more with what is happening in China especially in the cultural field. It tries to take such an audience outside the standard frame of Western modernity suggesting the possibility of different historical trajectories and possibilities. Because the book is theoretical and empirical in its approach it will be of strong interest to both those interested in Chinese cultural policy and the creative industries approach generally.
Cultural and creative industries is an increasingly important subject area in Higher Education with undergraduate and postgraduate programs representing some of the fastest growing areas in arts humanities and social science faculties. This audience is increasingly global as this policy debate has now moved outside the Western countries whose economic competitiveness it was meant to promote. It is an agenda promoted by agencies such as UNESCO UNCTAD the World Bank British Council and the Goethe Institute.
Primary readership will be academics with a particular interest in Chinese culture cultural studies media studies public policy and management studies cultural policy East Asian studies and cultural policy researchers. It will also be relevant to all those interested in China and Chinese’s culture; and those interested in the history of Shanghai and the role it plays in contemporary Chinese culture and politics. Given the current interest in China it may also be of wider appeal too.

Responding to Site
The Performance Work of Marilyn Arsem
This book focuses on the performance art of Marilyn Arsem an internationally acclaimed performance artist known for her innovative and experimental work. Arsem’s work addresses women’s history and myth-making capacities the potency of site and geography the idea of the audience as witnesses and the intimacy of one-to-one works.
One of the most prolific performance artists working in the United States today Arsem performs carefully choreographed durational actions that are developed site-responsively and range from deceptively simple interventions to elaborately orchestrated actions. This edited volume seeks to extend Arsem’s legacy beyond the audiences of her live performances and enter her work into the lexicon of the art world. Accompanied by 200 images this book will be of interest to scholars and students of performance studies feminist performance feminist art history and performance history. It will also contribute to the history of alternative spaces and galleries which is only now being written.
I have had the privilege of knowing Marilyn for over 30 years. Her work has given me so many epiphanies about live art time-based art practice and durational performance practice. How and why do you choose a single action and enact it over an extended period of time? How do you respond to site and create a sacred meditational zone; a reflexive space about the human condition? And most importantly how do you teach future generations about the importance of living while making art as a spiritual and philosophical practice? This book is yet another example of Arsem’s legacy. Fundamental I’d say.
- Guillermo Gómez-Peña
Watching Marilyn Arsem perform can be a slow careful vulnerable and heart-stoppingly profound experience. To see her is to know better the complex intermingling particularities of body space time being and action. Reading this comprehensive lucidly written and deeply insightful book – the first significant publication on Arsem’s practice as a performance artist – will enable new perspectives on a major artist’s work. It also sheds vivid light upon enduring themes for the critical encounter with art: duration and doing materiality and nothingness truth and representation commitment and experiment togetherness and solitude experience and endurance.
- Dominic Johnson Queen Mary University of London

Radical Mainstream
Independent Film, Video and Television in Britain, 1974–90
Radical Mainstream examines independent film and video cultures in Britain from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s in the context of struggles against capitalism patriarchy racism colonialism and homophobia examining relations between counterpublics and social change. The book considers this period in order to examine the capacity for radical discourse to affect dominant cultural media forms arguing that independent film- and video-makers helped transform television into a vital site of counterpublic discourse.
The end of the twentieth century saw the development of new social models of film and video production and exhibition alongside the formation of new alliances to campaign for changes to social practice policy and legislature. Radical Mainstream explores the interrelation between public debate institutions and individuals arguing that independent film and video in Britain at this time – including activist documentary currents of counter-cinema avant-garde film and video art – were largely concerned with creating and circulating counterpublic discourses. The book traces the diversity of the influences on independent film and video from socialist and liberation movements to popular radical histories and psychoanalytic and Marxist film theory. The account provides a historic backdrop to contemporary documentary and moving image work and illuminates the heritage of critical thinking within such practices.

Redefining Theatre Communities
International Perspectives on Community-Conscious Theatre-Making
Redefining Theatre Communities explores the interplay between contemporary theatre and communities. It considers the aesthetic social and cultural aspects of community-conscious theatre-making. While doing so the volume reflects on recent transformations in structural textual and theatrical conventions and traditions and explores the changing modes of production and spectatorship in relation to theatre communities. The essays edited by Marco Galea and Szabolcs Musca present an array of emerging perspectives on the politics ethics and practices of community representation on the contemporary international theatre landscape. An international interdisciplinary collection featuring work by theatre scholars theatre-makers and artistic directors from across Europe and beyond Redefining Theatre Communities will appeal to those interested in the diverse forms of socially engaged theatre and performance.

