Bøger udgivet af OR Books

Lucid Dreaming is an unprecedented global collection of discussions with documentary and experimental filmmakers, giving film and video its rightful place alongside the written word as an essential medium for conveying the most urgent concerns in contemporary arts and politics.In these long-form conversations, film curator and arts journalist Cohn draws out the thinking of some of the most intriguing creators behind the rapidly developing movement of moving-image nonfiction. The collection features individuals from a variety of backgrounds who encounter the world, as Cohn says, "through a creative lens based in documentary practice." Their inspirations encompass queer politics, racism, identity politics, and activism.The featured artists come from a multiplicity of countries and cultures including the U.S., Finland, Serbia, Syria, Kosovo, China, Iran, and Australia. Among those Cohn profiles and converses with are Karim Aïnouz, Khalik Allah, Maja Borg, Ramona Diaz, Samira Elagoz, Sara Fattahi, Dónal Foreman, Ja'Tovia Gary, Ognjen Glavonic, Barbara Hammer, Sky Hopinka, Gürcan Keltek, Adam and Zack Khalil, Khavn, Kaltrina Krasniqi, Roberto Minervini, Terence Nance, Orwa Nyrabia, Chico Pereira, Michael Robinson, J. P. Sniadecki, Brett Story, Deborah Stratman, Maryam Tafakory, Mila Turajlic, Lynette Wallworth, Travis Wilkerson, and Shengze Zhu.Can nonfiction film be defined? How close to reality can or should documentary storytelling be, and is film and video in its less restrictive iterations "truer" than traditional narratives? How can a story be effectively conveyed? As they consider these and many other questions, these passionate, highly articulate filmmakers will inspire not only cinema enthusiasts, but activists and artists of all stripes.

"Beautiful Rising offers insights and lessons for creative resistance from across the Global South, making it a crucial resource for change-makers."-Archbishop Desmond Tutu"Beyond a brilliantly innovative toolkit for making social change, you will find here a 'deep structure' of activist patterns and principles that can unite millions in creating a new world beyond capitalist sociopathy and strong man despotism. Read this optimistic book for hope in grim times. " -Charles Derber, professor of sociology at Boston College and author of Welcome to the Revolution: Universalizing Resistance for Social Justice and Democracy in Perilous TimesBased on face-to-face jam sessions held in Yangon, Amman, Harare, Dhaka, Kampala and Oaxaca, Beautiful Rising includes stories of the Ugandan organizers who smuggled two yellow-painted pigs into parliament to protest corruption; the Burmese students' 360-mile long march against undemocratic and overly centralized education reforms; the Lebanese "honk at parliament" campaign against politicians who had clung to power long after their term had expired; and much more.Now, in one remarkable book, you can find the collective wisdom of more than a hundred grassroots organizers from five continents. It's everything you need for a DIY uprising of your own.

A half-century into the conflict between Israel and Palestine, Israel's Occupation at Fifty brings together eminent political leaders, scholars, and activists for a wide-ranging, at times contentious, and remarkably fruitful discussion of the region's fate.A simple observation that ought to astonish more than it does: the Israel-Palestine conflict continues. A century on from the Balfour Declaration, 50 years since the fateful war of 1967, and a full decade into the brutal siege of Gaza, Israel's occupation is more entrenched than ever while Palestinian self-determination has never been so remote. This is a record that should inspire intellectual humility as well as political urgency; a readiness to acknowledge that, on myriad questions bearing on the prospects for resolving the conflict, compelling arguments can be advanced from multiple sides.This book brings together an unprecedented wealth of expertise-encompassing political leaders, preeminent scholars, and dedicated activists from Israel, Palestine, and abroad-in direct critical exchange on the issues at the heart of the world's most intractable war. Has Israel's vast settlement enterprise made a Palestinian state impossible? Can the Palestinian leadership end the occupation? Is Israel's rule in the Palestinian territories a form of apartheid? What role must the United States play in securing a just peace? In a series of compelling, illuminating and at times no-holds-barred debates, leading authorities tackle these and other problems, exposing myths, challenging preconceptions, and providing a more sober and informed basis for political action.

