Long Live Satie!
Alexander Billet assesses the life and impact of composer Erik Satie, 150 years after his birth. There are a great many fun and entertaining ways one could celebrate the 150th birthday of Erik Satie. The Velvet Gentleman seems to cast such an omniscient shadow over modern music that he is almost invisible. This of course […]
Bad comedy and bardolatry: on the politics of Shakespeare in the age of mechanical reproduction
It’s 400 years since Shakespeare died, and Kate Bradley doesn’t care.
Can we afford to laugh at ourselves in Broken Britain? A review of The Suicide
In the bleak years of Stalinist Russia Nikolai Erdman wrote a grim satire about a man planning to take his own life. In the bleak years of neoliberal Britain Suhayla El-Bushra has updated the play. Colin Revolting asks whether it survives the resurrection. Unemployed and now struck off benefits, Sam (Javone Prince) is stuck in […]
‘Your lunacy fits in nicely with my own’ (from ‘Sea Song’)
Starting out as drummer and singer for Soft Machine, Robert Wyatt has been making music for over 5 decades. Neil Rogall reviews ‘Different Every Time’, a new biography of him by Marcus O’Dair Robert Wyatt, now in his 70s is surely one of the most intriguing, distinctive and sometimes infuriating musicians born out of 1960s Britain. His […]
Kes: a tale for our times. Remembering Barry Hines.
Barry Hines, the author of such books as A Kestrel for a Knave, which became the film Kes, has died aged 76. Colin Revolting offers an appreciation of his seminal work.
On cultural appropriation, from American Spirit to Palmyra
While symbols and their deployment undoubtedly structure our experience, Charlie Jarsve argues that power relations have a materiality that an uncritical understanding of ‘cultural appropriation’ can obscure. I still remember the first time I came across American Spirit tobacco. I was in Berlin roughly two years ago and I saw a Swiss friend rolling a cigarette. Even […]
Critiquing empire through the white man’s gaze – a review of The Revenant
The Revenant has been widely praised, not least for its apparent critique of colonial expansion. However, while its de-romanticisation of the frontier is an improvement on recent cinematic glorification of imperialist violence, the colonised subjects remain largely silent. Joe Hayns reviews. The adverts punting The Revenant are now showing fifteen (or is it twenty?) five-star reviews, and sleeping in […]
“You can’t organise a riot”: racism, riots and arrests in 1981
In memory of John “Brad” Bradbury of the Specials who topped the charts with Ghost Town whilst Britain burst into flames of riots and racism in 1981 – Colin Revolting remembers how anti – racists danced to the Specials and fought against racism and unemployment. January A fire at a house party in New […]
“Important Speech on why we should go to war, just released”
Michael Rosen reports on an “Important Speech on why we should go to war, just released”. “We can drop bombs through the eye of a needle. We can’t always find the needle. But we drop the bombs anyway. And they land very accurately. On..er…whatever’s there. Which is good, isn’t it? “There will be civilian casualties. That’s […]
Ten radical poems for National Poetry Day
Like the song says, socialism is about bread, but also roses. With the help of rs21 members we’ve gathered ten poems about the fight against capitalism, racism and women’s oppression, and our dreams for a better world. We’ve put them together with images into a short publication. With writers from William Blake to Maya Angelou, we hope […]
“You can’t organise a riot”: racism, riots and arrests in 1981
In memory of John “Brad” Bradbury of the Specials who topped the charts with Ghost Town whilst Britain burst into flames of riots and racism in 1981 – Colin Revolting remembers how anti – racists danced to the Specials and fought against racism and unemployment. January A fire at a house party in New Cross […]
Je Suis Charlie Chaplin
Colin Revolting looks at the politics of Charlie Chaplin When millions of people held “Je Suis Charlie” signs in memory of the cartoonists killed in Paris last month, a different Charlie came to mind. Charlie Chaplin who made his first screen appearance, 100 years ago, as The Tramp. Why did I think of this other […]
William Blake: Apprentice and Master
William Blake was a revolutionary in poetry, engraving and politics. John Walker reviews a new exhibition of his artwork in Oxford. William Blake was a revolutionary. One of the funniest things, for those in the know, is to hear Conservatives singling Parry’s hymn “Jerusalem”. The words to this are taken from the Introduction to Blake’s […]
March and rally against privatisation at the National Gallery
Bettina Trabant joined gallery staff and supporters braving the wind and cold for a demonstration against privatisation at the National Gallery. A group of around 200 angry gallery staff, trade unionists and regular gallery visitors marched from Trafalgar Square to the Department for Culture Media and Sport in Whitehall to hand in a petition containing […]
Reviews: The Pianist and Defiance
27 January is Holocaust Memorial Day. Colin Revolting reviews two films set during WW2 that chronicle Jewish resistance Defiance (2009) When the Nazis invade Belarus, three Jewish brothers escape into the woods and vow to resist. But as other Jews flee Nazi persecution, the Bielski brothers have to decide if offering sanctuary or resistance is the most […]
Mike Marqusee (1953-2015)
