Projects tagged "Cities"

Robot Dogs and Other Weird Creatures Bring Nature to the City
Practitioner:
Natalie Jeremijenko
Date:
Jan 3 2013
by Natalie Pompilio Natalie Jeremijenko wants you to feed the animals. She encourages you to text the fish—and makes sure they'll text you back. She turns moths into movie stars and believes the next big thing in urban transportation is human flight.
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London’s “Free Butt Plug Catalogue” Confronts Hostile Architecture
Practitioner:
A Chinese Artist
Date:
May 16 2025
Hostile architecture—urban design features like ground spikes that deter the homeless from lying down or slanted benches that prevent lingering—inscribes exclusion into our streets. In response, a Chinese artist will launch the Free Butt Plug Catalogue, an art-activism project that documents fifteen such spikes and anti–loitering benches across London and pairs each with a commercially available butt plug of the same shape.
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The Peterloo Memorial: A monument to discrimination
Practitioner:
The Peterloo Memorial: A monument to discrimination
Date:
Jun 6 2019
Disabled people gathered to protest at the site where a memorial to the Peterloo massacre in 1819 is being built. We are keen to have a memorial to Peterloo, but we want one we can be proud of, rather than the one under construction, which will be inaccessible to many disabled people.
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"The Little Match Girl" in Shanghai -"One Box of Matches to Warm a Child"
Practitioner:
Date:
Jan 26 2016
On January 12, 2016, Shanghai's temperature dropped to its lowest of the year. A little girl was seen selling matches in the cold wind on Bund street. The little girl, wearing a classic dress, wrapped in an ocher-red scarf and carrying a small bamboo basket full of matches, gave matches to passers-by.
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How Protest Art Is Helping Fuel the Historic Demonstrations Erupting Across China
Practitioner:
Chinese art students
Date:
Nov 28 2022
Students at art colleges across China are taking a strong stance in the midst of the largest wave of protests to have gripped the country since 1989. As demonstrations against the government’s strict Covid-19 policies erupted across the country over the weekend, students rallied on campuses to create protest art and graffiti.
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Xincun
Practitioner:
Birdhead(Song Tao& Ji Weiyu)
Date:
Jan 1 2010
Song Tao and Ji Weiyu, established their collaborative named Birdhead in 2004. Both natives of Shanghai, their work is deeply rooted in their hometown and its evolution amid China’s growth into a global power. The duo takes diaristic snapshots, highlighting their everyday lives in the quickly changing city.
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Recycle Flash Mob
Practitioner:
Mall Shoppers
Date:
Jul 1 2015
A group of unidentified guerrilla activists staged a unique pro recycling flashmob in a Quebec mall in July 2015. An actor 'forgot' an empty water bottle on the ground in a food court a couple of feet from a recycling receptacle. Numerous people walked past the bottle and did nothing. Finally a woman walking past it reached down and recycled the bottle. She was then given a standing ovation and thunderous applause from the entire food court.
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Double Happiness
Practitioner:
Didier Faustino
Date:
Jan 1 2009
Architect Didier Faustino strips a billboard down to its skeleton, repurposes it as a swing set, and names it Double Happiness. This "urban reactivation device" needs to become a world wide phenomenon. Imagine billboard swing sets waiting at every destination. The climb looks worth the view.
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Art Inspection notices
Practitioner:
RTMark
Date:
Jul 25 2000
Bogus building inspection notices with the forged signature of city Building Inspection Director Frank Chiu appeared on buildings in San Francisco's South of Market area, prompting an investigation by exasperated city officials.
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Tournons le dos ! / Turn our back ! [April 22, 2012 – April 23, 2017]
Practitioner:
Lino Tonelotto, the 22avril2012 collective, the 23avril2017 collective.
Date:
Apr 15 2012
In France, abstention, vote of protest, lassitude or violent reactions rise from all over the crisis of our "representative democracy ». What about thinking the other way round ? What if we reappropriate the iconography of the election?
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The story behind the strange 8th Ave. subway statues and the cartoons that inspired them
Practitioner:
Tom Otterness
Date:
Apr 17 2004
At the Eighth Avenue subway station, sewer alligators are not an urban legend. Anyone who’s been through the 14th St./Eighth Ave. station has probably seen the bronze gator sculpture — and probably wondered what it means and why it’s there. The underground gators — along with dozens of other whimsical creatures — are part of the permanent art installation housed at the intersection of the A,C,E, and L lines.
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Ticketing Jessica Lappin
Practitioner:
undefined
Date:
Jun 16 2010
The initiators collaborated with the Street Vendor Project (SVP) of the Urban Justice Center to campaign against New York City Council Member Jessica Lappin’s 2010 law project. The bill, intended to revoke permits issued to street vendor trucks if they got parking tickets, was so restrictive that it threatened to put most food trucks out of business.
