We are working on the new book “UPRISINGS”, an illustrated history of popular rebellion.
2019 has been a year of uprisings all around the world: from Santiago to Hong Kong. The concerns of the protesters are everywhere similar: justice, the corrupt authority, the return to some sort of principle of collective good. Otherwise they seem so diverse intellectuals and political commentators often seem baffled to find any common thread, ranging from demands for direct democracy (France), the rejection of the ethnic or sectarian identities (Iraq and Lebanon); or the fate of the planet itself.
“Uprisings” provides one way to understand all this by examining to full range of similar rebellions in the past, from slave revolts in ancient Egypt to the fall of the Berlin Wall or the women’s revolution in Rojava. , “Uprisings” will be working on the borders between historical analysis (non-fiction, twitter encyclopedia) and the visibility of contemporary art.
Where existing narratives of radical social change debate the virtues and vices of individual heroes (Jesus, Mandela, Rosa Parks, Gandhi), “Uprisings” follows the tradition of Howard Zinn, viewing major events as the product of a confluence of efforts by multiple actors, usually, from radically different backgrounds. Marginalized and anonymous groups, children, women, indigenous peoples, and oppressed classes, are its heroes, which re-examines history not just from the perspective of, but as to a large degree, written by, those normally written out.
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