In 2007, Andrew Danziger had an architecture class assignment at the University of Texas at Austin to propose an urban intervention in Austin. The goal was to think about public art in unexpected ways. One classmate dreamed up a blank traffic sign; another suggested putting a bench at a bus stop that lacked one. Danziger hit on the idea of installing swings in surprising places, and then he went beyond the assignment by actually doing it.
In Pittsburgh, Memphis and Los Angeles, massive billboards recently popped up declaring, “Birds Aren’t Real.”
On Instagram and TikTok, Birds Aren’t Real accounts have racked up hundreds of thousands of followers, and YouTube videos about it have gone viral.
Last month, Birds Aren’t Real adherents even protested outside Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco to demand that the company change its bird logo.
“As an educator, I want people to have a sense of empowerment. I want them to have ownership of their own creative experience. It’s a very humane thing knowing we are inherently creative.”
One of the defining features of politics in the 21st century has been the way online cultural phenomena can cross over into the “real” world.
Unfortunately, perhaps because the internet seems to bring out the worst in people, those phenomena have largely been, well, awful.
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.
Shackles. Cotton. The Big House.
Americans tend to think of slavery in terms of chattel slavery. Plantation Slavery. Slavery where human beings are bought, sold, and owned. The kind outlawed in the United States by the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.
Slavery as a relic of the 19th Century.
“Six of us lived, worked, slept in a 10-by-10 (foot) room without a bed, bathroom, or clean water,” Nasreen Sheikh remembers.
The play celebrates the life and legacy of the Mexican-American labor activist César Chávez. His early life as well as his partnership with Dolores Huerta, activism with the National Farm Workers Association, the 1968 grape boycott, and his ongoing commitment to nonviolent civil rights work.
In conjunction with the GUTS world tour, Olivia has launched Olivia Rodrido’s Fund 4 Good, a global initiative committed to building an equitable and just future for all women, girls and people seeking reproductive health freedom.
A portion of the proceeds from all ticket sales at the GUTS world tour will go towards the Fund 4 Good.
José Bové, a sheep farmer/activist in Aveyron in the Midi-Pyrénées region of France, is a modern day Astérix, a mythical Gaul who drubbed foreign intruders centuries ago. In Bové's case, the intruder was McDonald's, the American fast food chain.
In 2019, Adeyemi Emmanuel began collecting bits of discarded plastic and used them to make a backpack. Seeing a way to raise environmental awareness in fashion-conscious Nigeria, Emmanuel in November launched a line of bags, wallets and gift boxes made of 20% leather and around 80% plastic waste, called ECO. He collects chips of used plastic by hand, such as leftovers from picture frames, primarily from craft workshops.
A dark cloud hovers above a stand of Eastern cottonwood trees in Tifft Nature Preserve, a 264-acre woodland nature refuge on Lake Erie. But this is no ordinary cloud; it is a high-tech habitat for one of the world’s most misunderstood species—bats.
In recent years, a fashion for painting the human figure has preoccupied the art world, with an emphasis on race, gender and other urgent social issues. Yet another pressing topic in America has been curiously absent from art: abortion, which became all the more timely when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June.
VALDOSTA, Ga. — On an October morning in 2018, Eleanor Holmes and her husband left home to run an errand and found two men inside their front gate. They introduced themselves as detectives from Orlando, Florida, and said they needed the couple’s help.
Rooted in Native American and indigenous practices,[11] restorative justice is a set of principles and practices that aims to help communities heal from conflict and harm by developing a common understanding of the root causes and effects.[12] Restorative justice can occur in a variety of different contexts: in the workplace, at schools and within, or instead of, the criminal justice system.
FloodNet was a conceptual artwork and a tool for online collective action.
Developed by the collective Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT), it took the form of a Java applet that allowed users to send useless requests or personalized messages to a remote web server in a coordinated fashion, thereby slowing it down and filling its error logs with words of protest and gibberish—a kind of virtual sit-in.
"100 Questions About Sex from Children" is an annual touring sex education exhibition founded and curated by Se A, a leading advocate of inclusive sex education in China. Since its launch in 2021, the exhibition has been held in major cities such as Shenzhen and Guiyang, with plans to expand into regions where sex education and gender awareness remain underdeveloped.
Zero Abuse Project is a 501(c)(3) organization committed to transforming institutions in order to effectively prevent, recognize, and respond to child sexual abuse.
A new exhibition titled “Afrofuturism: A History of Black Futures” will debut at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) to examine Afrofuturist expression and culture as it relates to music, activism, art, and more.
The Mirror Casket project is a sculpture, performance, and visual call to action designed and orchestrated by a collaborative of St. Louis community artists in response to the shooting death of Michael Brown on August 9, 2014 in Ferguson, MO.
User @ArmoredSuperHeavy on Twitter recently posted a master document detailing their explorations into bookbinding, fanfiction preservation, and the online gift economy. Their bookbinding venture, named Dead Dove Publishing, is a project that seeks to preserve and legitimize fanworks and celebrate the fandom gift economy. The document explains their actions and the work they have done since they began two years ago.
By going viral for the fashionable and aesthetically appeasing art for Trans lives, she has developed a new way to advocate for this cause while simultaneously growing her business. By starting by documenting their journey to living their most authentic life on youtube, they have gravitated to TikTok where they have found particular success in spreading awareness through their art and apparel.
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.
Fashion designers from L.A. to Milan are picking up their shears in solidarity to do their part to prevent the spread of COVID-19 to at-risk patients and primary care providers.
On the occasion of the European Cultural Capital Graz 2003, WochenKlausur developed a year-long program of activities for older people with severe mental disabilities. The object was to offer them opportunities for a change of their daily routine inside the home.
Haiti is a conservative society where Roman Catholicism shapes many of its social norms. Patriarchal norms, says Haitian feminist Pascale Solages, co-founder and general coordinator of feminist organization Nègès Mawon, have informed its strict views on abortion. In Haiti, women can’t legally access voluntary abortions. Doctors can’t perform them unless the woman’s life is in danger.