Students at the NYC iSchool, a high school in Manhattan, worked for 9 weeks to create works of activist art with art teacher Gretel Smith. We were lucky enough to have Stephen Duncomb and Steve Lambert from the Center for Artistic Activism come to our class to teach a lesson inspiring students to think like activists; they came back later to critique students’ works-in-progress.
The artist conceived the project as a collaborative exhibition featuring five art-as-response pieces to the student loan crisis and the pressure it causes upon graduates. In its original version, Öğüt invited Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Superflex, Dan Perjovschi, Martha Rosler to present sculptures as collection points for public contribution to The Debt Collective, a student-debt canceling initiative launched by Strike Debt's Rolling Jubilee.
On Tuesday, May 8, in the midst of final exam week, a group of female first-year students performed a public art action at UC Berkeley to call attention to the UC Regents’ privatization of what was once the premier public university in the country.(See photos below)
The artist in close collaboration with AMI (Assembly of Indigenous Migrants of Mexico City) has created a series of monographs made by students, through ‘tequio’: a communal system of organisation expressed in collaborative practices, mandatory and unpaid work. The goal of the project is to offer information about the lifestyle and culture of these indigenous communities, which live in Mexico City.
Student loan debt in the US today totals over 1.7 trillion dollars and is collectively borne by more than 44 million Americans, including artist kelli rae adams. With her installation Forever in Your Debt, adams converts this abstract burden into a tangible volume. She has crafted hundreds of wheel-thrown vessels, sized to collectively hold the average individual student debt —$37,000—in the form of coins.
This series of protests began on the UCT campus in an effort to remove the bronze statute of Cecil Rhodes in the center of campus due to the belief that Rhodes represents the oppressive colonization of South Africa that eventually led to apartheid.
National Museum of Women In the Arts:
To maintain their anonymity, group members wear gorilla masks in public and adopt the names of historic women artists, such as Käthe Kollwitz and Frida Kahlo, as pseudonyms.
After a spate of bullying-related suicides of LGBT youth, gay columnist Dan Savage and his partner Terry Miller decided to launch the It Gets Better project to see what they could do about it. They began with a simple YouTube video in which both of them described their experiences with bullying in high school, coming out, their families, and the story of their relationship and the adoption of their sun.
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 Venezuela, the far right opposition has protested against the leftist regime of Maduro. Violence has swept through the capital, Caracas, and other cities throughout the country. Meanwhile, the Western world has had its eye on Ukraine, and received relatively little news coverage of what is actually going on in Venezuela. An epidemic of misinformation has spread as a result.
Elisa and Lily chose to create StyleLikeU as an alternative to this disempowering status quo. In 2009, the duo picked up a home video camera and launched their "Closet" series, documenting diverse individuals who were challenging fashion industry norms in their style.
Camp Mossandsticks, named after moss and sticks--two of the most rudimentary tools with which one can spark fire--is a site for young women and girls to become resourceful, defiant, and self-sufficient revolutionaries of today. Started on November 6, 2012, the camp hosts workshops to spark the attendees’ inner political flames, challenging them to confront disenfranchisement created by the status quo and to take matters into their own hands.
Seattle Times:
In 1921, just four years after the Bolshevik Revolution, American journalist Albert Rhys Williams wrote: “The visitor to Russia is struck by the multitude of posters — in factories and barracks, on walls and railway-cars, on telegraph poles — everywhere.”
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.
Beyoncé delivered an intensely, unapologetic celebration of Black and HBCU culture at the Coachella Festival 2 weekends in a row. Not only were her performances some of the best live performances to date but they sent a pretty significant message to the world.
Here are some assessments of this beautiful demonstration of Blackness and Black Girl Magic:
From BBC News:
To Battle Fake News, Ukrainian Show Features Nothing but Lies
KIEV, Ukraine — The studio lights dim, and the anchor taps a stack of papers on her desk and directs a steely gaze toward the television cameras.
What appears to be a nightly newscast is about to begin, only with a very Ukrainian twist: Everything is a lie, from start to finish.
Moral and national education (MNE) s a school curriculum proposed by the Education Bureau of Hong Kong, transformed from the current moral and civic education (MCE).
In 2011, a video displaying fashion designer and former lead designer at Dior, John Galliano, shouting anti-Semitic remarks, went viral on the internet, leading to his subsequent dismissal from Dior and the subsequent defamation of his career. Nonetheless, Parsons at the New School extended Galliano an offer to teach a specialized design seminar, which was scheduled to begin this year.
At the New Orleans Swing Dance Festival the all African-American dance troupe The Rhythm Ambassadors were presented along side an African-American iteration of the Preservation Hall All-Star band with African-American vocalist Taryn Newborne to deliver the message that the African-American Lindy Hoppers were going to be protest until their rhythm is better presented...i.e.
The New Culture Movement was initiated by Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao, Lu Xun, Hu Shi, Cai Yuanpei, Qian Xuan and other writers who had received Western education (called the new-style education at the time). It is an ideological and cultural innovation and literary revolutionary movement.
Although we are in the supposedly modern and advanced year of 2020, there are still at least 500 million women and girls that lack adequate facilities for menstrual hygiene management, according to the World Bank Organization.