Asian Americans standing up for themselves, the Black Lives Matter movement, and their home: New York City
In 2020, as COVID-19 flared through New York City and NYC hospitals saw a spike of nearly 200,000 patients, Asian and Pacific Islanders (APIs) faced an added threat: blame, racism, and xenophobia.
Xiao Lu was one of the most influential women in contemporary Chinese art, better known for provoking performance art works and sharp social commentaries. Her works address sensitive social and cultural issues that counter mainstream attitudes and values. In 1989, she put her work "Dialogue" up for exhibition at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing.
Drake has released an emotional video for "God's Plan" in which he donates the music video budget to people in need.
Shot in Miami and directed by Toronto's Karena Evans and Jordan Oram, the video features a bunch of generous, grand gestures.
ONGOING ORGANIZATION:
CALLED: Iranti [pronounced írantì] is the Yoruba word for ‘memory’. Largely found in South West Nigeria and parts of Benin Republic, the Yoruba people consider memory a prized form of intelligence which determines how often one remembers what they see and hear.
Melissa is a down-to-earth, friendly woman in her 50s, and it seems that she has always met life with a certain amount of courage. She grew up on another continent, and after early motherhood, then divorce and a first career in business, she moved to the UK with her second husband. She then built another career working with survivors of domestic violence, before setting up a climate emergency centre in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.
“My intention was not to disappear in the environment but instead to let the environment take possession of me” Said Liu Bolin. With his strong photography, Bolin vanishes into the city, creating a powerful statement about our relationship, as humans, to our surroundings.
Beginning in the early 1970s, the Los Angeles-based multi-media arts collective Asco (from the Spanish word for nausea) created performances, street theater and conceptual art that satirized the emerging styles of Chicano art and pushed the boundaries of what it might encompass.
In “Speech/Acts,” a group exhibition organized by Meg Onli at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, Kameelah Janan Rasheed and Tiona Nekkia McClodden stood out as artists who take up voices, histories, and experiences that can help audiences move forward and endure in the future.
In Hong Kong in 2014 the song Raise Your Umbrella by Denise Ho and Anthong Wong became an anthem for the pro-democracy movement known as the Umbrella Revolution. The song was written after police fired tear gas into the crowds when protestors filled the streets.
Linha Vermelha was created in 2016 by the non-profit organization Academia Cidadã (Citizenship Academy). At that time there were fifteen active contracts for oil and gas drilling and we were inspired by the “Red Line Action” in Paris, during COP21 and decided to create this campaign.
Invincible: Detroit’s Homegrown, Hip-Hop Activism: Powerful, passionate, and politically charged rhymes that speak for marginalized people.
by Shannan Stoll
Ilana Weaver started listening to hip hop when she was seven, after her family moved from Israel to Ann Arbor, Mich. She was trying to learn English, but soon became fascinated by how hip hop gives a voice to marginalized people.
Many of the banks originally situated on Bank Street in Sharjah have left for more lucrative locations, so we have imagined a new, non-monetary banking model for the street.
What if we were to regard the sum total of memories and stories of the people in this area as the real capital of the street?
And what if this new currency could be invested in the new Bank Street and converted into physical objects?
From Creative Time, Social Practice Archive: Produced by the Windsor, Canada-based collective Broken City Lab—an artist-led interdisciplinary research group—Cross-Border Communication was a performative public art project that took place in November 2009 between the cities of Windsor and Detroit, which are separated by the Detroit River. For three nights, Broken City Lab projected a series of messages across the river which were visible in Detroit.
Song Tao and Ji Weiyu, established their collaborative named Birdhead in 2004. Both natives of Shanghai, their work is deeply rooted in their hometown and its evolution amid China’s growth into a global power. The duo takes diaristic snapshots, highlighting their everyday lives in the quickly changing city.
During the economic crisis of 2008, bankers in Spain took advantage of the economically disadvantaged, and the artwork La Fiera en Sevilla, or the Wild Animal in Sevilla in English, brings attention to this money-centric act from the bankers. La Fiera refers to the bankers at the time that used predatory methods in their actions to forcibly evict poor people from their houses.
"Built from the ground up by Black trans coders and developers, The Black Trans Archive takes the form of a video game, allowing visitors to interact with its content in real-time, making their own contributions in the process. It’s also specifically designed to ensure that this work can never be deleted, allowing everything contained within it to persist long beyond anyone who was involved in its creation.
“IN an instant all will vanish and we’ll be alone once more, in the midst of nothingness.”
When the actor Wendell Pierce spoke these words in performances of “Waiting for Godot” here last month, he really was in the middle of nothingness, or what looked a lot like it.
With a grand total of 0 permanent residents and an average winter temperature of --56.2°F, Antarctica is a bit more than your average “no man’s land.” This didn’t deter artist duo Lucy + Jorge Orta, however, who took an expedition to the territory in 2007 on commission from The End of the World Biennale. Nine years later, the duo’s cumulative work created during the program is finally on display in NYC at Jane Lombard Gallery.
Radio Ambulante is an award-winning podcast and audio series co-founded by novelist Daniel Alarcón in 2012. Described by many commentators as a Spanish-language This American Life, Radio Ambulante publishes stories from “everywhere Spanish is spoken,” reaching as many as 60,000 listeners worldwide per episode.
In October and November 2016, Breathing Lights illuminated the windows of hundreds of vacant buildings in Albany, Schenectady and Troy, NY. Warm light filled each window with a diffuse glow that mimicked the gentle rhythm of human breathing. Concentrated in neighborhoods with high levels of vacancy, Breathing Lights transformed abandoned structures from pockets of shadows into places of warmth.
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.
North Korea Releases Country’s First-Ever Video Game
North Korea has just released the country’s first-ever video game titled 'Pyongyang Racer'.
The racing game was created by a developer known only as Nosotek, and was commissioned by Koryo, a British tour company that takes travelers to North Korea.
Call it art, exhibited as an installation piece in the October 2014 show "Crossing Brooklyn," a collaboration of more than 100 artworks by 35 artists (or groups) who live or work in Brooklyn, presented at the Brooklyn Museum... or call it "A survey of Art from Brooklyn" as hyperallergic journalist Jillian Steinhauer wrote... it exists on the streets as a social practice, albeit using creative means for community-building.
On July 23rd 2011 a newly formed organization Multi-Story performed Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in a multi-story car park in Peckham Rye London. In doing so it completely subverted the entrenched traditions of the performance of classical music. The organization used student musicians and did not charge admission.
The latest Academy Award for Best Picture was earned by a film depicting the story of a poor, gay, black boy in South Florida. Moonlight, by director Barry Jenkins, has achieved great recognition for its beautiful and honest depiction of a storyline which challenges itself at every turn.