Usable Pasts addresses projects dating to two periods in the United States that saw increased financial support from the state for socially engaged culture. By analysing artworks dating to the 1990s by Suzanne Lacy, Rick Lowe and Martha Rosler in relation to experimental theatre, modern dance, and photography produced within the leftist Cultural Front of the 1930s, this book unpicks the mythic and material afterlives of the New Deal in American cultural politics in order to write a new history of social practice art in the United States. From teenage mothers organising exhibitions that challenged welfare reform, to communist dance troupes choreographing their struggles as domestic workers, Usable Pasts addresses the aesthetics and politics of these attempts to transform society through art in relation to questions of state formation.
- ISBN10 9004297146
- ISBN13 9789004297142
- Publish Date 24 March 2022 (first published 16 March 2022)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country NL
- Imprint Brill
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 228
- Language English
- URL brill.com/product_id86652