In March 1939, a 23-year-old Billie Holiday walked up to the mic at West 4th's Cafe Society in New York City to sing her final song of the night. Per her request, the waiters stopped serving and the room went completely black, save for a spotlight on her face.
"The mandate for great and difficult achievement is manifest in the message coming from the science of sustainability and climate change. Yet information alone will not take us where we need to go; science needs the arts to compel a response. It is the synergy of these two great human enterprises that creates both intellectual and emotional clarity.
The Heidelberg Project is an outdoor art project in Detroit, Michigan. It was created in 1986 by artist Tyree Guyton and his grandfather Sam Mackey ("Grandpa Sam") as an outdoor art environment in the McDougall-Hunt neighborhood on the city's east side, just north of the city's historically African-American Black Bottom area.
It's My Body! was initially a project for Stephen Duncombe's Media Activism class during Spring 2012. We designed and developed the concept for the class, but have yet to set up the actual website. The images below show the site's layout.
Palestinian and Israeli flags flutter in pro-Irish and pro-UK neighbourhoods in Northern Ireland, tapping into its own history of conflict and division that still affects everyday life despite a 1998 peace deal that largely ended violence.
Greta Thunberg has made her musical debut on a single by the 1975. On a track called The 1975, a version of which traditionally opens each of the British band’s albums, the 16-year-old environmental activist restates her position on the need to act on the climate emergency.
CultureStrike in partnership with Mariposas Sin Fronteras , End Family Detention and 15 artists from across the country, brings you Visions From The Inside, a visual art project inspired by letters penned by detained migrants.
The snapshots are thrust at us urgently, as if they were passports being shown at a border crossing, official proofs of national identity. Mostly, they are prosaic pictures of family members or houses. Sometimes a diploma will be offered up instead, or theater reviews clipped from newspapers or a membership card to a duck-hunting club. Later, other, more frightening, pictures will be shown, but they all serve the same function.
From Public Delivery:
"The art piece, which was showcased at the Flashpoint Gallery in Washington D.C. from February 1 to 17, 2019, allowed visitors to interact with it. The audience had a pile of crumbs placed right in front of the three-walled setup, which they would through and watch as ‘Ivanka’ vacuumed them all up.
By Latoya Peterson, Racialicious
Looking for a way to celebrate the folks who raised you–but from a slightly different perspective than you would get down at Hallmark? The good people over at Strong Families (a project of Forward Together/Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice) present Mama’s Day, a multicultural, queer-friendly celebration of the folks who do some of the most significant (and unpaid) work in our society.
Maria was psyched to travel to the Philippines where her hand-made basketball nets were well received. Invited with the Institute for Infinitely Small Things (Boston/Mass based) by Clara Balaguer and the Office of Culture and Design (Manila) she worked in Zamboanga City with students of Western Mindanao State University to carry out a 6 day arts and activism workshop.
The Acción Poética movement is a literary phenomenon that began in Monterrey, Mexico in 1996. It was founded by Mexican poet Armando Alanis Pulido and involves painting and intervening abandoned walls in cities with fragments of poetry. The content is usually love poems or optimistic phrases. Also, some phrases refer to the current situation in the cities (though one of their rules is to not talk about politics or religious beliefs).
Between the World and Me
by Richard Wright
And one morning while in the woods I stumbled
suddenly upon the thing,
Stumbled upon it in a grassy clearing guarded by scaly
oaks and elms
And the sooty details of the scene rose, thrusting
themselves between the world and me....
"Cat House for Dogs," said an ad in the Village Voice, "featuring a savory selection of hot bitches..." Along with this ad, a press release was sent to the media saying that if your dog graduated from obedience school, if it was his birthday, or if he was just horny, for $50 you could get your dog sexually gratified. This was not a breeding service, but purely a sexual pleasure service.
On 6 January 2012, Metrópolis (TVE 2) broadcast "Activismo y Ficción", a report directed by Enmedio members Leónidas Martín and Núria Campabadal. It looks at a series of creative projects that lie somewhere between fiction and social activism.
A popular theme throughout media is the relationship between technology and art. While art is often bolstered and disseminated through technology, discussions arise of how technology both positively and negatively affects content. Caroline Sinders’ exhibition Within the Terms and Conditions explores the way content has been spread online.
The enforcement of city and state law pertaining to graffiti, advertising, and other signage has enormous power to visually shape public space. In New York City, enforcement is heavily skewed to ignore illegal commercial advertising, while simultaneously aggressively targeting graffiti and, in some cases, symbols of dissent.
Dozens of Howard University students are sleeping outdoors in a tent encampment on campus grounds to protest what they describe as "poor" and "unlivable" conditions in the college dormitories.
Students told ABC News that portions of the university living quarters have mold and insect and rodent infestations, as well as leaky ceilings and flooding -- all of which they say put their health at risk.
Sometimes justice requires a little imagination. On Saturday, when
much of the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York was loudly
denouncing police violence against minorities and protesters, a small
group of environmentalists dreamed up a way to get the police to focus
on the crimes of the 1 percent, to the point of arresting five corporate
suits on United Nations property.