In August 2015, Weston-Super-Mare - a sleepy seaside town in Somerset, England - suddenly became the top destination for the metropolitan elite, welcoming celebrity guests like Brad Pitt, Jack Black and Mark Ronson. Overnight this quaint town, just 18 miles from Bristol, was transformed by anonymous street artist Banksy when he opened his very own dystopian Disneyland style theme park called ‘Dismaland’.
Thousands of ethnic Mongolians have protested across northern China in opposition to Beijing plans to replace the Mongolian language with Chinese in some school subjects.
Bil'in is a Palestinian village located 12 kilometres west of the city of Ramallah in the central West Bank. In 2005, the Israeli government began constructing the security barrier in the Bil’in area, and since then approximately 55 percent of Bil’in’s former land has been used for the construction of the Modi’in Illit settlement.
Leilei Zhang was harassed on a public bus when a man gripped her hand, glared at her and refused to let go. With the determination to raise public awareness, Leilei began a crowd-funding campaign to raise money for what could have been China's first public anti-sexual harassment advertisement. She approached the authorities of her home city, Guangzhou, but it did not want to take on the advertising for fear it would panic the public.
The Kiss of Love campaign in India is a non violent protest against moral policing. It started out as a Facebook page but gained momentum across India when a mob of conservative, right-wing party members attacked and demolished a coffee shop in Kozhikode, Kerala. Their grounds to do so was public display of affection by couples inside the coffee shop, which they saw as immoral activity.
Alexandria "Lexi" Aniyah Rubio was looking forward to playing volleyball when she got to junior high. She dreamed of going to law school one day, and she loved astrology, butterflies, and the color yellow.
In response to white gentrifiers trying to silence go-go music on the corners of Florida Avenue and 7th Avenue, activists and D.C. residents poured into the streets by blasting go-go music and celebrating its rich history within the city. For those unfamiliar, go-go music is at the heart of D.C. culture and features live bands playing covers of, and sometimes original, music with all different types of drums and other percussion instruments.
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.
There are no whistles, no loud speakers, and no placards held up high in this quiet act of subversion. Pimsiri Petchnamrob stands silently in a mass of sharply dressed Bangkok commuters, her hands clutched around a copy of George Orwell's 1984.
Next to her a small group of young men and women, their faces sombre and their heads bowed low, also read books about fictional and real totalitarian worlds in silence.
In 2009, the College Republicans used tens of thousands of dollars from student fees to bring Karl Rove to speak at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Many groups of activists responded.
On the 25th revolutionary 1st of May demonstration in Berlin-Kreuzberg, protesters were throwing huge inflatable cobblestones, made of silver-reflective foil and tape. The creative intervention was initiated by the former art-activist collective “eclectic electric collective” (e.e.c.) and was meant as a celebration of an object which is both a symbol and a material weapon of anti-authoritarian struggle everywhere.
Luke Ching Chin Wai is a conceptual artist and labour-artivist in Hong Kong. Since 2013, he has worked undercover in different low-paid jobs in the city, including as a security guard, supermarket cashier worker, and metro cleaner to learn about poor people's working conditions. He then uses these experiences to create art and push for improved labour rights.
One of the oldest forms of human expression is art, so it’s no surprise that art is constantly used to critique another of humanity’s oldest practices, violence and war. In the world of art activism, the power of creativity and innovation has been used to create commentary about war since the beginning of time. Art that speaks out against the atrocities of violent conflict embodies empathy, care, and a plethora of other human emotions.
On November 29th 2011 Proffessor of Philosophy Raymond Geuss relocated a lecture he was scheduled to give to an occupied lecture hall on the campus of cambridge university.
Essential workers at major companies like Amazon, Instacart, and Target across the United States on Friday protested for better safety protections, working conditions, and pay during the coronavirus pandemic.
Thousands of people protested in Ghana’s capital Accra on Wednesday against the expansion of its defence cooperation with the United States, in a rare public display of opposition to the growing foreign military presence in West Africa.
Demonstrators blowing vuvuzelas and beating drums filled Accra’s business district, holding placards criticising a new deal with Washington that they say threatens Ghana’s sovereignty.
Nanfu Wang feels safe in New York. Surveillance, that essential preoccupation of the documentarian in America, is a chokehold from which she has been temporarily released. From her Brooklyn apartment, the Chinese filmmaker prepares for the release of her debut feature documentary, Hooligan Sparrow.
Voina conducted a wake for absurdist poet and Soviet-era dissident Dmitry Prigov, featuring a table with food and vodka, in a Moscow Metro car. Originally, they had planned an action involving Prigov but he died before they were able to implement it. They later carried out a similar action on the Kiev Metro. As an art collective, Voina is testing the boundaries of performance art. As activists, they are testing the patience of Russian authorities.
Dozens of Howard University students are sleeping outdoors in a tent encampment on campus grounds to protest what they describe as "poor" and "unlivable" conditions in the college dormitories.
Students told ABC News that portions of the university living quarters have mold and insect and rodent infestations, as well as leaky ceilings and flooding -- all of which they say put their health at risk.
MOSCOW (AP) — Put your paws in the air.
Moscow police have arrested 10 environmental activists, including four dressed in polar bear costumes, who were protesting outside the main office of Gazprom, the Russian oil and natural gas giant.
In the 20th century India's Mahatma Gandhi famously used the hunger strike as political protest. In America today we demonstrate by eating fast food.
Call it an “eat-in,” call it a “buycott”: By whatever name, it’s a tactic that’s growing in popularity. As Wednesday's Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day indicates, it’s a form of protest Americans find increasingly easy to swallow.
The elimination of Net Neutrality is a much bigger issue than most people would like to admit. This issue stems far from just an issue dealing with an open internet, free from biased control of the internet service providers, whom which we rely on.
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).
"University of Miami students, mostly male, walked a mile in red high heeled shoes. They are walking a mile in her shoes.
The mile long walk was in support of Walk a Mile in Her Shoes®, an international men’s march to stop rape, sexual assault and gender violence.
The organization, which says on Facebook that they were founded in 2001, has walks around the world.