Twelve sheep and a sheepdog walk into the Louvre.
If it sounds like the beginning of a joke, it’s not. In Paris Friday, French farmers protesting European Union agricultural policy herded a flock of sheep down the steps of the Louvre’s famous glass pyramid entrance and then into the museum itself. The protesters were from the Peasants’ Confederation and were fighting against subsidy cuts the EU is proposing that could hurt small farms.
The questions that London-based collective One Of My Kind (aka OOMK) explore are those of identity and belonging—issues that are experienced by everyone regardless of whether they grew up defining themselves based on the music they listen to, the hobbies they enjoy, or the religion they practice.
Empathy may be the cornerstone of any Global Justice movement, but how do we cultivate the conditions for empathy to thrive?
The wheelbarrow symbolises something universally useful, practical and pleasingly straightforward. A space to deliver things in an efficient and direct manner - no packaging and completely people powered.
For the November issue of women’s magazine ELLE UK, agency W+K London teamed up with feminist cofounders of Vagenda, Holly Baxter and Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett, to rebrand feminism.
Frustrated with the way women are stereotyped and portrayed, Vagenda created a ‘Sod The Stereotypes’ manifesto.
In the middle of Berlin, two thousand armed police officers stand guard, with instructions not to let a single person over the fence. They have been brought in from all over Germany on this particular Saturday. Water cannons, tear gas, and guns are at the ready. They stand in a line, a careful five meters behind the chain link and barbed wire fence. Protesters, two for every officer, are standing a few meters back from the other side.
At the end of June of this year, as France sweated through record high temperatures, a group of men took a moment to escape the heatwave and compete in the inaugural Mr Triton France competition.
Organised by Merman Ludo, the event – which organisers believe might be the first of its kind in the world – saw ten competitors from all over the country face off in a battle to be the best merman France has ever seen.
On 17 June 2007, a horrific vision was offered to the viewers of the Czech morning program Panorama: instead of idyllic hills, the image of a mushroom cloud was broadcast by a weather camera installed in the Krkonoše mountains, which caused a brief moment of panic in a country that is regularly agitated by debates on nuclear power. The panic wasn’t justified.
On December 1, 1994 also known as World AIDS day, participating members from LSD (Lesbianas Sin Duda), La Radical Gai, and other allies sought out to protest against the push back of rejection that many of them were receiving from the medical and social perspective.
Princess Hijab is an anonymous female street artist working primarily in Paris, France. Her art centres on veiling the main characters of subway advertisements using black paint. Few facts are known about Princess Hijab.
About 6 months before the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, installation artist Marc Thompson began conceptualizing and constructing an installation that would reflect the absurdities of the divided city. Thompson´s work was part of the Ressource Kunst exhibition.
Foreigners out! Schlingensiefs Container (Ausländer raus! Schlingensiefs Container), alternately named "Wien-Aktion", "Please Love Austria—First European Coalition Week", or "Foreigners Out—Artists against Human Rights", is an art project and television show from 2000 that took place within the scope of the annual Wiener Festwochen. It was created by Christoph Schlingensief and directed by Paul Poet.
David Černý has been called "l'enfant terrible" of Czech art. Since 1991, Černý continues to produce some of Czech Republic’s most famous political sculptures. His grand sculptures are almost always mocking the system through humor. Many of his well-known pieces remain as public art and have sparked much conversation. Examples of these can be found littered around Prague.
Wheelbarrows full of washable paint were poured along the Kensington road to mark a year since Russia launched its invasion. Four people have been arrested for the protest.
This demonstration was in response to a new law (as of June, 2012) imposing fines for unauthorized protest of up to $20,000 for organizers and $10,000 for participants. After activists were turned down for a more traditional protest, Lyudmila Alexandrova and others set up small dolls, teddy bears, and figurines with demonstration slogans. Two mini protests took place in January 7 and January 14, 2012.
Activists gate-crashed a retirement dinner for outgoing HMRC boss Dave Hartnett in Oxford, presenting him with flowers and a fake award for allowing large companies to avoid paying tax.
On June 17, 1911, a week before the coronation of King George V, women from diverse backgrounds united in costume and with installations over a shared political view - that of rallying the right for women to vote. Known as the Women's Coronation March, women thronged the streets between Blackfriars Bridge and Albert hall in a five-linked chain, dressed for the most part in white.
A feminist group in France has been transforming the streets of Paris after noting that just 2.6 per cent are named after notable women.
Tourists on the Ile de la Cité got a surprise when they found that almost all of the street signs in central Paris had been changed overnight.
Environmental activist Ella Daish has created a giant tampon applicator as part of a protest against single-use plastic. The piece is made out of period plastic found polluting beaches, waterways, and local ecosystems in the UK. Daish sourced 1,200 applicators from 15 different locations across the United Kingdom. Of the plastic applicators collected for the project, 87.5 percent came from one brand, Tampax.
Today over 40 people gathered at the Ministry for Internal Affairs in the centre of Tirana, the capital of Albania. The issue is Tirana's drinking water, which is not clean, unreliable as it comes out of the tap only a few hours a day and that sewage systems continue to pollute the water sources.
We set up a gazebo and table in a public park. The gazebo had two notice boards in the shape of trees where reflections were encouraged. We had a sign with the name of the action "Fall in Love With Nature" painted upon it. On the table were resource lists for the public to take away with links to books and websites on the topic of forest bathing and connecting with nature.
Chinese artist Ai Weiwei covered a Berlin landmark with thousands of refugee life jackets for his latest installation. The striking display was the activist's attempt to highlight the scale of migrants taking to the seas every day.
Armed with a can of washable spray paint, an artist in Greater Manchester, England, has embarked on a worthy crusade: to rid the region of potholes… by drawing penises on them.
The anonymous artist, who goes by the name “Wanksy,” told the Manchester Evening News that he decided to draw attention to the “appalling” pothole-ridden streets after some of his cyclist friends were badly injured on the roads.
Climate protesters in Washington, D.C. were handcuffed on Thursday after they dragged paint on a glass cover protecting an art sculpture.
The incident happened at the National Gallery of Art by the activism group Declare Emergency in an attempt to bring attention to climate change, according to the Washington Post.
Protests continue at Gorleben nuclear waste storage facility
Demonstrations against the German government's nuclear power policy continued as protesters marched near the Gorleben waste storage site. But one provocative author came up with a racier way to block a nuclear power law.
Protestors near Gorleben
Protests near Gorleben have died down but not stopped