Go to Top

MUSÉE PRÉCAIRE ALBINET | THOMAS HIRSHHORN

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : Musée précaire d’Albinet (which means in english : the temporary museum of Albinet) | Artist : Thomas Hirshborn, order of the Laboratoire d’Aubervilliers, directed by Yvane Chapuis | Date : 19/04/14 – 04/06/14 | Location : the housing area of Albinet in Aubervilliers (France)

    THE ARTIST
    Thomas Hirshhorn is a swiss artist and also an activist born on 16 may 1957. He lives and works in Paris. He focuses on the creation of handmade temporary sculptures. They are made from materials used in our daily lives. He wishes to give birth to his works outside of the traditional exhibition areas.

    BACKGROUND
    The majority of French museums are located inside Paris. In addition, these museums are visited by the part of the French population who has the easiest access to exhibitions (managers, students, etc.). Museums struggle to reach the young people who are coming from disadvantaged neighbourhoods.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    Le Musée Précaire d’Albinet is a piece of art that was made for a short-term period and created in the public space. The piece itself is an exhibition space which displays works of artists such as Duchamp, Malevitch, Mondrian, Dali, Beuys, Le Corbusier, Warhol, Léger. The museum was designed at the foot of the buildings of Albinet, a poor neighbourhood in the Parisian suburbs. Young people were recruited on the spot, as people were needed to be in charge of the security, the installing, deinstalling of the exhibition as well as to liven up the space. The museum was created with modest materials: wood, plastic from packages, cardboard, Scotch tape, photocopies, writings made with marker pens, etc… The purpose of this work was to “give life to art outside its usual exhibition spaces”.

    • FACES & PHASES | ZANELE MUHOLI

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : Faces & Phases | Artist : Zanele Muholi | Date : from 2007 – ongoing | Location: South Africa | Medium : photography

    THE ARTIST
    Zanele Muholi is a South African artist and photographer born in 1972 in Umlazi, Durban. She is an active member involved in the LGBT cause. She works as an activist on the condition and identity of lesbians in her country.

    BACKGROUND
    Since the end of Apartheid, gay and lesbian human rights in South Africa are enshrined in the Constitution and the law. Gay marriage has become legal in 2006: South Africa, thus, became the fifth country in the world and the first in the African continent to legalise gay marriage. Nevertheless, discriminations and crimes against lesbians still remain widespread. Nowadays, members of the LGBT community want to show that their sexual identity is not conflicting with their African identity.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    Consisting in a series of photographs in black and white, Faces & Phases has started in 2006. It compounds more than two hundred portraits of Black-African women, lesbians and transgender people. The project is entitled to protect, preserve and expose their visual stories: it gives them visibility and suggests positive and gratifying representations of the community in the media and exhibitions places. But this work is also meant to be a protest call against violences that Black-African lesbians and queers suffer: the artist photographs many people who underwent homophobic attacks.

    LINKS
    https://aperture.org/blog/magazine-zanele-muholis-faces-%C2%9D-phases/

    Tumi Nkopane, KwaThema, Springs, Johannesburg, 2010

     

    Teekay Khumalo, BB Section, Umlazi, Durban, 2012

    • ASIAN WOMEN ARE NOT | SAD ASIAN GIRLS CLUB

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : Asian Women are not | Artist : Sad Asian Girls Club | Date : 2015 | Location : United States | Medium : posters

    THE ARTIST COLLECTIVE
    The Sad Asian Girls Club is a group of artists, which was founded by two graphic design students of the Rhode Island School of Design (United States). They wanted to respond to the prejudices they had suffered in their school as well as in other institutions. They gather with their Asian and American friends and break the silence on their experiences through debates on racism and feminism. Thanks to different artistic projects, they wish to denounce, but also offer a greater visibility to Asian women from all origins around the world. Thus, they produced awareness-raising campaigns and intervened in many institutions.

