Introduction: The Ambulatory Free States of Obsidia
The Ambulatory Free States of Obsidia is a tiny, Matriarchal, Micro-nation located at the confluence of feminism and geography.
Grand Marshal Yagjian's Great Vision for The Ambulatory Free States of Obsidia came in 2015 when its land claim was 'liberated' from a former lover’s house for a greater purpose.
VALDOSTA, Ga. — On an October morning in 2018, Eleanor Holmes and her husband left home to run an errand and found two men inside their front gate. They introduced themselves as detectives from Orlando, Florida, and said they needed the couple’s help.
For some, October 14, 1968, was a clarion call to the future.
On that day, a group of 12 black students at UC Santa Barbara, tired of the unequal treatment and passive-aggressive racism they received as Black athletes — and as members of the campus community at large — barricaded themselves in the university’s North Hall.
It was a quick turnaround for federal employers to recognize Juneteenth as a new federal holiday. But some cities were ready with new statues honoring George Floyd, whose killing by police in Minneapolis last year sparked a nationwide racial justice movement.
In 2007, Andrew Danziger had an architecture class assignment at the University of Texas at Austin to propose an urban intervention in Austin. The goal was to think about public art in unexpected ways. One classmate dreamed up a blank traffic sign; another suggested putting a bench at a bus stop that lacked one. Danziger hit on the idea of installing swings in surprising places, and then he went beyond the assignment by actually doing it.
from "Laugh, O Revolution: Humor in the Egyptian Uprising" by Anna Louie Sussman, in 2011.
Revolutions can be messy. They can be tragic. As long as the Internet is working, they can be tweeted. And, as Egyptians demonstrated during their 18 days of protest, they can also be funny.
A TYPICAL EPISODE of Journal Rappé begins with Senegalese rapper Makhtar “Xuman” Fall dressed in a suit and seated behind a news desk. At first glance, the show looks like an ordinary newscast. But then Xuman (pronounced human) launches into his intro, rapping in French instead of talking. “Welcome! Make yourself comfortable. These are the news for you. Some good ones and bad ones too. But they’re all news for you.”
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.
Since 2020, university students across China have launched a grassroots initiative to combat menstrual stigma by placing “menstrual pad mutual aid boxes” in campus restrooms. These boxes, often accompanied by signs reading “Take one if you need it, donate if you can,” provide free sanitary pads to anyone caught off guard by their period—offering both practical relief and a symbolic challenge to the cultural silence surrounding menstruation.
In 1998 Hacker-Poet-Artist Yucef Mehri breached the security of CANTV at the time the largest telecommunications company in Venezuela. He was able to access the personal data kept by the company which contained the names, addresses, phone numbers, working places, and even checking accounts, credit cards, and expiration dates of it's customers.
In 1932, Bennett Cerf, cofounder of Random House Publishing, acquired the rights to publish James Joyce’s Ulysses in the United States, believing that the book would be as successful as it had been throughout Europe. But Cerf had a problem. The book was banned in the United States and would be seized as soon as it came off the printing press, which would lose Cerf millions of dollars.
When award-winning architect David Rockwell started spending time in playgrounds with his young children, he was disturbed by the lack of imagination and variation in the way kids interact with standardized playground equipment. He spent five years developing the Imagination Playground, seeking private-public partnerships to see it realized.
In a bid to fight the spread of COVID-19, the EU Delegation to Ghana on Wednesday 27 May joined the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) and artists from the Ghana Graffiti Collective, to launch an initiative to use street art and graffiti to create awareness about coronavirus and migration.
The artwork created by the Ghana Graffiti collective speak about hope, tolerance, love and solidarity.
In September 1943, the Nazis prepared for the deportation of all Danish Jews to the concentration camps and death. But Georg Duckwitz, a German diplomat with a conscience, deliberately leaked the plans for the roundup, which was due to begin on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Armed with the information from Duckwitz, Danes swung into action.
Shackles. Cotton. The Big House.
Americans tend to think of slavery in terms of chattel slavery. Plantation Slavery. Slavery where human beings are bought, sold, and owned. The kind outlawed in the United States by the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.
Slavery as a relic of the 19th Century.
“Six of us lived, worked, slept in a 10-by-10 (foot) room without a bed, bathroom, or clean water,” Nasreen Sheikh remembers.
New York artist Donna Choi wanted to create a “weird, memorable way” to discuss fetishization of Asian women, so she put together a satirical series about how to diagnose Yellow Fever—the specific obsession many Western men have with Asian culture.
The over-the-top series is a discussion of race crafted for the attention span of the Internet.
I emailed with Choi about her thinking behind the Yellow Fever series.
The play celebrates the life and legacy of the Mexican-American labor activist César Chávez. His early life as well as his partnership with Dolores Huerta, activism with the National Farm Workers Association, the 1968 grape boycott, and his ongoing commitment to nonviolent civil rights work.
The Vivienne Foundation exists to honour, protect and continue the legacy of Vivienne's creativity and activism.
Since the start of her career in the 1970s, Vivienne was renowned not only for her fashion design, but also her activism. Vivienne always utilised her platform of prestige to make the world a better place.
In 2013, Ghana ThinkTank received a Creative Capital Award for Emerging Fields, enabling them to begin the multi-year ThinkTank at the Border project. In this project, they are collecting problems from civilian border patrols like the Minutemen, "Patriot" groups, and Nativist organizations, and bringing them to be solved by think tanks of undocumented workers in San Diego and recently deported immigrants in Tijuana.
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.
In 2019, Adeyemi Emmanuel began collecting bits of discarded plastic and used them to make a backpack. Seeing a way to raise environmental awareness in fashion-conscious Nigeria, Emmanuel in November launched a line of bags, wallets and gift boxes made of 20% leather and around 80% plastic waste, called ECO. He collects chips of used plastic by hand, such as leftovers from picture frames, primarily from craft workshops.
Godfrey Mwampembwa, popularly known as Gado, has been holding politicians accountable for nearly 30 years. Now, his concern has shifted to the coronavirus.
In a quiet office on the third floor of a building in Nairobi’s central business district, the cartoonist known by his pen name, Gado, was sketching a satire about the coronavirus.
Prison inmates in Mexico have suffered from coronavirus infections at a higher rate than the country as a whole, and pandemic lockdowns have reduced their already limited contact with the outside world.
But one group of women inmates at a prison west of Mexico City have managed to benefit, as the lockdown spurred a wave of professionals with time on their hands to donate online classes.