Wafaa Bilal’s brother, Haji, was killed by a missile at a checkpoint in their hometown of Kufa, Iraq in 2004. Bilal feels the pain of both American and Iraqi families who have lost loved ones in the war, but the deaths of Iraqis like his brother are largely invisible to the American public.
Out in Schools is a high school outreach initiative that has received acclaim from parents and educators across British Columbia since 2004. The Out in Schools program uses age-appropriate film and video presentations to engage youth and educators on issues related to homophobia and violence.
Artists4Ceasefire is a collective of actors, filmmakers, and other artists calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire during the Gaza war in Gaza, the delivery of humanitarian aid to civilians, and the release of all hostages.The collective was started on October 20, 2023, two weeks after the October 7 attacks.
The Balloon Project, is a three-year-in-the-making Art Installation by Yan Kong in support of world refugees and migrants. It pays tribute to human spirit, courage and survival. The Balloon Project is a multimedia work incorporating mechanical engineering and visuals to fuse art and politics. 32 balloons inflate and deflate to simulate refugee and migrants' breathing while fleeing their countries to seek safety and freedom in the world.
One film to change the world. Curated every month.
BURDEN OF PEACE follows Guatemala’s first female Attorney General Claudia Paz y Paz in her fight against impunity.
Throughout April 2018 a global audience came together to watch BURDEN OF PEACE, and to dig deep into the issues of women in power with our action kit, bonus features and Impact Talks podcast.
Often in military style video games we kill without much regard for the enemy. They are faceless or stereotypical, the Nazi or evil Cold War–era Russian. They are enemies that were fought on the battlefields of great wars, or they are aliens that have no resemblance to humans save for a general humanoid form.
"A Night of Philosophy and Ideas is a thinker’s lollapalooza. The free, 12-hour weekend lyceum at the Brooklyn Public Library includes spirited debate, live music, theater, performance art pieces, and film screenings. At any given hour, five or six different events will be taking place simultaneously. Visitors are encouraged to come and go as the spirit moves them.
By David Gonzalez
Leslie Thomas wants to shock you. She wants to anger you. And above all, she wants you to do something.
She’s not talking about run-of-the-mill, “Hey buddy, watch your step” angry or TMZ sleaze shock. She’s talking about the great humanitarian and social crises of our time, like in Darfur, Afghanistan or Myanmar. And yes, she’s talking to you.
For FX Harsono, art is activism. Over the past four decades, performance, sculpture, and painting have become his means of nonviolent protest against government autocracy and ethnic strife in Indonesia.
The State of Things was first performed in the spring of 2006 on the 3rd anniversary of the Iraq war. On September 1st, 2008 in collaboration with Northern Lights as part of the UnConvention, Ligorano/Reese recreated The State of Thing’s Democracy ice sculpture, weighing over 1,000 pounds and measuring 5 feet high and 20 feet wide, in front of the State Capitol Building in St. Paul, Minnesota.
The collective Ndaku Ya La Vie Est Belle, a group of Kinshasa street performers turn their bodies into living sculptures, and use them to political ends. Among the artists is Jared, who regularly takes to the streets dressed as Robot Annonce. The costume, made from broken radio parts, is designed to raise awareness of fake news. “People receive so much incorrect information and many inaccuracies are spread. I want to fight this,” says Jared.
Something Terrible is the story of Trippe’s childhood sexual abuse and painful struggle with its psychological aftermath. Though the comic itself is sparsely scripted and free of gory details, Trippe provides an afterword that relates the hard facts: he was raped as a child by a teenager, and for three days. The older boy, who took advantage of the trust of someone much too young, threatened Trippe’s family and used a gun as persuasion.
Shortly after the events of 9/11, a group of NYC women came together in protest of the Bush Administration's use of the terror attacks to justify war. Seeking out a new form of political protest, the women decided to respond to what they believed were the absurd reactions of Bush by attaching paper maché missile "dicks" and demonstrating in public.
For the past few years, I've been creating what I call "art of social conscience:" tv spots, viral emails, paintings and posters, but none of it has engaged viewers as much as this series of "historical" markers, each one a small story containing a discrete point of view.
Mending Baghdad is a four-and-a-half-by-six-and-a-half-foot quilt memorializing Baghdad as it looked during the American bombing on the first nights of the Iraq war. The purpose of the project is to bring people together to do something symbolically curative for Iraq. The artist, Clare Wainwright, worked up the image in about two days, but left it deliberately unfinished.
Lysistrata, by Aristophanes, was first performed in Athens in 411 BC. The play, while fictional, can be read as an early example of creative activism. It is about Lysistrata's quest to end the war between Athens and Sparta. She gathers the women of Athens and makes them swear an oath to deny their lovers and husband sex until they end the war.
A town in northwestern Syria has become the creative center of the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad. Since the beginning of the uprising, the residents of Kafr Anbel have drawn signs that skewer the Assad regime and express outrage that the world has not done more to stop the killing in Syria.
This project was born a few days after a demonstrator lost an eye after being hit by a rubber bullet shot from police guns in Barcelona. Unfortunately, it was not the first time. "Cop d' ull" means a "a blow to the eye" and also "at a glance”, which is a perfect description of this project.
One of the most pressing questions before us in the United States now is how to resolve the tension between our personal visions and needs, on the one hand, and the demands of being a member of a community, on the other.
“Baraye,” the anthem of Iran’s “Woman, Life, Liberty” protest movement—a song woven together entirely from a Twitter hashtag trend in which Iranians express their investment in the current protests—continues to unite Iranians in their opposition to the Islamic Republic several weeks after it was first released online.
Thousands of people protested in Ghana’s capital Accra on Wednesday against the expansion of its defence cooperation with the United States, in a rare public display of opposition to the growing foreign military presence in West Africa.
Demonstrators blowing vuvuzelas and beating drums filled Accra’s business district, holding placards criticising a new deal with Washington that they say threatens Ghana’s sovereignty.
Palas por Pistolas initiated in the city of Culiacán, a city in western Mexico with a high rate of deaths by gunshot. The botanical garden of Culiacán has been comissioning artist to do interventions in the park and my proposal was to work in the larger scale of the city and organize a campaign for voluntary donation of weapons.
The image is stark. And shocking.
A black man, his ankles shackled, his head hanging away from the viewer, stands in relief on a field of white. Chains stretching to the image's borders on the left and right pull his arms taut. Fourteen crimson marks crosshatch his back. Within the dark fabric that frames "86 Lashes to Go," a small rectangle is labeled simply "salt."
Neighbors in modern cities have less and less communication, and they all go about their business as soon as they close the door. In Switzerland, a woman dies every week as a result of domestic violence, so in an effort to get everyone to act, the charity has put up an interactive billboard in a shopping mall that shows a man in a family doing violence to a woman.