Beginning in February 2014, the New Museum will present the first US museum exhibition devoted to the work of Polish artist Paweł Althamer. The exhibition “The Neighbors” will include a new presentation of the artist’s work, Draftsmen’s Congress, originally presented at the 7th Berlin Biennial (2012).
Kenyan-based photographer Boniface Mwangi has captured his country's political and civic turmoil since the controversial presidential election in 2007. The violence and disorder he witnesses daily motivated him to take action, setting up a creative hub for activism called PAWA 254.
In 2007, anonymous French photographer JR embarked on the Face2Face project - the largest unauthorized photo exhibition ever conceived. JR and his collaborator Marco engaged Israelis and Palestinians employed in the same profession to be photographed making funny faces. They then enlarged the photos to grand proportions and wheat pasted juxtaposed portraits onto both sides of the security Separation Wall and in surrounding cities.
Ron Krielen is a social designer and a taxi driver. He spent five years driving a taxi for elderly and disabled people. En route, he would get to know them and their individual situation. He realized that this kind of personal contact gave him a better insight into possible solutions than many of the healthcare providers who were actually assigned to each case.
In 2003 Amsterdam police headquarters decided their security cameras needed a little bling after Jill Magid approached them through her company System Azure Security Ornamentation. Originally turned down as an artist proposal, Magid founded her company as a possible means of executing her project. It worked. Not only did she receive the proper permits to beautify police security cameras, but the city paid her to do it.
PARIS — At the end of the Dior fashion shown in Paris last September, a woman got up from the audience and walked down the runway carrying a yellow banner painted with the words “We Are All Fashion Victims.”
Forensic Architecture's Cloud Studies is a project that investigates the impact of toxic clouds on colonised and oppressed communities. The clouds, originating from sources like tear gas, industrial emissions, chemical weapons, and forest fires, often go unaddressed due to doubt and denialism.
"Intrabody Wireless Network" is a show of eighteen drawings and collages by Dmitry Borshch, in which he shows the architecture of such networks, their components referred to as nanomachines (biological, physical, chemical sensors, routers, antennas, interface devices), options for communicating (molecular, electromagnetic – in the terahertz band, acoustic, nanomechanical), and this type of network's applications (human, plant, industrial)
UK design students focusing on the use of design that moves beyond exclusivity, wealth, entitlement, and privilege, have created a coat that is also a shelter. The functional pocketed coat that converts into a tent and a sleeping bag, is intended for Syrian refugees. The students under the guidance of Dr.
Rectification of names
"If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant;
if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone;
if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate;
if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion.
Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said.
This matters above everything."
Confucius
The Guerrilla Girls tactic was well thought-out and was effective in creating a spectacle to draw attention to the issue at hand, which is the lack of female representation in the museum. Where I think the campaign has some drawbacks is in the actual message on the billboard. The rhetorical and ironic message is subtle and really only reaches those who are privy to the art world and/ or the museum.
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.
In the wake of the amount of police brutality that has been occurring since the dawn of the damn police, an institution that began as a way to find escaped slaves, across the United States, #manisfestjustice chooses to make its explicit artistic mission to demand that power take responsibility, and to provide avenues to community empowerment in the meantime.
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.
"On July 5, 2002, a strange new brand began cropping up in the streets of Barcelona. That day, at the height of sales season, more than fifty people rushed through the center of Barcelona to the Bershka clothing store to perform the very first Yomango fashion show.
A vibrant red mural in the heart of Barcelona serves as both an artistic expression and social activism. Officially known as the Todos Juntos Podemos Parar el SIDA (Together We Can Stop AIDS), the public art was created by the renowned American artist and AIDS activist Keith Haring in 1989. More than just a work of art, this mural represents a powerful call to action against the AIDS epidemic that was ravaging communities worldwide at the time.
From Public Delivery:
"The Land Mark series was a civil disobedience campaign. Over 2001 and 2002, Allora and Calzadilla, together with a group of activists, encroached into one of the United States Navy Bombing range in a beach of Vieques, Puerto Rico. The U.S. Military and NATO have used this location for various military exercises for more than 60 years.
John Wood and Paul Harrison are renowned British artists whose collaboration has led to the merging of video art with performance and conceptual art. Their works usually reside on the relationship between human beings, objects, and the environment, with humor and wit attached to them. They are well in place to make the artworks thought-provoking and entertaining. One such has to be 'Device'.
"It appears that Banksy has struck again, this time painting the brick wall of the former Reading Prison in Berkshire, England, where Oscar Wilde was jailed for two years over his “indecent” affair with Lord Alfred Douglas.