The Pilobolus Dance company, famous for their beautiful aesthetics of shadow play formed out of the dancer's bodies, started the #PilobolusVOTEproject, encouraging people to form the words VOTE with whatever material they had around them, take a picture of it and to upload it on instagram with the hashtag #PilobolusVOTEproject.
In order to raise awareness about the global issue of arranged child marriages, 21-year-old YouTube star Coby Persin decided to push the envelope by asking a 12-year-old 'bride' to pose with a 65-year-old 'groom' in the middle of Times Square. Child marriage is not only legal in 91 countries around the world, but even continues to be legal in the United States - with some having a cut off as low as 12 years of age.
Sirens of the Lambs is created by the enigmatic street artist, Banksy. This piece was first spotted on the streets of New York City on October 10, 2013, it went viral on social media and people are posting and reposting about it. Sirens of the Lambs is a truck full of stuffed animals – plush cows, chickens, pigs, lambs, bears – that first appeared in the Meatpacking neighborhood of NYC.
On a freezing Friday in January, Khmer-American artist Kat Eng sits in front of retail giant H&M’s Time Square store working on a manual sewing machine. For eight hours, Eng stitches together U.S. dollar bills while wearing a surgical mask and bloodstained shirt. Her performance “</3 Less Than Three” protests the way fast fashion and consumer culture creates oppressive conditions for Khmer workers.
Plants growing through urban cracks and concrete remind us of the power of nature. Whether its a tree or a blade of grass pushing its way through cement, an underlying chaos( or natural order) lives just beneath the surface of physical and mental organizational structures created by man.
Over the course of a semester, fashion hactivist and fashion social justice scholar, Otto Von Busch, facilitated a course on "Critical Fashion and Social Justice," where graduate fashion students at Parsons design school researched, contextualized and at times critiqued case studies on various examples of "fashion social justice." Case studies included traditional fair trade companies and non profit organizations that have used fashi
Trade School is a self-organised, alternative learning space that runs on barter. It was started in 2010 in New York’s Lower East Side by Rich Watts, Louise Ma, and Caroline Woolard of OurGoods.org, a creative barter network. Over 800 students participated in 76 single-session classes during 35 days. Anyone can teach a class, and students sign up by agreeing to meet the barter requests of teachers.
This blogger documents all the cool things that are on their way to extinction in New York. A mix of preserving history and nostalgia through old school photography and new media. This website creates a nostalgic internet record of pre-internet New York.
Henry Taylor (born 1958) is an American artist and painter who lives and works in Los Angeles, California. He is best known for his experimental figurative paintings and exploration of contemporary and relevant historical social issues. Taylor rewrites art history, often with art historical references, to amplify Black people who have been overlooked or undermined by the canon and systems of power and control.
Inspired by the Laughing Farmers of Karnataka, protesters in New York make Carlos Slim's visit to New York uncomfortable while he appears on a "Live From NYPL" program. This excellent video summarizes the action.
The International Harlem Fine Arts Show (HFAS) is the largest traveling African Diasporic art show in the United States. Inspired by the Harlem Renaissance, HFAS provides a platform for African Diasporic visionaries and American visual artists to exhibit and sell their artwork. The show also aims to create economic empowerment, educational opportunities and professional recognition within the multicultural community.
#SaveNYC is a grassroots, crowd-sourced, DIY movement
to protect and preserve the diversity and uniqueness
of the urban fabric in New York City.
As our vibrant streetscapes and neighborhoods are turned into bland, suburban-style shopping malls, filled with chain stores and glossy luxury retail, #SaveNYC is fighting for small businesses and cultural institutions to remain in place.
Butactually.com is a new kind of online dictionary created by a team of students at NYU Gallatin who seek to document, organize, and provide a platform for anyone to share new activist hashtags.
From 99 Percent Invisible:
By the late 1980s, AIDS had been in the United States for almost a decade. AIDS became the number one killer of young men in New York City, then of young men in the country, then of young men and women in the country.
It’s the radiant baby, the barking dog and the dancing man; the badges and the t-shirts; the unmissable mural spelling out CRACK IS WACK. Keith Haring’s career was short but spectacular, and he leaves behind a lasting legacy. From his chalk drawings in city-wide subway stations, to his collaborations with the superstars of his day, Haring’s life was founded on a belief in the power of people to change the world.
On Monday, a grassroots, anti–corporate tax-dodging coalition called Flip the Debt crashed a "Fix the Debt" party at St. Anselm's College in New Hampshire hosted by Honeywell CEO David Cote to tell the gathered deficit hawk disciples that paying their "damn taxes" would be a better solution than crippling the nation with fiscal austerity measures.
An Egyptian-born activist was arrested yesterday for spray-painting subway billboards that call enemies of Israel “savages” — amid a wave of vandalism unleashed on the inflammatory ads, which have divided the city.
Mona Eltahawy, a self-described “liberal Muslim,” strolled up to one of the signs at the crowded 1/2/3 train mezzanine at the Times Square station and sprayed pink paint on the ads.
"This project took aim at a public relations campaign produced by The Union Square Partnership, a local Business Improvement District (BID) attempting to privatize the north end of NYC’s Union Square park and install a high-end celebrity chef restaurant. They hosted historical walking tours of the park for decision-makers, as a means of getting buy-in for their development initiative.
"Project Black Mask HK (PBMHK) was founded by a (then) 18-year-old, Joyce Ho, who is an American-born Hong Konger. On May 28, 2020, during a peak of the Coronavirus Pandemic, many people expressed frustration with their inability to protest on the streets (of the United States) in support of the freedom and democracy for Hong Kong. PBMHK became a space where people could do exactly that.
The group of students from NYU took to the streets of Manhattan to shout back against sexual harassment and bring awareness to the Everyday Sexism project. Armed with business cards that said "#shoutingback" on one side, and "Real men don't catcall" on the other side, the group waited for men to yell at the women while they walked down the street.
The agriculture industry giant, Monsanto, has genetically modified its crops for years. March-Against-Monsanto wants to hold Monsanto more responsible for their loose modifications of these vegetable and fruits that so many Americans and citizens of the world consume on the daily.
The US artist Nan Goldin has staged her first public protest since she launched her activist group PAIN (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now), shaming members of the Sackler family who have profited from the sale of Oxycontin and institutions that have accepted their philanthropy.
On the eve of the 60th anniversary of the communist takeover of China, Tibet activists projected messages of support for human rights and freedom from inside and outside of the Empire State Building, countering China’s public relations stunt to bathe the building in red and yellow light. “NY [Hearts] Human Rights” was projected from inside the ESB onto a nearby building.