Projects tagged "Performance"

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A performance art piece by a student who sat in a cage to protest a draconian lockdown of the Beijing Film Academy (BFA) recently went viral, and was censored just as quickly. Like many other Chinese citizens, university students have been living under strict lockdowns, and are beginning to chafe at the restrictions—and at administrators’ lack of responsiveness to students’ concerns.

Often in military style video games we kill without much regard for the enemy. They are faceless or stereotypical, the Nazi or evil Cold War–era Russian. They are enemies that were fought on the battlefields of great wars, or they are aliens that have no resemblance to humans save for a general humanoid form.

“I performed at Tiananmen Square in 1989, 15 days before the crackdown. I sang A Piece of Red Cloth (一块红布), a tune about alienation. I covered my eyes with a red cloth to symbolize my feelings. The students were heroes. They needed me, and I needed them. After Tiananmen, however, authorities banned concerts. We performed instead at “parties,” unofficial shows in hotels and restaurants”.

Note before the post: This article is great in highlighting a specific case of creative activism in the streets of New York City, but also gives some contextual background to how this project manifested. On a sidewalk in the Village in downtown Manhattan, an African-American woman leans on her elbows and knees, wearing only black underpants. Scrawled in black marker all over her body are the words "Ain't I a Woman?"

The collective Ndaku Ya La Vie Est Belle, a group of Kinshasa street performers turn their bodies into living sculptures, and use them to political ends. Among the artists is Jared, who regularly takes to the streets dressed as Robot Annonce. The costume, made from broken radio parts, is designed to raise awareness of fake news. “People receive so much incorrect information and many inaccuracies are spread. I want to fight this,” says Jared.

Shouting is one of Xu Zhen’s early works questioning the limits of individual expression. First exhibited at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005, the video shows Xu hiding in crowds and performing a series of loud screams in Shanghai.

This is a parody of 1970s American daytime television aimed at housewives. In this performance Rosler takes on the role of an apron-clad housewife and parodies the television cooking demonstrations popularized by Julia Child in the 1960s. Standing in a kitchen, surrounded by refrigerator, table, and stove, she moves through the alphabet from A to Z, assigning a letter to the various tools found in this domestic space.

Toyi-toyi is a Southern African dance originally from Zimbabwe by Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) forces that has long been used in political protests in South Africa. Toyi-toyi could begin as the stomping of feet and spontaneous chanting during protests that could include political slogans or songs, either improvised or previously created. Some sources claim that South Africans learned it from Zimbabweans.

What seemed to be a cruel and bizarre PR campaign took over Amsterdam yesterday as a barge with an apparently drugged polar bear, a Russian child superstar, and a colorful marching band wound through Amsterdam's canals to the city zoo. There, visitors and staff watched Gazprom and Shell reps officiously give the bear to Amsterdam—before being forcibly removed by zoo security and city police.

Shortly after the close of this year’s International Women’s Day, China’s Twitter-like service Sina Weibo shut down Feminist Voices. With 180,000 followers, the group’s social media account was one of the most important advocacy channels for spreading information about women’s issues in China, but in an instant, it was gone. A few hours later, the private messaging app WeChat also shuttered an account for the group.

Museums and art galleries are not usually the sites of feminist political protest. Yet over the past couple of years, before the lockdown, gallery visitors all over the UK had noticed a small, determined activist whose modus operandi is “Small signs, big questions, fabulous wardrobe”.

In 2013, Ghana ThinkTank received a Creative Capital Award for Emerging Fields, enabling them to begin the multi-year ThinkTank at the Border project. In this project, they are collecting problems from civilian border patrols like the Minutemen, "Patriot" groups, and Nativist organizations, and bringing them to be solved by think tanks of undocumented workers in San Diego and recently deported immigrants in Tijuana.