Projects tagged "Performance"

The Hong Kong Artist Who Got Fired From McDonald’s
Practitioner:
Luke Ching
Date:
Feb 22 2025
On a recent eight-hour shift at a McDonald’s in Hong Kong, Luke Ching, 52, wiped tables, cleared trays of half-eaten fries, emptied cups of soda and milk tea and lugged bulging trash bags to the dumpster. For him, the main goal of the part-time work was not making ends meet. It was research for his main pursuit: using art to advocate for better treatment of people in menial jobs in a city with one of the widest income gaps in the world.
Ge Yulu: Eye Contact
Practitioner:
Ge Yulu
Date:
May 1 2016
Ge Yulu’s artistic practice playfully pulls at the strings of a social system that, although seemingly all-encompassing, is in fact a malleable structure consisting of individual human beings. For his 2016 project Eye Contact, Ge positioned himself in front of a surveillance camera and stared directly into the lens for hours, then negotiated with a security guard to buy the footage.
Organization for the Democratization of the Visual Arts
Practitioner:
DHAdmann
Date:
Jun 10 2026
ODBK is an activist organization that aims to create a more equal, diverse, inclusive, transparent and democratic art world. ODBK seeks to do this by diversify and increase the number of people who understand and engage with contemporary art.
Walkthrough
Practitioner:
Walid Raad
Date:
Oct 12 2015
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.
Fake Drone Crash on UCSD Campus
Practitioner:
Ricardo Dominguez
Date:
Dec 12 2007
Students at the University of California-San Diego were surprised when an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, commonly referred to as a drone, crashed in the middle of campus — or at least they thought that’s what happened.
How Art Gives Shape to Cultural Change
Practitioner:
Thelma Golden
Date:
Jul 2 2009
Thelma Golden, curator at the Studio Museum in Harlem, talks through three recent shows that explore how art examines and redefines culture. The "post-black" artists she works with are using their art to provoke a new dialogue about race and culture -- and about the meaning of art itself.
Student flash mobs in Thailand
Practitioner:
students
Date:
Sep 20 2020
"Thai artists and art students are on the frontline of their country’s swelling pro-democracy movement, calling for reforms of Thailand’s military-backed government, and breaking both taboo and national law to criticise the nation’s monarchy.
Monopoly Man
Practitioner:
Ian Madrigal
Date:
Dec 10 2018
On Tuesday morning, when Google CEO Sundar Pichai testified before the House Judiciary Committee about his company’s data collection practices, there was a familiar mustachioed face in the crowd. To most people, this person — also wearing a monocle and toting a bag of cash — is none other than the famous board game character most commonly known as Monopoly Man.
"The Little Match Girl" in Shanghai -"One Box of Matches to Warm a Child"
Practitioner:
Date:
Jan 26 2016
On January 12, 2016, Shanghai's temperature dropped to its lowest of the year. A little girl was seen selling matches in the cold wind on Bund street. The little girl, wearing a classic dress, wrapped in an ocher-red scarf and carrying a small bamboo basket full of matches, gave matches to passers-by.
The Invisible Man
Practitioner:
Liu Bolin
Date:
Jan 1 2005
“My intention was not to disappear in the environment but instead to let the environment take possession of me” Said Liu Bolin. With his strong photography, Bolin vanishes into the city, creating a powerful statement about our relationship, as humans, to our surroundings.
Tletl (Mexican Nahua Dance) Performance
Practitioner:
Kalpulli Yaocenoxtli
Date:
May 31 2020
The group known as Kalpulli Yaocenoxtli, which practices Mexican Nahua dance, song and drumming, is a frequent presence at Black Lives Matter protests in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Its dancers first took to the streets in solidarity with the movement after the death of Jamar Clark, who was shot and killed by Minneapolis police in 2015.
Social ID Bureau
Practitioner:
Tobias Leingruber
Date:
Mar 2 2012
Intro The Social ID Bureau is handing-out personal identification cards for a limited number of Facebook Social Network citizens, interested in alpha testing. Be the first among your friends to pick-up your social identification card and explore the future. What happend?