    BACKGROUND
    In 2017, Asian-Americans people in the United States represent roughly five percent of the whole population. This community bears racism and stereotypes, but, at the same time,is often praised to be a discreet “model minority”, hardworking and well integrated. For women, this type of stereotypes often involves other sexist stereotypes leading to a double oppression as a result of their status of women from Asian origins.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    The project kicked off with an online campaign: the group of artists asked Asian women to finish the following sentence “Asian women are not…”. Then, they received hundreds of suggestions and selected a hundred of them. Sentences refer to the fetishism towards Asian women, the myth of the exemplary integration and other stereotypes that they have to go through. This project targets further non-Asian people. The artists collected these stereotypes so that the public could realise that micro-aggressions do exist and they can be hurtful.

     

    • CARCASS | PIOTR PAVLENSKI

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : Carcass | Artist : Piotr Pavlenski | Date : 3rd May 2013 | Location : Legislative assembly of Saint-Petersburg, Russia | Medium : performance

    THE ARTIST
    Piotr Pavlenski is a Russian performer artist and a political activist born on 8th March 1984 in Leningrad. His work explicitly denounces the Russian government. Among his actions, he stitched his mouth during the Pussy Riot trial, nailed down his testicles on the pavement of the Red Square, cut a piece of his ear in front of the Serbsky centre. The artist uses his body to defy Russian authorities and condemn censorship, the arbitrary and authoritarian regime of Vladimir Poutine.
    “FIRST OF ALL, I WANT TO SHOW TO EVERYBODY THAT ACTIVISM IS EASY AND POSSIBLE. YOUR RAW MATERIALS MIGHT AS WELL BE YOUR DOMESTIC APPLIANCES THAN YOUR OWN BODY; YOU NEED NO MONEY TO CARRY OUT AN ACTIVIST ACTION. YOU JUST NEED A BIT OF MOTIVATION AND WILL TO GET OVER FEARS IMPOSED BY THOSE IN POWER. THEN, ACTIONS MAKE PEOPLE REACT AND CRITICISE. CALL IT A SOCIAL REFLEX, IF YOU WANT. THESE ACTIONS QUESTION WHAT IS HAPPENING AND GIVE AN ACCOUNT OF THE POWERFUL PROPAGANDA ESTABLISHED BY THE TOTALITARIAN IDEOLOGIES”.

    BACKGROUND
    This performance took place in response to a series of laws aiming to stop civic activism, more and more frequent intimidations towards the population, the rising number of political prisoners, anti-NGO laws, laws in favour of censorship, laws against “homosexual propaganda” and “anti-blasphemy” laws in Russia.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    On 3rd May 2013, Piotr Pavlenski accomplished a performance to protest against the political repression that is led by the Russian government. His assistants carried him naked wound around barbed wire and put him in front of the main entrance of the Legislative Assembly of Saint Petersburg. The artist remained silent. In his barbed cocoon, the artist did not say a word to the remarks of the people watching at him until he had been set free by the police.

    This performance occurred against a series of repressive laws that did not target criminals but individual liberties. The human body is naked, like a carcass dressed in barbed wire, that same wire that was made up to protect a cattle. The artist wishes to make people aware that these laws are just like this wire: they imprison people in a toxic nest, depriving them of their human rights and liberties.

    LINKS
    http://www.liberation.fr/planete/2017/01/31/russie-piotr-pavlenski-les-zones-dombres-d-un-exil_1545381

     

    • THE PROGRESS | TINO SEHGAL

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : The Progress | Artist : Tino Sehgal | Date : 2016 | Location : Palais de Tokyo, Paris (France) | Medium : performance

