No matter how nuanced current superhero comics may be, to the general public they are still fairly simple. Superheroes are the good guys, supervillians are the bad guys, and it’s easy to see who is who. That’s why kids like to dress up as superheroes on Halloween — and why should they have all the fun?
The crisis is here, let the party begin! April 30, 2009. At first the crisis was just a state of being, a kind of social sadness that paralyzed everything. To break this atmosphere we couldn’t think of anything better than to throw a party. The first thing you need for a party is a good location, so we set out to find a place where social sadness and fear were extremely present. It didn’t take us long to find one: an unemployment office.
Counterspace is an independent curatorial platform functioning as the first decolonial thinktank mapping cultural activism worldwide. It shapes collectively decolonial toolkits with common tools and resources, and a global directory browsable by continent, praxis, and social construct, as a Beuys-inspired ‘social sculpture’ revisited, and an alternative map of the universe.
On Friday, in room 43 of London's National Gallery, two young women opened cans of tomato soup and threw their contents onto Vincent van Gogh’s famous painting Sunflowers. The soup-throwers donned shirts displaying the logo of Just Stop Oil, an activist group that has been staging nonviolent demonstrations across the United Kingdom to protest the production of fossil fuels.
HONG KONG — It started when a single box of free sanitary pads appeared in a middle school classroom in October. Then a plastic container with pads was attached to the walls of four bathrooms in a university in Shanghai. By Monday, boxes and bags of individually wrapped pads had popped up outside bathrooms in at least 338 schools and colleges across China. Each carried a version of the same instructions: “Take one, then put one back later.
This is the sixth piece of the series Tatlin’s Whisper which examines the relationship between apathy and anaesthetization of the images in the mass media. This series intends to activate images, well-known because of having been repeatedly seen in the press, but are here decontextualized from the original event that gave way to the news and staged as realistically as possible in an art institution.
A press release from the non-profit organization - Women on Waves - regarding the intention of the creation of the Diesel for Women hoax website, pointing out the mistreatment of women workers in the fashion industry. This blurb and included images are taken directly from the Diesel for Women website:"BY Women on waves on February 4, 2012
Unfortunately, those who struggle for a more equal and democratic society are not the only ones who can make use of creative forms of activism. The following example shows how creative strategies can also be employed by those who have less wholesome intentions in mind.
If you headed into the West 4th St. Subway Station on March 9, 2014, you may have seen a group of people writing on cardboard, taping it to the walls, and seemingly holding a small class in the underground space. Those were some of the members of Free University NYC, a radical educational project started during May 2012 as a form of educational strike. They hold classes in public spaces like parks and subway stations, and are entirely free.
Heroin sold in the northeast, specifically in New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey tends to come in little glassine baggies. The art comes from the individual and unique "stamp" on said baggie sold to a user.
In the "D", "D" doesn't really stand for "Detroit", but "Demolition." Take a look around and you'll notice a great number of buildings marked on the front with a circled "D" in faint chalk. Off to the side, many of these same buildings will also have a noticeable dot, courtesy of our own native son, Tyree Guyton.
BBB are a network of militant bakers armed with pies that are ready to change the world. They stand for ecology, bioregionalism, human-scale economies, and proper gastronomics, and their method is inspired by Noël Godin, who has been pieing public figures since the '70s at the head of the International Patisserie Brigade.
Jeff is an animation storyboard artist from Los Angeles, previously working as an animation artist on several famous Disney movies. He uses his talent to produce work highlighting environmental and social issues worldwide with Disney characters, called Unhappily Ever After. His work includes images of Elsa from Frozen on melting ice caps and Alice from Alice & Wonderland taking drugs down a dark alley.
A couple of weeks ago Danish chef Rasmus Munk made Michelin-starred dishes, now he prepares pasta salad and tartlets for the homeless in Copenhagen.
In the past few weeks, COVID-19 has forced several restaurants in Denmark to close, including the well-known Alchemist.
The following description is taken from the website of Aljazeera America (find link below):
In early December, Ju Hyun-u, a student at South Korea’s elite Korea University, taped up two white sheets filled with his handwriting on a campus bulletin board. His message began with a question, “Are you doing all right?”.
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.
Last night, over 40 protesters staged an intervention inside the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan during Saturday night’s pay-what-you-wish admission hours.
In 1988, rap group the N.W.A from Compton, California released their second album, “Straight Outta Compton”. Without any radio play or media coverage, the album still managed to become an underground hit, and the notorious rap group successfully introduced socially conscious gangsta rap into the mainstream.
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’.
Song Dong's Waste Not consisted of a single installation comprising over 10,000 commonplace, domestic items of daily life that had been used and amassed by the artist’s mother (Zhao Xiangyuan) over fifty years.
The ZAD (zone à défendre, or “zone to defend”) in Western France is 4000 acres of wetland, farmland and forest that was originally intended to be built into an airport in 1965 but is now an autonomous territory occupied by 40 different collectives looking to reclaim the land. There are around 200 people living permanently on the zone, in addition to some 2,000 people coming and going.
LEGOVC is a fictional, made up, 100% fake, plastic, 'pantomime villain' Vice Chancellor of a fake British University struggling as his utter managerial brilliance crumbles in the face of sustained strike action by his staff after their pension scheme is slashed.
The streets of Santiago are once again alive with the spirit of revolution. For weeks now, working-class Chileans have occupied national monuments and blocked major intersections in protest of widespread inequality. They desire full reform — a request so long in the making that it is practically tradition. The country’s floundering political elite offer half measures while dispatching riot police and the military.