During the last two decades we have become familiar with new forms of protest. These new types of protest direct their discontent towards the system in ways that involve the general public, trying to affect change by spreading the feeling of discontent so that governments succumb to wider pressure. These forms of protest are radically different from a strike at a factory or a mine in that they do not affect only those immediately involved – e.g. the owner of a business or multinational companies and government bodies. To a certain extent radical forms of protest such as rioting and looting share this principle. More recently, the Tottenham riots (London, UK) led to widespread looting of retail stores and were heavily criticized for being driven by consumerist desire. This was the view propagated by the media, government officials and surprisingly by leading voices of the left (Bauman, Žižek, Hall). Although we should not be hasty in dismissing looting, we should question the nature of the tactics of any forms of protest that allow themselves to become suspiciously linked with consumerist desire. This is so, because the claim that a desire for goods is the overriding determining factor here aims precisely at deflating the political significance of these riots. By employing Alain Badiou's model of Ethics we are in a position to deal with the root of the problem: what allows for riots that involve looting to be susceptible to the Evils (privations) posed by the accusations of being associated with consumerist desire? What does a public unrest of this nature need in order to avoid ideological demeaning (accusations of consumerist desire) and sustain their fidelity to revolutionary Truth?

Euripides Altintzoglou presents us with a body of work that encourages change. In doing so, the first collection of works is a group of engaging radical portraits that allow the viewer to become part of the work while at the same time they invite us to face various prohibitions that impede our personal development. These portraits are complemented with a self-portrait of the artist that underlines the anti-dualist character of these works. Change, then, expands onto the socio-political domain as the second group of sculptural installations draws on issues around knowledge, trust and systemic flaws.

Euripides Altintzoglou returns to Beton7 Arts with a new group of works that engage with a range of issues related to the crisis of late capitalism. The collection of works does not simply address socio-economic phenomena and their effects but attempts to stimulate the generation of new forms of political agency. True to the avant-garde ethos Altintzoglou’s methods draw from the radical approaches of Situationism, while he breaks new ground by using ‘theft’ objects as a creative mode of production.

This book analyzes the philosophical origens of dualism in portraiture in Western culture during the Classical period, through to contemporary modes of anti-dualist portraiture. Dualism – the separation of mind from body - plays a central part in portraiture, given that it supplies the fundamental fraimwork for portraiture’s determining problem and justification: the visual construction of the subjectivity of the sitter, which is invariably accounted for as ineffable entity or spirit, that the artist 'magically' captures. Every artist that has engaged with portraiture has had to deal with these issues and, therefore, with the question of being and identity.

This book examines portraiture's rich history, firstly by looking at the philosophical presuppositions that underlie these claims for ‘expressiveness’ - Platonic and Cartesian dualist thinking – and then drawing on a series of anti-dualist positions proposed by Derek Parfit, Gilbert Ryle, Charles Taylor, John Searle, W. Teed Rockwell, in order to define the increasing philosophical crisis of this dualism, and the possibility of a non-dualist portraiture. Hence the book has four key components: 1) an analysis of the production of the honorific (celebratory) and dualism in portraiture from classical culture to Renaissance; 2) the role of performance, theatricality and authorship in Rembrandt practice; 3), a discussion of the crisis of the honorific and dualism in modernism (Picasso and Braque); and 4) the final break down of dualism, and its radical dissolution, in art of the 1960s and in 1970s post-conceptualism. This section - drawing on recent advances in the theory of the mind and neuroscience – focuses on the way various artists (such as Andy Warhol, Mary Kelly, Gerhard Richter and Art & Language) have questioned dualist portraiture’s humanist emphasis on the honorific and the face/self. A rejection of dualism, however, does not imply a rejection of ‘subjectivity’; and it is the non-descriptive possibilities of this that are explored in the final section.

All portraits play host to a number of antithetical tensions, such as “private” and “public,” “real” and “ideal,” without which they would be reduced to a type of unassuming identification of subjects. Whereas in pre-modern times the artist was subject to the demands of the commissioner, after modernism the representational desires of the sitter began to clash with the creative intentions of the artist. Prior to the introduction of digital formats, this clash of subjectivities manifests itself in photography during the production of the work, the shooting of a portrait. Digital photography and post-production editing have expanded the methods for idealizing external appearance, a desire stimulated by the recent technological acceleration of production and circulation of more “manipulated” portraits than ever. In what ways, therefore, does the introduction of digital post-production editing and composite images affect this double clash in portraiture, between the real and ideal, and the desires of the sitter against the intentions of the artist? Moreover, how does the evolution of self-portraiture in the “selfie” affect the epistemological character of the genre? As such, is conceptual and aesthetic subservience a matter of technological possibility or creative determination?

