After eight days of fall/winter New York Fashion Week, the most prominent trend—pervading both the runways and streets—has been social and political activism. To outsiders, New York Fashion Week may seem trivial in a time of more pressing news, but beyond being an escape, it’s a representation of how art can comment on social and political issues.
What is Francis Alÿs known for?
Francis Alÿs is known for using poetic and metaphorical techniques to highlight the political and social realities of his city. Often, the issues he addresses range from national border politics to globalism and areas of conflict in his community and the effects of modernism.
"Sixteen year-old Mariem Chourak is a devout Muslim who considers wearing a hijab an expression of her devotion to the Prophet Mohammad, but a proposal by French senators might soon deny her the freedom to do so in public spaces.
A CALL TO ARTISTS:
The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) has created a new, nationally touring poster exhibit called All of Us or None: Responses and Resistance to Militarism. The exhibit will launch in June and is already scheduled to travel to Chicago, Greensboro, Providence, and San Francisco with many other stops anticipated. We are looking for some additional work to include in this show.
Creative Leaders
Walk Free is a movement of millions of people everywhere, fighting to end one of the world’s greatest evils: Modern Slavery. Every person in our community has something unique and valuable to add in the fight to ending modern slavery – will you help?
Kids Helping Kids is a youth hip-hop program run by two NGOs, Hip Hip Saves Lives and Negusworld. Together, these organizations work with middle school and high school students to make conscious hip hop influenced by activist work happening worldwide.
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is home to the Oglala Lakota, designated as part of the Great Sioux Reservation. This land and its people have endured many tragedies at the hands of the United States government. Over 500 treaties negotiated in good faith with the U.S. government have been broken, changed or nullified to suit expansionist interests. Despite centuries of oppression, the Lakota people remain resilient, faithful, and strong.
"Surround Congress”: as soon as we’d heard this, in our minds we were there. To make the Government resign and demand they start a new constituent process seemed like a great idea. We immediately got to work.
East West Market in Vancouver, British Columbia have made it clear that they are very concerned about the effect that single use plastic items have on the environment.
On November twelfth, 2008, over 80,000 copies of a replica of the New York Times were distributed in several cities around the United States. The paper included 14 pages of “best case scenario” news set nine months in the future.
See the The New York Times Special Edition website.
LONG BEFORE WOMEN finally — though incompletely — won the right to vote in the United States in 1920, they were finding ways to influence politics. In late 18th-century New England, colonial women would make muster cakes — spiced, doorstop-heavy confections flecked with candied fruit and soaked in alcohol — for soldiers being gathered (or “mustered”) to fight in the Revolutionary War.
As the world watches Cairo burn, I can’t help but think that the flames of protest engulfing Egypt were sparked by Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian street vendor who set himself on fire on December 17 after police confiscated his vegetable cart. The desperation that he expressed through his act of self-immolation caught on, literally, and spread across the country, into Algeria, and now to Egypt.
Catcalls of NYC is an organization that uses Instagram and everyday intervention as a platform of raising awareness about street sexual harassment. The group receives direct messages from people who have been catcalled on the street. The group goes to the location of the harassment and writes the catcall on the sidewalk in chalk. The Instagram account CatcallsofNYC then posts on their account a picture of the chalk writing.
Hundreds of taxi drivers gathered together on the streets of Mexico City protesting against Virtual apps like Uber and Cabify. They formed a caravan and stopped the traffic for hours, as a way of denouncing unfair price competition.
Imagine for a brief moment, that the world’s last five remaining communist countries decided to unite forces and hire the world’s top advertising agencies to re-brand and create a resurgence in the ideologies of Communism?
The 2013 protests in Turkey started on 28 May 2013, initially to contest the urban development plan for Istanbul's Taksim Gezi Park. The protests were sparked by outrage at the violent eviction of a sit-in at the park protesting the plan.
Protesters from Extinction Rebellion disrupted London Fashion Week last weekend (15 February).
The group called on the industry to change its approach to protecting the planet: “We are asking not for sustainability but a complete reinvention of this industry in a way that regenerates the environment,” Extinction Rebellion spokesperson Sara Arnold said.
The video for “Borders,” a song off MIA's album Matahdatah, features images recalling all sorts of migrations from the developing world—there are people crossing deserts, fences, and bodies of water. Though much of M.I.A.’s work has been about women and children, this video is filled with brown men: the ultimate bogeyman for many in the West, stereotyped as terrorists, criminals, and job-takers.
In time for the 30th Anniversary of the famed EDSA People People Revolution, a two-day pop-up museum in Camp Aguinaldo serves as a vivid reminder of a significant period in Philippine History.
The interactive museum, which is composed of nine halls, recreates the martial law victims’ struggle for democracy, including the events that led to the bloodless revolution in 1986.