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Belgium Disappears
Practitioner:
Jason Applebaum
Date:
Dec 15 2006
For a brief moment on Wednesday night it appeared that Belgium had disappeared. The main French language television station hoodwinked the country into thinking that it had split in two when it reported that Flanders had issued a unilateral declaration of independence.
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Instantaneous ownership
Practitioner:
Zou Yaqi, China News
Date:
May 21 2021
"Why should I play a celebrity and live in Beijing for 21 days without spending money?" From May 1st to May 21st, 2021, I spent 21 days in Beijing without spending money, and I was as elegant as a celebrity. I recorded this behavior through video. Video "Instant Ownership" 28-minute graduation exhibition version of the Central Academy of Fine Arts (click to watch)
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Ghosts of Union Square - The Contested City
Practitioner:
Not An Alternative
Date:
Oct 1 2011
"This project took aim at a public relations campaign produced by The Union Square Partnership, a local Business Improvement District (BID) attempting to privatize the north end of NYC’s Union Square park and install a high-end celebrity chef restaurant. They hosted historical walking tours of the park for decision-makers, as a means of getting buy-in for their development initiative.
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U.S./Iraq War Memorial
Practitioner:
Mark Skwarek and others
Date:
Jan 1 2004
The U.S./Iraq War Memorial is an augmented reality public art project and memorial, dedicated to the thousands of individuals who have died on both sides of the conflict.
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You’d Better Watch Your Step In Madrid
Practitioner:
Luzinterruptus
Date:
Feb 20 2015
Luzinterruptus turns their art activism towards the overabundance of dog doo littering the city’s streets. The studio inflated 500 poop-scoopin' plastic bags and placed a lightbulb inside each one. Installation lasted nine hours.
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Bicycle Advocacy Love Your Lane
Practitioner:
American Youth Hostels (AYH)
Date:
Apr 7 1973
On April 7, 1973, some 400 cyclists chanting “Bikes don’t pollute” rode through midtown Manhattan in a “Bike-In” that called for separate lanes to encourage bicycling and provide safety on city streets.
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#SaveNYC
Practitioner:
JEREMIAH MOSS, new yorkers
Date:
Mar 23 2015
#SaveNYC is a grassroots, crowd-sourced, DIY movement to protect and preserve the diversity and uniqueness of the urban fabric in New York City. As our vibrant streetscapes and neighborhoods are turned into bland, suburban-style shopping malls, filled with chain stores and glossy luxury retail, #SaveNYC is fighting for small businesses and cultural institutions to remain in place.
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Respect The Living Too
Practitioner:
McCann Tirana
Date:
Jun 1 2014
An advertising agency creates a one-time action for traffic safety, then uses documentation to generate awards and free promotion for their company. Did traffic fatalities actually drop after this was done once? Their Press Release doesn't make mention. From McCann's Press Release:
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The Folded Map Project
Practitioner:
Tonika Lewis Johnson
Date:
Jul 25 2020
The Folded Map Project is a project by Tonika Lewis Johnson, a photographer and community activist from Chicago. The project aims to investigate and change the racial and economic segregation that affects the city and its residents.
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Tear It Down, They Said. He Just Kept Building.
Practitioner:
Chen Tianming
Date:
Jan 1 2025
The structure teeters over fields of knee-high grass, looking like a cross between a camping tent and a giant wedding cake. Eleven stories of dark red wooden rooms, diminishing in size as they ascend, balance atop one another, seemingly held together by only the thicket of cords that stretches from the peak to the ground.
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Beauty In Transition
Practitioner:
Jody Wood
Date:
Jan 5 2006
Beauty in Transition is an artistic project created by multi-media artist Jody Wood, that established a pop-up mobile hair salon providing beauty services including a hair wash, cut, color and/or style service to willing participants living in homeless shelters. By provoking face-to-face dialogue in a calming recuperative salon environment, this project aims to facilitate empathetic understanding and to unravel the reductive label of homelessness.
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ŠTO TE NEMA (WHY ARE NOT YOU HERE)
Practitioner:
Aida Šehović
Date:
Jul 11 2018
ŠTO TE NEMA is a public monument created as a response to Europe’s worst atrocity since World War II - the systematic killing of 8,372 Muslim men and boys in the UN-protected safe area of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina in July of 1995.
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Existe Amor em SP
Practitioner:
Existe Amor em SP
Date:
Aug 21 2012
São Paulo went through a process of privatization of the public spaces. The local government implemented several rules that beneficiated the real state speculation, the city is expensive, and it's not for the poor. Besides that, in october the elections were a hard game for the progressive party, PT, since two conservative candidates had big shares.
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