Talha Ahsan, poet and former political prisoner, pays tribute to Mike Marqusee, who died on January 13, 2015. Today at around 4.30pm I received a phone call that left me feeling numb all day. Someone I have never met had passed away. Mike Marqusee lived a life we can only envy. He was a journalist, […]
Condemning the slaughter of the ‘Great War’
2014 marks the 100th centenary of the beginning of the First World War. Britain’s rulers want us to commemorate it as a ‘just war’. Matthew Cookson argues that cultural representations of the war, often from soldiers’ perspectives, are an explicit condemnation of our rulers’ justifications for the slaughter. Before he was so cruelly defenestrated as the […]
The Babadook – a film about life’s real horrors
Where does fear come from? Jen Izaakson, PhD student and revolutionary socialist, examines this question through a psychoanalytic review of new horror film, The Babadook. Jen tweets at @izaakson. If we accept the psychoanalytic stance of a ‘continual return of the repressed’, ghosts and demons offer a way to battle unconscious psychic constellations of horror […]
Morris dancing, black face paint and racism: why it’s time to stop and think
Folk traditions should not be treated as fossils that are too brittle to evolve, argues Emma Rock. David Cameron found controversy and divided opinion this week by posing in a photograph with a Border Morris side wearing traditional black face paint in Banbury, near his Oxfordshire constituency. Many in the folk world will have greeted this latest gaffe […]
Review: Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age
Olivia Arigho Stiles reviews a new exhibition at the Barbican. The Barbican’s new exhibition explores the relationship between photography and architecture in the epoch of modernity. The exhibition is testament to the enduring power of the city (for here it is urban architecture which predominates) in the artistic imagination, exposing the aching desolation of the […]
People’s theatre and fun palaces: the life of Joan Littlewood
Radical left wing theatre director Joan Littlewood changed the face of modern British theatre. Marking the centenary of her birth there will be celebrations across Britain in honour of her achievements and ambitions including over 120 Fun Palaces are popping up across the country this weekend. Colin Revolting from the Revolting Peasants theatre company looks […]
The Premier League’s crackdown on social media is about policing access to football
The corporate interests that run football are trying to stamp out social media and illegal livestreaming. But this will come with a higher price than they realise, writes Mark Bergfeld Who doesn’t remember Robin van Persie’s gravity-defying goal against Spain at this year’s FIFA World Cup? Oh, you didn’t see it? Don’t worry – you […]
Review: ‘Late Turner’ shows an artist ahead of the tide
A new exhibition at the Tate Modern shows a visionary painter who anticipated much modern art, argues Colin Wilson A few years ago, in a particularly sentimental episode of Doctor Who, the doctor met Van Gogh. There is no evidence of Turner encountering a time lord, but that he travelled to the mid-twentieth century and back […]
On being comrades
On a night out drinking and suffering from the resulting inebriated disposition, Karl Marx and his friends Edgar Bauer and Wilhelm Liebkneckt started smashing up a number of street lanterns using a pile of paving stones. Bauer in his drunken state had, prior to this act of wanton hooliganism, tripped over them. They were then […]
Nein, Nyet, No: a brief history of jazz, rock & roll, race and repression
Mitch Mitchell takes a look at the music that made racists and rulers come out in hives.
Review: ‘Salt of the Earth’ 60th Anniversary release
Joe Sabatini re-examines the 1951 film ‘Salt of the Earth’ and argues for its contemporary relevance and importance. “Anything worth learning hurts, these changes come with pain.” 2014 marks the 60th anniversary of the release of the political classic: The Salt of the Earth. Salt dramatises a strike that took place in 1951 against the […]
The Other Side of the Commonwealth: ‘Emancipation Acts’ Review
Christine Bird reviews a new performance exploring Scottish links to slavery Who knew that Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art is housed in the 18th century mansion of tobacco merchant William Cunninghame? There is not so much as a plaque to commemorate the thousands of enslaved people who grew the crop that brought so much wealth […]
Why does Michael Gove hate Blackadder?
Today marks the 100th anniversary of Britain declaring war on Germany in the the First World War. Cameron, Gove and others want us to remember it as “just war”. But Matthew Cookson argues that cultural representations of the war are an explicit condemnation of our rulers’ justifications for it, and often an implicit critique of […]
Malevich: new art for a new world
Lois JC (Brixton) reviews the Tate Modern’s new show Malevich: Revolutionary of Russian Art at the Tate Modern is the first retrospective of the Russian avant garde artist Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935) in 25 years. The exhibition illustrates, beautifully yet subtly, the contours of a time of revolutionary upheaval: from his early influences and the formation of […]
Review: Skylight
Jack Farmer looks at the current revival of David Hare’s political play. It’s perhaps unsurprising that David Hare’s Skylight has been revived now, 18 years after its debut. At its heart, this is a play about inequality and the political values that excuse or condemn it. But Skylight is also a play about love, in […]