    THE ARTIST
    Tino Sehgal is a British and German artist born in 1976. The performance, the dance and more particularly, the choreographic part plays an important role in his work. However, the artist does not define himself as a “performer”, but as a “situation designer”. Tino Sehgal strives to challenge the limits of what makes the definition of a work of art by involving directly the public in his pieces. We can also see in them that he disapproves of the market value of art and the artist protects his private life: he cares to never leave a trace. He does not sell tickets to his exhibitions nor send invitations, he does not organise openings, he refuses to give interviews, his name is not written on any billboards… He also refuses that people film or take pictures during his exhibitions.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    The visitor enters an empty room with white walls. He is welcomed by a teenager who asks him “What is progress?”. The visitor is invited to talk with the teenager while they show them the way to a second room. Here an adult is waiting for them. The teenager summarises their conversation and leaves the visitor. The adult then takes over from the teenager and continues the conversation with the visitor, while leading them into a third room where a senior is waiting for them. The adult summarises the situation to the senior and leaves the room. The senior tells a private anecdote to the visitor and walks him to the exit.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    Throughout his works, Tino Sehgal raises questions about another possible economy for the art world. Indeed, his works are temporary and, thus, fall outside the scope of the art market economy. Nor a trace is left after the performances: no photographs, no videos, no posters, no tickets… Beside the trace left in our memory. His performances, thus, puts in value people meeting together, interactions, the power of speech as opposed to the art market. Perhaps that is what progress means according to the artist? Beside making encounters happen, Tino Sehgal’s works give them food for political, economic and social thinking about our contemporary societies.
    Therefore, in the situations Tino Sehgal designs the visitor is not a passive one anymore, simply visiting an exhibition, but living a fully-fledged experience.

    LINKS
    http://www.palaisdetokyo.com/fr/evenement/tino-sehgal

    Source : http://salonkritik.net/index_colaboradores.php

    • CORPORATE FLAG | ADBUSTER

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : Corporate flag | Artist : Adbusters (Shi-Zhe Yung) | Date : 2000 | Location : United States | Medium : printing on a fabric

    THE ARTIST COLLECTIVE
    Adbusters is a network of activists, writers and artists founded in 1989 in Canada. They are involved in numerous social and political causes, many of which are opposed to consumerism and capitalism. They promote a type of activism that is specific to our contemporary information age.

    BACKGROUND
    The piece of art appeared against the backdrop of modern capitalism, where everything seems to be good for selling and consumption. It should be noted that the political and economic background is part of the piece, as it is a criticism of modern capitalism.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    At first glance, the piece looks like the flag of the United States. In fact, it is not the real one: the stars – normally representing the different Federation states – has been replaced by the logos of important American firms. The aim is to protest against what activists call the hegemony of firms and consumerism in the American policy. Since 2001, Adbusters has been suggesting to replace the real flag of the USA with the Corporate flag – that you can purchase on their website – during the Independence Day, which is a national bank holiday in the United States.

    LINKS
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gran_Fury

    An activist waves the Corporate flag during a demonstration in Washington on the day of the second inauguration of the President George W. Bush.
    Source : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_flag

    • KISSING DOESN’T KILL: GREED AND INDIFFERENCE DO | Gran Fury

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : Kissing doesn’t kill : greed and indifference do | Artist : Gran Fury | Date : 1988 | Location : New-York City, United States | Medium : Awareness-raising campaign against homophobia

    THE ARTIST COLLECTIVE
    Gran fury is a group of American artists and activists who are part of AIDS, an association fighting for the prevention of the HIV virus. The collective was founded in 1988 and was dissolved in 1995. It is made up of eleven members. The collective define themselves as a group of artists united by their anger and they are committed to using the power of art to fight Aids and homophobia.

    BACKGROUND
    The artist collective Gran Fury appeared in the United States in reaction to the constant homophobia and discourse accusing homosexual people of being responsible of the Aids outbreak, that discourse which is spread by the government and sustained by many institutions and citizens.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    Gran Fury convey a political message, adapting the communication means and design of advertising and mass media to their own ends. They wish to share information about homosexuality and Aids with a very broad audience. The first step of the project was to send by post a card showing gay couples kissing each other. Next to the card, there was a sentence: Kissing doesn’t kill: greed and indifference do. On the back of the card it was written: “Greed of firms, inaction of government and indifference of people make Aids a political crisis”. Then, the collective used the usual means of advertising: billboards in the public space, on buses, stickers, t-shirts, posters, etc…

    LINKS
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gran_Fury

    Sources :
    https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/objects/read-my-lips-girls
    http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2016/06/22/73695

