 The Full StoryNew books:
The Oil Road
Dark Mountain 3
The Book of Barely Imagined Beings
Readings in Performance and Ecology
Beautiful Trouble. A Toolbox for Revolution
Here are books recently published. See also our library of books.
The Oil Road: Journeys from the Caspian Sea to the City of London
James Marriott and Mika Minio-Paluello
London: Verso Books (2012)
Editors' note: We include 'The Oil Road' because it derives from extensive walks by two artists/activists, and because its writing style bridges conventional travel writing and activism. This mixing of forms is an example relevant for theatre-making.
In a journey from the oil fields of the Caspian Sea to the refineries of Northern Europe and the City of London, James Marriott and Mika Minio-Paluello track the concealed routes along which flows the lifeblood of the economy. Pipelines and tanker routes tie the social democracies of Italy, Austria and Germany to the repressive regimes of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey. A web of financial and political institutions in London stitches together the lives of metropolis and village. 'The stupendous resource of Azerbaijani crude has long inspired dreams of a world remade. From the revolutionary Futurism of the capital city, Baku, in the 1920s to the unblinking capitalism of modern London, the drive to control the region’s oil reserves – and hence people and events – has shattered environments and shaped societies'.
Building on a decade of work with PLATFORM, Marriott and Minio-Paluello blend travel writing with investigative journalism and the artistic practices of walking and social engagement. September 2012 The Oil Road
www.platformlondon.org
Dark Mountain 3
edited by Paul Kingsnorth, Dougald Hine and Adrienne Odasso
Dark Mountain Project
This third in a series of collections published by the Dark Mountain Project features 58 essays, poems and stories, and 40 colour plates. Highlights include:
Essays and conversations: Akshay Ahuja talks to Dmitri Orlov; Paul Kingsnorth talks to conservationists Doug and Kris Tompkins; John Rember explores the end of the world via ski-ing and academia; Matt Szabo bends like a peasant; Dougald Hine talks to Sajay Samuel about Ivan Illich; Charlotte Du Cann explores flowers in America; Paul Kingsnorth joins up scything, the Unabomber and the end of environmentalism; Ian Hill finds carbon in Borrowdale; James Hester explains the three lessons of history; Caspar Henderson explores the time before history.
Fiction: Short stories from Margaret Irish, Nick Hunt, Tom Hirons, Gregory Norminton and Chris T-T.
Poetry: from Neil Curry, Eleanor Rees, Adrienne Odasso, Em Strang, Benjamin Morris, Roselle Angwin, George Roberts and Margot Boyer. Art: illustrated poetry from Mat Osmond, Kim Major-George and Steve Thorp; photography from Cat Lupton, Andy Broomfield, Tony Hall, Bridget McKenzie; art by Rima Staines, Darren Allen, Jake Weigel and Jackie Taylor. September 2012 dark-mountain.net
The Book of Barely Imagined Beings. A 21st Century Bestiary
Caspar Henderson
Granta Books
From Axolotl to Zebrafish, this world of 'barely imagined beings' shows real creatures that are often stranger and more astonishing than anything dreamt in the pages of a medieval bestiary. Ranging from the depths of the ocean to the most arid corners of the earth, Caspar Henderson captures the beauty and bizarreness of the many living forms as an invitation to better imagine the world. Caspar Henderson is a journalist and writer who has worked for the Financial Times, the Independent, and the New Scientist. From 2002 to 2005 he was a senior editor at OpenDemocracy. He received the Roger Deakin Award from the Society of Authors in 2009, and the Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Award in 2010. October 2012 grantabooks.com
www.barelyimaginedbeings.com
Readings in Performance and Ecology
edited by Wendy Arons and Theresa J. May
New York: Palgrave Macmillan (2012)
Wendy Arons and Theresa May bring together essays that advance concerns about how performance might function as part of the changes in values and practices that might forestall ecological collapse. They take 'ecology' not in a metaphoric way, as has been done in other performance writings, but in material ways. The human and human cultural actions, like theatre, are integral to nature.
The collection builds on the work of literary ecocriticism, developing what May calls an 'ecodramaturgy', writing that investigates the relations of theatre and performance to the natural world. The essays are:
Ecocriticism and Dramatic Literature
Theater, Environment, and the Thirties, by Barry Witham
Bringing Blood to Ghosts: English Canadian Drama and the Ecopolitics of Place, by Nelson Gray
Other Others: Dramatis Animalia in Some Alternative American Drama, by Robert Baker-White
Animals and/in Performance
The Silence of the Polar Bears: Performing (Climate) Change in the Theater of Species, by Una Chaudhuri
Dancing with Monkeys? On Performance Commons and Scientific Experiments, by Baz Kershaw
Everything á la Giraffe. Science, Performance and a Spectacular Body in Nineteenth-Century Vienna, by Derek Lee Barton Theorizing Ecoperformance
Ethics, Evolution, Ecology and Performance, by Bruce McConachie
National Disaster, Cultural Memory: Monteserrat Adrift in the Black and Green Atlantic, by Kathleen M. Gough
Stillness in Nature: Eco Stubblefield's Still Dances with Anna Halperin, by Arden Thomas
Ecoactivism and performance
British Alternative Companies and Antinuclear Plays: Eco-conscious Theater in Thatcher's Britain, by Sara Freeman
Bike, Choices, Action! Embodied Performances of Sustainability by a Travelling Theater Group, by Meg O'Shea
Earth First!'s 'Crack the Dam' and the Aesthetics of Ecoactivist Performance, by Sarah Ann Standing Case studies in Green Theater
Ecodirecting Canonical Plays, by Downing Cless
Devising Green Piece: A Holistic Pedagogy for Artists and Educators, by Anne Justine D'Zmura
Sound Ecology in the Woods: Red Riding Hood Takes an Audio Walk, Cornelia Hoogland
The Labor of Greening Love's Labour's Lost, by Justin A. Miller
Theatrical Production's Carbon footprint, by Ian Garrett
Epilogue: Thinking Forward..., by Wallace Heim
Readings in Performance and Ecology
Beautiful Trouble. A Toolbox for Revolution
Andrew Boyd and David Oswald Mitchell
London and New York: OR Books (2012)
Beautiful Trouble is organised around interrelated modules – creative tactics, action design principles, case studies, theoretical frameworks and practitioners – that comprise best practices and ideas in creative campaigning. Theatrical influences run throughout the handbook, such as image theatre, forum theatre, guerrilla theatre, as well as case studies including the Yes Men, Bread and Puppet Theatre, El Teatro Campesino, Allan Kaprow, Reverend Billy and the Women in Black.
Beautiful Trouble was assembled in the cloud from contributors around the world in an open, collaborative process. It exists as a printed book, and there is and will be more freely accessible material from the book online.
Beautiful Trouble
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