The following audio is from a Red Wedge panel discussion held at Historical Materialism London in 2017, featuring Neil Davidson on “Lukacs, Greenberg and the Spectre of Trotsky,” Crystal Stella Becceril on “Affirming the New: Art of the Mexican and Russian Revolutions,” and David Mabb on “The Three Crosses.”
Crystal Stella Becerril is a Brooklyn based poet, cultural critic, and independent journalist writing about Xicana feminism, class struggle, and the politics of aesthetics in pop culture. She’s been part of the Red Wedge editorial collective since 2013 and enjoys film, photography, graphic design and (like a good Xicana) Britpop is still her favorite genre.
Neil Davidson is the author of several books, among them We Cannot Escape History, Holding Fast to an Image of the Past, and How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions? His 2003 book Discovering the Scottish Revolution was awarded the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize. He lectures in sociology at the University of Glasgow and is on the editorial board of rs21.
David Mabb is an artist who works with appropriated imagery to rethink the political implications of different aesthetic forms in modern art and design history. Recent work has focused on William Morris. Mabb’s interest in Morris stems from the social and political connotations of Morris’ work, the continued relevancy of Morris’ politics and the continuing market for Morris’ designs. Mabb’s interpretations and reconfigurations of Morris’ designs consider the relationship between Morris’ own thinking and other forms of cultural production, particularly art and design produced in Russia around the time of the Revolution. Mabb is a Reader in Art at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he is Programme Co-Director of MFA Fine Art.