Projects tagged "Civil Liberties"

Poetry and silence: Iran's Kurds tread the line between art and activism
Practitioner:
Iranian Kurds
Date:
Feb 26 2016
In a sleepy town in Iranian Kurdistan, people take off their winter coats. It is evening, and outside one can just about discern the silhouettes of the mountains that lead to the Turkish and Iraqi borders. Inside, some 60 people fill the small community centre with a clammy heat. But it is not just warmth they are after. They have come for poetry.
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Emory Douglas, “Afro-American Solidarity With the Oppressed People of the World,” 1969
Practitioner:
Emory Douglas, The Black Panthers
Date:
Jan 1 1969
Emory Douglas joined the Black Panthers in January 1967 at the age of 23, just three months after Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the party. Douglas, who had studied graphic design at San Francisco City College, swiftly became the organization’s minister of culture and the art director in charge of its eponymous newspaper.
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Artists mark Trump's inauguration anniversary with day of protest art
Practitioner:
The Federation, a volunteer-run arts organization spearheaded by artist Laurie Anderson and producers Tanya Selvaratnam and Laura Michalchyshyn
Date:
Jan 19 2018
This weekend marks the one-year anniversary of Donald Trump's inauguration. It also marks the one-year anniversary of the Women's March his election inspired, the largest single-day protest in the nation's history.
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Response to James Cohan Gallery (October 19th, 2017)
Practitioner:
Chinatown Art Brigade
Date:
Oct 19 2017
October 19, 2017
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Slashing the Rokeby Venus
Practitioner:
Mary Raleigh Richardson, WSPU
Date:
Mar 10 1914
On March 10, 1914, Mary Richardson slashed Velasquez's "Rokeby Venus" with a small axe during public hours at the National Gallery in London. A militant suffragette protesting the force-feeding of imprisoned suffragettes in prison (and the Cat and Mouse Act which released the starving women only until they were slightly healthier only to imprison them again), Richardson released this statement after her arrest:
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Claiming Territory with Ink_ a street calligraphy graffiti artist in Hong Kong
Practitioner:
Tsang Tsou-Choi
Date:
Jul 5 1980
A toothless garbageman who once wandered Hong Kong’s streets with dingy bags of ink and brushes tied to his crutches is now the subject of a major retrospective. About 300 calligraphic works by the late Tsang Tsou-choi — who is best known by his self-dubbed title, the King of Kowloon — are showing at the ArtisTree art space in a high glass tower.
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Benjamin Lay spills blood at 1738 Quaker Meeting
Practitioner:
Benjamin Lay
Date:
Sep 1 1738
It was September 1738, and Benjamin Lay had walked 20 miles, subsisting on “acorns and peaches,” to reach the Quakers’ Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. Beneath his overcoat he wore a military uniform and a sword — both anathema to Quaker teachings. He also carried a hollowed-out book with a secret compartment, into which he had tucked a tied-off animal bladder filled with bright red pokeberry juice.
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Chinese Feminist Act Against Sexual Harassment on Subway
Practitioner:
Zheng Xi
Date:
Dec 1 2017
Zheng Xi 郑熹, a Ph.D. candidate with a focus on gender studies at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou. Zheng has launched a campaign asking city governments around China to display anti-sexual-harassment logos, complete with a groper’s “salty-pig hand” visual (etymological context here), alongside other commonly displayed public safety logos on places like subway trains and buses.
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3,000 Candles at the Lincoln Memorial #SoAllCanVote
Practitioner:
Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice
Date:
Jun 24 2014
At the same site where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech, we lit thousands of candles - one for each signature on our petition - to commemorate the legacy of brave freedom fighters Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner and to stand up for the rights that are once again in peril.
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Climate Activists Deface Constitutional Monument in Germany with Black Paint, Posters
Practitioner:
The Last Generation
Date:
Mar 4 2023
Climate activists defaced a work of art near Germany's Parliament Saturday in the latest act of vandalism by protestors concerned with environmental policy. Members of The Last Generation threw black liquid over a series of glass plates displaying 19 articles of the German constitution. The protestors then affixed posters to the facade that read, "Oil or fundamental rights?" in German.
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Pussy Riot Bring Their Music and Activism To Montreal
Practitioner:
Pussy Riot
Date:
Nov 1 2023
Pussy Riot are spreading their protests and activism beyond Russia. Away from Vladimir Putin’s censorship, they’re bringing their voices to Canada – a place where their message of resistance is resonating. On Nov. 1, as a chilling cold filled the streets of Montreal, Pussy Riot kicked off the North American leg of their Riot Days tour with a sold out show at the Rialto Theatre. The tension in the room was palpable.
