The Propaganda Machine is a battle cry delivered in the language of extreme metal. On Sahil Makhija’s fourth solo album as Demonstealer, he takes aim at the right-wing politicians, racist nationalists, disinformation artists, and religious extremists who manipulate and exploit the masses, in his native India and all over the world. He doesn’t mince his words; just about every lyric on the album could easily be printed on a protest sign.
Public transport in South Korea, Kyoung-seok says, is not designed for disabled people: "A normal journey can take twice or three times as long for a disabled person, compared to a non-disabled person." Kyoung-seok was involved in a hang-gliding accident in 1984, making him paraplegic at the age of 24.
The 2013 protests in Turkey started on 28 May 2013, initially to contest the urban development plan for Istanbul's Taksim Gezi Park. The protests were sparked by outrage at the violent eviction of a sit-in at the park protesting the plan.
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.
“OUTRAGE: Artists Respond
to the Election of Donald Trump” an online exhibition of art work by 20 artists
https://sites.google.com/site/outrageartistsrespondtotrump/
Art Hazelwood, Aileen Bassis, Patricia Dahlman, Donna Coleman, Anne Dushanko Dobek,
Food delivery riders are taking industrial action in China over low pay and the recent detention of an unofficial labor leader. The strike comes after Xiong Yan, who headed an unofficial union formed by workers for the food delivery app Ele.me and other services, was detained in Beijing last month. His whereabouts are still unknown.
This past Valentine's Day the Fresh Juice Party pulled another "art prank;" this time sending chocolate shaped as dead American soldiers and sent them to U.S. government officials, especially to the previous Bush administration. This prank while very effective in its message, is not so effective in terms of timing.
The initiators collaborated with the Street Vendor Project (SVP) of the Urban Justice Center to campaign against New York City Council Member Jessica Lappin’s 2010 law project. The bill, intended to revoke permits issued to street vendor trucks if they got parking tickets, was so restrictive that it threatened to put most food trucks out of business.
While adult coloring books are hitting a high note right now in 2016, this isn't the first time this has happened. Back in the 1960s, coloring books were so popular that one of them even made it to the New York Times bestseller list.
However, while modern adult coloring books are very geometric and abstract, intended to help adults destress and relax, adult coloring books from the 1960s were much more political.
A performance art piece by a student who sat in a cage to protest a draconian lockdown of the Beijing Film Academy (BFA) recently went viral, and was censored just as quickly. Like many other Chinese citizens, university students have been living under strict lockdowns, and are beginning to chafe at the restrictions—and at administrators’ lack of responsiveness to students’ concerns.
In the south-western city of Chengdu, by all accounts a city on the edge coping with heavy pollution but also with authorities scrambling to put a lid on simmering discontent. That night police detained a number of artists who managed to stage a silent demonstration, while wearing face masks.
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.
Dogs featured in one ruse to ridicule the regime—pictures of dictator Than Shwe were hung around the necks of the stray dogs that roam the streets of Rangoon. The pictures, which rapidly found their way onto the Internet, are the work of an exiled Burmese satirist who goes by the name of Mr Creator. Downloaded copies of his pictures and cartoons are popular items among cyber dissidents.
Seattle Times:
In 1921, just four years after the Bolshevik Revolution, American journalist Albert Rhys Williams wrote: “The visitor to Russia is struck by the multitude of posters — in factories and barracks, on walls and railway-cars, on telegraph poles — everywhere.”
Gum Election
Gum Election is a guerilla art project which started in New York City in October 2008. It encouraged people to vote during the presidential election in 2008 and also not to spit out their chewing gum carelessly on New York Cities already dirty streets. Now the Gum Election is back and New Yorkers are voting again “who’s sucking the most”.
Decolonizing Architecture/Art Residency (DAAR) is an art and architecture collective set up by Alessandro Petti, Sandi Hilal and Eyal Weizman, based in Palestine. Their work is a critical examination of the role played by architecture in the occupation of the Palestinian territories.
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.
The video for “Borders,” a song off MIA's album Matahdatah, features images recalling all sorts of migrations from the developing world—there are people crossing deserts, fences, and bodies of water. Though much of M.I.A.’s work has been about women and children, this video is filled with brown men: the ultimate bogeyman for many in the West, stereotyped as terrorists, criminals, and job-takers.
Associated Press
BEIJING — The surprising escape of a blind legal activist from house arrest to the presumed custody of U.S. diplomats is buoying China’s embattled dissident community even as the government lashes out, detaining those who helped him and squelching mention of his name on the Internet.
The Georgian government’s attempt in March to impose a repressive Russian-style “foreign agent” law has galvanised the cultural community in the country. Museum workers and artists have been at the forefront of dramatic protests during which police fired water cannons at crowds waving European Union flags, and say they plan to continue the battle despite the government backing down from the legislation.
“It might not seem that an act of public laundry could unsettle a president with a well-deserved reputation for inflexibility, corruption, and brutality. But mass washing ceremonies were a key element in getting rid of Peru’s unpopular president, Alberto Fujimori, after more than a decade in power.
Empathy may be the cornerstone of any Global Justice movement, but how do we cultivate the conditions for empathy to thrive?
The wheelbarrow symbolises something universally useful, practical and pleasingly straightforward. A space to deliver things in an efficient and direct manner - no packaging and completely people powered.
"Sun Mu is not the artist’s actual name. It’s a nom de plume that uses a combination of two Korean words that translate to ‘The Absence of Borders’. It not only represents what he feels is the transcendence of art but also the literal military demarcation line that keeps the Korean people separated.
Beyoncé delivered an intensely, unapologetic celebration of Black and HBCU culture at the Coachella Festival 2 weekends in a row. Not only were her performances some of the best live performances to date but they sent a pretty significant message to the world.
Here are some assessments of this beautiful demonstration of Blackness and Black Girl Magic:
From BBC News:
The Stanford Daily:
There is no word short of “spectacular” that better describes the experience of examining “Pan American Unity,” Diego Rivera’s 1940 mural, housed since 2021 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). The piece is the crux of SFMOMA’s soon-closing exhibition, “Diego Rivera’s America,” curated by James Oles and Maria Castro.