Raymond Williams
Cultural Analyst
Raymond Williams was a complex figure with various different facets to his activity. Raymond Williams: Cultural Analyst concentrates on the formation and application of his cultural-materialist methodology and its relation to his politics. Surveying Williams’s extensive writings across the fields of cultural studies sociology and Marxist theory the overall objective is to rescue Williams from his routine treatment as a literary scholar and restore him to his rightful place as a leading scholar of the social sciences not least for his theoretically sophisticated contribution to the field in the form of cultural materialism. Ultimately this book argues that Williams should be regarded as a cultural analyst in the sociological rather than narrowly literary sense.
The book is replete with examples of Williams’s ideas and concepts that are of direct and illuminating relevance to twenty-first century problems. Throughout Jim McGuigan displays a remarkable capacity to explain Williams’s sometimes complex ideas in an inviting and intuitively appealing way making interesting connections across key concepts. For those familiar with Williams’s work this new book will come as a breath of fresh air and for readers coming across Williams for the first time this offers an inspiring and vivid introduction to his work.

Revolution in the Echo Chamber
Audio Drama's Past, Present and Future
Revolution in the Echo Chamber is a sociohistorical analysis of British and US radio and audio drama from 1919 to the present day. This volume examines the aesthetic cultural and technical elements of audio drama along with its context within the literary canon. In addition to the form and development of aural drama Leslie Grace McMurtry provides an exploration of mental imagery generation in relation to its reception and production. Building on historical analysis Revolution in the Echo Chamber provides contemporary perspective drawing on trends from the current audio drama environment to analyse how people listen to audio drama including podcast drama today – and how they might listen in the future.

Revolve:R
edition three
Revolve:R was initiated in 2011 by Sam Treadaway and Ricarda Vidal as a multidisciplinary and international collaboration. The project explores the transmission of ideas through collaborative forms of communication ranging from the physical and tactile (such as the sharing of original artworks via the postal service) to the digital and intangible (which includes a parallel interplay online). Besides visual artworks Revolve:R includes poetry film soundscapes and music. The complete work of each Revolve:R edition is presented as a limited-edition bookwork. Revolve:R: edition three is available through Intellect.
Revolve:R: edition three is the result of a two-year-long collaboration between 2016 and 2018 in which artists poets and musicians from around the UK USA Africa and Continental Europe created artworks in reply and response to one another. During this time many of the artworks featured have physically travelled many thousands of miles before coming together in this publication.
Edition three is a continuation of editions one and two (Arrow Bookworks 2013 and 2015) which explored concepts relating to chaos theory chance and synchronicity. The first artwork-page of Revolve:R edition three (page 217) references the final artwork sequence from Revolve:R edition two (ending on page 216). Throughout the evolution of this third edition the editors have continued the development of the initial ideas and working processes that formed the basis and structure of the original Revolve:R project and have further reflected upon the nature of collaboration. In doing so their awareness and consideration of certain parallels and connections between the artworks has developed their insight into the act of co-creation and the phenomenon of collective consciousness.
Each Revolve:R edition is formed of six rounds or Revolves (effectively forming six chapters within the book) which follow the same pattern. A single 2D two-sided artwork of 21cm² is sent by post to a number of invited artists with the request that they respond with an artwork of their own by a specific date. Thus the initial artwork sets in motion a multitude of alternative creative responses reflecting the recipients’ various ways of reading interpreting and responding.
Revolve:R: edition three (Arrow Bookworks and Intellect 2019) follows Revolve:R edition one (Arrow Bookworks 2013) and Revolve:R edition two (Arrow Bookworks 2015). All three Revolve:R editions also function as catalogues and artworks are available to purchase as high quality limited edition prints. Further information about the Revolve:R project including how to purchase the prints can be found here: www.revolve-r.com
Revolve:R: edition three is a powerful and beautiful example of the power of collaborative practice a vehicle for new artistic dialogue and an artwork in its own right.
