I've decided to post about a recent experience, considerable an "action" in its nature, and how it felt, which was comparable to solicitation rather than activism. However, there was a sense for consciousness-raising regardless of any tangible outcome.
Counterspace is the first decolonial thinktank mapping cultural activism worldwide. Connecting the dots it creates the first global directory, network and social movement linking the countercultural experiences and radical culture shakers (artists, curators or both) who are creatively decolonising culture, inspiring others to join the collective machinery towards change.
It’s been a historic year for women. There are more serving in Congress than ever before, and a record number are currently running for president in 2020. But even with these significant gains, women—both in the U.S. and around the world—can still find gender equality elusive.
Two design students were awarded the Futurapolis prize last Wednesday for their project to adapt the Furan (underground river) , a response to the migration crisis.
Delhi- based graffiti artist who goes by the name Daku went around South Delhi, one of the poshest places in the city, and painted on overflowing garbage cans.
Caucus-goers in Des Moines will arrive to a disturbing sight on Monday, with dozens of chain-link cages appearing to hold migrant children cropping up across the city overnight.
In April, 2011, Food and Water Watch partnered with Yes Lab to raise questions regarding drinking water around New York City. Yes Lab, an organization that collaborates with activist groups, aims to create successful media-related creative actions that help raise awareness regarding pertinent causes and create desirable action, often by staging interventions for the existing status quo by imitation and alteration.
Whether or not they follow politics, it’s fair to assume most people don’t actually read electoral programs. Podemos, Spain’s growing leftwing party, which got nearly 21% of the votes in last year’s elections, doesn’t think that’s good, so it adopted an unusual marketing approach to tackle that problem: it printed the program as an Ikea catalogue (pdf, link in Spanish).
JAY SHELLS DROPS “RAP QUOTES,”
HIS MOST SITE-SPECIFIC STREET ART PROJECT YET
By Aymann Ismail | March 25, 2013 - 12:30PM
After schooling New Yorkers on etiquette via numerous unsanctioned interventions, artist Jay Shells channeled his love of hip hop music and his uncanny sign-making skills towards a brand new project: “Rap Quotes.”
Sublevarte, a Collective of Mexican artists, was born out of the ENAP (National School of Fine Arts) of UNAM (the National Autonomous University of Mexico), during the student strike of 1999-2000, the longest student strike in history.
What would a chemical attack on NYC look like? How would poisonous gases spread, through the lines of the subway and above ground? These are some of the questions the NYPD and a team of researchers hope to answer this July, when they’ll disperse colorless, odorless, and apparently harmless gases called perflourocarbons around the city and track their movement.
In a visually captivating public art venture, the Audonon Mural Project seeks to raise awareness for species of birds threatened by climate change in a rather unconventional way—street art. A collaboration between the National Audubon Society and Gitler &_____ Gallery, scatterings of stunning avian themed murals are cropping up throughout John James Audubon’s old Manhattan neighbourhood.
Bogus building inspection notices with the forged signature of city Building Inspection Director Frank Chiu appeared on buildings in San Francisco's South of Market area, prompting an investigation by exasperated city officials.
On Monday, a grassroots, anti–corporate tax-dodging coalition called Flip the Debt crashed a "Fix the Debt" party at St. Anselm's College in New Hampshire hosted by Honeywell CEO David Cote to tell the gathered deficit hawk disciples that paying their "damn taxes" would be a better solution than crippling the nation with fiscal austerity measures.
The latest in street art activism is confronting sexism in an unconventional, but wonderful, way.
Street artist, Elonë, from Karlsruhe, Germany, is paving her city with messages against sexism, street harassment and sexual abuse — all printed on menstrual pads.
An oversized facsimile of Rush poppers, tipped over, pouring out its viscous contents: this example of underground gay iconography blown up to almost belligerent proportions perfectly represents the aims of Party Out of Bounds: Nightlife as Activism Since 1980, a new exhibition at La MaMa’s La Galleria. The group show, curated by Emily Colucci and Osman Can Yerebakan, gathers together works by a small yet distinct menagerie of queer artists.
Over the past 2 years, Visualizing Palestine (VP) has harnessed visual storytelling to bring public attention to the daily injustices facing Palestinians, from demolition of homes to mothers forced to give birth at military checkpoints. VP wants to start 2014 by raising global awareness around two key issues.
HIV is still among the top 10 leading causes of death in the world, ranking sixth with around 1.5 million deaths each year. Around 35 million people are currently infected with HIV, and cases are worryingly on the rise—it is far from old news. Determined to change this, a magazine has embarked on a bold new campaign in which 3,000 copies will be printed using ink mixed with HIV-infected blood.
The Creativity Movement (formerly known as the World Church of the Creater) is a self proclaimed white supremacist organization with factions across the United States. In 2004, a high ranking leader of the Montana based faction defected from the group, but not before donating over 4,000 of the group's bibles called the 'RAHOWA' (acronym for racial holy war) to the Montana Human Rights Network.
The Canadian artist collective General Idea found its drive in the AIDS epidemic, becoming aesthetically and conceptually refined in the in the 1970s and ’80s, after long forays into absurdity and performances evocative of Dada and Fluxus.
Gum Election
Gum Election is a guerilla art project which started in New York City in October 2008. It encouraged people to vote during the presidential election in 2008 and also not to spit out their chewing gum carelessly on New York Cities already dirty streets. Now the Gum Election is back and New Yorkers are voting again “who’s sucking the most”.
Do we need to crowdsource a new Australian Constitution? Does anything matter more than the environment? Should Australia become a republic with an Australian head of state? Should whistleblowers be protected? Is representative democracy antiquated? Controversial artist Carl Scrase is asking these questions in a new project that mixes street art posters with political activism and aims to go viral through social media.
Spanish organization the ANAR Foundation (Aid to Children and Adolescents at Risk) releases a campaign that takes advantage of the process of lenticular printing to send an offer of help to abused children without alerting their abusers, even if they’re walking together.
Lenticular printing is a process that allows for different photos to be seen depending on the angle the image is viewed from.