    • NO WALLS | AMMAR ABO BAKR

  •  THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : No Walls | Artist : Amar Abo Bakr | Date : 2012 | Location : Cairo (Egypt) | Medium : Grafiti

    THE ARTIST
    Ammar Abu Bakr is a visual artist and a former teacher at the Fine Arts School of Louxor in Egypt. He also contributed to the famous mural painting in Mohamed Mahmoud street. In 2011, he began with other graffiti artists to create stencils and mural paintings as a protest against the police and in favour of the uprising. He took photo portraits of twelve people among the dozens who lost an eye in the battles and used the colours of the national flag in the background. In February 2012, along with artists such as Alaa Awad et Mohamed Khaled, he drew a great painting on the wall of the American University of Cairo in the Mohamed Mahmoud street representing the martyrs of the football team el Ahly who were killed in the Port Said Stadium confrontations. Ammar Abo Bakr found their portraits on Facebook and showed them with angel wings or framed them with a black stripe as a mark of grief. He says that these wings are the ones of the Coptic saints that we can see in churches, thus showing that the Egyptian heritage is at the same time Coptic, Pharaonic and Islamic.

    BACKGROUND
    While phone lines and Internet connexions were cut for the population, the art of graffiti spread in Egypt during the Arab Spring, although it existed before. If graffiti artists contributed to “inform” the revolution and the political events happening in the country, their tags also symbolised a form of artivism. In fact, within a few months graffiti artists have become influential activists, displaying satire, catch-phrases, powerful visuals to express their rejection of the government.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    In March 2012 Ammar Abo Bakr launched the collective graffiti campaign “No Walls”, in protest against the walls set up by the army in the middle of Cairo. These seven walls blocked access to the ministry of Interior after football supporters of the el Ahly football team died in the confrontations with the police in Port Said.
    Thus, on these walls artists drew and painted rainbows, kids playing, trees, smiles… They did it in trompe-l’oeil style, extending the street perspective and giving the illusion that the street is not blocked anymore. They wish to free the district and the inhabitants from the walls imposed by the army. One of the most well-known paintings is the trompe-l’oeil of the Sheikh Rihan street –– meticulously replicating the perspective of the street and the details architecture of the American University of Cairo.

    LINKS
    http://wallsoffreedom.com/
    https://www.facebook.com/Ammar.Abo.Bakr/


    Source : http://dbprng00ikc2j.cloudfront.net/userimages/101642/4cut/20141216200450-5._MunirSayegh_AmmarAbouBakr.jpg

    • SANS-TITRE | THE YES MEN

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : Sans-titre | Artist : The Yes Men | Date : 16 août 2001 | Location : Tampere (Finland), intervention during an international conference entitled “The clothes of the future” | Medium : Performance

    THE ARTIST COLLECTIVE
    The Yes Men (Jacques Servin & Igor Vamos) form an American artist and activist duo, that was born in 1993. The artists fight against capitalism, in particular against the privatisation of the public space and the relocation of firms. They also give performances against G. W. Bush and the Iraq war. The artists criticises neo-liberalism by using its own codes and make a mockery of them: hoaxes and caricatures are their favourite weapons.
    BACKGROUND
    In 1995, the WTO (World Trade Organisation) established international agreements enabling multinational companies to dissociate totally the place of goods production from their point-of-sale. Multinational firms can, therefore, delocalise their businesses in countries where social taxes and labour cost will be undeniably lower. In doing so, they have the guarantee to generate certain and immediate profits.

