Main Gallery

Sit-in at Veterans Memorial
Practitioner:
Veterans for Peace
Date:
Oct 7 2014
The Veterans Memorial in New York City, located at 55 Water Street, closes every day at 10pm. However, veterans often find themselves wanting to come to the memorial at all hours of the day and night. The organization Veterans for Peace organizes a sit-in every year on October 7th to protest their limited access to the memorial. That's not the only aim of the action, though.
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Rattlin' Bog Flash Mob
Practitioner:
Creativity & Change, Angela Higgins, Laurie Whelehan, Liz Dunne, Marie O'Connor, Michaela Donegan, Chendum Muotto, Laura Blewitt
Date:
Apr 27 2019
A This flash mob was designed to deliver a message to raise awareness and deepen understanding about the immediacy of the climate change problem. By subverting the lyrics of the Rattlin’ Bog, we appealed through music to the hearts of participants. The Irish song, the Rattlin’ Bog, is a well-loved traditional cumulative song, with a short chorus, and is easily learned. The word Rattlin’ means ‘splendid’.
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No Humans Involved: After Sylvia Wynter
Practitioner:
Alexandra Bell
Date:
Dec 1 2018
In this series featured in the 2019 Whitney Biennial, artist Alexandra Bell edited headline pages from the New York Daily News in 1989 concerning the case of the Central Park 5. Through redaction, highlighting, and censoring, Bell shows how the teens accused of this crime were painted as a pack of animals by the media.
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Emory Douglas, “Afro-American Solidarity With the Oppressed People of the World,” 1969
Practitioner:
Emory Douglas, The Black Panthers
Date:
Jan 1 1969
Emory Douglas joined the Black Panthers in January 1967 at the age of 23, just three months after Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the party. Douglas, who had studied graphic design at San Francisco City College, swiftly became the organization’s minister of culture and the art director in charge of its eponymous newspaper.
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Art, Activism, and the City: Illuminating Social Change
Practitioner:
Donkeys
Date:
Mar 13 2025
The creative fusion of art and activism in urban spaces has propelled the British collective Led by Donkeys into the spotlight, garnering millions of views for their interventions on social media. Their critical visual occupations - whether billboard messages during the day or large-scale projections at night - raise a compelling question: which medium holds the greater persuasive power?
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Occu-bot and Management-bot
Practitioner:
Taeyoon Choi
Date:
Dec 26 2011
Occu-bot can protest in places that human civil disobedience is not allowed, and it can also replace human protesters.
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2016 Pirelli Calendar May Signal a Cultural Shift
Practitioner:
Fran Lebowitz
Date:
Jun 30 2016
When Agnes Gund, the 77-year-old philanthropist and president emerita of the Museum of Modern Art, got the call, she thought: “That’s odd. What’s that got to do with someone like me?” When Fran Lebowitz, the 65-year-old author, got the call, she said, “I thought it was a joke.”
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Oakland Wiki
Practitioner:
Oakland Wiki
Date:
Jan 1 2013
Oakland Wiki (oaklandwiki.org) is a free website about Oakland that anyone can edit. It's a wiki that can house any kind of information about Oakland, from historic figures to native plants to City Council meeting notes to your favorite leafy walk.
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No Poisonous Pigs
Practitioner:
the Taiwan Anti-ractopamine Union
Date:
Dec 31 2020
President of Taiwan, leader of the Democratic Progressive Party（DDP）, Tsai Ing-wen, at a press conference with no early forecast on August 28, 2020, announcing that from January 1, 2021, American pigs containing ractopamine (Ractopamine) will be opened for those over 30 months old U.S. cattle are imported. Furthermore, the administrative order has only a 7-day notice period.
