Projects tagged "Corporate Power"

The Yes Men - Bhopal Hoax
Practitioner:
The Yes Men
Date:
Dec 3 2004
“I am very, very happy to announce that for the first time, Dow is accepting full responsibility for the Bhopal catastrophe. We have a $12 billion plan to finally, at long last, fully compensate the victims, including the 120,000 who may need medical care for their entire lives, and to fully and swiftly remediate the Bhopal plant site,” said the supposed Dow Chemical spokesman, Jude Finisterra, on Dec. 3, 2004, during an appearance on BBC World.
Illuminating Rana Plaza: NYFW Protest and Projection
Practitioner:
99 Pickets, The Illuminator art collective, Ismail Ferdous
Date:
Feb 6 2014
To protest unethical labor practices in Bangladesh, specifically unsafe working conditions, 99 Pickets, The Illuminator, and Ismail Ferdous took action during New York Fashion Week.
$100 bills try to rush the White House
Practitioner:
Represent.us
Date:
Apr 13 2013
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_wlSzkOlFE Anti-corruption activists unite: The Tea Party and Bold Progressives fighting side-by-side On Saturday, April 13, 2013 at 2 p.m., hundreds of activists marched K Street in Washington D.C. (aka “Influence Alley”) dressed as giant $100 bills.
untitled (Long Live the Real King)
Practitioner:
Unknown
Date:
Feb 24 2025
An A.I. generated video of Donald Trump sucking Elon Musk's toes was broadcast at the Department of Housing and Development headquarters in DC in February of 2025. As an actual art piece, we can debate if the video itself is art. However, the caption, subject matter of the fake video, and chosen location to broadcast is definitely a strategic work of creative activism. From the New York Times:
'0 to 1939 in 3 seconds’: Why Anti-Elon Musk Satire Is Flourishing in Britain
Practitioner:
Center for Political Beauty and others
Date:
Apr 5 2025
The mischievous posters began appearing all over London in the past two months. On the side of an East London bus stop, one of them shows Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, emerging from a Tesla’s roof with his hand pointing upward in a straight-armed salute. “Goes from 0 to 1939 in 3 seconds,” the ad reads. “Tesla. The Swasticar.”
Michael Moore demands nationwide boycott of Walgreens for not selling abortion pill: 'Bigotry and misogyny'
Practitioner:
Michael Moore
Date:
Mar 6 2023
Filmmaker Michael Moore has called for a nationwide boycott of Walgreens after the pharmacy chain announced it would not sell abortion pills in 20 states. n February, 20 Republican state attorneys general wrote to Walgreens Corp. threatening legal action if Walgreens provides the abortion pill, mifepristone, to consumers in their pharmacies across the U.S.
"Hail to the Thief" : political art or creative activism?
Practitioner:
The Goodman Gallery
Date:
May 20 2012
Established Cape Town based artist Brett Murray returns to Goodman Gallery Johannesburg with Hail to the Thief II. This body of satirical work continues his acerbic attacks on abuses of power, corruption and political dumbness seen in his 2010 Cape Town show Hail to the Thief.
Protesters Block Access to Private Prison Company’s South Florida Headquarters
Practitioner:
Geo Group Protestors
Date:
Dec 3 2019
At least nine protesters were arrested during a protest Tuesday at Geo Group headquarters — a Florida-based private prison company that operates facilities nationwide.
The artist behind ‘Fearless Girl’ wants to spread her message far and wide. A lawsuit is getting in the way
Practitioner:
Kristen Visbal, CNN
Date:
Feb 17 2022
CNN — Five years after first appearing on the cobblestones of Wall Street, the “Fearless Girl” statue – a petite but controversial symbol for gender equality – is taking on a new digital form.
Monopoly Man
Practitioner:
Amanda Werner
Date:
Oct 4 2017
During Wednesday’s Senate hearing on the Equifax data breach, a protester dressed as the “Monopoly Man” from the board game photobombed Equifax CEO Richard Smith’s testimony. While the CEO discussed his company’s breach that affected 145.5 million people, the protester gazed skeptically through a monocle at the back of his head.
</3 Less than Three and Up Srei: Art and the Cambodian Worker Struggle
Practitioner:
Kat Eng
Date:
Jan 17 2014
On a freezing Friday in January, Khmer-American artist Kat Eng sits in front of retail giant H&M’s Time Square store working on a manual sewing machine. For eight hours, Eng stitches together U.S. dollar bills while wearing a surgical mask and bloodstained shirt. Her performance “</3 Less Than Three” protests the way fast fashion and consumer culture creates oppressive conditions for Khmer workers.
The Teddy Bear Catapult
Practitioner:
Deconstructionist Institute for Surreal Topology (DIST)
Date:
Apr 1 2001
It was a classic summit protest at the height of the anti-globalization movement. Thirty-four heads of state from across the Americas were gathering in Québec City to negotiate the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), a sweeping trade deal with deeply anti-democratic provisions.
