The Bed-Stuy Aquarium (also known as the Hancock Street Bed-Stuy Aquarium) is a makeshift goldfish pond located on a sidewalk in the Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn neighborhood of New York City. The pond, originally formed by a puddle from a leaky fire hydrant, garnered attention from locals and the press beginning at the time of its creation in August 2024.
A collective resistance movement dedicated to reasserting communal ownership of common spaces, Reclaim the Streets staged its first action on Camden High Street in 1995, when activists closed the road to vehicle traffic to make way for a street party. Combining the tactics of non-violent direct action with 90's UK rave culture, organizers kept the location secret until the last moment to preempt police interception.
As the conflict between Israel and Hamas continues, hundreds of people gathered inside the Museum of Modern Art and outside of the Brooklyn Museum on Saturday for protests.
With the intention of recognizing the work of the Latin American carreteros (garbage pickers) that collect recyclable materials in wheel carts, and increase environmental consciousness, artist Mundano created “Pimp My Carroça"
A Centro Social Okupado Autogestionado (Self-Managed Occupied Social Center) or CSOA is an occupied building dedicated to the development of social and cultural activities. They are part of the “movimiento okupa” (“squatter movement”), a label created and circulated by the mainstream press.
“Piano Stairs” is an interactive playful musical stairway installation created into the Odenplan underground station of Stockholm to make people use stairs more often than elevator. The project was part of a Wolkswagen initiative called “The fun theory” whose main objective and mission is to “change people’s behaviour for the better by making it fun to do.”
Puerto Rico doesn’t know what’s going on here, and if they do, they’re ignoring us.” So opens Gabriel Miranda’s documentary Vietnam, Puerto Rico. Focused on the coastal community of Vietnam, which is located in the Guaynabo, the doc tells the story of a disenfranchised population being displaced over the past two decades to make room for a glitzy new waterfront development.
Ghana ThinkTank is an international collective that “develops the first world” by flipping traditional power dynamics, asking the “third world” to intervene into the lives of the people living in the so-called “developed” world.
A troupe of approximately thirty women and men of various ages, sizes, ethnicities and performance backgrounds marched through the performance art space of SESC-Vila Mariana in Sao Paulo and then through the streets of downtown Sao Paulo, silent, blind folded, dressed in business attire, and covered completely with a gray mud. The performances walked slowly in unison at turtle's pace.
At the Eighth Avenue subway station, sewer alligators are not an urban legend.
Anyone who’s been through the 14th St./Eighth Ave. station has probably seen the bronze gator sculpture — and probably wondered what it means and why it’s there.
The underground gators — along with dozens of other whimsical creatures — are part of the permanent art installation housed at the intersection of the A,C,E, and L lines.
On the afternoon of September 11th, nearly a hundred people hugged each other to feel the beauty of the hug on the Paris Square in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, under the leadership of the Chinese artist Gao Brothers. At the beginning of the event, the Germans have not yet adapted to the behavior of embracing strangers, but encouraged by Gao brothers, people have opened their arms and gave the strangers around them a warm hug.
AMNA NAWAZ: Since anti-government protests erupted in Iran last year, people around the world have taken to social media to show their support.
That includes an Iranian American ballerina who's tapping into her own heritage and her art, in solidarity with those pushing for more rights.
The "NewsHour"'s Julia Griffin reports for our arts and culture series, Canvas.
Art in Odd Places (AiOP) presents visual and performance art in unexpected public spaces. AiOP also produces an annual festival along 14th Street in Manhattan, NYC from Avenue C to the Hudson River each October.
On October 16, 1964, the artist collective Hi Red Center, clad in sanitation masks and white uniforms and wielding small brooms and toothbrushes, spent several hours meticulously cleaning the streets of the Tokyo district of Ginza, amid the hustle and bustle of a “normal” day.
Students at art colleges across China are taking a strong stance in the midst of the largest wave of protests to have gripped the country since 1989. As demonstrations against the government’s strict Covid-19 policies erupted across the country over the weekend, students rallied on campuses to create protest art and graffiti.
For his latest project, Mark Manzi found himself outside of his comfort zone. For the Amsterdam-based photographer and designer, People of Japan was an attempt to break from his photography-first portfolio. “In the past, my work was very image-focused, whereas with this book I wanted to scan objects, collect receipts, record noises, add copy, and really create something visually striking,” he says.
Originally a project of San Francisco-based art and design studio Rebar, Park(ing) Day participants from Tucson to Tehran set up temporary installations ranging from simple unrolled sod to art galleries and even free health clinics.
Our City is a startup nonprofit based in Oakland and working with cities everywhere. They work with governments, cultural institutions, companies, community organizations, designers, and residents to produce
events, installations, and workshops that use public design to improve cities.
In the Si 8 Do project, Seville activists convened in a neglected barrio during the Euromediterranean Conference on Sustainable Cities, which was taking place in Seville.
"This area will be photographed" is a public performance of implied photographic consent, inspired by Google's street view and satellite surveillance. Posted signs and handbills alerted the public present in Union Square, New York, NY that a photograph would be taken of the area at a precise time.
The Protest Banner Lending Library is a space for people to gain skills to learn to make their own banners, a communal sewing space where we support each other’s voices, and a place where people can check out handmade banners to use in protests.
By Rebecca Davis and Meena Hart Duerson
Those who believed the Occupy Wall Street movement was all but dead after its dramatic removal from Zuccotti Park last fall may have been surprised to see the group pop up again in the days after Hurricane Sandy.
But this time, they weren’t organizing protests – they were calling on their large network to come to the aid of those hit hardest by the storm.
Spearheaded by Latitude Artist Community, Project Easy Access Lexington (PEAL) organized team 'Bricksquad' to help make the sidewalks and streets of downtown Lexington, KY more wheelchair accessible. Armed with only a canvas bag of few bricks, sand, and some tools the teams would make their way through the sidewalks restoring bricks as needed. The damage to the sidewalks was such that the gesture was symbolic more than effectual initially.
On June 26, contemporary artist Cai Guo-Qiang released the daytime firework display ‘When the Sky Blooms with Sakura’ at Yotsukura Beach in Iwaki City, as commissioned by Saint Laurent’s creative director Anthony Vaccarello.
When Bay Area activists Moms 4 Housing began their campaign, they were fighting gentrification and institutional poverty. Now, as California's housing crisis compounds during the COVID-19 pandemic, their work has taken on new significance.