In 1996, filmmaker John Akomfrah created the character of the Data Thief as a narrative device to offer an insightful study of Afrofuturism in his film The Last Angel of History, which links Black musicians including George Clinton, Derrick May, and Sun Ra to Akomfrah’s thesis about the role of technological fantasy in Black artistry across genres and mediums.
Room13Delmar is a tricycle-based mobile studio conceived as a sculpture: a cross between a vending tricycle and a ‘Mary Poppins’ bag that unfolds to create a space for creativity on the sidewalk, at a senior center and at a veterans medical center, north of Delmar in the city of St. Louis, Missouri.
Bit Rosie showcases female music producers in high quality performance videos and short documentaries. Our videos and digital archive project with the New York University library document the work of women using music technology to make sounds across genres and locales.
Bit Rosie is directed and produced by Adele Fournet.
http://www.adelefournet.com/
“Spengler and the Decline of Russia”
105 NY-110, Melville, NY 11747
November 6, 11 am – December 1, 7 pm
Tuesday – Saturday, 11 am – 7 pm, free admission
Please write to racc.ny@mail.ru or call (347) 662 1456
The artist is available for interviews
"'Shake the Dust' is a feature documentary that tells the stories of break-dancers in struggling communities around the globe that, although separated by cultural boundaries and individual struggles, are intrinsically tied to one another through their passion for break-dancing and hip-hop culture.
Burners Without Borders (BWB) is a grassroots, volunteer-driven, community leadership organization whose goal is to unlock the creativity of local communities to solve problems that bring about meaningful change. Supporting volunteers from around the world in innovative disaster relief solutions & community resiliency projects, BWB is known for the unbridled creativity they bring to every civic project they do.
On Sunday April 3rd, Art Not Oil coalition member group BP or not BP? occupied the Great Court of the BP-sponsored British Museum with a 'disobedient exhibition'. Called 'A History of BP in 10 Objects', the exhibition featured artifacts submitted by frontline communities around the world who are fighting back against the impacts of BP's operations.
For the past five years, we’ve screened SIMA juried films in communities and classrooms across six continents and witnessed an increasing demand to use the inspirational force of documentary filmmaking to build a global digital community around today’s most pressing issues.
The work of Marcela Cantuária (b. 1991, Rio de Janeiro; lives in Rio de Janeiro) often portrays female figures who navigate regional, international, and social boundaries. Often highlighting symbols from tarot and astrology as well as themes that reflect political and environmental activism in Latin America, she weaves narratives of social spheres, political associations, and ethereal wishes.
Say hello to ArtActivistBarbie (AAB), whose modus operandi is small signs, big questions and a fabulous wardrobe. With her inviting call to arms, “Refuse to be the muse!” this fierce new incarnation of Barbie is helping to challenge art galleries and museums worldwide about their woeful lack of women and other minorities in their collections, and reluctance to consider the female gaze.
When Patricia Stonefish returned home to the United States from Egypt in 2014, she brought with her a new outlook for conceptualizing women's self defense. Having seen firsthand the benefits and empowerment of Taekwando/ Hapkido/ Gumdo classes for Egyptian women during and after the revolution in 2011, she decided to put her decade of martial arts training to good use on home turf.
Play Smart a series of yearly events where photographers and designers are gathered and designed cards to trade. It has lasted from 2010 to this year. Play Smart 2010 is the first in the series. In 2010, Play Smart featured photographers Aaron Cobbett, inkedKenny, Greg Mitchell and Slava Mogutin and was designed by John Chaich.
The new exhibit “MESH” at Portland Art Museum features Indigenous contemporary artists advocating for change
Visual artist, writer and activist Ka’ila Farrell-Smith says she considers herself a wartime artist.
She is a member of the Klamath tribes and lives in Modoc Point, Oregon. When asked about how history influences her work, the answer weaves through over 150 years of white colonization and Indigenous struggles in the West:
The work of South African artist Mary Sibande tells the tale of her alter-ego Sophie, a domestic worker who finds refuge in dreams where she emancipates herself from the ghoulish realism of an ordinary existence, cleaning other people's homes.
Exploring the construction of identity within post-apartheid South Africa, Sibande's work probes the stereotypical contextualisation of the black female body.
Iran is a nation with a fine art tradition that stretches back thousands of years; its reputation for contemporary fashion design less so. Writing that from an external, Western perspective may read unduly dismissive, but it’s a statement that holds up even from within the country’s borders, Shiva Vaqar assures us. “Being a designer has never really been considered a serious job here,” she says over the phone from Tehran.
ARTS/CULTURE
FOKAL is the hub in Haiti where locals and international visitors from all walks of life -- artists, writers, citizens, activists-- come together to discuss the most pressing nation- and community-building issues, enjoy cutting edge artistic expressions, and share their ideas.
Grandmas diving for seafood while immigrants wrestle with identity. Scrambling for self-worth in the face of suicide. Rock music in the face of fear. A noir murder mystery. Musings on death.
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."
First cut the banks! In 2012 Bankia declared itself bankrupt and, almost immediately, asked the Government of Spain for €23 billion. The Government accepted, yet that very same week ordered €20,000 million worth of cuts in health and education. It was then that we realized that what they called a crisis was actually a scam. You wouldn’t believe how pissed off we were. So we threw a party, because there is nothing like partying to relieve your anger.
In response to a memo from Afghanistan's education ministry, Ahmad Sarmast, the founder of Afghanistan's Institute of Music, began a Twitter campaign with the hashtag #IAmMySong. In response to the hashtag, Afghan girls have taken to Twitter with videos of themselves singing tagged with Sarmast's hashtag and spreading petitions against the ban. The ministry memo banned girls 12 years old and older from singing at school functions.
Song Dong's Waste Not consisted of a single installation comprising over 10,000 commonplace, domestic items of daily life that had been used and amassed by the artist’s mother (Zhao Xiangyuan) over fifty years.
Back after a five year hiatus, V-Day Sedona joins with hundreds of other productions across the globe in celebrating V-Day’s 20th anniversary with an act of artistic activism. For its 20th anniversary, V-Day is calling on activists around the world to Rise, Resist and Unite.
As local rapper Naty says, a group of young people are intent on making their mark in Madagascar's cultural history. From gifted slam poet Caylah to inventive visual artist Temandrota and a crew of entrepreneurial skateboarders, a generation of young Madagascans are making space for creative projects.They are inspiring in their enthusiasm and hopeful for the future despite the poverty in their country and its colonial past.