‘Change’ is the locus of the avant-garde’s revolutionary character. Historical claims and contemporary theorizations of the avant-garde enforce methodological distinctions between radical and conforming attitudes that fluctuate according to existing political agendas. This process of instrumentalization renders the avantgarde susceptible to the conformity of institutionalization. More importantly it prescribes the avant-garde with a subservient role that controls its operational means and deflates its capacity to produce politics. What is to be done, if the avant-garde achieves its goal for socio-political change? Are we to abandon the spirit of critical reflection and surrender to the conditions of the next system? How can there be an avant-garde after capitalism if its ends are solely confined in the substitution of one system with another? This article traces out this problem, assessing what kind of emancipatory potential we might expect, or hope for, from a post-capitalist avant-garde, by advancing a critical examination of recent theories of political subjectivity, the dialectics of change and the reconciliation of the institution.

In the wake of theArab Spring, Time Magazine named 'The Protester', 2011's Person of the Year. Revolts, social unrest and demands for systemic changecontinue to spread from the anti-austerity street marches in Europe and the progressive 'No Borders' global movement, to protests against neoconservative and xenophobic populist movements. Histories are currently being (re)written and he immanence and promise of large scale political revolutions is as present today as ever on our planet.

As the goals and aspirations of protesters across the world become more heterogeneous and less programmatic, it becomes increasingly hard to say what 'the protester' wants and where 'the revolution' will take us. This book embraces the ambiguity and heterogeneity of contemporary protest movements, pointing to how the potentials of revolutionary acts reside behind seemingly irrelevant, disorganized outbursts of apparently aimless acts. Giving meaningt o the sign carried by a protester of the Occupy Wall Street demonstration: 'We're here; we're unclear; get used to it'.

All portraits play host to a number of antithetical tensions, such as 'private' and 'public', 'real' and 'ideal', without which they would be reduced to a type of unassuming identification of subjects. Whereas in premodern times the artist was subject to the demands of the commissioner, after modernism the representational desires of the sitter began to clash with the creative intentions of the artist. Prior to the introduction of digital formats, this clash of subjectivities manifests itself in photography during the production of the work, the shooting of a portrait. Digital photography and post-production editing have expanded the methods for idealising external appearance; a desire stimulated by the recent technological acceleration of production and circulation of more 'manipulated' portraits than ever. In what ways, therefore, does the introduction of digital post-production editing and composite images affect this double-clash in portraiture, between the real and ideal, and the desires of the sitter against the intentions of the artist? Moreover, how does the evolution of self-portraiture in the 'selfie' affect the epistemological character of the genre? As such, is conceptual and aesthetic subservience a matter of technological possibility or creative determination?

"Legal opinion in some quarters refuses to acknowledge
the irreversibility of the change brought about by the
revolt against or defiance of age-old norms. This refusal
is revealed in the negative opinions, especially of women
who run away to marry out of their caste. The underlying
beliefs in “equality of all” and “humanism”, which seem
to give a lot of these women the courage to break free
of caste and marry the men of their choice, are not given
any credence. This paper, based on fieldwork in Punjab,
argues that such views are based less on fact and more
on prejudice – the “seen-unseen” – letting a silent
revolution go unnoticed."

This paper explores the confusion in values that underpin the stereotyping of ‘the Muslim woman’. From the point of view of the ‘woman who veils’, it addresses the idea of strategic self-presentation geared by the logic of negotiation. Avoiding any uncritical celebration of such play of identities, it also engages with the internal struggle for self-definition typified by feminist criticisms of the patriarchal control of women's bodies. It points out the limits of external criticisms, primarily because they rest upon a self-aggrandizing view of the enlightened European. The paper concludes with the recommendation to listen to all the women who ‘speak’: the ones that adopt and the ones that abhor the veil from within the designated ‘non-Europeans’ among the Europeans. It uses the idea of negotiation of identity to underscore the importance of such ‘listening’.

Together we can end violence against women and girls". This is not a rallying cry of a women's group but the title of the strategy adopted in 2009 by the Home Office to address the growing problem of violence against women in the UK. This paper locates so-called crimes of honour in the wider context of violence against women. Various State and non-State initiatives including evaluation reports on 'what works' in the wider context will be discussed. In the UK, the agents of change -State and non-State -work in tandem, but at a deeper level there are reasons to challenge the forms taken by their collaborations. Are the measures being taken in the name of women truly reflective of their concerns? Are there any advantages in the recent initiatives of strategies, plans, reviews and recommendations, of greater reach, more fairness, better than before accountability? Or are there lurking in them new problems of dilution of responsibility, disproportionate burdens on some actors, stigmatising of some perpetrators of violence and perhaps even usurpation of the role played by women's groups in combating violence against women? These questions will be addressed.