In 2009, conservative Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi demoted the publicly-funded Italian Theatre Insitute (or ETI) to "disposable" status, hacking funding for the arts considerably. ETI promoted Italian companies abroad, managed the Teatro della Pergola in Florence, the Duse theatre in Bologna, and Rome's Teatro Valle--the oldest theatre in Rome, located between the Pantheon and Piazza Navona, Campo dei Fiori and the Senate.
The creative fusion of art and activism in urban spaces has propelled the British collective Led by Donkeys into the spotlight, garnering millions of views for their interventions on social media. Their critical visual occupations - whether billboard messages during the day or large-scale projections at night - raise a compelling question: which medium holds the greater persuasive power?
Creative Graffiti at the Urban Culture Festival in Germany
By Loredana Loy
A street art project by by KD Key Detail from Minsk, Belarus--created and featured at the IBUg 2013 Urban Culture Festival in Zwickau, Germany.
The project is entitled "Bon Appetit." Images speak louder than words. Links and photos below.
“A Foreigner Makes Beijing’s Smog into Rings” has become a tittle used by a multitude of popular public accounts on Wechat, the most commonly used chatting app in China, which makes more and more Chinese netizens know the story of Daan Roosegaarde, a Dutch artist and “social designer”, who has been making effort to combine the energy saving technology with visually enjoyable art.
The Mischief Makers built a giant bird as a symbolic way of opening up Serb borders and made an impressive mosaic on the same theme, possibly to be used in a new youth centre. Clowns trained and joked about at the final parade to end the week of workshops. An other impressive feature of the activities in Novi Sad was the quickly formed samba band, which did a couple of stunning performances in the centre of town.
Trolls chanted in the streets the day of a planned neo-Nazi rally in the small ski town of Whitefish, Montana earlier this year. But they were not the trolls that residents had been expecting—namely, white supremacists from around the country, who had been harassing the town's Jewish community with death threats.
Anonymous urban artists set up art installations, large nest eggs, at several locations in Skopje, wanting to alarm the growing number of trees in the city.
In the nest read a message "You cut all the trees, where do we make nests? Birds".
This demonstration was in response to a new law (as of June, 2012) imposing fines for unauthorized protest of up to $20,000 for organizers and $10,000 for participants. After activists were turned down for a more traditional protest, Lyudmila Alexandrova and others set up small dolls, teddy bears, and figurines with demonstration slogans. Two mini protests took place in January 7 and January 14, 2012.
When Europeans of the 18th and 19th centuries established their grandest museums, each building meant to unite the world’s cultural heritage under a single roof, they had no doubt as to who should explain it all: themselves. They took a Eurocentric view, categorizing the spoils of colonial enterprise by nation and region, splitting art from craft, and nature from culture.
Petr Pavlensky, a Russian performance artist, sent a nail through his scrotum to the cobblestones of Red Square in Moscow (on a holiday in celebration of law enforcement). He was later charged with hooliganism.
Pavlensky, as quoted in the Guardian: "The performance can be seen as a metaphor for the apathy, political indifference and fatalism of contemporary Russian society."
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, and other top Western officials gathered on March 2 for a London summit to discuss support for Kyiv.
Croatian artist Sanja Iveković started Women’s House (Sunglasses) in 1998 in collaboration with a women’s shelter in Zagreb and later with women’s shelters elsewhere in Europe and Asia. Iveković organised workshops with women in these shelters to produce plaster casts of their faces, as well as to give them the space to write their life stories.
Just over a decade ago on May 15, 2011, a wave of social outrage began as the Spanish people collectively decided that they had had enough of the corruption, cuts, and inequalities affecting their country.
Today over 40 people gathered at the Ministry for Internal Affairs in the centre of Tirana, the capital of Albania. The issue is Tirana's drinking water, which is not clean, unreliable as it comes out of the tap only a few hours a day and that sewage systems continue to pollute the water sources.
Detox Levi's: 6th December: Greenpeace activists staged a vertical catwalk action in front of the levi's store in the biggest mall in Copenhagen, Denmark. Greenpeace calls Levi's to engage fully in the process of ending the use and release of hazardous chemicals in connection with the production of their clothing.
"Turkish past, Ottoman present" and "Spengler in Turkey"
105 NY-110, Melville, NY 11747
August 5, 11 am – August 30, 7 pm
Monday – Friday, 11 am – 7 pm, free admission
Please write to racc.ny@mail.ru or call (347) 662 1456
The artist is available for interviews
Kyiv, Ukraine (CNN) — The leaders of Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Poland have told Russian leader Vladimir Putin to agree to a 30-day ceasefire starting on Monday or face possible “massive” sanctions, according to French President Emmanuel Macron, on a highly symbolic visit to Kyiv. The demand comes with the backing of the White House after a joint phone call with President Donald Trump, the Europeans said.
The language of music is common to all generations and nations,” Gioachino Rossini, the virtuosic opera composer, once said. “It is understood by everybody, since it is understood with the heart.” In recent weeks, Italians have embraced the language of music as a means to communicate with their neighbors and endure the ravages of covid-19 as a collective.
In August 2015, Weston-Super-Mare - a sleepy seaside town in Somerset, England - suddenly became the top destination for the metropolitan elite, welcoming celebrity guests like Brad Pitt, Jack Black and Mark Ronson. Overnight this quaint town, just 18 miles from Bristol, was transformed by anonymous street artist Banksy when he opened his very own dystopian Disneyland style theme park called ‘Dismaland’.
When Tracey Emin aired her dirty laundry in the 1999 Turner Prize exhibition at Tate Britain, she set a new standard for confessional art. She conceived of the installation, titled My Bed (1998), after a long, bedridden bender following a bad break-up. When Emin finally left her sheets, she examined the mess she’d created.
In a case of voter fraud, an investigation revealed that the party in power had won fifty votes from the residents of a single apartment.
A group of activists reproduced the apartment in a downtown square and invited 50 people inside.
The action took just one part of the case, literally brought it into three dimensions, and showed the absurdity that this could ever be legitimate.
Francisco Ibáñez Gorostidi (known as "Paco Ibáñez") is a spanish singer that has dedicated almost all his career to turning poems by classical and contemporary spanish and latin american authors into songs.