BEIJING – Before Yue Xin became a central figure in China’s burgeoning movement against sexual harassment, she recorded herself singing a revamped version of the 1960s pop classic “Que Sera Sera.”
“Will we be equal? Will we be free?” sang the Peking University senior in a voice clip posted online, putting her own spin on Doris Day’s “Will I be pretty? Will I be rich?”
UndocuNation, a performance and visual art conglomeration, took place this past Friday at International House. The Center for Race and Gender at Berkeley, CultureStr/ke, and the Theater and Dance Performance Studies department here at UC Berkeley helped put on the show specifically for Berkeley students. The show’s main focus was on the complex issues of undocumented immigration, and what that can mean for students especially.
In 1978, while studying print-making in Hamburg, Gavin Jantjes was deemed a persona non grata by South Africa. His crime? Creating a series of prints that documented the violence and discrimination in the apartheid state, which he gathered together under the tongue-in-cheek name of a "colouring book".
China's only seaside theater festival has been held in the resort town of Aranya in north China's Hebei Province. Artists from around the world traveled there to take deep dive into the world of dramatic performance. For theatergoers, there were interactive activities including cross-border installations such as seaside talks, environmental drama readings, screenings, theater houses, parades and bonfires by the sea.
In Shanghai, a vigil grew into a street protest where many held blank sheets of white paper in a symbol of tacit defiance.
In Beijing, students at Tsinghua University raised signs showing a math equation devised by the Russian physicist Alexander Friedmann, whose surname in Chinese is a homonym for “free man.”
The new wave of hip-hop has arisen a woke generation. From it, Xiuhtezcatl — seventeen-year-old Indigenous rapper and activist — has emerged, stirring the comatose with his music.
From performing at the Standing Rock encampment with Immortal Technique and Nahko to leading the Youth v. Gov. lawsuit against the Federal Government, Xiuhtezcatl’s actions show his music is more than words.
Huffington Post put together a digital, interactive map of some of the so-called best and brightest street art collections. Street art is important because it allows artists, usually from the community where the street art is taking place, to interact with the community and bring color/brightness to the environment.
The 9,000 bottles of water on display at an art gallery in Beijing last month appeared identical to those of Nongfu Spring, one of China’s most popular spring water brands, with one jarring difference. Inside each bottle was brown, murky groundwater collected from a Chinese village.
From Creative Time, Social Practice Archive: Produced by the Windsor, Canada-based collective Broken City Lab—an artist-led interdisciplinary research group—Cross-Border Communication was a performative public art project that took place in November 2009 between the cities of Windsor and Detroit, which are separated by the Detroit River. For three nights, Broken City Lab projected a series of messages across the river which were visible in Detroit.
The 14th day of June each year is celebrated as Flag Day, and in 2017 it was no different save for the fact that the project took center stage. The celebrations kicked off with hoisting the resist flag, a creation by Marilyn Minter on the rooftop of the 4th street headquarters of Creative Time.
Watch Gabriel Frilando (aka CheatDeathNYC) cycle through the streets of New York City in this short film of remembrance made by NYC based, Argentinian born, director/ cinematographer Nicolás de Miranda.
Speaking about this personal project Nicolás says:
A human tide swept through Paris last month for the type of event France knows only too well — a protest. Union leaders led the march, awash in a multicolored sea of flags. Demonstrators shouted fiery slogans. Clashes with the police erupted.
And, as in every protest, there was Jean-Baptiste Reddé.
Invincible: Detroit’s Homegrown, Hip-Hop Activism: Powerful, passionate, and politically charged rhymes that speak for marginalized people.
by Shannan Stoll
Ilana Weaver started listening to hip hop when she was seven, after her family moved from Israel to Ann Arbor, Mich. She was trying to learn English, but soon became fascinated by how hip hop gives a voice to marginalized people.
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.
We are a grassroots movement of Star Trek fans volunteering with non-partisan, pro-democracy groups nationwide.
Our team of thousands of "Starfleet officers" volunteer with our partner organizations to support voting rights, improve election transparency, and help elections administrators meet their staffing needs.
Yes, the Climate is Changing
Video: People around the world show how climate change is already affecting their lives.
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Early Sunday morning, the Dallas Police Department's Twitter account tweeted for followers to download its iWatch Dallas app and share videos "of illegal activity from the protests." The police are looking to arrest lawbreakers at weekend demonstrations decrying police violence against black people. The benefit of the app, according to the tweet, was the ability for informants to stay anonymous.
On June 17, 2013, Russell Brand (a stand-up comedian and actor) visited MSNBC’s
'Morning Joe' news show to promote his international stand-up tour, 'The Messiah Complex', but he also managed to mock the 'Morning Joe' news anchors, as well as the mainstream media. Clips of this particular interview immediately went viral on YouTube, and one of the videos is linked to this page (see the first link below).
The language of music is common to all generations and nations,” Gioachino Rossini, the virtuosic opera composer, once said. “It is understood by everybody, since it is understood with the heart.” In recent weeks, Italians have embraced the language of music as a means to communicate with their neighbors and endure the ravages of covid-19 as a collective.