Projects tagged "Activates (people)"

Energizes and organizes people into action. Can include emotion work
Mattress Protest/Carry That Weight
Practitioner:
Emma Sulkowicz
Date:
Sep 1 2014
Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight) (2014–2015) was a work of endurance/performance art which Emma Sulkowicz conducted as a senior thesis during the final year of a visual arts degree at Columbia University in New York City.[1]
Favorite 
2
"We stand in solidarity"-Asian American Artist Confront Racism
Practitioner:
Mike Keo, Monyee Chau, Godzilla: Asian American Art Network
Date:
Apr 2 2020
Unleashed by anxiety over the pandemic, the nationwide rise in anti-Asian hate has served as a call to action for many Asian American artists to take a stand: To actively challenge the historic negative stereotype of the vice- and disease-ridden Yellow Peril; to dismantle the pernicious and divisive myth of the model minority that pits achievements by Asian Americas as judgements against other communities of color; and to advocate for social justice, eq
Favorite 
4
Say No To Body Shame
Practitioner:
Mounica Tata
Date:
Aug 18 2020
Mounica Tata launched Doodleodrama as an online journal to improve representation for her body type in mainstream media. “I’ve always been an overweight person and bullied and shamed for the same. Only fairly recently I’ve learned to make my peace with my body. My own journey with my body inspired/continues to inspire me to talk about it.”
Favorite 
1
'0 to 1939 in 3 seconds’: Why Anti-Elon Musk Satire Is Flourishing in Britain
Practitioner:
Center for Political Beauty and others
Date:
Apr 5 2025
The mischievous posters began appearing all over London in the past two months. On the side of an East London bus stop, one of them shows Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, emerging from a Tesla’s roof with his hand pointing upward in a straight-armed salute. “Goes from 0 to 1939 in 3 seconds,” the ad reads. “Tesla. The Swasticar.”
Favorite 
3
“Supporting Ukraine Is Not a Choice, But Our Common Duty”: How a Group of Artist-Activists Is Supporting Ukraine From Warsaw
Practitioner:
Sunflower Solidarity Community Center
Date:
Feb 25 2023
In 2023, it is impossible to be an apolitical artist in Eastern Europe. As war rages on in Ukraine, art serves as a powerful and necessary tool, according the members of the Sunflower Solidary Community Center in Warsaw: Maria Beburia, Sebastian Cichocki, Kuba Depczyński, Taras Gembik, Yulia Krivich, Kaja Kusztra, Natalia Sielewicz, and Bogna Stefańska.
Favorite 
4
The Tragic Story Behind Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit"
Practitioner:
Billie Holiday
Date:
Apr 15 1937
In March 1939, a 23-year-old Billie Holiday walked up to the mic at West 4th's Cafe Society in New York City to sing her final song of the night. Per her request, the waiters stopped serving and the room went completely black, save for a spotlight on her face.
Favorite 
3
Bread and Puppet Theatre: Insurrection Resurrection Service Circus
Practitioner:
Bread and Puppet
Date:
Jul 1 2020
The Insurrection-Resurrection Service Circus is this summer’s [started in 2020 and is ongoing] contribution to the iconic Bread and Puppet Circus tradition beloved by audiences worldwide for nearly 2 generations — a bright, raucous melee of short acts governed by a brass band, addressing the heart of the current moment using diverse puppetry styles and spanning many moods, from slapstick to the sublime.
Favorite 
1
Chinese See Themselves in a Chained Woman
Practitioner:
netizens, journalists, lawyers, academics...
Date:
Jan 25 2022
The Xuzhou chained woman incident, also known as the Xuzhou eight-child mother incident, is a case of human trafficking, false imprisonment, sexual assault, severe mistreatment, and subsequent events that came to light in late January 2022 in Xuzhou's Feng County, Jiangsu, People's Republic of China.
Favorite 
6
Seaspiracy
Practitioner:
Ali Tabrizi
Date:
Mar 24 2021
"Passionate about ocean life, a filmmaker sets out to document the harm that humans do to marine species - and uncovers alarming global corruption."
Favorite 
2
Hannah Gadsby's Gender Agenda
Practitioner:
netflix
Date:
Mar 5 2024
Following the backlash of Netflix's support of Dave Chappelle's "The Closer" comedy special, which featured racist transphobic "jokes", Hannah Gadsby took a deal with Netflix to create a comedy special featuring genderqueer comics. The show, titled 'Gender Agenda', was tapped in the Alexandra Palace Theatre in London and released on Netflix on March 5, 2024.
Favorite 
3
London’s “Free Butt Plug Catalogue” Confronts Hostile Architecture
Practitioner:
A Chinese Artist
Date:
May 16 2025
Hostile architecture—urban design features like ground spikes that deter the homeless from lying down or slanted benches that prevent lingering—inscribes exclusion into our streets. In response, a Chinese artist will launch the Free Butt Plug Catalogue, an art-activism project that documents fifteen such spikes and anti–loitering benches across London and pairs each with a commercially available butt plug of the same shape.
Favorite 
0
Giving the World a Middle Finger
Practitioner:
Ai Weiwei
Date:
Jan 1 2005
Ai Weiwei is a Chinese artist and activist. He has been vocal and openly critical of the Chinese government’s stance on democracy and human rights. His work has captured global attention and served to bring attention to social injustices, human rights violations and systemic violence. Ai never shies away from saying what he truly feels and he encourages people to state exactly what they want.