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Once banned for his work, anti-apartheid activist highlights role of politics in art
Practitioner:
Gavin Jantjes
Date:
Jun 19 2024
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".
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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.
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Odes to Putin were Russian translations of Nazi verse
Practitioner:
Anonymous Russian pranksters
Date:
Jun 26 2024
Pranksters reveal odes to Putin were Russian translations of Nazi verse
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How about taking your favourite banker (and politician) to jail?
Practitioner:
Xnet
Date:
May 16 2012
The Spanish 15M/INDIGNADOS social movement represents a citizen break-up with the current political system while proposing an alternative one, creatively transforming the prevailing participation and action patterns in its society.
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Design For Freedom Summit Shares Strategies For Removing Modern-Day Slavery From Building And Construction Supply Chain
Practitioner:
Grace Farms Foundation
Date:
Mar 29 2024
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.
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This Is Not Your Body
Practitioner:
This Is Not Your Body
Date:
Nov 25 2014
Two reflective stickers in a bathroom stall. When you sit down you can see your face in the bottom one. When you stand you can see your face in the top one, your groin in the bottom one. The top one says "Public", the bottom one says "Private". Or maybe the top one says "Private", and the bottom one says "Public". Which one is correct?
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The Great Migration Series
Practitioner:
Jacob Lawrence
Date:
May 12 1941
National Public Radio (NPR): There's no historical marker outside Jacob Lawrence's childhood home in New York City's Harlem neighborhood. But Khalil Gibran Muhammad, director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, has an idea of what it might say: "Here lived one of the 20th century's most influential visual artists, a man named Jacob Lawrence, who was a child of southern migrants."
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Every Month: One Week. One Film. One Global Audience.
Practitioner:
SIMA RAMA
Date:
Mar 16 2017
For the past five years, we’ve screened SIMA juried films in communities and classrooms across six continents and witnessed an increasing demand to use the inspirational force of documentary filmmaking to build a global digital community around today’s most pressing issues.
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North Korean Artist Hopes Reverse Propaganda Will Change Lives Back Home
Practitioner:
Song Byeok
Date:
Jan 1 2018
Song Byeok is one of the most acclaimed Korean artists living today. He is from North Korea, where he was a propaganda artist for the North Korean government for two decades. After defecting in 2002, Byeok has turned his prolific creativity into powerful, satirical art using North Korea’s ruling culture as motifs.
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Edward Snowden Hologram
Practitioner:
The Illuminator
Date:
Apr 7 2015
NEW YORK — Hours after police removed an illicit bust of Edward Snowden from its perch in a Brooklyn park on Monday, artists replaced it with a hologram. The group of artists — who collectively call themselves "The Illuminator" and are not related to the trio behind the original sculpture — used laptops and projection equipment to cast an image of Snowden in a haze of smoke at the spot where the sculpture once stood.
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K-Pop Fancams Got Political to Protect Black Lives Matter Protesters From Dallas Police
Practitioner:
K-Pop Fans
Date:
Jun 5 2020
If you’ve spent a decent amount of time on Twitter, you’re probably familiar with the concept of K-pop fancams. The short clips of live performances, primarily by South Korean acts, often dominate replies on the app and are hated by many. This week, however, the social phenomenon has taken over in a different way: to fight for the rights of Black Lives Matter protesters seeking justice after the death of George Floyd.
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In Search of Magic - A Proposal for a New Constitution for The Republic of Iceland.
Practitioner:
Libia Castro (b. 1970) & Ólafur Ólafsson (b. 1973)
Date:
Oct 3 2020
The duo Libia Castro (b. 1970) & Ólafur Ólafsson (b. 1973) are the recipients of the Art Prize 2021 for their collective performance with the Magic Team In Search of Magic - A Proposal for a New Constitution for The Republic of Iceland.
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The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
Practitioner:
Prophet Bobby Henderson
Date:
Jun 10 2005
In the mid early 2000s, religious advocates tried a new strategy: promoting the theory of “intelligent design” to be taught in schools. As the Kansas School Board considered the argument, Prophet Bobby Henderson saw an opportunity. His now famous, “Open Letter to the Kansas School Board” began:
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Smuggling Books Across The Border
Practitioner:
Leila Abdelrazaq on ForThePeople
Date:
Apr 1 2016
For the People Artists Collective is a collaborative network of radical artists of color in Chicago.
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