Projects tagged "Activates (people)"

Energizes and organizes people into action. Can include emotion work
Las Carpetas
Practitioner:
CHRISTOPHER GREGORY-RIVERA
Date:
Jan 14 2021
"Las Carpetas looks at the bureaucratic residue of a 40-year-long secret surveillance program that aimed to destroy the Puerto Rican Independence Movement. Through still-lives, archival appropriation, and investigation, Christopher Gregory-Rivera provides a counter-history to the way many understand this period of time and its aftermath.
Brat Summer: From Charli XCX's *Brat* to a Cultural Movement and the Perfect Sneaker Aesthetic
Practitioner:
Charli XCX
Date:
Jun 7 2024
The Brat Summer movement can be directly traced back to the release of Charli XCX's album "Brat" in 2024. Known for her boundary-pushing pop sound and fierce persona, Charli XCX used "Brat" as a platform to explore themes of defiance, self-empowerment and the rejection of societal expectations.
Black Lives Matter meets Animal Crossing: how protesters take their activism into video games
Practitioner:
Adelle
Date:
Aug 7 2020
s street protests against anti-black racism erupted across the globe, Animal Crossing: New Horizons players were taking their own stand. Adelle, a software engineer from New York, decided to create a memorial on her in-game island, decorated with flowers and pixel art portraits of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other black victims of police brutality.
Rokudenashiko and Her Man-Boat
Practitioner:
Rokudenashiko (Megumi Igarashi)
Date:
Mar 1 2014
Megumi Igarashi—who goes by the name Rokudenashiko, or "good-for-nothing" in Japanese—is known as a "vagina artist" in her native Japan. Among the pieces she's created are a vagina chandelier, a remote-controlled vagina car, and a 3-D-printed kayak modeled after her vulva, which she actually rowed in 2014 "as a metaphorical image of life springing from it," she told Glamour through a translator.
The Story of Let Hair Down and her confrontations with the NYPD
Practitioner:
Kanami Kusajima
Date:
Aug 19 2021
Kanami Kusakima, also known as the woman who dances in Washington Square Park with the long black hair and the paint, was happy to allow the Mayor's Office of NYC use her image as a promotional tool for a "post-coivd" New York. Yet, she has had multiple encounters with police who want to shut her performance down.
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.
Tamir Rice legacy shows how artists can sensitively engage with racially charged history
Practitioner:
Cleveland Museum of Art
Date:
Nov 24 2019
CLEVELAND, Ohio – Dana Schutz, the acclaimed New York artist who trained at the Cleveland Institute of Art, famously stirred controversy at the 2017 Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art with “Open Casket,’’ her painting depicting Emmett Till’s body in its coffin. Till, a black 14-year-old, was murdered and mutilated by white men in Mississippi in 1955 after having been falsely accused of flirting with a white woman.
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.
It Looks Like Bansky Has Struck the Wall of England’s Reading Prison, Which Once Detained Oscar Wilde, in His Latest Mural
Practitioner:
Banksy
Date:
Mar 1 2021
"It appears that Banksy has struck again, this time painting the brick wall of the former Reading Prison in Berkshire, England, where Oscar Wilde was jailed for two years over his “indecent” affair with Lord Alfred Douglas.
Wheatfield - A Confrontation
Practitioner:
Agnes Denes
Date:
May 3 1982
Architectural Digest:
Living and Killing in Modern China: "A Touch of Sin"
Practitioner:
Zhangke Jia (贾樟柯)
Date:
May 17 2013
"May you live in interesting times" is the familiar Chinese saying, usually spat out as a curse. You can see why in "A Touch of Sin," a film by renowned director Jia Zhang-ke. That kind of time is now, in the history of his country. With four vignettes inspired by real-life "ripped from the headline" events, he shows what the great economic expansion of China is doing to the majority of its people.
Students protest gender-based violence in Latin America
Practitioner:
Brandeis University
Date:
Mar 21 2023
For some, International Women’s Day is a day for the celebration of the social, cultural, and professional achievements of women. Many others, on the other hand, believe that we are not yet at the point of celebration, arguing that with gender inequality and gender-based violence rampant worldwide, celebrations are not what International Women’s Day should be about.
Beyond AI WeiWei
Practitioner:
International Art Basel Fair
Date:
Mar 27 2015
In a gallery in Hong Kong’s Chai Wan district last week, during the city’s third annual installment of the international Art Basel fair, the Beijing-based artist Huang Rui introduced a new live work called “Red Black White Grey.” At the start of the performance, four affectless women walked onstage wearing trench coats, then disrobed one by one as Huang, who is sixty-three, slathered their bodies with black and then white paint.