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Chinese Artist Creates Hall Of Fame Portraits Of Corrupt Officials
Practitioner:
Zhang Bingjian
Date:
Apr 27 2011
Chinese Artist Zhang Bingjian has embarked on an artistic project to promote transparency in China and Chinese government. His motivation? Discovering the extent of the corruption going on in his country. Zhang told the Toronto Star: “The chief prosecutor announced that 3,000 officials had been convicted for corruption in a single year. I remember being shocked, a little angry and then confused.”
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Chatty cockroach
Practitioner:
Myrto Sarma and Dimitra Trousa
Date:
Jun 15 2019
This is the image confronting Greeks from an Athenian drain . "Hello, I live in the sewers of Athens," says the cockroach. "Yes, me too," says an Athenian walking past, apparently unfazed by the idea of an insect talking to him from a drain.
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Theresa May gets fired during speech
Practitioner:
Simon Brodkin
Date:
Oct 3 2017
At Theresa May's speech to the Conservative Party conference, comedian Simon Brodkin crept up to the stage and handed the Prime Minister a P45 form (the form that bosses in the UK use to formally fire their employees), telling her "Boris told me to do it."
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Mental Health Care Revolution: FEEL IT!
Practitioner:
The Babyfacedassassin, Are You A Messenger Movie Project
Date:
Feb 1 2013
Artistic Activist, Charlotte Claire, is at the forefront of initiating revolutionary change in mental health care. Her project, The Babyfacedassassin, is dedicated to improving mental health care and inspiring people to care for their mental health.
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Jingle dress dancers honour George Floyd at site where he was killed
Practitioner:
Indigenous jingle dress dancers
Date:
Jun 2 2020
Indigenous people in Minneapolis supporting Black Lives Matter cite similar struggles Jingle dress dancers held a ceremony at the intersection of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis on Monday, the place where George Floyd was killed by police last week.
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Occupy the Theatre
Practitioner:
Italian Theatre Association (ETI)
Date:
Jun 14 2011
A changing cast of theater workers — actors, seamstresses, lighting technicians and prop masters — are protesting the privatization of a stage once graced by some of Europe’s greatest thespians, from Sarah Bernhardt to Vittorio Gassman.
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Daughter of China
Practitioner:
Date:
Nov 1 1949
Chen Boer's first heroine film, which she co-wrote and directed, was "Daughter of China," about female soldiers in the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army. They didn't have much filmed material at the time, but as a feminist, Chen Boer clearly wanted to record the sacrifices and contributions of Chinese women in the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression.
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Speech/Acts at ICA Philly
Practitioner:
Jibade-Khalil Huffman, Steffani Jemison, Tony Lewis, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, and Martine Syms
Date:
Sep 1 2017
In “Speech/Acts,” a group exhibition organized by Meg Onli at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, Kameelah Janan Rasheed and Tiona Nekkia McClodden stood out as artists who take up voices, histories, and experiences that can help audiences move forward and endure in the future.
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ButActually | The Hashtag Activist Dictionary
Practitioner:
ButActually, NYU Gallatin
Date:
Jan 1 2015
Butactually.com is a new kind of online dictionary created by a team of students at NYU Gallatin who seek to document, organize, and provide a platform for anyone to share new activist hashtags.
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Occupy the Pipeline Shuts Down Spectra Construction in NYC
Practitioner:
Occupy the Pipeline
Date:
Oct 12 2012
As part of a nationwide day of action against fossil fuel pipelines from Pennsylvania to Texas, several hundred New Yorkers succeeded Monday in halting construction of a radioactive pipeline threatening the West Village--after unrelenting daily vigils at the Spectra pipeline site over the past several weeks.
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Poetry to challenge GBV from an intersectional lens – the Sari Red
Practitioner:
Pratibha Parmar
Date:
Mar 1 1988
Sari Red (1988), by Pratibha Parmar, is a visual poem. Made in memory of Kalbinder Kaur Hayre, a young Indian woman killed in 1985 in a racist attack in England, Sari Red eloquently examines the effect of the ever-present threat of violence upon the lives of Asian women in both private and public spheres.
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