This year marks the 50th anniversary of one of this country’s most beloved theater companies. Founded in New York City in 1963, the Bread and Puppet Theater’s first productions ranged from puppet shows for children to pieces opposing poor housing conditions. The group’s processions, involving monstrous puppets, some about 20 feet high, became a fixture of protests against the Vietnam War. "We don’t have playwrights in the theater.
Pursuing the possibility of emancipatory use of technology, Paglen, together with Jacob Appelbaum, developed Autonomy Cube (2014). Autonomy Cube is a sculpture and internet router designed to be housed in civic spaces. The sculpture is meant to be both “seen” and “used.” Formally it references Hans Haacke's 'Condensation Cube' (1963-65).
Visible Distance / Second Sight is an art installation by Jennifer Bolande for DesertX. The temporary artwork can be found along the Gene Autry Trail near Vista Chino (33°50’41.70”N 116°30’21.02”W), where a series of consecutive billboards have been replaced by perfectly aligned photos of the landscapes they are blocking.
From the DesertX project page:
It is a clear, fresh New York night in March 1939. You're on a date and you've decided to investigate a new club in a former speakeasy on West 4th Street: Cafe Society, which calls itself "The Wrong Place for the Right People".
Students dressed as Israeli soldiers stopped other students, ordered them to the ground, and blindfolded them in a demonstration that drew multiple campus groups to a standoff on College Walk Thursday afternoon.
The Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine set up mock checkpoints—to resemble those manned by the Israeli army in the West Bank—drawing crowds and counter-protests for several hours.
“The Garment Worker” an interactive installation piece that focuses on the daily life of a garment worker and the hardships she/he encounters working in a sweatshop. The installation in Kang Wei Laundromat simulated the sounds, motions and experiences of a garment factory while providing testimonials and information from immigrant workers on their sweatshop conditions.
Four months ago, I was in a multifaith brainstorm for the People’s Climate March when someone said, “What if we had a giant ark?” I think we all had the same reaction: Great … but how do you build an ark?
A is for Activism is a children's book developed by Innosanto Nagara, an author illustrator and founding member of the Design Action Collective, a worker owned cooperative design studio in Oakland that is dedicated to “serving the Movement.” The book includes playful rhymes for each letter stressing the importance of civic engagement and a participatory democracy.
Camp Mossandsticks, named after moss and sticks--two of the most rudimentary tools with which one can spark fire--is a site for young women and girls to become resourceful, defiant, and self-sufficient revolutionaries of today. Started on November 6, 2012, the camp hosts workshops to spark the attendees’ inner political flames, challenging them to confront disenfranchisement created by the status quo and to take matters into their own hands.
Protesters left 7,000 pairs of shoes in front of the Capitol building Tuesday to symbolize the number of children killed by gun violence in the United States since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December 2012.
From 8:30 am to 2 pm, the shoes were displayed on the southeast lawn in the hope of sending a clear message to Congress: Reform gun control legislation or more children will be killed by gun violence.
During 2008-2009, when the United States was entering a recession, the idea of the Homeless Art Gallery was popping up across Staten Island, New York City's least populated borough and biggest underdog. This is an example of art intervention, disrupting space to question the economic and political systems of capitalism. It was also an excellent community building project.
The National Rifle Association has recently decided that the way to promote their gun rights among the American people is to retell the classic stories with guns. Thus far, they have rewritten The Little Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel, handing guns into the hands of the children protagonists, resulting in, surprisingly, significantly less bloodshed.
Few opera choruses are as moving as the one a group of prisoners sings in Act I of Beethoven’s “Fidelio.” Released temporarily from their cells, the inmates almost whisper a hymnlike paean to liberty: “Oh, what a joy to breathe freely again in the open air.”
Mona Haydar knows the way some people feel about Muslims in the wake of recent terrorist attacks.
Just weeks after the horrific San Bernardino, Calif., shooting in December, where Islamic extremists killed 14 people and wounded 22 others, Haydar was at an airport looking to buy frozen yogurt. Suddenly, a man came up to her and whispered menacingly in her ear, "You killed my people."
On November 13, 2012, Joey Skaggs dressed up as Santa Claus and rode a three-wheeler to the United Nations in New York, NY. Skaggs’ bike was equipped with a fake mobile rocket launcher and a sign that read “ Peace on earth, or else!” A group of elves also accompanied Santa to the UN, and they alternated between handing out green toy soldiers to bystanders and singing their altered version of Jingle Bells, as seen below:
When dancer Sheen Jamaal saw a video of protestors doing the Cupid Shuffle in New Jersey, inspiration struck to do something similar in New York. He immediately called his friend and collaborator Allison “Buttons” Bedell, and the seed for the Dance For George protest was planted.
Montreal: The City of Lights
In Canada Alfredo Jaar completed a project referred to as Lights in the City, in 1999. Keep in mind this is considered one of the richest cities in North America. with a large population of homeless individuals. Is there not a way, for such a rich city, to help people in dire need of just basic necessities?
Butactually.com is a new kind of online dictionary created by a team of students at NYU Gallatin who seek to document, organize, and provide a platform for anyone to share new activist hashtags.
After eight days of fall/winter New York Fashion Week, the most prominent trend—pervading both the runways and streets—has been social and political activism. To outsiders, New York Fashion Week may seem trivial in a time of more pressing news, but beyond being an escape, it’s a representation of how art can comment on social and political issues.
A march took place Wednesday evening in Manhattan calling for justice in the case of Trayvon Martin. He was an unarmed black teenager who was shot to death by a neighborhood watch captain in Florida last month.
On March 3, 1913, President-elect Woodrow Wilson arrived at Union Station in Washington, DC. It was the day before his inauguration, but the teeming mobs that typically appeared to greet a new president were nowhere to be found. Instead, the streets of Washington seemed deserted. A disappointed Wilson asked, “Where are all the people?” “Over on the Avenue watching the suffrage parade,” he was told.
The Mission of CAMP is to support and produce socially engaged and aesthetically diverse public art as a grassroots community-based, artist-run organization based in San Francisco.
Clarion Alley Mural Project is a fiscally sponsored project of Independent Arts & Media.