Mayor Gilberto Kassab passed a Clean City Law that banned all public advertising in Sao Paulo, one of the world's most populous cities. The mayor gained the support of the city's elites in pressing the law as an anti-pollution measure targeting "visual pollution". The city was quickly stripped of its ubiquitous billboards, signs, graffiti and other public ads.
“Discovering Columbus,” by the Japanese artist Tatzu Nishi.
Nishi built a living room around the sculpture in Columbus Circle in New York City. The living room is mounted on scaffolding and turns the sculpture into a domestic center-piece.
The collective Ndaku Ya La Vie Est Belle, a group of Kinshasa street performers turn their bodies into living sculptures, and use them to political ends. Among the artists is Jared, who regularly takes to the streets dressed as Robot Annonce. The costume, made from broken radio parts, is designed to raise awareness of fake news. “People receive so much incorrect information and many inaccuracies are spread. I want to fight this,” says Jared.
Parió Paula is an all women’s percussion group based in Lima, Peru. These women are truly artistic renegades defying the social norms of Lima’s predominantly male music scene. With a bold message on emphasizing female expression, these ladies have transformed their countless styles of drumming into something effective for their city.
(see full article and short documentary at link below)
For his latest project, Mark Manzi found himself outside of his comfort zone. For the Amsterdam-based photographer and designer, People of Japan was an attempt to break from his photography-first portfolio. “In the past, my work was very image-focused, whereas with this book I wanted to scan objects, collect receipts, record noises, add copy, and really create something visually striking,” he says.
A site-specific art intervention intended as a call to action in response to Brazil's water crisis. Strategically planned to coincide with UN World Water Day, Gota D'Agua gathered onlookers around an abandoned Olympic size swimming pool at the foot of Edificio Raposo Lopes, a towering luxury condominium building situated on a steep incline overlooking Rio de Janeiro.
In December – as many around the globe were preparing for the holidays – Sama, a former attorney, remained hunkered down in her house in Kabul, Afghanistan, trying to comprehend how her world had changed.
For this edition of ADE, Stichting NDSM-werf invited art- and activist group Tools for Action + Floor to use their terrain as a public practice space for RÆV REHEARSAL. They invite the public to rehearse new forms of assembly. With a Bluetooth speakers system, floating inflatable sculptures, and a minimalist techno beat, they move through the city like a radiating dancing swarm.
Bogus building inspection notices with the forged signature of city Building Inspection Director Frank Chiu appeared on buildings in San Francisco's South of Market area, prompting an investigation by exasperated city officials.
Troy, Michigan couldn't afford to keep its library open, so it scheduled a vote for a tax increase. A strong anti-tax group waged a dominating campaign against it. Posing as a political group, an outside advertising agency posted signs around town that said, "Vote to close Troy library Aug 2, book burning party Aug 5." We invited everyone to our Facebook page, adding Twitter, Foursquare, want ads, flyers and more to drive engagement.
Just weeks after activists staged an alternative tour of the American Museum of Natural History to call for its removal, among other things, the equestrian statue of Teddy Roosevelt was vandalized early Thursday morning.
Members of three organizations – Artists Building Communities, Essential Food and Medicine, and Living Earth Structures – have built a kitchen, clinic, free store, stage, toilet, oven, and shower with and for a homeless community near Wood Street in West Oakland.
Shouting is one of Xu Zhen’s early works questioning the limits of individual expression. First exhibited at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005, the video shows Xu hiding in crowds and performing a series of loud screams in Shanghai.
This was a protest posted on Change.org in response to NYU's forced eviction deadline on students living in on-campus housing.
The following was the information posted on the site:
We, the undergraduate student body of New York University, strongly urge NYU to rescind the call for students to evacuate NYU residence halls before March 22nd.
Spread over three institutions — the Bronx Museum of the Arts; El Museo del Barrio in East Harlem; and Loisaida Inc., a cultural center in the East Village — this show departs from straight political history by presenting the Young Lords as a cultural phenomenon as well as an ideological one, with a highly developed instinct for visual self-projection, right down to having an official party photographer, the gifted Hiram Maristany.
The starting point of this artistic project, carried out by MAPA within its Laboratory of Artists in Colombia, is the disappearance of one of the oldest "barrios" downtown Bogotá: El Cartucho.
On April 7, 1973, some 400 cyclists chanting “Bikes don’t pollute” rode through midtown Manhattan in a “Bike-In” that called for separate lanes to encourage bicycling and provide safety on city streets.
In 2009, the dissident artist created a work to honour the thousands of children who died in the Sichuan earthquake. He recalls how the project, Remembering, angered China’s rulers – and changed his career for ever
This is an edited extract from The Start podcast
The pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong have a new mascot: a roughly 12-foot-high figure of wood blocks holding a bright yellow umbrella in its outstretched right hand. The students call it Umbrella Man.
Umbrellas emerged as a symbol of the demonstrations after dozens of students wielded them on the night of Sept. 28 to fend off pepper spray as they jostled with the police.
In April, 2011, Food and Water Watch partnered with Yes Lab to raise questions regarding drinking water around New York City. Yes Lab, an organization that collaborates with activist groups, aims to create successful media-related creative actions that help raise awareness regarding pertinent causes and create desirable action, often by staging interventions for the existing status quo by imitation and alteration.
The initiators collaborated with the Street Vendor Project (SVP) of the Urban Justice Center to campaign against New York City Council Member Jessica Lappin’s 2010 law project. The bill, intended to revoke permits issued to street vendor trucks if they got parking tickets, was so restrictive that it threatened to put most food trucks out of business.
Los Angeles is at a critical moment when it comes to art. Not because it's "underappreciated as a world art center" as The New York Times informed us in 2011. Or because it's a "burgeoning art capital" as The New York Times revised in 2014. No, it's because L.A. has actually moved past the "up-and-coming" stage into a fully integrated part of the art world.
This is the image confronting Greeks from an Athenian drain . "Hello, I live in the sewers of Athens," says the cockroach. "Yes, me too," says an Athenian walking past, apparently unfazed by the idea of an insect talking to him from a drain.