The “Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef,” a unique exhibition and thought-provoking fusion of science, conservation, mathematics, and art, is on display in Washington, D.C., at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. By engaging local communities to crochet coral reefs, the exhibition celebrates the reefs' beautiful diversity and speaks to the urgent need to protect these vanishing ecosystems.
Beauty in Transition is an artistic project created by multi-media artist Jody Wood, that established a pop-up mobile hair salon providing beauty services including a hair wash, cut, color and/or style service to willing participants living in homeless shelters. By provoking face-to-face dialogue in a calming recuperative salon environment, this project aims to facilitate empathetic understanding and to unravel the reductive label of homelessness.
In Women Are Heroes, JR introduces women who sometimes look death in the face, who go from laughter to tears, who are generous, have nothing and yet share, who have had a painful past and long to build a happy future.
For one day, a group of artists known as the INDECLINE Artist Collective turned a hotel room in New York City's Trump International Hotel into a single jail cell for Donald Trump without the hotel's knowledge. The inside the jail cell was a Donald Trump impersonator in a suit and a "Make America Great Again" hat and at his feet were McDonald's food wrappers and live rats.
Surrounded by a jungle of tents and mud, the Good Chance Theatre was set up last year by British playwrights Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson. The refugee camp theatre has been derided by many, but for the thousands of migrants who have journeyed across the world to Calais, the small dome has been the first and only place into which they have been welcomed, and their voice valued.
Thrive Collective mobilizes students, parents, artists, and community stakeholders to partner with public schools for transformational change. They function both as a matchmaker and direct service provider of arts and mentoring programs that cultivate the character and competencies necessary for students to thrive in today’s world.
In May, the horrific mass shooting in Isla Vista, CA, triggered national conversations about violent misogyny. After some Twitter users began using the hashtag #NotAllMen to defensively derail the conversation, the hugely popular hashtag #YesAllWomen emerged, getting tweeted over 1 million times within just a few days.
A group of South Korean activists is determined to send copies of The Interview across the North Korean border, despite threats from the state to respond with “cannons or missiles” if the plan succeeds.
Mending Baghdad is a four-and-a-half-by-six-and-a-half-foot quilt memorializing Baghdad as it looked during the American bombing on the first nights of the Iraq war. The purpose of the project is to bring people together to do something symbolically curative for Iraq. The artist, Clare Wainwright, worked up the image in about two days, but left it deliberately unfinished.
In May of 2009 lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg was murdered in Guatemla City. A video was released of Rosenberg directed to the Guatemalan public. If you are watching this, he said, I have been murdered by the president Alvaro Colom. The video caused an uproar and sparked protests throughout the city.
"In a world where artists do themselves no financial favours by voicing critical political sentiments, Björk’s iconoclastic position and perspective is almost unique. Despite having made zero concessions to commerciality in her music, she has sold millions of albums, and remains as vital today as she was a quarter of a century ago.
Officials in Thailand had an unorthodox approach to deal with visitors who left a tent filled with litter in a national park: mail the trash to the offenders.
Since 1991, approximately 1,700 organizations in 130 countries have participated in the 16 Days Campaign, which originated from the first Women's Global Leadership Institute sponsored by the Center for Women's Global Leadership. During 16 days, participators are encouraged to organize events and act in their local communities to:
Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale write: Five Chinese feminists have been arrested for planning to protest against sexual harassment. They face five to ten years in jail. This post explains the background to the case, and suggests ways that other activists around the world can show solidarity.
Kwame Brathwaite, the photographer and activist whose work gave a visual identity to the “Black is Beautiful” movement, died on April 1. He was 85.
The news was shared by his son, Kwame Brathwaite, Jr., in an Instagram post. “I am deeply saddened to share that my Baba, the patriarch of our family, our rock and my hero has transitioned,” Brathwaite, Jr. wrote. “Thank you for your love and support during this difficult time.”
"I wish for you to stand up for what you care about by participating in a global art project, and together we'll turn the world...INSIDE OUT."
– JR, TED2011
On June 17, 2013, Russell Brand (a stand-up comedian and actor) visited MSNBC’s
'Morning Joe' news show to promote his international stand-up tour, 'The Messiah Complex', but he also managed to mock the 'Morning Joe' news anchors, as well as the mainstream media. Clips of this particular interview immediately went viral on YouTube, and one of the videos is linked to this page (see the first link below).
These are called "anti-homeless spikes." They're about as friendly as they sound.
Photo courtesy of CC BY-ND, Immo Klink and Marco Godoy.
As you may have guessed, they're intended to deter people who are homeless from sitting or sleeping on that concrete step. And yeah, they're pretty awful.
Beirut, Lebanon (CNN) -- They've been described as the voice of their generation -- though not one that everyone is comfortable hearing.
Mashrou' Leila, whose name translates as "The Night Project," is a controversial alternative rock band from Lebanon, whose music has served as something of a soundtrack to the Arab Spring for many young people throughout the region.