What are the myths that hold up the empires and belief systems of today?
We know that art is a game of stories, promoting and propagating ideas which define societies. It is spun in cinematic movieverses, carved in stone or worn on our chests. In our fifth issue, we explore what our myths tell us about ourselves, and probe at the question of whether we can invent new, better, more tolerant ones.
"Politics is about storytelling", Sasha Josette, organiser of The World Transformed tells us in our upcoming interview. But similarly storytelling is political, most interestingly when it promises to be anything but: as our review of Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens explores. And as the stories we consume compress themselves in to momentary memes and gifs, the power of the narrative only increases. Myths don't just shape us as cultures: they imprint themselves on to us, the bodily subject, as ex convict, hate crime survivor, former sex worker and mentally ill fugitive Milton Goosby reflects upon in Flux: Bodies, Space and Spectrum.
Simply criticising art and the narratives it produces without putting forward new ideas, however, is hollow. That's why we are very pleased that our fifth issue has more photography, poetry and fiction than all of its predecessors. The Radical Art Review is a platform for artists who dominant media outlets ignore, and those who see in art the potential for social transformation.
Rebel and create.