Favorite 
2
A Fire in My Belly (A work in progress)
Practitioner:
David Wojnarowicz
Date:
Jan 1 1986
"Owning a vehicle, you could drive by and with the pressure of your foot on the accelerator and with your eyes on the road you could pass it quickly … The images of poverty would lift and float and recede quickly like the gray shades of memory so that these images were in the past before you came upon them. It was the physical equivalent of the evening news.” — David Wojnarowicz.
Favorite 
5
‘They’ve taken away my freedom’: the truth about the UK state’s crackdown on ​protesters
Practitioner:
Natasha Walter
Date:
Feb 5 2023
Melissa is a down-to-earth, friendly woman in her 50s, and it seems that she has always met life with a certain amount of courage. She grew up on another continent, and after early motherhood, then divorce and a first career in business, she moved to the UK with her second husband. She then built another career working with survivors of domestic violence, before setting up a climate emergency centre in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.
Favorite 
6
Artists Tried to Activate Voters With Billboard Art. Did It Work?
Practitioner:
Hank Willis Thomas
Date:
Jan 13 2025
On Nov. 6, the day after the presidential election, the artist Hank Willis Thomas was at his studio in Brooklyn. His production assistants were poring over tables strewed with blobby red white and blue silk-screen prints of the words “Fragile/ Democracy / Handle With Care” in capital letters.
Favorite 
2
呼吸之痛 The Pain of Breath
Practitioner:
Date:
Sep 11 2018
Pneumoconiosis has become the most serious occupational disease in China, and the vast majority of sufferers, nearly 6 million, are migrant workers. Because of the long-term inhalation of dust caused by pulmonary fibrosis, they usually breathing if not oxygen machine help, easy to suffocate.
Favorite 
1
Indigenous activists gather in Brazil to discuss future of the Amazon
Practitioner:
Brazilian Indigenous Activists and Environmentalists
Date:
Aug 6 2023
Thousands of Indigenous activists and environmentalists have converged in one of the Amazon’s biggest cities to voice their hopes and fears about the future of the world’s biggest rainforest. The Brazilian city of Belém will this week host a two-day conclave bringing together the presidents of eight Amazon nations including Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela.
Favorite 
0
Carlos Slim Laugh Machine
Practitioner:
new yorkers, The Yes Men
Date:
May 9 2013
Inspired by the Laughing Farmers of Karnataka, protesters in New York make Carlos Slim's visit to New York uncomfortable while he appears on a "Live From NYPL" program. This excellent video summarizes the action.
Favorite 
5
Howardena Pindell; "Rope/Fire/Water"
Practitioner:
The Shed, Howardena Pindell
Date:
Oct 16 2020
Howardena Pindell presented her solo exhibition, “Rope/Fire/Water”, her first video in 25 years and a project utilized by the artist since the 1970s that The Shed commissioned and displayed in late 2020 and into early 2021. “Rope/Fire/Water” mines the history of violence against African-Americans and features Pindell’s personal anecdotes and anthropological and historical data related to lynchings and racist attacks in the United States.
Favorite 
1
Ghen Cô Vy / Corona Hand Washing Song
Practitioner:
Khac Hung, Min x Erik, Vietnam Institute of Occupational and Environmental Health
Date:
Mar 1 2020
'Jealousy Ms. Vy' is a creative project of the Institute of Occupational and Environmental Health, in collaboration with musician Khac Hung, singer Min and singer Erik. Through this project, we look forward to empowering and trusting the community, so that we can join hands to combat COVID-19 (aka nCoV-2019).
Favorite 
3
Big Tech CEOs Become 7ft Capitol Rioters
Practitioner:
Sum Of Us
Date:
Mar 25 2021
As tech leaders faced tough questions from Congress, SumOfUs, an 18 million member advocacy organization, was right outside with a larger-than-life installation of the January 6th Capitol riot that shows the role Big Tech played in sparking the insurrection.
Favorite 
0
Voices of Freedom: The Impact and Legacy of Tania Bruguera’s #YoTambienExijo
Practitioner:
Tania Bruguera
Date:
Dec 17 2014
The beginnings of the #YoTambienExijo movement were born on 17 December 2014, when President Obama announcement a landmark warming of the 53-year chill between the United States and Cuba.
Favorite 
2
Ringgold's art - a visual symphony that harmonizes activism
Practitioner:
Faith Ringgold
Date:
Jan 1 1997
Faith Ringgold is a successful painter, sculptor, mixed-media artist, author, feminist, and political activist. She is particularly known for her narrative quilts, as she explores identity, race, family ties, as well as cultural and political topics through her many different forms of storytelling. “I have always wanted to tell my story or, more to the point, my side of the story” - Faith Ringgold
Favorite 
2
Reframing Trash Into Art
Practitioner:
Vik Muniz
Date:
Sep 15 2008
In 2008, my work as an artist took me to a gigantic landfill outside Rio de Janeiro called Jardim Gramacho. After operating for more than 30 years, the sanitary facility, once one of the largest in the world, had reached its maximum capacity and was on the eve of closing permanently.
Favorite 
2
Artist Statement
Practitioner:
Mbizo Chirasha
Date:
May 7 0020
Mine is not Arts for the sake of Arts. It is a revolutionary INSGINA carved into the artistic plaque of my DNA to speak FREEDOM of expression and then freedom after EXPRESSION. The footprints of my revolutionary walk are dipped in the paths of RESISTANCE. My Ideological Swag -word is CREATIVITY. My spiritual birth mark is RESILIENCE. My revolutionary slogan is a nonviolent but a poetic fist of MASS INSTRUCTION. I am non-selfish believer.
Favorite 
6

Pages