"In this stunning overview, Ford draws from his work for Black Agenda Report, one of the most incisive and perceptive publications of the progressive left, to examine competing struggles for class power and identity in the Black movement. In a survey stretching from the violent gentrification of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, through the engineered bankruptcy of Detroit, to the "more effective evil" of the Obama presidency, Ford casts a caustic eye on the empty posturing and corruption of the Democratic Party. This, he insists, depends on a Black constituency for electoral success, while using a co-opted "Black misleadership class" to sell out working people's interests. Profiling along the way storied Black leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Brown (for whom Ford once worked), The Black Agenda looks, too, beyond American shores, at US intervention in Libya, the Congo and the Middle East, showing how these are imbricated with racism at home. Ford concludes with a discussion of the Black Lives Matter movement, setting out both its pitfalls and potentialities."--Provided by publisher.

Behold thesleazy logic of museums: plunder dressed up as charity, conservation, and care.The idealizedWestern museum, as typified by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the BritishMuseum, and the Museum of Natural History, has remained much the same for overa century: a uniquely rarified public space of cool stone, providing anexperience of leisure and education for the general public while carefullytending fragile artifacts from distant lands. As questions about representationand ethics have increasingly arisen, these institutions have proclaimed theirinterest in diversity and responsible conservation, asserting both theiradaptability and their immovably essential role in a flourishing and culturallyrich society.WithDecolonizeMuseums, Shimrit Lee punctures this fantasy, tracing the essentiallycolonial origins of the concept of the museum. White Europeans atrocities werereimagined through narratives of benign curiosity and abundant respect for theoccupied or annihilated culture, and these racist narratives, Lee argues,remain integral to the authority exercised by museums today. Citing pop culturereferences fromIndiana JonestoBlack Panther,and highlighting crucial activist campaigns and legal action to redress theharms perpetrated by museums and their proxies,Decolonize Museumsarguesthat we must face a dismantling of these seemingly eternal edifices, andconsider what, if anything, might take their place.

The science is conclusive: to avoid irreversible climate collapse, the burning of all fossil fuels will have to end in the next decade. In this concise and highly readable intervention, Ashley Dawson sets out what is required to make this momentous shift: simply replacing coal-fired power plants with for-profit solar energy farms will only maintain the toxic illusion that it is possible to sustain relentlessly expanding energy consumption. We can no longer think of energy as a commodity. Instead we must see it as part of the global commons, a vital element in the great stock of air, water, plants, and cultural forms like language and art that are the inheritance of humanity as a whole.People's Powerprovides a persuasive critique of a market-led transition to renewable energy. It surveys the early development of the electric grid in the United States, telling the story of battles for public control over power during the Great Depression. This history frames accounts of contemporary campaigns, in both the United States and Europe, that eschew market fundamentalism and sclerotic state power in favor of energy that is green, democratically managed and equitably shared.

As we emerge (though perhaps only temporarily) from the pandemic, other crises move center stage: outrageous inequality, climate disaster, desperate refugees, mounting tensions of a new cold war. The abiding motif of our time is relentless chaos.Acknowledging the possibilities for new beginnings at such moments, Mao Zedong famously proclaimed "e;There is great disorder under heaven; the situation is excellent."e; The contemporary relevance of Mao's observation depends on whether today's catastrophes can be a catalyst for progress or have passed over into something terrible and irretrievable. Perhaps the disorder is no longer under, but in heaven itself.Characteristically rich in paradoxes and reversals that entertain as well as illuminate, Slavoj A iA ek's new book treats with equal analytical depth the lessons of Rammstein and Corbyn, Morales and Orwell, Lenin and Christ. It excavates universal truths from local political sites across Palestine and Chile, France and Kurdistan, and beyond.Heaven In Disorder looks with fervid dispassion at the fracturing of the Left, the empty promises of liberal democracy, and the tepid compromises offered by the powerful. From the ashes of these failures, A iA ek asserts the need for international solidarity, economic transformation, and-above all-an urgent, "e;wartime"e; communism.