Vienna Rye's Zine and Instagram: A Space for Education
Practitioner:
Vienna Rye
Date:
Feb 1 2018
Instagram and Zines have become a tool for activists worldwide, and Vienna Rye (@vrye) has amassed over 126,000 followers by promoting education, mutual aid, and advocacy. They are a self-taught visual artist and revolutionary community organizer, which translates into their artwork. Vienna visualized a better world to build it. To do this, they use her art to confront settler colonialism, racism, and patriarchy.
Papel Machete Fights for Liberation
Practitioner:
Papel Machete
Date:
May 1 2006
The work of a radical theater and puppetry collective, known as Papel Machete, produces and performs throughout Puerto Rico and the United States. Papel Machete was established on May 1, 2006 during protests responding to the government shutdown and political and economic crisis prompted by Puerto Rico’s status as a United States colony.
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.
Trump 'played' by K-pop fans and TikTok users who disrupted Tulsa rally
Practitioner:
K-Pop Fans
Date:
Jun 21 2000
K-pop fans and users of TikTok claimed tickets to Donald Trump’s Saturday night rally in Tulsa then did not use them, as part of a coordinated effort which helped to leave hundreds of seats empty in a 19,000-capacity venue.
Björk to Launch Environmental Sound Installation at Paris’ Pompidou Centre
Practitioner:
Björk and Aleph
Date:
Nov 20 2024
Björk and the French artist Aleph have collaborated on an immersive, AI sound piece that recreates extinct animal calls, set to run at the Pompidou Centre, in Paris, from November 20 until December 9. It will play as visitors travel on escalators in the art museum, as part of its “Biodiversity: Which culture for which future?” forum.
It Never Ends: The Everlasting Battle on Fighting for Female Equality
Practitioner:
https://www.instagram.com/elreydelaruina/
Date:
Mar 8 2018
El Rey de la Ruina, aka The King of Ruin, is a local artist based in Madrid, Spain, who creates artistic activist pieces that range from the impact Covid-19 had on the social life of people in Spain, to the impact gentrification has taken on various groups of people. He tends to utilize (at least in his more recent pieces) bright colors and fun, geometric shapes in his art.
Ice Bucket Challenge
Practitioner:
The ALS Association
Date:
Jul 1 2014
The Ice Bucket Challenge, sometimes called the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, was an activity involving the pouring of a bucket of ice water over a person's head, either by another person or self-administered, to promote awareness of the disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as motor neuron disease and in the U.S. as Lou Gehrig's disease) and encourage donations to research.
Extravaganja
Practitioner:
UMass Student
Date:
Apr 28 1991
Rooted in decades of grassroots organizing, the cannabis reform activism at the University of Massachusetts Amherst is one of the longest-running student-led efforts for marijuana legalization in the United States. Led by the Cannabis Education Coalition (CEC), founded in 1991, this movement combined cultural celebration with political advocacy, using public festivals like Extravaganja to destigmatize cannabis and promote drug policy education.
Birds Watching
Practitioner:
Jenny Kendler
Date:
May 1 2018
Birds Watching I, 2018 was created for Storm King Art Center's Indicators: Artists on Climate Change, in partnership with NRDC, which ran from May–Nov 2018, and featured 100 U.S. climate-threatened species derived from Audubon's first report. That work was reinstalled as a public sculpture in Chicago on the elevated 606 Bloomingdale Trail between St. Louis Ave. and Kimball Ave. and is fully-accessible via the Spaulding Ave. ramp.
Professor tracks rise in racism linked to pandemic
Practitioner:
Russell Jeung, San Francisco State, the Asian Pacific Planning and Policy Council (A3PCON) and Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA)
Date:
Mar 19 2020
Research from Professor and Chair of Asian American Studies Russell Jeung spurs launch of online reporting center to document COVID-19 discrimination.
"We stand in solidarity"-Asian American Artist Confront Racism
Practitioner:
Mike Keo, Monyee Chau, Godzilla: Asian American Art Network
Date:
Apr 2 2020
Unleashed by anxiety over the pandemic, the nationwide rise in anti-Asian hate has served as a call to action for many Asian American artists to take a stand: To actively challenge the historic negative stereotype of the vice- and disease-ridden Yellow Peril; to dismantle the pernicious and divisive myth of the model minority that pits achievements by Asian Americas as judgements against other communities of color; and to advocate for social justice, eq
Dance for George
Practitioner:
Sheen Jamaal, Alison Bedell
Date:
Jun 7 2020
When dancer Sheen Jamaal saw a video of protestors doing the Cupid Shuffle in New Jersey, inspiration struck to do something similar in New York. He immediately called his friend and collaborator Allison “Buttons” Bedell, and the seed for the Dance For George protest was planted.

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