Projects tagged "Politics & Government"

Edward Snowden Hologram
Practitioner:
The Illuminator
Date:
Apr 7 2015
NEW YORK — Hours after police removed an illicit bust of Edward Snowden from its perch in a Brooklyn park on Monday, artists replaced it with a hologram. The group of artists — who collectively call themselves "The Illuminator" and are not related to the trio behind the original sculpture — used laptops and projection equipment to cast an image of Snowden in a haze of smoke at the spot where the sculpture once stood.
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Ai Weiwei, Stools, 2014. Courtesy of Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin
Practitioner:
Ai Weiwei
Date:
Apr 3 2014
Chinese artist Ai WeiWei has drawn on the stool part of that French surrealist's pioneer work for his latest exhibition, the largest ever devoted to Ai, which opens in Berlin this Thursday. The show, entitled Evidence, is at Berlin's Martin-Gropius-Bau exhibition hall, and consists of either entirely new works, or pieces never seen in Germany before. The exhibition is huge, taking up 3,000 square metres in total and running across 18 rooms.
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Montreal's 'casseroles' cook up a storm over Quebec's anti-protest law
Practitioner:
Casseroles
Date:
May 18 2012
"Every night, at 8pm, during 15 minutes, take a casserole or any object that makes some noise and bang it with all the wrath that Bill 78 inspires you!" Citizens in Quebec adopted 'cacerolazo,' a form of popular protest which consists of a group of people making noise by banging pots, pans, and other utensils in order to call for attention.
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A Piece of Red Cloth - Rock n' Roll Performed in 1989
Practitioner:
Cui Jian
Date:
Jun 19 1989
“I performed at Tiananmen Square in 1989, 15 days before the crackdown. I sang A Piece of Red Cloth (一块红布), a tune about alienation. I covered my eyes with a red cloth to symbolize my feelings. The students were heroes. They needed me, and I needed them. After Tiananmen, however, authorities banned concerts. We performed instead at “parties,” unofficial shows in hotels and restaurants”.
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Avatar in Bil'in
Practitioner:
Palestinian and Israeli activists
Date:
Feb 10 2010
Bil'in is a Palestinian village located 12 kilometres west of the city of Ramallah in the central West Bank. In 2005, the Israeli government began constructing the security barrier in the Bil’in area, and since then approximately 55 percent of Bil’in’s former land has been used for the construction of the Modi’in Illit settlement.
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Activists protest on MRT to show solidarity for ISA detainees
Practitioner:
Jolovan Wham and other activists
Date:
Jun 4 2017
A group of activists took to the trains to protest the horrendous treatment that the Singapore government meted out upon 22 individuals who were detained 30 years ago under an operation that was entitled,"Operation Spectrum" with the use of the Internal Security Act (ISA).
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Young Latinas are using their quinceañeras to get Texas voters to the polls this election
Practitioner:
Ride to the Polls
Date:
Oct 29 2022
A group of young Latinas donned their quince gowns on Oct. 29 and led their families and friends along the streets of San Antonio, urging them to harness their electoral voice and vote in the upcoming midterm elections. The event was part of Ride to the Polls, a national campaign from the nonprofit organization Harness that aims to encourage young BIPOC voter turnout through cultural milestone celebrations.
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Strike Debt: Peoples Bailout Telethon
Practitioner:
Not An Alternative
Date:
Nov 15 2012
Part telethon, part variety show, and part party, the People’s Bailout Telethon kicked off the Rolling Jubilee, a project by the Occupy-offshoot Strike Debt. The Rolling Jubilee raises funds through grassroots donations, buys debt for pennies on the dollar, but instead of collecting it, abolishes it. The project works within the system of the secondary debt market in order to undermine it.
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Iranian Documentary ‘The Gardener', on Religion and Baha’i Garden
Practitioner:
Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Date:
Feb 1 2012
The Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf opens “The Gardener” with the declaration: “I am an agnostic filmmaker.” From anyone else, this might seem like a simple statement, but not from the complex Mr. Makhmalbaf. In 1974, when he was 17, religious and involved in a guerrilla group, he stabbed a policeman, for which he received a bullet to the stomach and a prison sentence.
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Problem Air Drop
Practitioner:
Ghana Think Tank
Date:
Jun 1 2016
In 2013, Ghana ThinkTank received a Creative Capital Award for Emerging Fields, enabling them to begin the multi-year ThinkTank at the Border project. In this project, they are collecting problems from civilian border patrols like the Minutemen, "Patriot" groups, and Nativist organizations, and bringing them to be solved by think tanks of undocumented workers in San Diego and recently deported immigrants in Tijuana.
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Printing a Revolution: The Posters of Paris ’68
Practitioner:
École des Beaux-Arts
Date:
Jan 1 1968
During the major strikes and student uprisings in France that year, the École des Beaux-Arts turned itself into a workshop for revolutionary messages.