This explosive account by Jeremy Corbyn's former speechwriter and author of The Candidate Alex Nunns reveals how the Labour Party threw the 2017 general elections and stopped their own leader from becoming the prime minister. The full extent of Labour MPs’ treachery is exposed for the first time—the incessant negative leaks and briefings to the press, the procedural stitch-ups, and the abuse meted out to Corbyn and his staff. Names are named and no blushes are spared. Nunns weaves together separate threads to argue that this was a grad effort by the establishment to crush Corbyn.

Charlie Parker is an African Grey Parrot. He entered the life of the Smith family three decades ago when they first encountered him in a downtown Manhattan bird shop and found him so irresistible, they had to bring him home.Charlie is many things in the Smith family, articulating them all in an astonishingly diverse and colorful vocabulary. He can be demanding, squawking imperiously "e;Clean my cage"e; or "e;Want some water."e; He can be very direct, warning an aggressive business associate who had been yelling at Debby "e;I'm going to kick your ass, you sonofabitch"e; He can be mischievous, making meowing noises to a neighbor's confused dog in the elevator. He is a survivor, who ended up recovering on an IV after the collapse of the World Trade Center filled the Smiths neighboring apartment with toxic dust. He is often the entertainer, with a songbook that extends across the opening bars of "e;Home on the Range"e; and "e;The Yellow Rose of Texas."e; Most of the time he is affectionate, as when he hangs upside down against the side of the cage and asks for his tummy to be tickled.In hearing Charlie's tales in this charming book, we come to realize that parrots are intelligent, sociable and loving creatures, to an extent that, as the renowned avian scientist Professor Irene Pepperberg insists in her introduction, they cannot meaningfully be owned by humans but should rather be enjoyed as companions.

Few urban critters are more reviled than the hipster. They are notoriously difficult to define, and yet we know one when we see one. No wonder: they were among the global cultural phenomena that ushered in the 21st century. They have become a bulwark of mainstream culture, cultural commodity, status, butt of all jokes and ready-made meme.But frightening as it is to imagine, for more than a century hipsters have been lurking among us. Defined by their appearances and the cloud of meaning attached to them-the cool vanguard of gentrification, the personification of capitalism with a conscience-hipsters are all looks, and these looks are a visual timeline to America's past and present.Underlining this timeline is the pattern of American popular culture's love/hate/theft relationship with Black culture. Yet the pattern of recycling has reached a chilling point: the 21st century hipster made all possible past fads into new trends, including and especially the old uncool. InDecolonize Hipsters, Grgory Pierrot gives us a field guide to the phenomenon, a symptom and vanguard of the wave of aggressive white supremacist sentiment now oozing from around the globe.

An audacious collaboration between an award-winning novelist and a leading environmental philosopher,Love in the Anthropocenetaps into one of the hottest topics of the day, literally and figurativelyour corrupted environmentto deliver five related stories (Flyfishing, Carbon, Holiday, Shanghai, and Zoo) that investigate a future bereft of natural environments, introduced with a discussion on the Anthropocenethe Age of Humanityand concluding with an essay on love.The love these writer/philosophers investigate and celebrate is as much a constant as is human despoliation of the planet; it is what defines us, and it is what may save us. Science fiction, literary fiction, philosophical meditation, manifesto? All the above. This unique work is destined to become an essential companiona primer, reallyto life in the 21st century.

