Other recent works include the Broadway debut of David Byrne’s American Utopia (2019) as well as the Spike Lee directed film version (2020), SOCIAL! Social Distance Dance Club at The Park Avenue Armory (2021), and the world premiere of Theater of the Mind at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts (2022). Reasons to be Cheerful is the Arbutus Foundation’s first and primary project.īyrne has been involved with photography, drawing, installations, performance and design throughout his career and has been publishing and exhibiting his work since the 1990s. David Byrne is the founder and in-house headline writer of Reasons to be Cheerful, and the founder of Arbutus, a non-profit organization that celebrates, re-presents and amplifies ideas found in surprising places, ensuring that our picture of the world contains the joy that it should, and is accessible to everyone.
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The English translation of Joothan - a magnum opus of Hindi Dalit literature - is an event in which we have witnessed both, the importance of translation as well as how translation of Dalit literature has many political dimensions that are yet to be unravelled. Just as it has many artistic dimensions, translation has its own politics. Most importantly, it provides new meanings to the pains and pleasures of life it expands our ability to think about society more broadly and generously it lessens our prejudices about people we may have never met it is a transport system that transcends our world-views about a world without actually visiting it in person. Translation of literary works widens our imagination of society. The English translation of Joothan, by Arun Prabha Mukherjee, has many such political connotations, which must be understood with critical mind. In this time, I have witnessed many hues and aspects of it which have less to do with the growth of Dalit literature as a movement, and more to do with the politics of Brahminical hegemony in India’s literary domain. A few months ago, I started to research the trajectories and politics of translations of Dalit literature in India. Sketches that have an ‘on-the-spot’ feel to them are interwoven with the artist’s observations gleaned from Tolkien’s books and recollections of his time spent in Middle-earth while working alongside Peter Jackson on the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit film trilogies. Events from Tolkien’s books are explored – battles of the different ages that are almost part of legend by the time of The Lord of the Rings lost kingdoms and ancient myths, as well as those places only hinted at: kingdoms of the far North and lands beyond the seas. The roads as yet untraveled far outnumber those down which Tolkien had time to wander.Ī Middle-Earth Traveller presents a walking tour of Tolkien’s Middle-earth, visiting not only places central to his stories, but also those just over the hill or beyond the horizon. Middle-earth has been mapped, Bilbo’s and Frodo’s journeys plotted and measured, but Middle-earth remains a wilderland for all that. Let acclaimed Tolkien artist John Howe take you on an unforgettable journey across Middle-earth, from Bag End to Mordor, in this richly illustrated sketchbook fully of previously unseen artwork, anecdotes and meditations on Middle-earth. |