“up yours” share trading
Practitioner:
James Gubb
Date:
Nov 9 2017
JAMES GUBB was finishing off the knuckles when the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) shut him down. Trading single shares between two accounts, Mr Gubb had managed to “draw” the image of a fist with an upright middle finger onto the share-price chart for Oakbay Resources and Energy Limited, a company controlled by the Gupta brothers, cronies of President Jacob Zuma, that is at the centre of allegations of “state capture” in South Africa.
Security-1998 Hacked CANTV database
Practitioner:
Yucef Mehri
Date:
Aug 17 1999
In 1998 Hacker-Poet-Artist Yucef Mehri breached the security of CANTV at the time the largest telecommunications company in Venezuela. He was able to access the personal data kept by the company which contained the names, addresses, phone numbers, working places, and even checking accounts, credit cards, and expiration dates of it's customers.
Occupy Small Street
Practitioner:
Arts x Activism
Date:
May 22 2012
First Inspired by a doll-sized action in Siberia, #occupysmallstreet staged its first little protest in Melbourne's City Square, as part of #F12, International Art + Occupy Day. Signs are made collectively, by regular Arts x Activism and members of the public (adults and children) who stop by and have something to add.
The Peoples Bank of Govanhill
Practitioner:
Ailie Rutherford, Katherine MacKinnon, Carmen Sawers
Date:
Sep 21 2019
The People’s Bank of Govanhill uses social and activist art practices to involve people in re-imagining the local economy, looking at how we can put feminist economics into practice in the local community.
Politics, activism and cool cats by artist Meredith Stern at AS220 Project Space
Practitioner:
Meredith Stern
Date:
Feb 1 2020
“I really wanted to highlight the strength of the human condition. When we work together we’re stronger,” Meredith Stern says of her exhibition “Cooperation Cats: 10 years, 20 prints” at AS220’s Project Space, 93 Mathewson St., Providence, from Feb. 1 to 29.
Flip the Debt Clock
Practitioner:
Flip the Debt
Date:
Feb 13 2013
On Monday, a grassroots, anti–corporate tax-dodging coalition called Flip the Debt crashed a "Fix the Debt" party at St. Anselm's College in New Hampshire hosted by Honeywell CEO David Cote to tell the gathered deficit hawk disciples that paying their "damn taxes" would be a better solution than crippling the nation with fiscal austerity measures.
Balls Across America
Practitioner:
The Yes Men
Date:
Jan 1 2008
The Survivaball made its first appearance in 2006, when "Halliburton representatives" attended a conference on catastrophic climate change and demonstrated the functionality of the large inflatable suits ("a gated community for one"), which keep corporate managers safe from global warming. Not long afterward, in Berlin, the Yes Men learned they also work as disruptive, arrest-resistant tools.
Photographing Every Disappearing Manhattan Bodega
Practitioner:
Gail Victoria Braddock Quagliata
Date:
May 11 2015
"is a conceptual documentary project in which I photographed every Mom and Pop-style cornershop on the island of Manhattan as quickly as possible, as I walked each block in the city ( CLICK FOR A MAP of my route). I fear these veritable microcosms of NYC will be swallowed in the presently swelling wave of corporate homogeny.
José Bové dismantles a McDonald's
Practitioner:
Andreja Kulunčić, Ahmet Ögüt
Date:
Aug 12 1999
José Bové, a sheep farmer/activist in Aveyron in the Midi-Pyrénées region of France, is a modern day Astérix, a mythical Gaul who drubbed foreign intruders centuries ago. In Bové's case, the intruder was McDonald's, the American fast food chain.
Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir
Practitioner:
Reverend Billy
Date:
May 25 1950
Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir is a New York City based radical performance community, with 50 performing members and a congregation in the thousands. We are wild anti-consumerist gospel shouters and Earth loving urban activists who have worked with communities on four continents defending community, life and imagination. Our Devils over the 15 years of our "church" have remained the same: Consumerism and Militarism.
In Response to Controversial Funder, Protestors Rechristen Met Museum Plaza
Practitioner:
Occupy Museums, The Illuminator
Date:
Sep 9 2014
On Tuesday evening, at the end of an action staged by Occupy Museums at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to protest the unveiling of the David H. Koch Plaza, three members of The Illuminator were arrested. Earlier in the evening, police had moved protestors to a cordoned area on the opposite side of the street from the museum; a substantial police presence remained throughout the evening, but no other arrests took place.
1.5 °C is Dead! Climate Revolution Now!
Practitioner:
Scientist Rebellion
Date:
Apr 6 2022
A NASA scientist and three others were arrested in Los Angeles on Wednesday after chaining themselves to the doors of a Chase Bank office building.
The Sugar Sphinx
Practitioner:
Kara Walker
Date:
May 1 2014
Over the past twenty-five years or so, ever since her spectacular New York début at the Drawing Center, in 1994, the now forty-four-year-old artist Kara Walker’s visual production—sculptures, cutouts, drawings, films—has been diaristic in tone.

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