Joey Skaggs: novelty silliness and well-packaged rebellion
Practitioner:
Joey Skaggs
Date:
May 9 2013
In July 1976, prankster and satirist Joey Skaggs, calling himself Giuseppe Scaggoli, appeared before a rabid crowd, dressed in sharp-lapeled finery. He had some unfortunate news: that day’s planned auction of rock star sperm was cancelled due to a mysterious theft. All he could offer in the way of comfort were his assurances that more donations were to be sought as soon as possible.
Anti-Trump Aerobics
Practitioner:
Margaret McCarthy and Liat Berdugo
Date:
May 3 2017
Alley Cat Books, located in the heart of San Francisco's Mission District, is ordinarily a quiet space for book lovers to peruse multicolored shelves for their next literary adventure. But on Sunday, the small bookstore buzzed with energy as a group of leggings-clad Bay Area residents protested Donald Trump's presidency in the form of a sweaty cardio workout.
Tournons le dos ! / Turn our back ! [April 22, 2012 – April 23, 2017]
Practitioner:
Lino Tonelotto, the 22avril2012 collective, the 23avril2017 collective.
Date:
Apr 15 2012
In France, abstention, vote of protest, lassitude or violent reactions rise from all over the crisis of our "representative democracy ». What about thinking the other way round ? What if we reappropriate the iconography of the election?
Soviet Disco
Practitioner:
Soviet Union
Date:
Jan 1 1977
The origin of the Soviet disco tradition, one that lasts to this day in the DJ-laden nightlife of Moscow and St. Petersburg, lay in the Stalinist era. Western culture – modernism, cubism, rock and roll, all that good stuff – was “decadent,” perhaps even a plot by Trotskyists or the Western intelligentsia to dull the steely nerves of the Soviet people. But dancing – this was a-OK.
Inmates Perform Valmiki Pratibha
Practitioner:
Calcutta Presidency Jail, Alokananda Roy
Date:
Jul 7 2007
Alokananda Roy walked into Calcutta's Presidency Jail on International Women's Day, 2007. The Indian classical dancer had been invited to watch female inmates perform, but it was the men who caught her eye. "They shook me," she says. "Their body language — it was as though they had no future, nothing to look forward to."
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.
As the Taliban Curbs Women’s Rights, Advocates Demand Action
Practitioner:
Afghan women walk along a road in Kandahar, Afghanistan, on July 29, 2022.
Date:
Feb 15 2023
In December – as many around the globe were preparing for the holidays – Sama, a former attorney, remained hunkered down in her house in Kabul, Afghanistan, trying to comprehend how her world had changed.
Horas por la educación, Hours for education
Practitioner:
Chilean students
Date:
Jun 13 2011
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.
The Most Shocking Image I Can Remember Is Seeing Myself in the Mirror
Practitioner:
Ai Weiwei
Date:
Apr 3 2011
It can be important to reflect on the artistic recounts of activists experiences under state imprisonment. In a revealing interview with Artspace, Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei reflects on his 81-day secret detention in 2011 and the psychological strategies used to dismantle identity and autonomy.
Pigasus for President
Practitioner:
Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Yippies
Date:
Aug 23 1968
At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968, the Yippies (Youth International Party) nominated a pig for president, with the campaign pledge: “They nominate a president and he eats the people. We nominate a president and the people eat him.” This porcine political maneuver was the brainchild of sixties activists Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin.
Waiting for Godot
Practitioner:
Paul Chan
Date:
Dec 2 2007
“IN an instant all will vanish and we’ll be alone once more, in the midst of nothingness.” When the actor Wendell Pierce spoke these words in performances of “Waiting for Godot” here last month, he really was in the middle of nothingness, or what looked a lot like it.
Mashrou’ Leila
Practitioner:
Mashrou’ Leila
Date:
Sep 1 2018
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.
"HALT"
Practitioner:
Jamar Roberts
Date:
Jan 24 2018
In Halt, a new solo piece premiered at NYU Gallatin, dancer and choreographer Jamar Roberts examined the language of the body in protest. The work focuses on what it means for human beings-the committed individual and the organized collective- to be equally the subjects of progressive change and the targets of unjust corporeal punishment.

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