Main Gallery

DIY documentarian serves time for refusing to submit video of police brutality during Tompkins Square Park Riots
Practitioner:
Clayton Patterson
Date:
Aug 6 1988
Documentarian Clayton Patterson captured video of police brutality during the Tompkins Square Park riots in the summer of 1988. When District Attorney Robert Morgenthau ordered Patterson to hand over his camera and tapes as evidence, Patterson refused, citing distrust of the criminal justice system. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail, but after a 10-day hunger strike, his lawyers negotiated a deal to free him.
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In Women’s Rights Battle, a Call to Underarms
Practitioner:
Weibo User
Date:
May 26 2015
As the summer warms up, bringing with it sleeveless tops, Xiao Meili, a women’s rights advocate, is collecting photos of women’s armpits. Her goal: to challenge a growing belief in China that a woman must have hair-free armpits to be attractive.
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1
"Get Out"
Practitioner:
Jordan Peele
Date:
Feb 24 2017
Jordan Peele discovered halfway through the making of “Get Out” what story he wanted to tell: A horror-thriller for black audiences that delivered a searing satirical critique of systemic racism.
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0
Creative Activism in the Service of Corporations
Practitioner:
McDonalds
Date:
Dec 7 2012
McDonald’s wanted children in Hong Kong to spend more time with their imagination after a study showed that children spend an average of 5 hours studying per day. In its new ‘I’m Amazing’ campaign, the fast food chain challenges these children to draw and create their ideal McDonald’s environment.
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3
SWIMMING CITIES OF SWITCHBACK SEA
Practitioner:
Swoon Studio
Date:
Sep 7 2008
TROY, N.Y. — Three loud blasts from a steam whistle screamed out as the rain drizzled on the riverbank here. And the fleet of seven eclectic handmade ships slowly moved away.
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1
There Will Be Blood
Practitioner:
Emma Arvida Bystrom
Date:
May 17 2012
"I got my period in the store!" "I got my period on the car seat!" "My mom talked about my period in front of a cute guy!"
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6
SaveCanada
Practitioner:
SaveCanada
Date:
Sep 1 2013
Save Canada is a direct action that began in Ontario in fall 2013. In reaction to TransCanada's public relations tour of townships affected by the Keystone XL pipeline, Save Canada decided to infiltrate the meetings, which were being held as propaganda displays rather than honest conversations with the people.
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2
William Shatner targets Hewlett-Packard for toxic waste
Practitioner:
Greenpeace
Date:
Jun 1 2009
Hewlett-Packard pledged to stop using dangerous plastics in its computers by 2009. It broke that promise. Will a company-wide voicemail from William Shatner make it change its mind?
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1
Syria's Creative Resistance
Practitioner:
Reported by Layla Al-Zubaidi
Date:
Jan 1 2012
Bashar al-Assad snores, his head twitching on a large white pillow. Suddenly, he wakes up. “The people want to overthrow me!” he screams, the pompom on his nightcap bouncing. 
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1
Free Breakfast Program for Children
Practitioner:
Black Panther Party for Self Defense
Date:
Aug 11 1968
The Free Breakfast for School Children Program was initiated at St. Augustine's Church in Oakland by the Black Panther Party. The Panthers would cook and serve food to the poor inner city youth of the area.
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7
Warscape Sonata - Bala Perdida
Practitioner:
vlax
Date:
Jan 6 2012
Warscape Sonata is a transmedia project that documents and perform audiovisual information related to the current drug war in Mexico. Twitter hashtags, youtube viral videos and mass media are used as creative sources to document the militarized Mexico.
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4
Abortion rights and Body Vulnerability
Practitioner:
Maria Maria Acha Kutscher
Date:
Jul 10 2019
The rise in feminism and feminist advocacy has changed history forever in terms of how women are viewed and treated in society. Though great progress has been made, women are still fighting for their rights even today. Abortion and body vulnerability are just two issues that are still being confronted and fought for in the public view.
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5
Tim DeChristopher Thwarts a Land Auction (Bidder 70)
Practitioner:
Tim DeChristopher
Date:
Jul 27 2011
In December 2008, Tim DeChristopher, along with his church group, was protesting outside a Bureau of Land Management oil and gas lease auction of 116 parcels of public land in Utah's red rock country. Tim decided to take his protest inside and disrupt the auction itself. Instead, at the door, he was offered a bidder's paddle — which, after a split second of hesitation, he accepted.
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8
YBCA Explores Art And Activism in Take This Hammer
Practitioner:
Christian L. Frock
Date:
Mar 21 2016
A new exhibition at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts that showcases activism through art and media in the San Francisco Bay Area, gets its name, Take This Hammer, from a 1963 documentary about the author James Baldwin as he went around San Francisco, talking to African-Americans about what it was like for them in the city.
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4
Black Dandyism, the 2025 Met Gala’s Theme, Has Its Roots in 18th-Century Painting
Practitioner:
The Costume Institute
Date:
May 10 2025
A young Black boy, wearing deep red livery with gold trimming, a gold earring, and red-and-white turban secured with a jeweled brooch, stares out at the viewer. Standing before a ship at sea, he hands a letter, addressed to “Monsieur le chevalier de Rohan, captain of the King’s ships at Rochefort,” to an older white man, dressed in regal-looking steel armor.
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3
The People's Prison
Practitioner:
Indecline Artist Collective
Date:
Mar 31 2018
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.
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7
New Documents
Practitioner:
MOMA
Date:
Feb 28 1967
This modestly scaled exhibition, featuring work by three (then) young and relatively unknown photographers named Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, and Garry Winogrand, had a lasting influence on modern photography.
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1
What Is Obscenity? The Story Of A Good For Nothing Artist And Her Pussy.
Practitioner:
Rokudenashiko
Date:
Jan 1 2014
Rokudenashiko is on a mission to free the vagina. In her native country of Japan, the vaginal slang word “manko” is considered taboo while the penis equivalent, “chinko,” is used freely. Rokudenashiko (the pseudonym of artist Megumi Igarashi) uses her manko art to destigmatize the vagina, using it as the basis for whimsical figurines, iPhone cases, dioramas, and, in her most infamous piece, a kayak.
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3
Mexican Activists Protest Drug War Through Public Art
Practitioner:
Mexican Activists
Date:
Mar 6 2012
Huff Post Latino Politics The Huffington Post While drug-related deaths continue to escalate as the Mexican drug war wages on, Mexican youth have resorted to peaceful and artistic forms of protest against the violence. Last Sunday, activists met on Mexico City's Zocalo Square in an effort to demonstrate against the war. They covered the public space with chalk outlines of human bodies.
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7
2015 Die-In Protest Against Gender Violence
Practitioner:
Women in Black of Madrid
Date:
Sep 2 2015
On September 2nd 2015, a die-in protest to advocate against gender violence was carried out by a group called Women in Black (Olmedilla, 2015). This form of protest was likely inspired by other die-in protests in Spain and represented Spanish women who have died due to domestic violence (DV). A group of women dressed in black clothing gathered on the streets of Madrid. One by one they fell to the ground and lay there, acting dead.
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