“Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.” Mahatma Gandhi
#FUEELESTADO is a project about the lack of social justice and the gross human rights violations in Mexico. It examines the conflict between state power and personal autonomy and responsibility, a conflict that, in Mexico, involves missing persons and unidentified bodies and that can’t be silenced anymore.
The crisis is here, let the party begin! April 30, 2009. At first the crisis was just a state of being, a kind of social sadness that paralyzed everything. To break this atmosphere we couldn’t think of anything better than to throw a party. The first thing you need for a party is a good location, so we set out to find a place where social sadness and fear were extremely present. It didn’t take us long to find one: an unemployment office.
I think this is a very interesting project that is intended to pay hommage by showcasing portraits of survivors of the Cuban revolution. They are displayed in the streets of Havana and, as the artists explains, this is a place that lacks commercial advertising/ billboards in the streets. So they are displaying the courage and strength of those, people who should be admired, earned their place in a sense.
In the "D", "D" doesn't really stand for "Detroit", but "Demolition." Take a look around and you'll notice a great number of buildings marked on the front with a circled "D" in faint chalk. Off to the side, many of these same buildings will also have a noticeable dot, courtesy of our own native son, Tyree Guyton.
The Balloon Project, is a three-year-in-the-making Art Installation by Yan Kong in support of world refugees and migrants. It pays tribute to human spirit, courage and survival. The Balloon Project is a multimedia work incorporating mechanical engineering and visuals to fuse art and politics. 32 balloons inflate and deflate to simulate refugee and migrants' breathing while fleeing their countries to seek safety and freedom in the world.
First Inspired by a doll-sized action in Siberia, #occupysmallstreet staged its first little protest in Melbourne's City Square, as part of #F12, International Art + Occupy Day. Signs are made collectively, by regular Arts x Activism and members of the public (adults and children) who stop by and have something to add.
A group of South Korean activists is determined to send copies of The Interview across the North Korean border, despite threats from the state to respond with “cannons or missiles” if the plan succeeds.
Thanks to dramatic advances in drug therapy, infection with HIV has been transformed from a death sentence to a chronic, manageable disease. HIV-positive patients can even enjoy a normal life expectancy if treatment is successful. So we needn’t worry about this virus anymore, right? Sadly, that seems to be the misinformed idea held by many.
In Kiev, clashes between protestors and police have persisted since December. Blood has been shed, and the political stability of Ukraine remains uncertain.
During late January and early February, the opposition began to play music (from pianos) in front of riot police. These artists modus operandi has been to serenade protestors and police toward peaceful consensuses.
On January 18, 2012, numerous website across the internet called for an internet blackout in protest of SOPA and PIPA. SOPA, or the Stop Online Piracy Act, and PIPA, the Protect IP Act, were a series of bills promoted by Hollywood in the US Congress that would have created a “blacklist” of censored websites.
Dark Matter is a trans South Asian performance art duo comprised of Alok Vaid-Menon and Janani Balasubramanian, a prominent pair of voices operating at the intersection of the arts and activism.
"Since the progress of civilization in our country has furnished thousands of convenient places for this Swallow to breed in, safe from storms, snakes, or quadrupeds, it has abandoned, with a judgment worthy of remark, its former abodes in the hollows of trees, and taken possession of the chimneys which emit no smoke in the summer season." John James Audubon, The Chimney Swallow (or American Swift, Chimney Swift, Chaotura Pelasgia), from The O
The post (r)evolutionary exercises are the outcome of a meeting/friendship/project that started in summer 2010, when we took part in "Goings on" seminar in Beirut, Lebanon. In this seminar, curated by Cecilia Andersson, Scandinavian and Middle east art groups were invited to meet and learn about each others practices. That's what we did, we got along really well, and we started at once to think of ways to do something together again.
There are few artists more innocuous, more neutered, more universally loved and reviled than Thomas Kinkade. His soft-focus images present an idyllic vision of America and of Christianity, like Norman Rockwell without the blue-collar populism, where everything is beautiful, nothing hurts, and there’s always a warm fire going in the Lincoln-Log cabin just down the trail.
Isabelle Wenzel's series of photographs entitled 'Building Images' is a striking view on the idea of the office/ workplace. Not only do her images ironically translate the uncomfortable positions office workers endure sitting in a single position for 8 hours a day, but she also takes on a feminist approach by focusing on feminine models in her photographs that center upon the contorted body and office fashion worn.
If you visit the Art AIDS America exhibition expecting to see activist slogans and memorial pieces along with some art-world superstars, you won’t be disappointed—Keith Haring, Robert Mapplethorpe and the “Silence = Death” slogan are present and accounted for—but you might also walk through the show scratching your head in confusion.
Rain of Poems took place over London on Tuesday 26th June 2012 at 9pm. One hundred thousand poems printed on bookmarks by over 300 contemporary poets from 204 countries fell from a helicopter over Jubilee Gardens during Poetry Parnassus as the sun sets.
Blair Holt was shot and killed while he shielded another classmate from the bullets a gunman sprayed on a CTA bus in Chicago in 2007. His father is a police officer and his mother is a fire department chief, and that’s what they had taught him to do.
Taxi is a car with a digital advertising sign attached to the roof. Linked to a global positioning system, the message changes relative to the car's location, addressing specific neighbourhoods, addresses, and audiences. The technology can target an area as small as a square block. Haha solicits messages through email list serves and through direct contact with various groups throughout the city.
On 6 January 2012, Metrópolis (TVE 2) broadcast "Activismo y Ficción", a report directed by Enmedio members Leónidas Martín and Núria Campabadal. It looks at a series of creative projects that lie somewhere between fiction and social activism.
This project was born a few days after a demonstrator lost an eye after being hit by a rubber bullet shot from police guns in Barcelona. Unfortunately, it was not the first time. "Cop d' ull" means a "a blow to the eye" and also "at a glance”, which is a perfect description of this project.
The Immigrant Yarn Project (IYP), organized and created by Cindy Weil was a massive work of public and democratic (crowd-sourced), yarn-based art honoring our immigrant heritage and promoting tolerance, difference, and community. Weil reached out across the state and beyond to collect yarn-based creations by immigrants and their descendants.
In 2013, a group of ten women incarcerated at York Correctional Institution in Connecticut, calling themselves “Women of York,” created this work of art inspired by Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party. The installation includes six entry banners and ten place settings arranged on a triangular table, each dedicated to a woman of personal significance to the artist.