Main Gallery

Street Advertising Takeover - Artist turns billboards into democratic spaces
Practitioner:
Jordan Seiler
Date:
Apr 3 2016
"Two weekends ago, a loose network of these artists and activists, under the name Subvertisers International, launched their first global effort to reclaim our shared public environment from its monopolization by commercial media. The demand was not for better or more truthful advertising, but to imagine what a city would look like when the stories we told ourselves in public space reflected a democratic voice.
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Chinese Feminist Act Against Sexual Harassment on Subway
Practitioner:
Zheng Xi
Date:
Dec 1 2017
Zheng Xi 郑熹, a Ph.D. candidate with a focus on gender studies at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou. Zheng has launched a campaign asking city governments around China to display anti-sexual-harassment logos, complete with a groper’s “salty-pig hand” visual (etymological context here), alongside other commonly displayed public safety logos on places like subway trains and buses.
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Black Lives Matter Plaza in DC
Practitioner:
Rose Jaffe
Date:
Jun 5 2020
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser renamed a street in front of the White House “Black Lives Matter Plaza” and had the slogan painted on the asphalt in massive yellow letters, a pointed salvo in her escalating dispute with President Trump over control of D.C. streets.
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#Protect Girls Project -- Anti-surrogacy Stickers
Practitioner:
Date:
Jan 19 2021
Many girls in China may have seen the advertisements of egg donation as a surrogate, in hospitals, schools, public toilets, shared bikes, ATMs...... They are everywhere and the number of this kind of advertisements is large. Though there are lots of girls who have never seen such advertisements or would never believe in them, there would still be some girls who would dial the numbers on the advertisements.
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Participatory Chinatown: Promoting Civic Engagement
Practitioner:
MacArthur Foundation and Muzzy Lane
Date:
May 6 2010
Taken from Boston Globe Article: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2010/05/06/chinatown_the_video_game/ 
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Malcolm X Street
Practitioner:
Group X
Date:
May 7 1991
At a time when the city of Portland was considering stripping Martin Luther King Jr.'s name off a local street, a covert organization calling itself Group X changed the name of another downtown street to Malcolm X Street in a clandestine overnight action.
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Kurdish Artist Zehra Doğan Has Been Freed in Turkey After 3 Years for Illustrating Turkey's Violence
Practitioner:
Zehra Doğan
Date:
Feb 28 2019
The Kurdish journalist and artist Zehra Doğan was freed yesterday after nearly three years in prison, Hyperallergic reports. Doğan first caught the attention of the Turkish authorities back in 2017 with a watercolor that depicted a Kurdish district after Turkish security forces set it on fire and largely destroyed it.
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Suffrage Parade
Practitioner:
suffragettes
Date:
Mar 3 1913
On March 3, 1913, President-elect Woodrow Wilson arrived at Union Station in Washington, DC. It was the day before his inauguration, but the teeming mobs that typically appeared to greet a new president were nowhere to be found. Instead, the streets of Washington seemed deserted. A disappointed Wilson asked, “Where are all the people?” “Over on the Avenue watching the suffrage parade,” he was told.
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Wrinkles of the City
Practitioner:
JR & Jose Parla
Date:
May 7 2013
I think this is a very interesting project that is intended to pay hommage by showcasing portraits of survivors of the Cuban revolution. They are displayed in the streets of Havana and, as the artists explains, this is a place that lacks commercial advertising/ billboards in the streets. So they are displaying the courage and strength of those, people who should be admired, earned their place in a sense.
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A Painter and Social Activist With an ‘Unruly Nature’
Practitioner:
Mary Lovelace O’Neal
Date:
Mar 1 2020
The idea was born in an instant. A curator attending an opening at the Baltimore Museum of Art was immediately captivated by a painting from an artist she had barely heard of, Mary Lovelace O’Neal.
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Bread and Puppet Theatre: Insurrection Resurrection Service Circus
Practitioner:
Bread and Puppet
Date:
Jul 1 2020
The Insurrection-Resurrection Service Circus is this summer’s [started in 2020 and is ongoing] contribution to the iconic Bread and Puppet Circus tradition beloved by audiences worldwide for nearly 2 generations — a bright, raucous melee of short acts governed by a brass band, addressing the heart of the current moment using diverse puppetry styles and spanning many moods, from slapstick to the sublime.
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‘Earth Day Sing Out’ supports climate activism, local musicians
Practitioner:
Davis Independent Music Initiative
Date:
Apr 22 2020
The community is invited to join with local climate activists in the “Earth Day Sing Out” from noon to 1 p.m. and 5 to 6 p.m. Wednesday, April 22, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. The event is designed to call for an economic stimulus to help prevent future climate crisis.
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Deep Listening Post
Practitioner:
Connection Action Project
Date:
Jan 17 2013
The Deep Listening Post is a place where people can come to be heard about what's important to them in a safe and respectful environment. Empathetic volunteers lend an ear so that people can share about what's happening in their lives and in their hearts.
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The Fearless Collective – Public Art for Social Change
Practitioner:
Bangalore
Date:
Dec 8 2012
Founded in India, this collective creates participatory murals that transform public spaces into affirmations of love and resistance. Collaborating with marginalized communities, they co-create artworks that challenge narratives of fear and oppression
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Poop Protest
Practitioner:
Hongkongers
Date:
Apr 27 2014
A mainland couple allowed their 2-year-old son to relieve himself by the road at Mangkok, Hong Kong and conflicted with local pedestrians who took photos of the child caused quite a stir among Chinese netizens. While the majority of mainland netizens show understanding for the couple, HongKongers think differently.
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Marta Minujín’s The Parthenon of Books: A Living Elevation of Social and Cultural Relations
Practitioner:
Marta Minujín
Date:
Jan 1 1983
A collective endeavor of Greek antiquity — no less than eighty different artists worked on the frieze alone — the Parthenon was built between 447 BC and 438 BC under the orders of Pericles, following a democratic debate, and overseen by the sculptor Phidias. It measures ten meters high and approximately seventy meters long by thirty meters wide.
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One Billion Rising
Practitioner:
Eve Ensler
Date:
Feb 14 2013
The One Billion Rising campaign is a global movement that's using dance to combat gender violence worldwide. Initiated by "Vagina Monologues" creator and women's activist Eve Ensler, the campaign will see cities across the world hold dance parties on Valentine's Day to raise awareness about gender violence and rape.
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Trash Tycoon: A Game about "Upcycling"
Practitioner:
Guerillapps
Date:
Sep 1 2011
Trash Tycoon is an upcycling social network game developed by Guerillapps. The game applies traditional social gameplay features to highlight real-world issues such as waste, water, and “green” activities. Gameplay includes cleaning trash, recycling, and constructing products and decorations out of recycled material.
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Jameela Jamil says she’s ‘not here to be liked’: ‘I am not a trend, I am a human being’
Practitioner:
Jameela Jamil
Date:
Dec 10 2021
Jameela Jamil has opened up about how she’s “not here to be liked” in a frank new interview with Meghan Markle. In the latest episode of Archetypes, Meghan’s Spotify podcast, the Duchess speaks with both Jamil and Shohreh Aghdashloo about the “stereotypes and judgements women face in the world of activism”.
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“Don’t Look Up” director McKay gives to climate activists
Practitioner:
Adam McKay
Date:
Sep 20 2020
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — In director Adam McKay’s “Don’t Look Up,” a 2021 satire about two scientists who try in vain to warn the world about a planet-destroying comet, the scientists’ desperate plea for action ultimately doesn’t work. But don’t take that as McKay’s view on the power of activism to change the course of the climate crisis, the existential threat his movie was really about.
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