Reviews of Habibi Funk 031, Kayatibu, and The Good Ones
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A poignant remembrance of things past
FM Dostoevsky Academic Drama Theatre in Nizhny Novgorod, designed by V Somov, built in 1987
[Arseniy Kotov]
SIMON DUFF relishes the cross contamination of Damien Hirst’s greatest hits by street artists from France and the US
In view of the grooming gangs inquiry, SIMON PARSONS feels the relevance of this powerful examination of trauma suffered at Medomsley Youth Detention Centre
JOHN GREEN doubts the motivations of a US war photographer who never questions why, or for whom, she is producing images of imperialist conflict
MARIA DUARTE reviews Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, Hedda, The Mastermind, and Regretting You
TONY CONWAY welcomes a thrilling and concise history of Hope not Hate, that is also a manual full of tactical advice
PAUL DONOVAN welcomes an inspiring account of living with deafness that has important lessons for the treatment of deaf people in today’s UK
SOVIET CITIES Labour Life Leisure
by Arseniy Kotov
FUEL £24.95
“I WAS born in 1988 and have no experience of life in the USSR, but looking at its architecture it is clear that it was a great civilisation with a genuine intention to build a fairer society,” writes Arseniy Kotov in the introduction to his fascinating photographic record of the Soviet Union interrupted.
Kotov denotes the ever-present art on the facades of buildings, particularly housing estates, with motives from socialist life and regrets the demise of the architecturally legendary palaces of culture — vibrant communal hubs with workshops, lectures, performances — these days transformed into indoor markets where now, its once gainfully employed visitors and participants, eke a meagre living.
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HENRY BELL notes the curious confluence of belief, rebuilding and cheap materials that gave rise to an extraordinary number of modernist churches in post-war Scotland
RON JACOBS recommends a painstaking study of the communists and revolutionaries who congregated in Moscow after 1917
NICK WRIGHT delicately unpicks the eloquent writings on art of an intellectual pessimist who wears his Marxism lightly
MICHAL BONCZA recommends a compact volume that charts the art of propagating ideas across the 20th century