Runners and walkers planning to take part in a 5K race in Asheville early next month might do better with a compass — a well-tuned political compass, that is.
Michael Landy made an inventory of every single thing he owned: every item of furniture, every book, every work of art, every article of clothing and one Saab car. Cataloguing all his possessions took a year to complete and the final list comprised 7,227 items.
Chilean students ran for 1,800 consecutive hours around Chile's presidential palace, La Moneda, from June 13 to August 27, 2011 to protest the cost of education. The 1,800 hours stand for the 1,800,000,000 Chilean pesos, or approximately US$4 million which would cover the cost of higher education for 300,000 students. They carried Chilean flags and signs with "Free Education Now" written on them.
Acción #CronicaDaMorteAnunciada que consistió en la creación de 9 estandartes con informaciones sobre asesinatos a “País do Santo” para denunciar sus muertes por motivos de racismo afroreligioso en la ciudad de Belém, Brasil.
A collective resistance movement dedicated to reasserting communal ownership of common spaces, Reclaim the Streets staged its first action on Camden High Street in 1995, when activists closed the road to vehicle traffic to make way for a street party. Combining the tactics of non-violent direct action with 90's UK rave culture, organizers kept the location secret until the last moment to preempt police interception.
La Casa Invisible project was started in 2007 in Malaga, Spain, when a group of socially involved participants squatted in a run-down building, aiming to eventually claim the legal rights to the property (Moor & Smart, 2016). The space was opened to local artists and creators, quickly becoming a hub for free local music, performances, and seminars as well as creating an important meeting space for social groups (Moor & Smart, 2016).
"A Russian ballerina from the renowned Mariinsky Theatre performed on the frozen waters of the Gulf of Finland in protest against a construction project that is likely to threaten the area’s natural habitat.
Dancer Ilmira Bagautdinova traded some of the world’s most prestigious stages to perform on the frozen waters of Batareinaya Bay, after reports of plans to build a grain silo at the site emerged.
My skin is black,” the first woman’s story begins, “my arms are long.” And, to a slow and steady beat, “my hair is woolly, my back is strong.” Singing in a club in Holland, in 1965, Nina Simone introduced a song she had written about what she called “four Negro women” to a young, homogeneously white, and transfixed crowd.
At the New Orleans Swing Dance Festival the all African-American dance troupe The Rhythm Ambassadors were presented along side an African-American iteration of the Preservation Hall All-Star band with African-American vocalist Taryn Newborne to deliver the message that the African-American Lindy Hoppers were going to be protest until their rhythm is better presented...i.e.
When Rage Against the Machine arrived in Philadelphia to play their 15-minute set as part of Lollapalooza ’93, the Los Angeles band knew they had a problem. Zack de la Rocha, the band’s incendiary frontman who was as outspoken on the mic as he was loud in his cadence, had no voice. A month of playing shows on a tour to support their self-titled debut album released the previous November had taken its toll on the frontman’s vocal cords.
In her curatorial project Making Way, Ruth Simbao brought together works that complicated the idea of globalization’s effect on African nations, especially the idea that the new phase would usher in an almost frictionless movement of labor and capital across borders. Works by artists like Athi-Patra Ruga reflected on questions of how bodies moved through settler colonialist spaces.
Trickery and disguise, usually followed by revealing the truth, are often tactics used by liberal activism, like the Yes Men for example. When used by the right, however, it can have different implications. Pretending to be a CEO or billionaire in order to expose corporate greed and corruption is clearly different then pretending to be a minority. The use of disguise can manipulate and shed light on hierarchies of power.
Back after a five year hiatus, V-Day Sedona joins with hundreds of other productions across the globe in celebrating V-Day’s 20th anniversary with an act of artistic activism. For its 20th anniversary, V-Day is calling on activists around the world to Rise, Resist and Unite.
"Small charities of today are in threat. Charitable donations are down. Fewer people are donating. Those that do donate are giving less. Whilst bigger charities are better equipped to deal with this flux (with money to spend on large advertising campaigns), smaller charities are facing a more uncertain future. For the Pilion Trust, a small frontline charity working with homeless and disadvantaged people in London, times are tough.
In May, 2013, Russian performance artist Petr Pavlovsky wrapped his body, nude, in barbed wire and lay outside the St. Petersburg legislative assembly. The act was in protest of restrictions imposed on freedom of speech and assembly. Police officers were forced to attempt to disengage him from the wire. After medical officials also arrived, Pavlovsky refused to be taken to the hospital and was brought to jail, where he was held for several weeks.
"In a world where artists do themselves no financial favours by voicing critical political sentiments, Björk’s iconoclastic position and perspective is almost unique. Despite having made zero concessions to commerciality in her music, she has sold millions of albums, and remains as vital today as she was a quarter of a century ago.
Melissa is a down-to-earth, friendly woman in her 50s, and it seems that she has always met life with a certain amount of courage. She grew up on another continent, and after early motherhood, then divorce and a first career in business, she moved to the UK with her second husband. She then built another career working with survivors of domestic violence, before setting up a climate emergency centre in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.
"Cat House for Dogs," said an ad in the Village Voice, "featuring a savory selection of hot bitches..." Along with this ad, a press release was sent to the media saying that if your dog graduated from obedience school, if it was his birthday, or if he was just horny, for $50 you could get your dog sexually gratified. This was not a breeding service, but purely a sexual pleasure service.
One interesting thing about this stunt is that there is no record of it other than the Yippies' wonderful testimony. We believe that it actually happened, but it shows that storytelling is the most important part of any action of this sort.
"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.
For FX Harsono, art is activism. Over the past four decades, performance, sculpture, and painting have become his means of nonviolent protest against government autocracy and ethnic strife in Indonesia.