"Since March 2011, the artist Tim Devin has been putting broadsides (small posters) up around the Boston area.
The posters come in different kind of flavors: Street Surveys, Mappy Facts or Poems by Paul Johns.
"The Uni Project aims to do one thing and do it well: temporarily
transform almost any available urban space into a public reading room
and venue for learning. We start with the conviction that books and
learning should be prominent, accessible, and part of what we expect at
street-level in our cities." (From site.)
A public art exhibition designed to raise awareness of solutions to climate change. Cool Globes grew out of a commitment at the Clinton Global Initiative in 2005, and was incorporated as a non-profit organization in 2006. Since that time, Cool Globes premiered in Chicago and went on tour across the country from Washington DC to San Francisco, San Diego, Sundance, Los Angeles, Houston and Cleveland.
In the Si 8 Do project, Seville activists convened in a neglected barrio during the Euromediterranean Conference on Sustainable Cities, which was taking place in Seville.
At the Eighth Avenue subway station, sewer alligators are not an urban legend.
Anyone who’s been through the 14th St./Eighth Ave. station has probably seen the bronze gator sculpture — and probably wondered what it means and why it’s there.
The underground gators — along with dozens of other whimsical creatures — are part of the permanent art installation housed at the intersection of the A,C,E, and L lines.
Creative Time, Social Practice Archive: In 2000 Heavy Trash, an anonymous arts organization of designers, architects, and urban planners, implemented its Aqua Line project throughout various parts of Los Angeles. The project involved the installation of false "Future Station Location" signs in the downtown area, notifying passersby of the impending construction of a subway that would connect the downtown to the Westside.
There are no whistles, no loud speakers, and no placards held up high in this quiet act of subversion. Pimsiri Petchnamrob stands silently in a mass of sharply dressed Bangkok commuters, her hands clutched around a copy of George Orwell's 1984.
Next to her a small group of young men and women, their faces sombre and their heads bowed low, also read books about fictional and real totalitarian worlds in silence.
Architect Didier Faustino strips a billboard down to its skeleton, repurposes it as a swing set, and names it Double Happiness. This "urban reactivation device" needs to become a world wide phenomenon. Imagine billboard swing sets waiting at every destination. The climb looks worth the view.
It was once the most feared address in Berlin, a place easy to enter but very hard to leave. Now the ruins of the former engine room of Nazi terror at Prinz Albrecht Strasse in Berlin have been preserved in a new exhibition space open to the public from tomorrow.
With the intention of recognizing the work of the Latin American carreteros (garbage pickers) that collect recyclable materials in wheel carts, and increase environmental consciousness, artist Mundano created “Pimp My Carroça"
MADE HERE is a documentary series and website focusing on performing artists based in New York City. A collage of intimate interviews, performances and behind-the-scenes footage, MADE HERE mirrors the rich diversity of the artists and communities they serve. It reflects on Performance Artists battle to balance work and art in New York City.
Using Performance Art to Alert Drivers to Look Out for Pedestrians
A series of three street performances taking place this Thursday and Friday carries a simple message - remember to see and stop for pedestrians.
The Protest Banner Lending Library is a space for people to gain skills to learn to make their own banners, a communal sewing space where we support each other’s voices, and a place where people can check out handmade banners to use in protests.
Parió Paula is an all women’s percussion group based in Lima, Peru. These women are truly artistic renegades defying the social norms of Lima’s predominantly male music scene. With a bold message on emphasizing female expression, these ladies have transformed their countless styles of drumming into something effective for their city.
(see full article and short documentary at link below)
On January 12, 2016, Shanghai's temperature dropped to its lowest of the year. A little girl was seen selling matches in the cold wind on Bund street. The little girl, wearing a classic dress, wrapped in an ocher-red scarf and carrying a small bamboo basket full of matches, gave matches to passers-by.
Song Tao and Ji Weiyu, established their collaborative named Birdhead in 2004. Both natives of Shanghai, their work is deeply rooted in their hometown and its evolution amid China’s growth into a global power. The duo takes diaristic snapshots, highlighting their everyday lives in the quickly changing city.
In early 2012, a group of artists, activists and assorted other odd balls got together to form People's Tours. The idea was to give walking tours in the Boston area. Standard enough. But instead of the usual history, we would talk about social justice, contested spaces, important protests, and shady corporations.
So far, the group has consisted of Dave Taber, Heather McCann, Kristin Parker, Neil Horsky, and Tim Devin.
Artist Luke Jerram created a genderless sleeping figure made of glass lying on a piece of cardboard and exhibited in the streets of London. The artist said in an interview "For every person you see sleeping on the streets, there are many others sleeping in hostels, squats and other forms of unsatisfactory and insecure accommodation.
Brooklyn deli re-brands as artisanal emporium to protest rent hike
The owners of an imperiled Boerum Hill deli have staged an “artisanal takeover” of their 25-year-old corner store, re-branding products with yuppified names and jacking up prices to illustrate the kind of shop that could afford the 250-percent rent hike they say the store’s landlord is demanding.
A technological feat has emerged amid the Chilean protests. A video of protestors bringing down a police drone has gone viral on social media sites. These protestors didn't use any physical or gun force to bring the drone down. Instead, they used another form of technology: lasers. A lot of bright green laser beams were pointed in unison at the drone, which can be seen moving erratically, before quickly falling down to Earth.
#SaveNYC is a grassroots, crowd-sourced, DIY movement
to protect and preserve the diversity and uniqueness
of the urban fabric in New York City.
As our vibrant streetscapes and neighborhoods are turned into bland, suburban-style shopping malls, filled with chain stores and glossy luxury retail, #SaveNYC is fighting for small businesses and cultural institutions to remain in place.
The odd spaces exiting under bridges and viaducts around the world are often left aside, urban spatial residues mostly abandoned or occupied informally by homeless people drug users etc. The former pro boxer Nilson Garrido saw the space under the Alcantara Machado viaduct (in the Mooca neighborhood of Sao Paulo) as an opportunity to create a Boxing Academy.
Spread over three institutions — the Bronx Museum of the Arts; El Museo del Barrio in East Harlem; and Loisaida Inc., a cultural center in the East Village — this show departs from straight political history by presenting the Young Lords as a cultural phenomenon as well as an ideological one, with a highly developed instinct for visual self-projection, right down to having an official party photographer, the gifted Hiram Maristany.
In July and August 2013, O Teatrão, a Coimbra based theatre company, presented the project Arruinados, comprising three theatre performances in three abandoned spaces (‘ruins’), one in each of three cities in the Centre region of Portugal located along the Mondego River:Coimbra, Montemoro Velho, and Figueira da Foz.