I have created for each of you a fate, one tailored specifically for your needs and desires. Each of you has a defining momentnot before, not afterwhen a wrong turn or decision led to the disastrous outcome that you and I mourn. To isolate that malignant moment is an exacting, exhaustive process, which only the most well-trained and competent professionals, armed with the most sophisticated of predictive models and processing power, can accomplish. You can put your trust in me, as you would in an expert surgeon, a surgeon of the soul.On a distant planet overlooking Earth, the nameless protagonist ofThe Compensation Bureauis one of a team of Actuaries at work on the innovative Lazarus Project. Conceived in response to the shocking violence observed in humankind, the project identifies people who have wrongfully died at the hands of otherswhether victims of war, hate crimes, or random brutalityand attempts to compensate for the cruelty and pain they faced in life and death.But balancing the accounts for the sufferings and wrongdoings of humanity proves hardly a clinical exercise. The Actuary soon finds himself personally invested in the projects mission, and the goals of the project itself are complicated as the fate of Earths inhabitants becomes more uncertain.The Compensation Bureauexplores the power of individual and collective action, from a writer hailed byThe Washington Postas a world-novelist of the first category.

A mesmerizing mix of Charles Bukowski, Hunter S. Thompson, and Philip K. Dick, Chameleo is a true account of what happened in a seedy Southern California town when an enthusiastic and unrepentant heroin addict named Dion Fuller sheltered a U.S. Marine who'd stolen night vision goggles and perhaps a few top secret files from a nearby military base.Dion found himself arrested (under the ostensible auspices of The Patriot Act) for conspiring with international terrorists to smuggle Top Secret military equipment out of Camp Pendleton. The fact that Dion had absolutely nothing to do with international terrorists, smuggling, Top Secret military equipment, or Camp Pendleton didn't seem to bother the military. He was released from jail after a six-day-long Abu-Ghraib-style interrogation. Subsequently, he believed himself under intense government scrutiny - and, he suspected, the subject of bizarre experimentation involving "e;cloaking"e;- electro-optical camouflage so extreme it renders observers practically invisible from a distance of some meters - by the Department of Homeland Security. Hallucination? Perhaps - except Robert Guffey, an English teacher and Dion's friend, tracked down and interviewed one of the scientists behind the project codenamed "e;Chameleo,"e; experimental technology which appears to have been stolen by the U.S. Department of Defense and deployed on American soil. More shocking still, Guffey discovered that the DoD has been experimenting with its newest technologies on a number of American citizens.A condensed version of this story was the cover feature ofFortean Times Magazine(September 2013).

With Joe Biden stepping back into the national scene, the time is ripe for a close assessment of the administration in which he served as vice-president.The Center Did Not Holdweighs the progressive-and not so progressive-contributions of the Obama-Biden White House across more than a hundred issues involving international relations, domestic cultural and economic matters, and social justice.While Obama and Biden campaigned in the early 2000s on a host of progressive promises, Eisenberg's meticulous accounting shows that, over eight years, they failed to achieve any substantial, lasting change to that end, instead perpetuating a tradition of cautious centrism.Among the disappointments, the former president and vice-president reneged on environmental promises, pandered to lobbyists, prosecuted a record number of whistle-blowers, and failed to implement the simplest of financial reforms in response to the 2008 crisis. Under Biden's trademark "e;counterterrorism plus"e; strategy, they oversaw tens of thousands of civilian deaths in Afghanistan, and escalated violence in the Middle East.

Tiyo Attallah Salah-El died in 2018 on "e;Slow Death Row"e; while serving a life sentence in a Pennsylvania prison. He was a man with a dizzying array of talents and vocations: author, scholar, teacher, musician, and activist: he was the founder of the Coalition for the Abolition of Prisons. He was also, as is apparent from the letters written over a decade and half to his friend Paul Alan Smith that make up this book, an extraordinarily eloquent correspondent.Tiyo's missives present a vivid picture of the tribulations faced by those incarcerated, especially the nearly 60% who are non-white: habitual racism, arbitrary lockdowns, brutal beatings and hospitalizations, stifling heat and bitter cold. Here too are descriptions of Tiyo's individual struggles with cancer, aging, and the sirens of personal demons.Tiyo's refusal to succumb to such hardships is evident in dispatches that are generous, philosophical and often laugh-out-loud funny. Through them we learn of his many friendships, including those with the historian Howard Zinn, a range of activist/advocate supporters on the outside, and two fellow people in prison who were leaders of the Black liberation group MOVE.At a time when the appalling racial bias of America's police and criminal justice system is under the spotlight as never before,Pen Palis both a vital intervention and moving portrait of someone whose physical confinement could never extinguish an extraordinary free spirit.

