Buses serving several routes in central Seoul have acquired a new and highly controversial passenger: a barefoot “comfort woman”, wearing a traditional hanbok dress with her hands resting on her knees.
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.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of one of this country’s most beloved theater companies. Founded in New York City in 1963, the Bread and Puppet Theater’s first productions ranged from puppet shows for children to pieces opposing poor housing conditions. The group’s processions, involving monstrous puppets, some about 20 feet high, became a fixture of protests against the Vietnam War. "We don’t have playwrights in the theater.
Acting on a tip from a disgruntled neighbor, two comedians dressed as drag queens confronted parking officers in broad daylight.
The pair wanted to know why the officers, who so ruthlessly enforced parking limits, had never so much as given a warning to the local fruit salesman, whose battered Ford Explorer sat illegally parked all day, every day, in the upper-class neighborhood of Polanco.
It’s the summer of 1971 and tourists flock around one of Washington DC’s most famous hotspots – the Capitol steps. Journalist Art Goldberg recalls ‘a squad of soldiers moving through the space. They are grubby-looking troopers, clad in jungle fatigues. Jumping a low fence, they begin shouting at a group of tourists. “All right! Hold it! Hold it! Nobody move. Nobody move!” Their voices full of tension and anger. A man runs from the crowd.
"Las sinsombrero" ("without hat") were a group of spanish women formed by the artists Maruja Mallo, Margarita Manso, Concha Méndez and the socialist activist Margarita Nelken.
A social experiment testing the public’s reaction to gay people in China has gone viral.
The blindfolded activists stood in public wearing T-shirts that said “I’m gay would you hug me?” and video of the protest then spread rapidly on Weibo, a hugely popular social media platform in China.
The social experiment follows a recent announcement by Weibo to ban gay content on its platform of 400 million active users.
"Thai artists and art students are on the frontline of their country’s swelling pro-democracy movement, calling for reforms of Thailand’s military-backed government, and breaking both taboo and national law to criticise the nation’s monarchy.
Students at the University of California-San Diego were surprised when an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, commonly referred to as a drone, crashed in the middle of campus — or at least they thought that’s what happened.
Driving along an ordinary dirt road, it's hard to miss the Goma Cultural Centre with its bright blue gate, emblazoned with the Congolese flag. "As you can see, we are proud to be Congolese around here," said Belamy Paluku, a volunteer manager at the youth centre.
From 1995 to 1997, Colombian families reunited in front of the TV to watch Quac: El Noticero, a comedy newletter performed by the comedian Jaime Garzon and the actor Diego Leon Hoyos.
It has been the only space in which the Colombian society was allowed to see a well made newsletter about the reality of the country and their politicians from a comedy perspective.
A striking new cultural space is taking shape in New York’s Hudson Valley. Alex Grey and Allyson Grey, co-founders of CoSM, Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, have launched a Kickstarter campaign to build Entheon, sanctuary of visionary art, to ask for support to complete the build.
In Tunisia, a country gripped by economic uncertainty and still in the midst of rebuilding its identity after the Arab Spring, hip-hop culture is viewed as part of an ongoing dissident movement. Just a few events, such as the recent Mafia Wallitili Festival in the heart of downtown Tunis, offer the local hip-hop community an opportunity to share their values with the broader population.
A troupe of approximately thirty women and men of various ages, sizes, ethnicities and performance backgrounds marched through the performance art space of SESC-Vila Mariana in Sao Paulo and then through the streets of downtown Sao Paulo, silent, blind folded, dressed in business attire, and covered completely with a gray mud. The performances walked slowly in unison at turtle's pace.
Mark Boyle has lived completely without money in England [since 2008], an experience which formed the basis for his first book, The Moneyless Man. He is also the founder of Freeconomy, an alternative economy with local groups across 171 countries.
He holds a degree in Business and for most of his professional career was involved in the management of organic food companies.
Forest activist and environmentalist Julia Butterfly Hill spent two years (Dec. 10, 1997-Dec. 18, 1999) living 180 feet high, on two six-by-six-foot platforms, in the canopy of a thousand-year-old redwood tree named Luna to help make the world aware of the plight of the redwood forest.
An Israeli member of the Taiji Dolphin Action Group, with a red body painting to evoke blood, is curled up on a sheet depicting the Japanese flag, during a January 30, 2014 protest against the killing of dolphins, notably in the Japanese city of Taiji, held outside the building housing the Japanese Embassy, Tel Aviv. Similar rallies outside Japanese consulates and embassies were expected to take place worldwide.
Serene colors and technical set pieces create a surreal ambience as performers delicately hover into the black void above the stage. These performers belong to Kinetic Light, an "internationally-recognized disability arts ensemble". In 2022, the ensemble performed Wired, a "potent contemporary aerial dance performance that explores race, gender, and disability stories of barbed wire in the United States".
After weeks of vegan activists protesting in front of his nose-to-tail bistro, chef Michael Hunter decided to make a statement by butchering a freshly-killed deer’s leg in the window of his Toronto restaurant, Antler Kitchen & Bar, right in front of the demonstrators. “I figured, I’ll show them,” Hunter tells writer Corey Mintz. “I’m going to have my own protest.”
We are sitting at a dhaba – a roadside tea-shop in Pakistan often frequented by lower-to-middle income men. At our table: four women and camera crew. The reporter from ‘one of the most globally viewed’ [read: western], mainstream British outlets looks me in the eye: “So, how safe do you feel at the moment? We were just surrounded by a group of little boys [because of the cameras], do you think the situation can ever turn on you?"
Long before the red ribbon became an innocuous symbol of AIDS
“awareness” and celebrity philanthropy, there was the pink triangle and
there was ACT UP and there were thousands of people taking to the
streets for their lives. Once a symbol used to mark suspected queers for
death in the Holocaust, ACT UP appropriated the pink triangle for
According to Direct Action Everywhere, activist Matt Johnson was able to get booked on Bartiromo’s show as Smithfield Foods’ new CEO and President Dennis Organ. During the interview, he warned viewers that factory farms like the ones Smithfield operates could create the next pandemic, without raising any suspicion from Bartiromo, who simply plowed forward with the segment.
The frontier between the United States and Mexico is the busiest land border in the world. It is also among one of the world’s most heavily regulated and policed border zones—the arid climate of which is responsible for many migrant deaths each year.
The Harlem Festival of Culture not only pays homage to the past but also envisions a brighter future. It serves as a platform to showcase the rich diversity and dynamism of Harlem's artistic community, while also acting as a catalyst for social change and community empowerment. The festival boasts a lineup of artists from various genres and backgrounds, including jazz, soul, hip-hop, gospel, blues, rock, Latin, and Afrobeat.