    DESCRIPTION OF THE PIECE
    The performance took place during an international conference in Tampere, the second biggest city of Finland, about the future of the textile industry and new technologies. During the conference, the two artists stepped in and pretended to be two representatives for the WTO: Mr Hank Hardy Hunruh and his assistant. Mr Unruh begins his intervention with a comparison supported by statistics about the cost of a slave and a worker from developing countries. “The WTO is against slavery. Indeed, if we add up the expenses for food, clothing and accommodation required for a slave, the sum of their expenses is obviously higher than the cost needed for an Asian child hired by a firm like Nike. That is the reason why the American Civil War turned out to be a waste of money for the United States, as slavery, that is unprofitable, would have disappeared anyway”. No reaction in the conference hall. Hank Hardy Unruh carried on with some compliments about Gandhi:

    “This idiot had harmful protectionist reflexes”.
    As he noticed no reaction in the audience, he then showed a golden prop in the shape of a phallus that stood as a symbol of a tool to control and subdue the employee.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    This performance mocks multinational firms with a satirical discourse on the privatisation of the market and the apology of domestic slavery. The Yes Men use their favourite weapons: their sense of humour, pastiche and grotesqueness to denounce and debunk liberalism.

    LINKS
    Performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo-1W_8otS4


    Source : http://www.cinemetroart.com/film/film-the-yes-men-152.html

    • POWER : FROM THE MOUTHS OF THE OCCUPIED | PATRICE CULLORS

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : Power : From the Mouths of the Occupied | Artist : Patrice Cullors | Date : 2015 | Location : United States | Medium : performance

    THE ARTIST
    The artist is the Afro-American artist and activist Patrisse Cullors. She is the co-founder of the “Black Lives Matter” movement born in 1983 in Los Angeles. Using techniques belonging to the theatre and dance world, she blends visuals with sounds in ways that enable to name her works as art-therapy, promoting healing through art. She is particularly committed to curing traumas caused by the State and fights against the systemic violence it inflicts. Her purpose is to transform acts of violence into something positive through art.

    BACKGROUND
    The Power – From the Mouths of the Occupied performance, conceived by Patrisse Cullors, took place during her involvement in the Afro-American activist movement of the “Black Lives Matter”. Founded in 2013 in the United States, this movement stands up to the systemic violence and racism towards Black people and organises many demonstrations against repeated killings of Black people perpetrated by policemen.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    The performance displays stories of members of the Afro-American community who happened to be victims of the police and/or state violence. It is a collaborative performance that aims to reveal those stories that remain too often unspoken. The idea is to help the community, to heal traumas and bring about positive change through art. Their personal stories are combined with dialogue recordings, music, theatre and multimedia.

    LINKS
    Performance :

    https://seattlechannel.org/FrontRow/episodes?videoid=x68750

     

    Sources:
    https://highwaysperformance.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/PowerFlyer_web.jpg
    http://www.cityartsonline.com/sites/default/files/inline_images/Power_Ishisaka-8747.jpg https://seattlechannel.org/FrontRow/episodes?videoid=x68750

    • HOTEL EUROPA | GTO LX – NETWORK TOGETHER

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    TITLE : HOTEL EUROPA ARTIST : GTOLX – TOGETHER NETWORK | DATE : 2017 | PLACE : LISBON, PORTUGAL

    THE ARTIST
    GTO LXA – group of Theatre of the Oppressed based in Lisbon, developing different activities in the framework of Theatre of the Oppressed. This theatrical framework works with disadvantaged communities and their questions, topics, creating a framework by the play where the shared doubts can be discussed and strategies can be developped to resolve the crisis what the thetre play makes visible.

    BACKGROUND
    GTO LX is a group who practices diverse forms of Theatre of the Oppressed in various communities of Portugal, treating topics as gender equality, housing and intergenerational dialogue.
    Together is an international network of Theatre of the Oppressed institutions.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    Inspired by the events of the European crisis of the last years, Hotel Europa brings together an international cast from seven European countries to develop a Forum Theatre play about it. For two years, the cast worked and learned together exploring and understanding all themes connected to the European crisis.
    The play tells the story of a middle-class family, affected by the austerity measures imposed by governments and the accompanying striving for more profit from an unreformed banking sector. Examining the historical foundations of the current crisis, the piece invites the audience to ask themselves how is it possible to change the current situation, how would a different future for Europe look like?

    LINKS
    http://www.gtolx.org




    Co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union

    • CHALK TV & STREET CHANNEL| PNEUMA SZÖV.

