"Oda Projesi is an artist collective based in Istanbul. It is composed of three members; Özge Açıkkol, Güneş Savaş and Seçil Yersel who turned their collaboration into an art project in 2000. The project members had met in 1997 and decided to rent and share an apartment as a private studio in Galata.
In 2005, Rebar, a design studio in San Francisco, transformed a single metered parking space into a temporary public park. The area where this two-hour park took place was one that lacked public open space. This was the first Park(ing) Day project.
If you headed into the West 4th St. Subway Station on March 9, 2014, you may have seen a group of people writing on cardboard, taping it to the walls, and seemingly holding a small class in the underground space. Those were some of the members of Free University NYC, a radical educational project started during May 2012 as a form of educational strike. They hold classes in public spaces like parks and subway stations, and are entirely free.
On August 14th 2014 several prominent statues within the city centre and the southern suburbs of Cape Town got redressed in green blankets, equipped with miner gear or carrying grocery bags. The statues – mainly of which represent colonial figures – were redressed in light of what has come to be known as the Marikana Massacre: the shooting of 34 miners by the local police force of Marikana, South Africa on August 16th, 2012.
The Improv Everywhere team created separate walking lanes for tourists and New Yorkers on a Fifth Avenue sidewalk. Department of Transportation “employees” were on hand to enforce the new rules and ask pedestrians for their feedback on the initiative. Enjoy the video first and then go behind-the-scenes with the photos and report below.
The Last Billboard is a 36-foot art installation located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Created in 2013, it features a steel frame and removable wooden letters that must be arranged by hand. Each month a different artist, activist or individual is invited by creator and curator, Jon Rubin, to come and utilize the billboard space. The participants share messages over this medium in the form of thoughtful questions, esoteric musings, or other visual means.
This project consisted of an articulation between research, public policy and art. Corpovisionarios por Colombia was implementing a social change initiative in one of the poorest and most violents neighborhoods in Cali, Colombia. The demographic information showed that the most implicated population in the violence and murder cases were young men. They informed their masculinity through ideas of territory and its violent protection.
In early 2012, a group of artists, activists and assorted other odd balls got together to form People's Tours. The idea was to give walking tours in the Boston area. Standard enough. But instead of the usual history, we would talk about social justice, contested spaces, important protests, and shady corporations.
So far, the group has consisted of Dave Taber, Heather McCann, Kristin Parker, Neil Horsky, and Tim Devin.
Katharina Grosse's public exhibition "Just Two of Us" consists of eight large meteor looking sculptures painted in bright technicolors. The sculptures, which have been placed in the public plaza at Metro Tech Commons, have transformed downtown Brooklyn. Grosse is a German artist based in Berlin, who is known for her use of spray gun techniques to create abstract colorful paintings on unconventional surfaces.
"This Ain't a Eulogy" is both a staged performance and a durational, outdoor, public performance that reclaims and takes public space. The artist statement is as follows:
The Monument Quilt is an on-going collection of stories of survivors of rape and abuse. By stitching our stories together, we are creating and demanding public space to heal. We are building a new culture where survivors are publicly supported rather than publicly shamed. From 2013-2016, more and more stories will be added to The Monument Quilt as participants make their own squares, host workshops, and organize local displays of the quilt.
"What I Couldn't Say in Public" transforms individual secrets into a public, anonymous spectacle.
While origins and exact location of the "What I Couldn't Say in Public" project are unknown, awareness about the project has grown over the micro-blogging platform of Tumblr. Amassing over 132,480 notes on the website, this practice may have possibly inspired others to imitate the same or similar projects in different locations.
Many of the banks originally situated on Bank Street in Sharjah have left for more lucrative locations, so we have imagined a new, non-monetary banking model for the street.
What if we were to regard the sum total of memories and stories of the people in this area as the real capital of the street?
And what if this new currency could be invested in the new Bank Street and converted into physical objects?
"In preparation for tomorrow's election, members of artist-activist project Luminous Intervention beamed ballot-question themed slogans onto a bridge over Route 83 during rush hour traffic this evening. Today's action followed on the heels of an equality-themed luminous alteration of The Natty Boh/Utz Girl proposal billboard in Station North on Friday.
A short documentary about Artist Stephen Sheehan's performance called 'Weighed down by a cushion' performed at Liverpool One. The footage contains views from the public captured during the performance.
Disabled people gathered to protest at the site where a memorial to the Peterloo massacre in 1819 is being built. We are keen to have a memorial to Peterloo, but we want one we can be proud of, rather than the one under construction, which will be inaccessible to many disabled people.
"A new photographic work created by Ayyam Gallery artist Tammam Azzam has captured the imaginations of the world, going viral and being shared across social media as a symbol of the power of love and human spirit in times of war. The Syrian artist has superimposed Gustav Klimt’s iconic work, The Kiss (1907 – 1908), over the walls of a war-torn building in his native country in a powerful juxtaposition of beauty and devastation.