Bernie Sanders' tilt at the US presidency has come under fire from an establishment that derides his social democratic policies as alien to the American way. But, as Ted Hamm reveals in this engaging and concise history, the sort of socialism Bernie advocates was commonplace in the Brooklyn where he grew up in the 1940s and 50s.Policies like free college tuition, rent control, and infrastructure projects including extensive public housing, parks and swimming pools were part of the New Deal city run by a progressive Mayor, Fiorello La Guardia, and supported by FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt. While Arthur Miller, resident in Brooklyn Heights, was stagingDeath of a Salesman, a play with which Bernie's dad closely identified, Woody Guthrie was penning his paeans to the American worker in Coney Island and Jackie Robinson was breaking the color bar on Ebbets Field in a Dodgers team yet to be relocated in California.Drawing deeply on interviews with his brother and friends, and delving skillfully into the history of the borough,Bernie's Brooklynshows how, far from being an anomaly in US politics, Sanders' 2020 platform is rooted firmly in the progressivism of the New Deal.

"e;When I first committed to three full months in El Salvador, the feeling that I was signing up for the equivalent of marriage and reproduction was assuaged only by the awareness that, come March 2020, I'd be dashing around Mexico before flying to Istanbul and resuming freneticism in that hemisphere. Little did I know that the scribbled itinerary would never come to fruition, and that I'd only get as far as the coastal village of Zipolite in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, where March 13-25 would turn into March 13 until further notice."e;Since leaving her American homeland in 2003 Beln Fernndez had been an inveterate traveler. Ceaselessly wandering the world, the only constant in her itinerary was a conviction never to return to the country of her childhood. Then the COVID-19 lockdown happened and Fernandez found herself stranded in a small village on the Pacific coast of Mexico.This charming, wryly humorous account of nine months stuck in one place nevertheless roams freely: over reflections on previous excursions to the wilder regions of North Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe; over her new-found friendship with Javier, the mezcal-drinking, chain-smoking near-septuagenarian she encounters in his plastic chair on Mexico's only clothing-optional beach; over her protracted struggle to obtain a life-saving supply of yerba mate; and over, literally, the rope of a COVID-19 checkpoint, set up directly outside her front door and manned by armed guards who require her to don a mask every time she returns home.

It's tough being an author these days, and it's getting harder. A recent Authors Guild survey showed that the median income for all published authors in 2017, based solely on book-related activities, was just over $3,000, down more than 20% from eight years previously. Roughly 25% of authors earned nothing at all. Price cutting by retailers, notably Amazon, has forced publishers to pay their writers less. A stagnant economy, with only the rich seeing significant income increases, has hit writers along with everyone else.But, as Jason Boog shows in a rich mix of history and politics, this is not the first period when writers have struggled to scratch a living. Between accounts of contemporary layoffs and shrinking paychecks for authors and publishing professionals are stories from the 1930s when writers, hard hit by the Great Depression, fought to create unions and New Deal projects like the Federal Writers Project that helped to put wordsmiths back to work.By revisiting these stories, Boog points the way to how writers today can stand with other progressive forces fighting for economic justice and, in doing so, help save a vital cultural profession under existential threat.

The Art of Activism is an all-purpose guide to artistic activism, combining the creative power of the arts to move us emotionally with the strategic planning of activism necessary to bring about social change. With contemporary case studies and historical examples, chapters on cultural and cognitive theory, sections on what can be learned from unlikely sources like popular culture and marketing techniques, along with investigations into ethics and evaluation, explorations of the creative process and the importance of utopian thinking, and an attached workbook with over fifty exercises to practice, the co-founders of the Center for Artistic Activism take readers step-by-step through the process of becoming, or becoming even better, artistic activists.