For artist Christine Sun Kim, sound is a "ghost." The multiple-MFA-holding Senior TED Fellow who has had a Whitney Museum residency and exhibited at MoMA, has been profoundly deaf since birth. The sonic hush in which she lives has pushed her towards exploring sound through her work in a varied oeuvre of performance, installation, drawing, and video.
Drake has released an emotional video for "God's Plan" in which he donates the music video budget to people in need.
Shot in Miami and directed by Toronto's Karena Evans and Jordan Oram, the video features a bunch of generous, grand gestures.
You could hear their chants from the White House.
On June 6, hundreds of activists and protesters gathered on Black Lives Matter Plaza, a two-block section on 16th Street in Washington D.C. that was renamed amid BLM protests.
❗❗PRIDE REQUIRES ACTION❗❗
Celebrating Pride?
What better way to uplift LGBTQ people’s lives than by joining our campaign to #EndTransDetention?
Honor the legacy of Pride by taking action until all of us are free.
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https://www.endtransdetentions.org/petition
“Rose Boy” (玫瑰少年) refers to Yeh Yung-chih, a 15-year-old junior high school student in Taiwan who died on April 20, 2000, after years of bullying due to his non-conforming gender expression. Though the official cause of death was ruled accidental—he allegedly slipped in a school bathroom—the circumstances surrounding his death, including prior complaints from his mother about repeated verbal and physical harassment, drew widespread public attention.
In May 2010, as oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster continued to spread in the Gulf of Mexico, growing outrage from residents in New Orleans at the response by government agents and corporate executives, opened up new horizons of political possibility.
Ultra-Red is a collective founded by two AIDS activists in 1994 to explore the intersection of the political and aesthetic through "militant sound investigations".
In an endeavor to raise awareness at the local and international level, Razia organized the Mifohaza Masoala (Wake Up Masoala) music and environmental festival, which took place at the edge of the Masoala Rainforest in October 2011. The concert featured some of Madagascar’s most thrilling performers, and the festival was a tremendous success, with over 10,000 people in attendance.
*We would like to thank everyone who who participated in a very successful first Butterflies for Bealtaine*
For the month of May, we invited all ages to creatively respond to the theme of The Butterfly and to share a change they wish for on a personal, community or global level.
In Ireland as in many parts of the world we have been in a quarantine situation because of the global pandemic. This environment informed our project.
The Harlem Festival of Culture not only pays homage to the past but also envisions a brighter future. It serves as a platform to showcase the rich diversity and dynamism of Harlem's artistic community, while also acting as a catalyst for social change and community empowerment. The festival boasts a lineup of artists from various genres and backgrounds, including jazz, soul, hip-hop, gospel, blues, rock, Latin, and Afrobeat.
The Colombian hip hop had an outstanding representation with the C15 group in the Fabrica of Rimas International Festival, a gathering of urban cultures, sponsored by Morocco, Colombia and Spain.
"A live interview with the leader of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland was interrupted by protesters. During the live television interview with ARD, Alice Weidel, co-leader of AfD, appeared at times to struggle to hear the questions being asked of her as protesters gathered below the provisional stage for the interview in Berlin.
Lady Gaga said something interesting about her song “Born This Way” during a March 2011 interview at Google headquarters. “What's so funny [is] when I put that song out, everybody was like, ‘Oh, the lyrics are so literal,’ and I'm like, ‘Yeah,’” she shared, almost with a fuck-you cadence. She wasn't angry—but you could tell how important the track was to her, and how she didn't want its message muddled.
Kanami Kusakima, also known as the woman who dances in Washington Square Park with the long black hair and the paint, was happy to allow the Mayor's Office of NYC use her image as a promotional tool for a "post-coivd" New York. Yet, she has had multiple encounters with police who want to shut her performance down.
The rap duo Macklemore and Ryan Lewis has broken records with their hits “Thrift Shop” and “Can’t Hold Us.” And now, with their pro-marriage equality hit “Same Love,” which features out lesbian Mary Lambert, they’re shattering stereotypes.
Beirut, Lebanon (CNN) -- They've been described as the voice of their generation -- though not one that everyone is comfortable hearing.
Mashrou' Leila, whose name translates as "The Night Project," is a controversial alternative rock band from Lebanon, whose music has served as something of a soundtrack to the Arab Spring for many young people throughout the region.
Veteran Industrial band Skinny Puppy have objected to their disturbingly dark music being played to discombobulate inmates at Guantanamo, and plan to “charge” the government for doing so. They are not the first band to express such objections.
Mass media using propaganda to brainwash citizens. Confusion and ignorance causing a divide. People rising up against an oppressive government. Humans being torn between rage and love. These are the themes of Green Day’s widely successful 2004 album, “American Idiot.” These themes still sound familiar. Nearly two decades later, the world, especially the United States, faces these same issues.
A This flash mob was designed to deliver a message to raise awareness and deepen understanding about the immediacy of the climate change problem. By subverting the lyrics of the Rattlin’ Bog, we appealed through music to the hearts of participants.
The Irish song, the Rattlin’ Bog, is a well-loved traditional cumulative song, with a short chorus, and is easily learned. The word Rattlin’ means ‘splendid’.
Hair Nah (https://hairnah.com/) is a game created by Momo Pixel, a Black woman who wanted to represent how it feels for people to touch her hair without consent. The game is fun but also impactful, especially with the mechanic of "getting tired" of smacking away hands.
Unveiling the Unseen
BlindWiki is a location-based audio network where citizens who are blind or partially sighted use smartphones to share their findings by posting sound recordings. The platform does not just contain information about difficulties and barriers but is also a repository for experiences, opinions and stories, generating a creative and collaborative cartography of the unseen.
Kids Helping Kids is a youth hip-hop program run by two NGOs, Hip Hip Saves Lives and Negusworld. Together, these organizations work with middle school and high school students to make conscious hip hop influenced by activist work happening worldwide.
In March of 2022, JR, with the help of 100 volunteers, unfurled the portrait of five-year-old, Ukrainian refugee Valeriia in Lviv, Ukraine. Leaving Ukraine, JR saw firsthand how difficult it was for women and children to get to safety due to long queues at the border. In response, he released two NFTs of Valeriia as part of his solidarity project titled: Can Art Change the War?