On March 24, 1992, a fake inter-office memorandum from the then Mayor of the City of New York, David Dinkins, was leaked to the press. A handwritten Post-it note was attached which read "Thought you might be interested in seeing what the Mayor's up to! 'Mayor to Sell the Brooklyn Bridge!' Think this will fly?? I love New York!!!"
The snapshots are thrust at us urgently, as if they were passports being shown at a border crossing, official proofs of national identity. Mostly, they are prosaic pictures of family members or houses. Sometimes a diploma will be offered up instead, or theater reviews clipped from newspapers or a membership card to a duck-hunting club. Later, other, more frightening, pictures will be shown, but they all serve the same function.
NEW YORK, April 21, 2012 -- Homelessness is a great American tragedy. Our financial system and government have let us down and we, together, must take a stand to change the way the system works. With over 11 million homes underwater and millions in foreclosure, people are frightened, distressed and angry.
At Souvenir Stands, Selling Tourists on Ending Stop-and-Search
By COREY KILGANNON
New York Times, City Blog, August 27, 2012
Last week, a 37-year-old artist from Oakland, Calif., named Aaron Gach joined the crowds of tourists swarming the sidewalk souvenir stands set up around the perimeter of Battery Park in Lower Manhattan.
In an effort to prepare against chemical, biological and radiological attacks in the New York subway, the New York Police Department has announced plans to release harmless gases into the city’s streets and subway stations to better understand the pathways of airborne contaminants. Officials will use more than 200 sensors, set up throughout all five boroughs, to track these benign gases as they disperse.
The Peace Piece was conceived by artist Adelle Lutz as a reaction to the declaration of the American war with Iraq in the Spring of 2003. Lutz combined her talents as a costume designer and artist to create a project that would remind the Americna public that the majority of war victims suffering in Iraq were women and children.
A crew of occupiers makes a home of a Bank of Americalobby with a couch, a coffee table, a rug and a pottedplant. "Bank of America took our homes so we though we'dmove in here!"
TED TALK:
I consider it my life's mission to convey the urgency of climate change through my work. I've traveled north to the Arctic to the capture the unfolding story of polar melt, and south to the Equator to document the subsequent rising seas. Most recently, I visited the icy coast of Greenland and the low-lying islands of the Maldives, connecting two seemingly disparate but equally endangered parts of our planet.
As part of a nationwide day of action against fossil fuel pipelines from Pennsylvania to Texas, several hundred New Yorkers succeeded Monday in halting construction of a radioactive pipeline threatening the West Village--after unrelenting daily vigils at the Spectra pipeline site over the past several weeks.
Embody the Message: Occupy the Mind This t-shirt / language project began in March 2006, when a small group of artists and activists decided to embody the historic words “WE WILL NOT BE SILENT” while doing a public action in New York City.
Last night, over 40 protesters staged an intervention inside the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan during Saturday night’s pay-what-you-wish admission hours.
It’s time to deport the Statue of Liberty.
That’s the latest mission for Legals for the Preservation of American Culture, an organization which has begun the “Deport the Statue” campaign for the removal of Lady Liberty through four Twitter accounts and a video that hopes to prove the iconic statue is not only an undocumented French immigrant but is “taking a job away from a qualified American statue.”
"Cat House for Dogs," said an ad in the Village Voice, "featuring a savory selection of hot bitches..." Along with this ad, a press release was sent to the media saying that if your dog graduated from obedience school, if it was his birthday, or if he was just horny, for $50 you could get your dog sexually gratified. This was not a breeding service, but purely a sexual pleasure service.
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.
The Whitney Museum of American Art’s pay-what-you-wish Fridays are typically busy. For two-and-a-half hours out of the 53 the museum is open each week, visitors can enter without paying the usual $25 admission fee, a brief and temporary, but recurrent, leveling of the playing field for art lovers.
JAY SHELLS DROPS “RAP QUOTES,”
HIS MOST SITE-SPECIFIC STREET ART PROJECT YET
By Aymann Ismail | March 25, 2013 - 12:30PM
After schooling New Yorkers on etiquette via numerous unsanctioned interventions, artist Jay Shells channeled his love of hip hop music and his uncanny sign-making skills towards a brand new project: “Rap Quotes.”
In mid-November, the nonprofit group Asian American Federation released 10 travel posters designed to subvert a question that can instantly get under the skin of any person of Asian descent in the United States: “Where are you really from?”