Mayor Gilberto Kassab passed a Clean City Law that banned all public advertising in Sao Paulo, one of the world's most populous cities. The mayor gained the support of the city's elites in pressing the law as an anti-pollution measure targeting "visual pollution". The city was quickly stripped of its ubiquitous billboards, signs, graffiti and other public ads.
It was October 31st, 2012, when a new artist appeared on social media. In a series of video clips, she proposed with a soft and slow speech that Peru hide its poverty. Her project consisted of installing vinyl pieces to avoid what she called "the visual pollution." She titled the project Don't be poor, be fashion(able).
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.
Shouting is one of Xu Zhen’s early works questioning the limits of individual expression. First exhibited at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005, the video shows Xu hiding in crowds and performing a series of loud screams in Shanghai.
A public art exhibition designed to raise awareness of solutions to climate change. Cool Globes grew out of a commitment at the Clinton Global Initiative in 2005, and was incorporated as a non-profit organization in 2006. Since that time, Cool Globes premiered in Chicago and went on tour across the country from Washington DC to San Francisco, San Diego, Sundance, Los Angeles, Houston and Cleveland.
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.
He had served in the army, either as a full-time soldier or as a reservist, for 22 years when he finally decided he wanted out. In 2003, Ari Folman, who had just turned 40, asked his commanders in the Israel Defence Forces to release him from the obligation to do a month's military service every year. They agreed - "so long as you go to the army therapist and talk about everything you went through".
Whose job is it to create a city? Our intention is to jumpstart a new profession that can re-invent and negotiate the complex mix that encompasses a city. We have defined a radical new occupation to regenerate, pioneer, and sustain the future urban realm. These innovative multi-disciplinarian advocates are called Urbaneers. Their immense task is to manifest and facilitate the next expression of city across the globe.
In 1995, Bogota was a chaotic city. Among others, it presented high ranges of homicides, delinquency, corruption, no sense of belonging, traffic chaos and financial problems.
Object Orange (formerly Detroit. Demolition. Disneyland. is an artistic project in Detroit, Michigan which seeks to draw attention to dilapidated buildings by painting them orange.
For a brief moment on Wednesday night it appeared that Belgium had disappeared. The main French language television station hoodwinked the country into thinking that it had split in two when it reported that Flanders had issued a unilateral declaration of independence.
Hundreds of demonstrators have marched through a shopping district in the Chinese city of Shanghai to protest against changes to housing regulations, in a rare show of public dissent in the financial hub.
Footage of the late Saturday protests shared on social media showed hundreds of demonstrators holding placards and shouting slogans while marching along Nanjing Road, a glitzy shopping strip in the city center.
"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.
Circus Amok is a New York City based circus-theater company whose mission is to provide free public art addressing contemporary issues of social justice to the people of New York City.
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.
In March this year, less than 100 days since he took office again, Luis Castañeda Lossio, Mayor of Lima, announced that the Municipality would remove the street art murals painted on the walls of downtown Lima’s historical city streets. “Lima has to recover all the architectural quality it has. They have chosen us and we will comply with the obligation that the population has consigned us,” said the mayor.
Wallhunter's Slumlord Project is an innovative project in Baltimore, Maryland that will use street art to expose and publicize vacant and dilapidated housing and the responsible parties for those conditions. The project will use different street art forms to display art that will attract community interest and support community identity.
More than 200 people protested outside Lebanon's justice palace on Thursday over efforts to derail an investigation into the deadly 2020 Beirut port explosion, as top judges cancelled a meeting to discuss the fate of the inquiry.
GrowNYC is a nonprofit that promotes community values through environmental missions. One of GrowNYC's programs is the GreenMarkets, which are fresh produce markets that are set up in various neighborhoods in the city, each one unique to the area. These markets focus on bringing local farmers into the community as well as promoting awareness of seasonal produce in order to limit the environmental damage of importing goods.
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.
Students from the School of Communication and Art of the University of Sao Paulo perform a skit titled 'Blind Ones' as a protest against consumerism inside a shopping mall of Natal, capital of Rio Grande do Norte state, December 9, 2013.
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Recently, residents in the coastal city of Ningbo rallied to oppose the expansion of a plant that produces paraxylene (PX), a potentially hazardous chemical used in the production of plastics and polyester. Protesters organized using microblogs and other social media and turned out over several days in demonstrations of people power that sometimes met with violent confrontations with police.
For his latest project, Mark Manzi found himself outside of his comfort zone. For the Amsterdam-based photographer and designer, People of Japan was an attempt to break from his photography-first portfolio. “In the past, my work was very image-focused, whereas with this book I wanted to scan objects, collect receipts, record noises, add copy, and really create something visually striking,” he says.
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.