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : chalk tv, street channel | artist : pneuma szöv./mókusok | date : 2014/2016 | Place : budapest, hungary

    THE ARTIST
    Pneuma Szöv. is a Budapest based international artist cooperative and network that defines the term Pneuma (ancient Greek word for “breath”, “spirit” or “soul”) as a quest for free space created through common breathing and through the alchemy of art.

    BACKGROUND
    Since 2008, Pneuma Szöv. has been creating temporary common spaces, where people are inspired to resist the segregations and constraints of society through imagination and play. Pneuma Szöv.’s work is a chain of actions, nomadic street media shows and theatrical events on the verge of activism, encouraging people to take part in shaping the conditions in which they live.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    Both of the actions consist of several ocassions, are performed in the public space and spread also through social media channels. During the Chalk TV action questions and messages were written on the ground wth chalk, asking the locals about their opinion. The authorities, not having other tool for repression, interviened with a cleaning machine to erase the messages written by the group. Street Channel focuses on news related to the locals, discussing questions of housing, cooking, talking with activists in the frame of a talkshow, recorded on a square in front of a Market hall.

    LINKS

    films about the actions :

    page :

    http://pneumaszov.org/hu/

    • BILLBOARD CAMPAIGN | TWO TAILED DOG PARTY

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : billboard  campaign against the government propaganda| artist : twotailed dog party | date : 2016 | Place : hungary
    THE ARTIST
    The Two tailed dog Party started as a street art group in Szeged, at a bigger town in Hungary, for some years now they define themselves as a party. Their program consists of providing eternal life by abolish diseases, the general and total relief of taxation and payment without working. They create creative actions, renovate the public spaces and  make guerilla gardening, among other missions.
    BACKGROUND
    In 2016 the Hungarian Government launched a massive anti-immigration billboard campaign. The slogans were calling attention to the respect of the Hungarian national culture, the workplaces of the people and the nationallaws. The billboards texts were addressing the immigrants directly, although it was all in Hungarian, and all the different phrases started with the same question: Did you know? The campaign was important part in the creation of the central anti – refugee, anti – migrant narrative in Hungary.
    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    As a reaction for the anti-immigration campaign they crow funded money to create billboards with information they consider important the people should know (following the question: Did you know?) and created messages that either absurd or has some connection to the messages of the government and migration, like “There is war in Syria” or “You can come to Hungary, we already work in the UK” or “70 weasel can easily occlude an average size tunnel”.
    LINKS
    http://ketfarkukutya.com/?page_id=1233

    http://mkkp.hu

    • BAILE DE FAVELA- RESPOSTA | MARIANA NOLASCO

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Baile de Favela – Resposta| artist : Mariana Nolasco | date : uploaded at may 2016 | Place : Brasil /youtube

    THE ARTIST
    Mariana Nolasco is an example for this youtube viral video art that fights sexism

    BACKGROUND
    The Brazilian Funk is common in the Favelas (Rio de Janeiro) where also the number of teen pregnancies (and rape) have been increasing day by day, becoming a national problem, and turning Brazil into one of the worst numbers on this statistics.
    In the favelas, poverty, drugs, arms, poor educational system, no health care, are the most common problems that influence the art created in this same place. So the Funkeiros, sing about what they see around them, normally, over sexualizing women in the lyrics and on the video clips which actually started a new dance trend called daggering (where men stick their reproductive organs into the women – in a very explicit way).
    For the huge spread of sexist speech and other hate speech by these very popular songs, some youtuber decided to create a counter narrative to these songs – where they grab the lyrics of the music and they turn into something that can be used for awareness raising.
    One of the things that the youtubers clearly state, is that they mean to disrespect  the authors of the songs, and by doing this they are just trying to include more love on the world and to offer their opinion on the topic.

    LINKS
    Original video

    Response Video

    • PIMP MY CARROÇA | MUNDANO

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Pimp my Carroca| artist : mundano | date : from 2012 on | Place : Sao Paolo, Rio de Janeiro, curitiba states in Brasil

    THE ARTIST
    The movement Pimp my carroça was initiated my a graffity artist Mundano, who believes that the catadores are working for the whole society and they are heroes without recognition. For now other artists, companies and volunteers joined the movement.

