Goodnight, Revolution is an ABC storybook created during a special workshop at NYU lead by artist Lara Baladi titled "Archiving Resistance & the ABC of Revolting." The fall 2018 workshop mapped questions related to archiving a revolution in the digital age as a means of resistance with a focus on the language of rebelling.
Description: In his Theses on the Philosophy of History, German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin takes Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus as a metaphor for human history engulfed in human woe and suffering. He describes the eternally hovering seraph as the “angel of history” being propelled into the future with the debris of history scattered at his feet. Goodnight, Revolution is an ABC storybook that assembles the debris of historical turning points, including memories of failed, dormant and unfinished revolutions as well as elements of everyday coping mechanisms such as self-care, creativity and community. The unfinished collection puts to sleep the idea that historical turning points progress along a linear continuum with a clear beginning, middle and end. Instead, the ABC storybook allows the reader to manifest a version of history that is folded into different moments of time. It visualizes the ghosts that lurk in the corners of seemingly banal landscapes, and it blasts open the quiet whisperings of violence at the heart of capitalist consumerism.
Description: In his Theses on the Philosophy of History, German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin takes Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus as a metaphor for human history engulfed in human woe and suffering. He describes the eternally hovering seraph as the “angel of history” being propelled into the future with the debris of history scattered at his feet. Goodnight, Revolution is an ABC storybook that assembles the debris of historical turning points, including memories of failed, dormant and unfinished revolutions as well as elements of everyday coping mechanisms such as self-care, creativity and community. The unfinished collection puts to sleep the idea that historical turning points progress along a linear continuum with a clear beginning, middle and end. Instead, the ABC storybook allows the reader to manifest a version of history that is folded into different moments of time. It visualizes the ghosts that lurk in the corners of seemingly banal landscapes, and it blasts open the quiet whisperings of violence at the heart of capitalist consumerism.