After winning the TED Prize on March 2, 2011, the French-artist JR launched the Inside Out Project, in his first TED Talk. Using his own artistic practice as inspiration, this participatory platform helps individuals and communities to make a statement by displaying large-scale black and white portraits in public spaces. Through their “Actions,” communities around the world have sparked collaborations and conversations.
“I am a silkworm.” Liang Shaoji has repeatedly used this phrase to describe his work, underscoring his preoccupation with the materiality of silk and the technology of sericulture, or silk farming. For more than twenty-five years, Liang Shaoji has raised silkworms and trained them to spin silk onto different objects in his Nature series.
The 2013 protests in Turkey started on 28 May 2013, initially to contest the urban development plan for Istanbul's Taksim Gezi Park. The protests were sparked by outrage at the violent eviction of a sit-in at the park protesting the plan.
The Repellent Fence is a social collaborative project among individuals, communities, institutional organizations, publics, and sovereigns that culminate with the establishment of a large-scale temporary monument located near Douglas, Arizona and Agua Prieta, Sonora. This 2 mile long ephemeral land-art installation is comprised of 26 tethered balloons, that are each 10 feet in diameter, and float 100 feet above the desert landscape.
On Christmas day in 1993, kids were finding more than they bargained for under their trees: Mattel’s new talking Barbie dolls growled “Dead men tell no lies,” while Hasbro’s macho GI Joe’s chirped “I love to shop with you.”
Theater as investigative reporting or investigative reporting as theater, however you cut it, Mark Thomas, a British TV actor/comedian and activist has created a fascinating show. It's by him and about him: how he ran stings that put some illegal arms traffickers out of business or in jail and how he was deceived and betrayed by a "comrade" who turned out to be a spy for BAE Systems, the UK's largest aerospace and weapons company.
How would you describe Mixer?
Anis Bennaceur: It’s a professional network for creatives—people working in arts, fashion, film and media, and music. You can showcase your work, past projects to everyone else on the platform, and you can search, discover, connect, and collaborate with a lot of other incredible and talented people working in those industries. Also, every member is vetted by our team, so we ensure the quality of the userbase.
What the Skirt Lifts is a day long protest against gender discrimination initiated by student Arthur Moinet and sanctioned by the Académie de Nantes, made up of local school officials. Both male and female students were encouraged to school wearing skirts. Those who did not feel comfortable wearing skirts were invited to participate by wearing a sticker which read: I am fighting against sexism, are you?
Decolonize Me features six contemporary Aboriginal artists whose works challenge, interrogate and reveal Canada’s long history of colonization in daring and innovative ways.
Gender equality charity Women of the World (WOW) is launching a one-day festival of activism that invites people from all generations, genders and backgrounds to take part in conversations around sexual violence.
In 1982, for documenta 7, Beuys proposed a plan to plant 7000 oaks throughout the city of Kassel, each paired with a basalt stone. The 7000 stones were piled up on the lawn in front of the Museum Fridericianum with the idea that the pile would shrink every time a tree was planted. The project, seen locally as a gesture towards green urban renewal, took five years to complete and has spread to other cities around the world.
The signature angst of our time was profoundly expressed in the poems submitted for WOMAWORDS Literary Press June 2020 edition, Imaging Life After COVID-19, offering women poets an opportunity to write about their experience of the pandemic and their vision of or for the future. The universal trauma wrought by this virus, invisible and silent and pouncing with madness and mendacity, brings us to a place we’d like to forget but never will.
Fang Si-Qi’s First Love Paradise, a 2017 novel by Taiwanese writer Lin Yi-han, has become one of the most haunting and politically charged literary works in the Chinese-speaking world. Although presented as fiction, the novel closely mirrors Lin’s own lived experience of being groomed and sexually abused by a private tutor during her adolescence.
In 2020 Noname, a Chicago rapper, activist, and poet, released the single titled "Song 33" to address racism in America and the Black Lives Matter movement. She specifically raps about the killings of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter activist Oluwatoyin Salau, singing, "A baby just 19/I know I dream all black/I seen her everything immortalized in tweets, all caps/They say they found her dead," she raps.
"Every night, at 8pm, during 15 minutes, take a casserole or any object that makes some noise and bang it with all the wrath that Bill 78 inspires you!" Citizens in Quebec adopted 'cacerolazo,' a form of popular protest which consists of a group of people making noise by banging pots, pans, and other utensils in order to call for attention.
Emel Mathlouthi (Arabic: آمال المثلوثي) is a Tunisian singer-songwriter best known for her protest songs "Ya Tounes Ya Meskina" (Poor Tunisia) and "Kelmti Horra" (My Word is Free) which became anthems for the Tunisian revolution and the 2011 Egyptian revolution.
In 1998 Portuguese born artist Paula Rego created a series of work entitled Untitled. The Abortion Pastels. Rego created her work in response to a referendum to legalise abortion in Portugal, which was very narrowly defeated. Each canvas depicted the image of a woman undergoing an unsafe abortion. When the series was exhibited in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, Rego recalled the whispered secrets of women in the gallery while looking at her artworks.
For a class project at Northern Illinois University, we were tasked with performing an act of artistic activism on campus. We choose to raise awareness about the student health insurance policy. The policy at NIU states that if you do not have your own form of insurance, you are automatically charged for the university’s insurance plan, which costs $1,224 per semester.
Museums and art galleries are not usually the sites of feminist political protest. Yet over the past couple of years, before the lockdown, gallery visitors all over the UK had noticed a small, determined activist whose modus operandi is “Small signs, big questions, fabulous wardrobe”.
The mischievous posters began appearing all over London in the past two months.
On the side of an East London bus stop, one of them shows Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, emerging from a Tesla’s roof with his hand pointing upward in a straight-armed salute. “Goes from 0 to 1939 in 3 seconds,” the ad reads. “Tesla. The Swasticar.”