    BACKGROUND
    In Brazil and in other Latin-American countries waste is creating huge problems. The catadores (waste collectors) are people who are living in a marginalized position, earning very little money from the waste they collect on the streets, surrounded by the prejudices of the rest of the

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    The aim is to give voice and visibility to these people, support their self esteem and raise recognition among the maiority society about their work in recycling and environmental protection. After painting  more than 200 cars Mundano launched a fundraising campaign to provide tools and renovation for the waste collectors’ cars, involving 800 volunteers and graffity artists. In Brasil the movements focuses on Sao Paolo, Rio de Janeiro and Curitiba, but Mundano calls attention to all the people living and working in similar conditions all around the world, to valorize them and the effort they do for the society.

    LINKS
    http://pimpmycarroca.com
    https://www.ted.com/talks/mundano_pimp_my_trash_cart

    • DO WOMEN HAVE TO BE NAKED TO GET INTO THE MET. MUSEUM? | GUERILLA GIRLS

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Do women have to be naked to get into the met. musem ? artist : guerilla girls | date : 1989/2011 | Place : new york (usa)

    THE ARTIST
    Guerilla Girls is a collective of women, based in New York, USA, who produce visual campaigns, provides workshops, their main topic is the exclusion and discrimination of women in the art world. The anonymous women artists always wear masks of gorillas and have names of famous former female artists.

    BACKGROUND
    Exclusion of women artists from the prestigious institutions and the art world.
    “(…) That work is more than a quarter-century old, but the Guerrilla Girls have updated it over the years – with the results just as discouraging. The 2011 version states that women represent 4 percent of the artists in the modern-art sections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art but 76 percent of the nudes.” (guerrillagirls.com)

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    The group began in 1984 as a response to The Museum of Modern Art’s exhibit An International Survery of Painting and Sculpture where 100% of the artists exhibited were white and less than 8% were women. The members of guerilla girls are calling attention and challenge the hegemony of the art world, they also fight against racial and political discrimination. They use posters, street art, videos and other easy and accessible channels to transmit their mostly ironic messages, organize street actions, protests and forums, edit books.

     

    LINKS
    https://guerrillagirls.squarespace.com/#open

    Guide how to behave (manifesto kind of video)

     

    complain department

     

    (sources of the videos and photos too: guerillagirls.com)

    https://www.instagram.com/guerrillagirls/

    • KNOWLEDGE IS POWER | KRISTOF HORVATH

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : a tudás6alom (knowledge is power)| artist : kristóf hováth and the kids | date : 2014 | Place : hungary

    THE ARTIST
    Kristóf Horváth is a slammer and actor

    BACKGROUND
    In Hungary the Roma youngsters often leave the school before gaining qualification. Discrimination and negative stereotypes in the education system are strongly present, even after many years of different attempts of integration projects.

     

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    The original project consists on one hand of professional music videos presenting slam poetry or traditional folk songs where the text encourages Roma youngsters to learn, not to feel ashamed in school, because as the main message says: knowledge is power.  The song calls to combat prejudices and discrimination, speaking to young people, and in the same time raising awareness among the majority of society as well on the inequalities.

    Kristóf Horváth (Színész Bob) is a slammer, actor, working in various artistic-social projects.

    LINKS

    • Protest Art About Independence

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Agostamiento Abierto x obras | artist : Basurama | date : 2016 | Place : Madrid

    THE ARTIST
    Basurama; It is a group dedicated to the investigation, creation and cultural environmental production founded in 2001, that has focused their area of study and action on the productive processes, the generation of waste that these imply, and the creative possibilities that provoke these contemporary conjunctures.

