Manchester University Press

This is Charlotte Adelina from Life Slash University, and you're listening to an episode of the New Books Network.

Today, we are talking to Angela Last about her recent book titled Painted Tools, New Materialisms as a New Decolonial Project, and it was published by the Manchester University Press.

Many congratulations, Angela, and thank you so much for your time.

Thank you for having me.

And I thought I wanted to write something because things were obviously bothering me that comes from within.

And the long answer is that it was a very different book at the beginning.

It was supposed to be in a different series at Manchester University Press called Theory for a Global Age.

And originally it was about the idea of the cosmic in materialist thought, especially the kind of period 1900s to sort of 1940s, where not only the cosmic was interesting because of the sciences, but it was also being, I guess there are so many dimensions to the cosmic, the spiritual, the worldview and so on.

And if they do and take the spirit of what we learned in Manchester, which is written up in the book.

uh published by manchester university press in march next year that that actually i think we could we could be in for not a period of of attritional warfare between layers of government but actually for a period of really frenetic exciting and results oriented cooperation between them

but i think i mean maybe i'm i'm over reading what you're saying and maybe it's between the lines rather than in the in the lines themselves but i think you're your review and the report, which we'll come on to very shortly, you are worried that it won't be like that, right? In a sense, I mean, at least that's what I think you were warning that the danger that it's overly institutional in the sense of everything has to be the MSA or the SA.

will become a challenge and or potential problem for a whole bunch of different reasons one because many of these issues require lots of different players to play a role anyway outside of the government sector never mind inside but also they don't clearly nor one institution could ever have or certainly doesn't have currently the capability and capacity to do this even if they wanted to

His current research interests include the conditions of artistic labour, new models of artistic institutions, artistic self-organisation, artistic research and post-artistic theory and practice.

His book, The ABC of the Projectariat, Living and Working in a Precarious Art World, was published in 2021 by Manchester University Press and the Whitworth, and you can find my review of that in Tribune.

In 2025, together with Kasper Gren and the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam, he produced the visual essay, Duck Rabbits Unveiled, a sneak peek at post-artistic theory and practice.

So Kuba, Ava, welcome to the show.

If you want to find out more about Gareth's work, you can follow him on X at G underscore F underscore red.

And he has a book coming out next year with Manchester University Press.

So keep your eyes peeled.

You can find out more about Alex and Jay's work on the New Economics Foundation website.

Absolutely.

One of the ones I used teaching once, I've only ever used Shahani, except for one time I used Michael Swanton's from University of Manchester Press.

It's got a really good introduction was the main reason that discusses basically a long social commentary on Beowulf and its importance to Saxon and Old English letters and culture.

But that's a prose translation.

And that reflects, I think, a difference of our backgrounds and our perceptions about how to order things.

And by then, that book was published in 1993, 1994, initially by Manchester University Press, was then taken on by Cambridge University Press.

I was right at the beginning of a career as a barrister.

And so I suspect that I was more influenced and informed than Alan or Pat about the practicalities.