On July 4, 2012, several members of MicCheckWallSt, a subsidiary group of Seattle's larger Occupy Wall Street that formed in December, 2011, anonymously checked into a room at the historic Roosevelt Hotel in Downtown Seattle.
Josep Renau Berenguer was a Spanish painter, photomontager, muralist and communist militant.
Renau was the son of an Art teacher. Due to his father’s low income, he had to work various jobs during his youth and teenage years to maintain a middle class position.
Following in the strong tradition of using graphic novels to explore social ills, DC Comics is releasing two new politically activist issues in their "New 52" series.
The first is called "The Movement" and is written by Gail Simone. Simone describes that "The Movement is an idea I’ve had for some time. It’s a book about power–who owns it, who uses it, who suffers from its abuse."
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."
Daniel Hewson describes the use of protest posters and the work of collective, Burning Museum, and artist, Faith47, in the Fees Must Fall movement taking place in South Africa:
In 2012, visual artist Shilo Shiv Suleman started Fearless in response to the powerful protests that shook the country in response to the “Nirbhaya” tragedy in Delhi, India.
The war against London's "anti-homeless" spikes escalated today from sign-waving to radical criminal action In the small hours of the morning, some activists dressed as builders poured concrete over the metal spikes outside a Tesco Metro on Regent Street, before vowing to strike again.
In 1930, the Indian National Congress adopted satyagraha (essentially, nonviolent protest) as their main tactic in their campaign for independence. Mahatma Gandhi was appointed to develop a plan of action; he proposed marching to the sea to make salt in defiance of the Salt Act of 1882.
Title 18, Part 1, Chapter 17 of the United States Criminal Code:
"Whoever mutilates, cuts, defaces, disfigures, or perforates, or
unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill,
draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking
association, or Federal Reserve bank, or the Federal Reserve System,
A year after the revolution, Egypt is still in conflict, still grasping for a catalyst to solidify its society and bring unity and peace to the people. Violence, poverty and unemployement are still rampant, and the voiceless still seek a voice.
As was the case in 2011, Hip Hop has reemerged as a voice for the Egyptian youth for 2012, with new challenges and frustrations countering their struggle for freedom and equality.
This project consisted of an articulation between research, public policy and art. Corpovisionarios por Colombia was implementing a social change initiative in one of the poorest and most violents neighborhoods in Cali, Colombia. The demographic information showed that the most implicated population in the violence and murder cases were young men. They informed their masculinity through ideas of territory and its violent protection.
Together with a group of homeless New Yorkers, Wodiczko constructed the Homesless Vehicle as an instrument of survival for urban nomads. A modified shopping cart that facilitates refundable bottle and can collection, it also provides temporary shelter. As a house on wheels intended for New York City sidewalks, the Homeless Vehicle embodies Wodicko’s practice of ‘Interrogative Design’.
After a first illegal exhibition on the walls of the Cité des Bosquets, JR settles in the heart of this neighborhood and the neighboring projects of La Forestière, in Clichy-sous-Bois, where the 2005 riots started in the French suburbs.
The first portraits are displayed on the walls of the last popular neighborhoods of the capital, in Eastern Paris.
Italian museum burns artworks in protest of budget cut An Italian museum on Tuesday began burning its collection of contemporary artworks in a singular protest against harsh budget cuts that have left many cultural institutions out of pocket.
First Inspired by a doll-sized action in Siberia, #occupysmallstreet staged its first little protest in Melbourne's City Square, as part of #F12, International Art + Occupy Day. Signs are made collectively, by regular Arts x Activism and members of the public (adults and children) who stop by and have something to add.
The Bread and Puppet Theater was founded in 1963 by Peter Schumann on New York City’s Lower East Side. Besides rod-puppet and hand puppet shows for children, the concerns of the first productions were rents, rats, police, and other problems of the neighborhood. More complex theater pieces followed, in which sculpture, music, dance and language were equal partners. The puppets grew bigger and bigger.
Thrive Collective mobilizes students, parents, artists, and community stakeholders to partner with public schools for transformational change. They function both as a matchmaker and direct service provider of arts and mentoring programs that cultivate the character and competencies necessary for students to thrive in today’s world.
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.
Empathy may be the cornerstone of any Global Justice movement, but how do we cultivate the conditions for empathy to thrive?
The wheelbarrow symbolises something universally useful, practical and pleasingly straightforward. A space to deliver things in an efficient and direct manner - no packaging and completely people powered.
Olafur Eliasson's latest project Little Sun was first debuted at the World Economic Forum on Africa in 2012. The global initiative is bringing tiny, sunburst shaped, plastic solar powered LED lights to the most marginalized regions of the world. Elliasson calls Little Sun, "A work of art that works in life."The lights are also capable of self renewable energy, which makes them practical and portable to those without proper electricity.