"Lincoln Square — The runners tossed blankets, gloves, jackets and other gear onto the pile, each leaving a piece of where they came from. A French man donated his running shirt and pants, and noted that they were designer wear. Enybe Merritt, 32, contributed a West Virginia University Cycling sweatshirt.
Over the course of a semester, fashion hactivist and fashion social justice scholar, Otto Von Busch, facilitated a course on "Critical Fashion and Social Justice," where graduate fashion students at Parsons design school researched, contextualized and at times critiqued case studies on various examples of "fashion social justice." Case studies included traditional fair trade companies and non profit organizations that have used fashi
This is a prime example of the marriage of art and activism. The Silence = Death poster is simple but extremely powerful representation of the obstacles the AIDS movement was facing (suppression of gay people + their problems, lack of awareness surrounding the pandemic).
On a sidewalk in the Village in downtown Manhattan, an African-American woman leans on her elbows and knees, wearing only black underpants. Scrawled in black marker all over her body are the words "Ain't I a Woman?"
Across the street, another woman lies face down, sunbathing on a large sheet of tinfoil. The sentence "White Supremacy Is Terrorism" is inked across her white skin, which is turning pink under the hot sun.
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.
"The Uni Project aims to do one thing and do it well: temporarily
transform almost any available urban space into a public reading room
and venue for learning. We start with the conviction that books and
learning should be prominent, accessible, and part of what we expect at
street-level in our cities." (From site.)
At the press preview for Sharon Hayes’s new full-floor exhibition “There’s So Much I Want to Say to You” at the Whitney Museum there was a podium and a microphone set up in the center of the gallery that would eventually be used by director Adam Weinberg and curator Chrissie Iles to introduce the artist and her restless work.
Howardena Pindell presented her solo exhibition, “Rope/Fire/Water”, her first video in 25 years and a project utilized by the artist since the 1970s that The Shed commissioned and displayed in late 2020 and into early 2021. “Rope/Fire/Water” mines the history of violence against African-Americans and features Pindell’s personal anecdotes and anthropological and historical data related to lynchings and racist attacks in the United States.
Actionplay, a theatre company dedicated to providing autistic, neurodivergent, and disabled teens and young adults equal access to the theatre-making process, is pleased to announce their next production, the new musical comedy The Surface (or, That One Time Atlantis Washed Up On the Beach).
Sometimes justice requires a little imagination. On Saturday, when
much of the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York was loudly
denouncing police violence against minorities and protesters, a small
group of environmentalists dreamed up a way to get the police to focus
on the crimes of the 1 percent, to the point of arresting five corporate
suits on United Nations property.
Zimmerman a composer who uses art, dance, tech, and even robots in his shows. You might call this interdisciplinary. Wagner called it total art, or gesamtkunstwerk.
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 exhibition "Unpacking the 21st Century: Artists Engaging the World" included work by five New York City area artists that examined a range of social and political issues and offered companion special events.
The Pilobolus Dance company, famous for their beautiful aesthetics of shadow play formed out of the dancer's bodies, started the #PilobolusVOTEproject, encouraging people to form the words VOTE with whatever material they had around them, take a picture of it and to upload it on instagram with the hashtag #PilobolusVOTEproject.
"This project took aim at a public relations campaign produced by The Union Square Partnership, a local Business Improvement District (BID) attempting to privatize the north end of NYC’s Union Square park and install a high-end celebrity chef restaurant. They hosted historical walking tours of the park for decision-makers, as a means of getting buy-in for their development initiative.
On the eve of the 60th anniversary of the communist takeover of China, Tibet activists projected messages of support for human rights and freedom from inside and outside of the Empire State Building, countering China’s public relations stunt to bathe the building in red and yellow light. “NY [Hearts] Human Rights” was projected from inside the ESB onto a nearby building.
Come across a poster like the two above on your commute recently? Laid out in classic MTA style, but adorned with Orwellian imagery and an appropriately ambiguous hashtag, they warn of two possible hazards to your health: an upcoming “airborne non-toxic test” in which the NYPD will disperse “harmless, colorless gas” around the five boroughs, and an at-risk nuclear reactor that’s just 28 miles from NYC.
"Brooke Shields is one of 200 famous faces that the artist Jonathan Horowitz identifies as vegetarian in head shots he has hung on the white-tile walls of a former meat locker in the south Village. Horowitz, 44, swore off meat at the age of 12, after his parents took him to a bullfight on a vacation in Mexico.
The Veterans Memorial in New York City, located at 55 Water Street, closes every day at 10pm. However, veterans often find themselves wanting to come to the memorial at all hours of the day and night. The organization Veterans for Peace organizes a sit-in every year on October 7th to protest their limited access to the memorial. That's not the only aim of the action, though.
alternating yellow and white chalk on black blank subway advertisement spaces.
"NO ONE VOTED FOR ELON"
"RISE AND RESIST"
"RESISTANCE IS CONTAGIOUS"
"WHO WILL SAVE US? WE WILL SAVE US"
found on the uptown C train platform at 50th street station. found on february 9, 2025.
The latest episode in Nicolas Heller's documentary web series "No Your City," as published by Gothamist, features the arguably pretentious, inarguably earnest street performer Kalan Sherrard, who was recently arrested during his peaceful anarchist puppet show. Functioning as a video manifesto for his peculiar ways, the clip is at least compelling.
The initiators collaborated with the Street Vendor Project (SVP) of the Urban Justice Center to campaign against New York City Council Member Jessica Lappin’s 2010 law project. The bill, intended to revoke permits issued to street vendor trucks if they got parking tickets, was so restrictive that it threatened to put most food trucks out of business.
Kheris Rogers, an 11-year-old entrepreneur from Los Angeles, has made history at New York Fashion Week as the youngest fashion designer ever to present. Kheris became an internet sensation earlier this year after her sister posted photos of her promoting her unapologetic Flexin' in My Complexion apparel line.
From 99 Percent Invisible:
By the late 1980s, AIDS had been in the United States for almost a decade. AIDS became the number one killer of young men in New York City, then of young men in the country, then of young men and women in the country.