"He's been running all his life, running for freedom, running for peace.It started when he ran away from home at the age of eight. Later he ran away from his homeland, Iran, and spent seven years on a bicycle, pedaling 49,700 miles across 55 countries. In 2002, he reached America. He now lives in a tent in Death Valley. It's been nearly 10 years since Reza Baluchi escaped from Iran.
A young man melting into a puddle of himself is something you don’t see everyday, much less in a busy public square. Yet this humourous but surprisingly effective spectacle is the latest effort by the Red Cross of Argentina to raise awareness about climate change.
MoMA presents the first comprehensive American survey of the leading contemporary artist Walid Raad (b. 1967, Lebanon), featuring his work in photography, video, sculpture, and performance from the last 25 years.
"Gardens Speak is an interactive sound installation containing the oral histories of ten ordinary people who were buried in Syrian gardens. Each narrative has been carefully constructed with the friends and family members of the deceased to retell their stories as they themselves may have recounted it. They are compiled with found audio that evidences their final moments.
Students dressed as Israeli soldiers stopped other students, ordered them to the ground, and blindfolded them in a demonstration that drew multiple campus groups to a standoff on College Walk Thursday afternoon.
The Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine set up mock checkpoints—to resemble those manned by the Israeli army in the West Bank—drawing crowds and counter-protests for several hours.
A collective resistance movement dedicated to reasserting communal ownership of common spaces, Reclaim the Streets staged its first action on Camden High Street in 1995, when activists closed the road to vehicle traffic to make way for a street party. Combining the tactics of non-violent direct action with 90's UK rave culture, organizers kept the location secret until the last moment to preempt police interception.
CAIRO — Seven Egyptians were arrested on charges of promoting homosexuality after concertgoers waved rainbow-colored flags at a rock concert in Cairo last week, Egyptian officials said.
The arrests were the latest assault on social freedoms in Egypt under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, whose government has imposed harsh restrictions on free speech and led an aggressive campaign against gays.
The Miss Rockaway Armada is both a collection of
individuals and an idea. At its most basic, the idea is this: we’re
going to float down the Mississippi River from Minneapolis to New
Orleans on rafts that we built ourselves. The crew can be called many
things: artists, musicians, builders, travelers, organizers, dreamers.
Ask one of the people who help build and move these crafts for the
On October 2nd 2012, World Farmed Animals Day, three animal rights activists in Israel got branded with a hot steel brand, in the same way that farmed animals are branded in factory farms.
Tong Wenmin is a Chinese performance artist affiliated with works exploring movement, interaction, and humanity. Her art is a relationship between human behavior and the natural world, a round dynamic between physicality and environmental elements. One of her most compelling works, "FLYING THE WIND," is outstanding in merging performance art with a deeper exploration of the interaction between humans and nature.
The Harlem Festival of Culture not only pays homage to the past but also envisions a brighter future. It serves as a platform to showcase the rich diversity and dynamism of Harlem's artistic community, while also acting as a catalyst for social change and community empowerment. The festival boasts a lineup of artists from various genres and backgrounds, including jazz, soul, hip-hop, gospel, blues, rock, Latin, and Afrobeat.
The work of a radical theater and puppetry collective, known as Papel Machete, produces and performs throughout Puerto Rico and the United States. Papel Machete was established on May 1, 2006 during protests responding to the government shutdown and political and economic crisis prompted by Puerto Rico’s status as a United States colony.
Bea Camacho is a visual and performance artist from the Philippines, the provocation of whose work is described as exciting and strikingly into identity, intimacy, and isolation. Her art is known to delve into the human complex of experiences and offer a layered narrative within its visual and performance medium.
At 12:00 noon (New York time) on November 19, 2016, Chinese artist Ning Kong, wearing a wedding dress with hundred dove, appeared at the 911 site in New York. Even though the theme of performance art is calling for peace, the police banned it and showed the handcuffs because doing performance art was not allowed at the 9/11 site. So Kong Ning turned to Times Square, New York, successfully completing her performance art.
"Around 30 people gathered on Victoria Island Monday morning to advocate for the return of the endangered American Eel to the Ottawa River.
The event mixed art with activism, with attendees carrying windsocks decorated to look like as eels as they marched to Parliament Hill.
The marquee creation was an 8.2-meter-long replica of an eel, which had to be carried by six walkers."
Lil Baby, a popular American rapper, released a song titled "The Bigger Picture" in 2020 in response to the Black Lives Matter movement and the protests that took place following the murder of George Floyd by a police officer.
Matthew “Levee” Chavez sits at a table in New York City’s Union Square, sporting a thrift store suit and tie, holding a sign that reads “Subway Therapy.” This act of social practice, which started as an invitation for conversation, went viral after he set up shop at the subway the day after the 2016 presidential election. He wrote “Express Yourself” on a Post-It and stuck it to the tiled wall.
On November 13, 2012, Joey Skaggs dressed up as Santa Claus and rode a three-wheeler to the United Nations in New York, NY. Skaggs’ bike was equipped with a fake mobile rocket launcher and a sign that read “ Peace on earth, or else!” A group of elves also accompanied Santa to the UN, and they alternated between handing out green toy soldiers to bystanders and singing their altered version of Jingle Bells, as seen below:
Adrian Piper disguised her identity, changing her race, sex, and social class in order to experiment in public situations and gauge people’s reactions. She investigated how outwardly visible identity markers (like skin color) impacted others’ perceptions of her character. By manipulating her (apparent) identity to produce reactions, she demonstrated the power and influence of stereotypes (Piper, 1996).
CultureStrike, the national arts and activism group, teamed up with undocumented youth and NY-based artist Miguel Luciano to hold a kite-based symbolic public art project in Washington D.C.
Chilean students ran for 1,800 consecutive hours around Chile's presidential palace, La Moneda, from June 13 to August 27, 2011 to protest the cost of education. The 1,800 hours stand for the 1,800,000,000 Chilean pesos, or approximately US$4 million which would cover the cost of higher education for 300,000 students. They carried Chilean flags and signs with "Free Education Now" written on them.
“Gravity of Equilibrium” revolves around Mass Shootings in USA. Mass shootings and guns are an incredibly divisive topics, one that is nearly impossible to engage opposing viewpoints in a discussion about. The majority of gun related debates devolve into charged arguments with parties feeling threatened. This effectively creates an environment where new perspectives and inputs are unable to be processed.
“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.
grrrRoar! Ecology is sexier when you focus on women and fanged beasts. Fashions in leopard print help us make that connection globally and online. Polluters at least pause at the reminder that nature isn't dead yet and in fact stirs the same passion as the woman you just met who's saying something about "Fanged Wilds"!
One of the most critical artists on the contemporary art scene is Zhang Huan. His works are of great social insight and unique in how he applies his artistic expression. He thus makes them an almost visual feast with a peek into the multilevel structure of modern society. One such work is the masterpiece "Family Tree," which shows how art can mould our social cognition through multilayered symbolism and profound imagery.