The Fourth of July is upon us, so it’s time once again to sing what is arguably our most baffling national ditty, “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” Maybe you’ve noticed: Some of the lyrics seem like the work of a prankster on acid. Who else could have conceived a vignette as bizarre as a man riding a pony into town, then sticking a feather in his cap that, for unknown reasons, he insists on calling “macaroni”?
Xiao has organized and participated in a series of activities that combine performance art with a strong social message. Despite a well-known Chinese maxim expounding that women "hold up half the sky," feminism has largely been an underground movement in the country. Xiao and her cohorts' mission is to change that by taking up the cause in public, even if it means going to extreme and controversial lengths.
For more than 20 years, Metronome, which includes a 62-foot-wide 15-digit electronic clock that faces Union Square in Manhattan, has been one of the city’s most prominent and baffling public art projects.
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.
With delicate composition, striking details and strong emotion, five editorial posters drawn by Wuheqilin have attracted some half million followers to his account on Sina Weibo, China's Twitter-like social media platform. His political views expressed in his art have led to some netizens dubbing him the "Wolf Worrier artist."
Gran Fury was an AIDS activist artist collective from New York City consisting of 11 members, all artists - but action, not art, was the aim of the collective. Gran Fury member Loring McAlpin described the collective's mass-market ambition to “...fight for attention as hard as Coca-Cola fights for attention.”
Susan Speirs fed four dollars into the Amend-o-matic Stamp Mobile. After spiraling up the "Tower of Corrupted Power," gliding past a clanging gong and sliding down hairpin turns on a roller coaster-style track to a final stamping station, the bills came out with bright red lettering in all caps.
Now, they read, "Stamp money out of politics."
Highlights:
A handful of teens donned puffy quinceañera dresses to protest against the “sanctuary cities” ban.
The teens gave paper flowers to lawmakers who voted against SB 4 and flyers to those who voted in favor.
Texas teens took part in a quinceañera-themed protest on the south steps of the Capitol to voice their opposition to Senate Bill 4, the so-called sanctuary cities ban.
The Transborder Immigrant Tool is a ECD 2.0 (Ricardo Dominguez, Brett Stalbaum, Amy Sara Carroll, Micha Cárdenas, Elle Mehrmand) project designed to repurpose inexpensive used mobile phones that have GPS antennas (through the addition of proper software which the TB project is designing) to provide emergency personal navigation, helping to guide dehydrated immigrants to water safety sites established by activists and to provide poetic audio nourishment
The project consists of a double-sided, hand-drawn 8.5" x 11" quarter-fold sheet available to print and distribute freely.
It features such topics as basic information on police tactics (kettling, LRADS, tear gas or pepper spray), ways cops might try to get you to talk to them, and your rights as a student.
From creativetimereports.org:
Artist-activist collective MTL's clickable collages connect disparate aspects of Palestine's geographical and political landscape, offering provocative insight into "how Palestinians suffer and struggle in ways that are parallel to those elsewhere" according to philosopher Michael Hardt.
Eleven students have locked themselves in the Peter Cooper Suite of the eighth floor of the Cooper Union building to protest the institution's decision to charge graduate students tuition.
On Sept 21, 2017, the professional committee of dementia and related diseases of China geriatric health association, together with many caring enterprises, jointly launched a public welfare activity entitled "no longer forget", hoping to call on the public to pay attention to Alzheimer's disease and promote early screening.
Christine Sun Kim's series Degrees of My Deaf Rage is a series of charcoal drawings of charts that depict the artist's varying degrees of what she calls "deaf rage." These frustrations are categorized by situations: deaf rage in the art world. institutional deaf rage, deaf rage concerning interpreters, deaf rage while traveling, deaf rage within educational settings, deaf rage in everyday situations.
Last Friday, Pablo Picasso’s Buste de Femme, (1943), was put on display at the International Art Academy Palestine in Ramallah. Marking the very first time that the Picasso’s work has been shown in Palestine and as the result of a loan request to the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, this project is the tenacious vision of artist Khaled Hourani (also the Artistic Director of IAAP).
Students at the University of California-San Diego were surprised when an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, commonly referred to as a drone, crashed in the middle of campus — or at least they thought that’s what happened.
What is it like living with AIDS? This heart-wrenching video for South Africa’s Topsy Foundation brings us through 90 hard days in the life of someone living with it. Be sure to watch it all the way to the end. It’s worth it:
Did you catch that? If you didn’t, watch it again. Spoiler after the jump.
Beyoncé delivered an intensely, unapologetic celebration of Black and HBCU culture at the Coachella Festival 2 weekends in a row. Not only were her performances some of the best live performances to date but they sent a pretty significant message to the world.
Here are some assessments of this beautiful demonstration of Blackness and Black Girl Magic:
From BBC News: