Bob and Roberta Smith has been at the forefront of activist art for 2 decades; so who better to ask about how art is responding to these politically bleak times?
In 2009, the dissident artist created a work to honour the thousands of children who died in the Sichuan earthquake. He recalls how the project, Remembering, angered China’s rulers – and changed his career for ever
This is an edited extract from The Start podcast
Chuck Tingle is the Internet's most beloved author of bizarre niche erotica, perhaps best known for his masterwork Pounded in the Butt by My Own Butt. The Hugo Awards are a formerly prestigious sci-fi honor, hijacked in recent years by racist neoreactionaries and Gamergaters aiming to Make Science Fiction Not Diverse Again.
Rufina Bazlova is not afraid to surrender her art to activism. Born in Belarus, a former Soviet republic ruled by the authoritarian leader Aleksandr Lukashenko for 29 years now, Bazlova knows all too well that being apolitical is a privilege many Eastern Europeans cannot afford. 2020 was a pivotal year for Belarus, not only because of the COVID-19 pandemic but also the presidential elections, which declared Lukashenko president for the sixth time.
The Fast for Families on April 7-9 is the culmination of a month of action involving more than 1200 women fasting through 70 events in 35 states as well as in Washington, D.C., and Mexico City.
It’s time to deport the Statue of Liberty.
That’s the latest mission for Legals for the Preservation of American Culture, an organization which has begun the “Deport the Statue” campaign for the removal of Lady Liberty through four Twitter accounts and a video that hopes to prove the iconic statue is not only an undocumented French immigrant but is “taking a job away from a qualified American statue.”
The current cultural and political context in Macedonia marginalizes lesbians and women in general, and the dominant political party forces the traditional role of the woman, where she is a mother, a housewife, and of course, heterosexual. Furthermore, the major TV stations are flooded with Turkish soap operas, where traditional values are the leitmotif of the show.
Blizzard Entertainnment an American gaming company that has created some of the world's most beloved games has permantly banned Blitzchung, a professional Hearthstone player from Hong Kong who shouted after a livestreamed game, "Liberate Hong Kong! The revolution of our age!" After the professional player shouted that out, Blizzard banned the pro gamer from playing Hearthstone for a year and reclaimed his prize money from the tournament.
Students at the March for Our Lives rallies across the country and world today, March 24, are wearing a “price tag” of $1.05. The reason? March organizers have argued that $1.05 is the amount each student is worth to Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio.
The Origins of Totalitarianism:Donald Trump reads Hannah Arendt
AI video and sound. 2024, 24:30mins
YouTube link: https://youtu.be/RzWi51prZlA?si=hTUP4F-_nOSijbba
This act of art and activism displayed in the photograph was created in 1994 by the group La Radical Gai at the height of the HIV and AIDS epidemic that decimated many communities in Madrid. The first case of AIDS in Spain was documented in 1982. Since that time, 85,000 people in Spain have been diagnosed with AIDS and 60,000 people have died from the deadly virus (Soriano, Ramos, Barreiro, Fernandez-Montero, 2018).
The Protest Banner Lending Library is a space for people to gain skills to learn to make their own banners, a communal sewing space where we support each other’s voices, and a place where people can check out handmade banners to use in protests.
A topless activist staged a mock hanging from a bridge in Paris, to protest against the visit of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. The protester, from international women's rights group Femen, hung from the bridge in an execution-style demonstration on 28 January 2016. She had an Iranian flag painted on her chest.
Animal Collective, Mumford and Sons and Duran Duran among performers who have turned concerts in state into fundraisers as part of NC Needs You movement
Even as North Carolina’s governor, Pat McCrory, refused to comply with federal officials over his state’s so-called “bathroom bill”, experimental pop group Animal Collective went forward with its scheduled show in the state over the weekend.
Over the past 2 years, Visualizing Palestine (VP) has harnessed visual storytelling to bring public attention to the daily injustices facing Palestinians, from demolition of homes to mothers forced to give birth at military checkpoints. VP wants to start 2014 by raising global awareness around two key issues.
Whether or not they follow politics, it’s fair to assume most people don’t actually read electoral programs. Podemos, Spain’s growing leftwing party, which got nearly 21% of the votes in last year’s elections, doesn’t think that’s good, so it adopted an unusual marketing approach to tackle that problem: it printed the program as an Ikea catalogue (pdf, link in Spanish).
In December – as many around the globe were preparing for the holidays – Sama, a former attorney, remained hunkered down in her house in Kabul, Afghanistan, trying to comprehend how her world had changed.
Two dozen rogue "delegates" disrupted the corporate-sponsored welcome gala for the high-stakes Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade negotiations yesterday with a fake award ceremony and "mic check." Other activists, meanwhile, replaced hundreds of rolls of toilet paper (TP) throughout the conference venue with more informative versions, and projected a message on the venue's facade.
Topic: Displaced people
Concept: Explore and communicate some of the issues around displacement in a global, European and Irish context.
Date of action: 11th March 2.30 to 4.20 pm
Place: Emmett Place, Cork City, Ireland
Anonymous (used as a mass noun) is a loosely associated hacktivist group. It originated in 2003 on the imageboard 4chan, representing the concept of many online and offline community users simultaneously existing as an anarchic, digitized global brain.
Throughout the weekend, big box stores across the country were stocked with an unexpected item: “The Justice Kavanaugh Boof Kit.” The item, an alcohol enema kit (known as “boofing” or “butt chugging”), appeared on dozens of retailer’s shelves over the weekend in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Minneapolis, and Detroit. Some of the stores included Walmart, Target, Bevmo and other major super market chains.
Demonstrators aligned with the Occupy Wall Street movement sang their way into handcuffs during a Bronx foreclosure auction Monday to protest the housing crisis that continues to plague the borough.
They serenaded a courtroom of real estate investors with the lyrics, "Y'all are speculating off people's pain. With all due respect, you should be ashamed."
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
San Francisco, California
Corrected Billboard Defends Transparency at Guantanamo Bay
The California Department of Corrections (CDC) has unveiled a new billboard campaign to assist the U.S. Navy with transparency at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.