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Toyi-Toyi
Practitioner:
Soutth African protesters
Date:
Jan 1 1976
Toyi-toyi is a Southern African dance originally from Zimbabwe by Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) forces that has long been used in political protests in South Africa. Toyi-toyi could begin as the stomping of feet and spontaneous chanting during protests that could include political slogans or songs, either improvised or previously created. Some sources claim that South Africans learned it from Zimbabweans.
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Who killed Rodrigo Rosenberg?
Practitioner:
Rodrigo Rosenberg and Guatemalan civilians
Date:
May 2 2009
In May of 2009 lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg was murdered in Guatemla City. A video was released of Rosenberg directed to the Guatemalan public. If you are watching this, he said, I have been murdered by the president Alvaro Colom. The video caused an uproar and sparked protests throughout the city.
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How Protest Art Is Helping Fuel the Historic Demonstrations Erupting Across China
Practitioner:
Chinese art students
Date:
Nov 28 2022
Students at art colleges across China are taking a strong stance in the midst of the largest wave of protests to have gripped the country since 1989. As demonstrations against the government’s strict Covid-19 policies erupted across the country over the weekend, students rallied on campuses to create protest art and graffiti.
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Bus Regulation: The Musical – The Trilogy
Practitioner:
Ellie Harrison
Date:
Nov 13 2022
Bus Regulation: The Musical (2019 – 2023) is a Trilogy of roller-skating Musicals inspired by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘Starlight Express’ performed in three of the UK’s biggest post-industrial city-regions – Greater Manchester, Strathclyde and Merseyside – in collaboration wi
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“Rice Bunny” (米兔) #MeToo Code on Chinese Social Media
Practitioner:
Chinese Netizens
Date:
Apr 5 2018
Women in China are covertly resisting government crackdowns on discussions over their Me Too movement with a clever workaround. The phrase “rice bunny” (米兔), pronounced as “mi tu,” has popped up on social media networks after censors removed posts that mentioned sexual harassment or the hashtag #MeToo. While those phrases are heavily monitored, Rice Bunny isn’t.
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The Swasticar
Practitioner:
Everyone Hates Elon
Date:
Feb 26 2025
It appears Elon Musk has enemies all over the world. The tech billionaire — currently the planet’s richest man and CEO of Tesla — has integrated himself into U.S. politics, becoming Donald Trump‘s head of a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and aligned himself with far-right politicians in Europe.
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Modi, A Message To You
Practitioner:
Ska Vengers
Date:
Apr 6 2014
Mode, A Message To You 
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Artists in Seven South American Cities Reflect on Past Dictatorships
Practitioner:
various groups
Date:
Mar 23 2018
*image* Gabriela Golder, “Letters” (photo by Federico Lo Bianco, courtesy Parque de la Memoria)
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Deepfake Activism: Campaign Uses AI to Target Germany's Far-Right Party
Practitioner:
Zentrum für Politische Schönheit (ZPS)
Date:
Nov 23 2023
The German government is considering legal action after a deep fake video of Chancellor Olaf Scholz calls for the far-right AfD party to be banned.
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Takeaways from J. Cole's New Album, KOD
Practitioner:
J. Cole
Date:
Apr 20 2018
In keeping with his activist turn on 2016’s 4 Your Eyez Only, J. Cole’s new album, KOD, is an exploration of addiction. The title has three different meanings that all speak to this aim: Kids On Drugs, King OverDosed, and Kill Our Demons. Each feeds into the next in this narcotic odyssey.
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5 Broken Camera
Practitioner:
Emad Burnat, Guy Davidi
Date:
Jan 1 2005
In 2005, Emad Burnat got a video camera to record the birth of his son. That same year, Israel's security barrier went right through his village of Bil'in in the West Bank. The fence cut off some fields and olive groves on the other side. When protests broke out against the establishment of the barrier, Burnat became the unofficial cameraman for the weekly anti-wall protests that drew support from around the world.
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EASY TO ASSEMBLE - Spain's Podemos Leftist Party Printed its Program as an Ikea Catalog so Voters Will Actually Read It
Practitioner:
Podemos
Date:
Jun 9 2016
Whether or not they follow politics, it’s fair to assume most people don’t actually read electoral programs. Podemos, Spain’s growing leftwing party, which got nearly 21% of the votes in last year’s elections, doesn’t think that’s good, so it adopted an unusual marketing approach to tackle that problem: it printed the program as an Ikea catalogue (pdf, link in Spanish).
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Emergency Cinema and the Dignified Image: Cell Phone Activism and Filmmaking in Syria
Practitioner:
Syrian citizens
Date:
Jan 1 2011
One of the most significant aspects of the wave of protests and uprisings that began in Syria in 2011 was the use of the cell phone camera as a tool of documentation, political activism, and creative expression.
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Truisms
Practitioner:
Jenny Holzer
Date:
Jul 5 1978
Holzer's Truisms have become part of the public domain, displayed in storefronts, on outdoor walls and billboards, and in digital displays in museums, galleries, and other public places, such as Times Square in New York. Multitudes of people have seen them, read them, laughed at them, and been provoked by them. That is precisely the artist's goal.
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