Between the late 1960s and 1970s numerous alternative printshops were set up across the UK, with the founding objective of producing, providing or facilitating the cheap and safe printing of radical materials. They were started by libertarians, aligned and non-aligned Marxists, anarchists and feminists, and as such were constitutive of the fractured and fractious politics of the post-1968 left.
Graffiti art is particularly viewed as a powerful form of social protest, and the (illegal) act of defacing can be as important as the message itself. Artist Void One has been arrested on numerous occasions for his politically-charged interventions.
“I didn’t set out to make political art but art is a platform where I can vent my frustrations” – Void One.
World Microphone (世界麦克风) is an organization created by students (most of them are Chinese) located in London. The organization has an account in RED, which is a popular social media in China. It often holds interviews and movements on the street in London, talking about world culture, food, and travel. Then, it makes short videos based on these interviews and movements and posts the videos on RED.
The political artist I chose to investigate is Ruth Peche, a Spanish sculptor and photographer. Her themes tend to center around plastic waste and the impact it has on the environment, using this as a muse for describing the relationship human society has with the natural world. Peche’s interest in art activism, particularly with themes of preserving the environment, is something that was sparked for her in during her childhood years.
"FTSE" is Birmingham-born producer and rapper Sam Manville. As an anti-captialist, he though it would be funny to take the name of the British stock market index (Financial Times and Stock Exchange), but he also jokes the acronym stands for "Fuck The System, Ennit.”
ART COLLECTIVE LUZINTERRUPTUS has created an installation made up of 100 glowing “radioactive” figures for the Dockville Festival in Hamburg.
The human-size figures appear to be wearing special white protective clothing and marching, heads down, across the landscape. The eerie structures contain a number of lights which make them appear to glow ominously in the dark.
This action was suggested in the workshop assembly by a neighbor of Arrayán street itself. At the end of this street giving the market there was a wall in a state of collapse that
concerned the neighborhood. On several occasions, either neighbors or from the same Peña Bética in front of them, they had
given by the City Council, but without results. And every day having to go all the way through that gorge with two
For three days, Ruben Santiago installed, without any official authorization, a hydro-massage shower in a public bathroom in the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona. The installation also made available to users bath gel, shampoo and towels that were regularly replaced.
HIV is still among the top 10 leading causes of death in the world, ranking sixth with around 1.5 million deaths each year. Around 35 million people are currently infected with HIV, and cases are worryingly on the rise—it is far from old news. Determined to change this, a magazine has embarked on a bold new campaign in which 3,000 copies will be printed using ink mixed with HIV-infected blood.
At first glance, it seemed like any other Monday evening in Görlitz, the most eastern town in Germany — where Poland sits just across the river. It was July 31, and a couple hundred people had gathered as part of the so-called Monday demonstrations to protest refugees, the COVID-19 vaccine and the government’s green energy politics.
"Members of the Reclaim Shakespeare Company jumped on stage at the Noël Coward theatre to deliver another surprise anti-BP performance. Just before the second half of a BP-sponsored Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) performance of Much Ado About Nothing was due to begin, the three actor-vists performed a short Shakespeare-inspired piece.
A series of creative workshops for sex workers, including a 7-day workshop modeled on the C4AA Art Action Academy. The workshops enabled sex workers to tell their own stories, and shift the narratives and stigma around sex work, and videos created during the workshop have been shown at festivals in New York and Berlin.
The 1975’s ‘Love It If We Made It’ is a dystopian love story that feels appropriate for the last 18 months. Even though it was written before the pandemic, its relevancy has only increased tenfold since its release in 2018.
Un hombre trajeado viaja en el Metro. Utilizando frases clásicamente asociadas a la mendicidad, las invierte. En vez de anunciar precariedad económica y un estado de necesidad, afirma ser un banquero, sin cargas familiares, que no está perseguido por la justicia. Ofrece monedas a los viajeros, diciendo que si las cogen, ello le hará sentir mejor.
Founded in 2008, the French Feminist Collective, La Barbe, targets inequities of female representation in media and cultural/governmental institutions. La Barbe, meaning "beard" in French, is also an old colloquial expression for "enough is enough!". Known as barbues, the female members are all ages. Any woman is welcome to join.
Dismaland was an experimental and interactive art installation that mimicked and mocked similar attractions and characters of the Disney franchise. He later referred to it as a ‘bemusement park.’ Although the bemusement park seemed to disappear as suddenly as it arrived, the exhibition lives on in the collective memory of the British public.
In 1932, Bennett Cerf, cofounder of Random House Publishing, acquired the rights to publish James Joyce’s Ulysses in the United States, believing that the book would be as successful as it had been throughout Europe. But Cerf had a problem. The book was banned in the United States and would be seized as soon as it came off the printing press, which would lose Cerf millions of dollars.
The mischievous posters began appearing all over London in the past two months.
On the side of an East London bus stop, one of them shows Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, emerging from a Tesla’s roof with his hand pointing upward in a straight-armed salute. “Goes from 0 to 1939 in 3 seconds,” the ad reads. “Tesla. The Swasticar.”
Kyiv, Ukraine (CNN) — The leaders of Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Poland have told Russian leader Vladimir Putin to agree to a 30-day ceasefire starting on Monday or face possible “massive” sanctions, according to French President Emmanuel Macron, on a highly symbolic visit to Kyiv. The demand comes with the backing of the White House after a joint phone call with President Donald Trump, the Europeans said.
The "Real Time" series by Maarten Baas is an avant-garde collection of art installations and functional timepieces that question the very basics of how to measure and experience time. It has, therefore, been a unique mix of performance art with functional design since 2009. Baas reimagines how time may be seen in his various installations in a provoking, innovative, engaging, and reflective manner for all audiences.
In March of 2022, JR, with the help of 100 volunteers, unfurled the portrait of five-year-old, Ukrainian refugee Valeriia in Lviv, Ukraine. Leaving Ukraine, JR saw firsthand how difficult it was for women and children to get to safety due to long queues at the border. In response, he released two NFTs of Valeriia as part of his solidarity project titled: Can Art Change the War?
On Friday night, a painting by the anonymous street artist known as Banksy sold at Sotheby’s auction house in London for $1.4 million. But as soon as the auctioneer dropped the gavel, something unexpected happened: a beeping alarm went off and the frame began eating the painting, spitting half of it out the bottom in what may be the first instance of a self-destructing painting, reports Scott Reyburn at The New York Times.
A changing cast of theater workers — actors, seamstresses, lighting technicians and prop masters — are protesting the privatization of a stage once graced by some of Europe’s greatest thespians, from Sarah Bernhardt to Vittorio Gassman.