From Black Power to Migrants’ Power
BY Robin Cembalest POSTED 01/22/13
As ’60s activist art enters museums, a new generation is creating an iconography of protest for today
At the New Orleans Swing Dance Festival the all African-American dance troupe The Rhythm Ambassadors were presented along side an African-American iteration of the Preservation Hall All-Star band with African-American vocalist Taryn Newborne to deliver the message that the African-American Lindy Hoppers were going to be protest until their rhythm is better presented...i.e.
Upon its original release on N.W.A.’s Straight Outta Compton LP in 1988, the song was safely titled “_ _ _ _ Tha Police (Fill in the Blanks),” and the album cover was among the first to feature the infamous “Parental Advisory” label, warning moms and dads about the album’s explicit lyrics. A censored version of the LP even omitted the song entirely.
from "Laugh, O Revolution: Humor in the Egyptian Uprising" by Anna Louie Sussman, in 2011.
Revolutions can be messy. They can be tragic. As long as the Internet is working, they can be tweeted. And, as Egyptians demonstrated during their 18 days of protest, they can also be funny.
Trickery and disguise, usually followed by revealing the truth, are often tactics used by liberal activism, like the Yes Men for example. When used by the right, however, it can have different implications. Pretending to be a CEO or billionaire in order to expose corporate greed and corruption is clearly different then pretending to be a minority. The use of disguise can manipulate and shed light on hierarchies of power.
DEPENDING on your taste, punk died in 1979, or maybe 1994, or whenever studded leather cuffs became a must-have mall-girl accessory. Now, suddenly, punk has been resurrected, stitched together anew in the form of the well-accessorized Russian women who call themselves Pussy Riot.
Feb 23 2024, on the streets in Henan, China, a girl holds a big sign with the black text "I've got nothing to say" on a white background, walking around in city center and malls. She live-streamed her walk and her account was banned after a few hours.
Mural artists add color and flavor on 800 South in the Granary District of downtown Salt Lake City. There’s an old-fashioned bar on the side of a locally-owned brewery, and a Southern Utah landscape on another building. Down the street, on the south corner of 800 South and 300 West, there’s a new mural that’s far more potent.
UK photographer Alicia Bruce collaborated with Zero Tolerance, a Scottish non-profit to end GBV, to produce a new version of the Violence Unseen campaign, launched for the first time in the 1990s and created by Franki Raffles. The new one was launched in 2018, 25 years after the original iconic Zero Tolerance campaign, shot by the late Franki Raffles.
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.
I am a federal criminal defense attorney and have written a formal legal brief in response to the Obama Administration's White Paper attempting to justify the killing of American citizens without due process. The brief is a new form fusion of law and nihilistic commentary about the American condition. I will be delivering the brief with others to the Department of Justice and posting at the White House on March 15.
In state capitals and street protests, women’s rights activists have been wearing red robes and white bonnets based on “The Handmaid's Tale,” the 1985 novel that is now a series on Hulu.
Silent, heads bowed, the activists in crimson robes and white bonnets have been appearing at demonstrations against gender discrimination and the infringement of reproductive and civil rights.
The Islamic Republic has always frowned upon dance but recently even a simple choreographed or ‘synchronized movement’ – as the regime calls it – has become an act of protest.
The Red Sand Project is a participatory art installation and social awareness project created by artist and activist Molly Gochman in 2014. The project aims to raise awareness about human trafficking, which is a global issue that affects an estimated 40 million people, including men, women, and children who are subjected to forced labor, sexual exploitation, and other forms of exploitation.
#NYTIMES Why are there no U.S. anti-slavery monuments? http://antislaverymonument.org project is an answer.
Standing 60 feet tall, corten steel of two hollow chain links the upper one broken.
What is GoTopless.org?
We are a U.S.-based organization founded in 2007 by spiritual leader Rael and we claim that women have the same constitutional right that men have to go bare-chested in public.
Voina conducted a wake for absurdist poet and Soviet-era dissident Dmitry Prigov, featuring a table with food and vodka, in a Moscow Metro car. Originally, they had planned an action involving Prigov but he died before they were able to implement it. They later carried out a similar action on the Kiev Metro. As an art collective, Voina is testing the boundaries of performance art. As activists, they are testing the patience of Russian authorities.
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".