    BACKGROUND
    In 2016 the Hungarian Government launched a massive anti-immigration billboard campaign. The slogans were calling attention to the respect of the Hungarian national culture, the workplaces of the people and the nationallaws. The billboards texts were addressing the immigrants directly, although it was all in Hungarian, and all the different phrases started with the same question: Did you know? The campaign was important part in the creation of the central anti – refugee, anti – migrant narrative in Hungary.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    The project Agostamiento is an intervention site-specific  realized by Basurama for the Opened program x Works and that takes place in the former cold-storage room of the one that was Legazpi’s slaughter house in Madrid. Basurama proposes an interior landscape extracted from the plantation of  7000 sunflowers that has cultivated together with the neighbors of the Great Route of the South-east, in Vallecas’s Widening, Madrid. A public space that, in Basurama’s words, “It invites to chat and to eat pipes, looking at the future from the darkest thing”.  This project was realized in Madrid, in 2016.

    LINKS
    http://www.furfur.me/furfur/culture/culture/169811-protestnoe-iskusstvo-na-maydane

    http://www.furfur.me/furfur/culture/culture/176987-kak-graffiti-stanovitsya-yazykom-gosudarstvennoy-propagandy

     

    • NO FUTURE

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : no future| artist : Banksy | date : – | Place : Bristol, UK

    THE ARTIST

    Banksy is an anonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist and film director of unverified identity. Their satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine dark humour with graffiti.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Graffiti

    DESCRIPTION

    Banksy once characterised graffiti as a form of underclass “revenge”, or guerilla warfare that allows an individual to snatch away power, territory and glory from a bigger and better equipped enemy. Banksy sees a social class component to this struggle, remarking “If you don’t own a train company then you go and paint on one instead.” Banksy’s work has also shown a desire to mock centralised power, hoping that his work will show the public that although power does exist and works against you, that power is not terribly efficient and it can and should be deceived.

    Banksy’s works have dealt with various political and social themes, including anti-war, anti-consumerism, anti-fascism, anti-imperialism, anti-authoritarianism, anarchism, nihilism, and existentialism. Additionally, the components of the human condition that the works commonly critique are greed, poverty, hypocrisy, boredom, despair, absurdity, and alienation. Although Banksy’s works usually rely on visual imagery and iconography to put forth his message, Bansky has made several politically related comments in his various books. In summarising their list of “people who should be shot”, they listed “Fascist thugs, religious fundamentalists, (and) people who write lists telling you who should be shot.” While facetiously describing their political nature, Banksy declared that “Sometimes I feel so sick at the state of the world, I can’t even finish my second apple pie.”

    LINKS

    http://www.banksy.co.uk/

     

    • My Chinese-Canadian Boyfriend

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : My Chinese-Canadian Boyfriend | artist : Wayne Yung  | date : – | Place : Berlin

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Issues related to queer, Asian, and European identity and life

    DESCRIPTION

    In a way, Wayne Yung really is my Chinese-Canadian boyfriend. I met Wayne when I curated my first film festival in 2003 shortly after moving to Amsterdam.  We had a blast at the festival as he generously helped guide a very enthusiastic but very inexperienced festival organizer through lost tapes and bad subtitles. We quickly became partners in crime and over the years, brainstormed of ways to radicalize the Asians and Queers in Europe, to not be ashamed to show their faces and hear their own voices and desires on screen and off. As members of the silent model minority in North America, the so-called “good studious immigrant Asian kids”, we slowly but surely became rebels with a cause. We held queer karaoke “happenings” from Berlin to Amsterdam to show that anyone could make a video, have fun doing it and bring the queer community closer together. In the meantime Wayne also continued making videos about his queer, Asian, and now European identity and life as he became a fusion of different cultures and identities. In his work he has always sought to create dialogue with himself and others about who he is as he has always done in his more than 20 year career of making video art. Wayne is one of the pioneers of the queer video art form and continues to bravely explore his personal life and space to bring us the insights of his discoveries.

    LINKS

    Wayneyung.webhosting.softronics.ch/yeung.html

    • Babak Bordbar

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Babak Bordbar | date : – | Place : Turkey

    THE ARTIST

    Babak Bordbar is an Iranian photojournalist, who has sought asylum in France after the government crackdown following the disputed presidential election in 2009. This event forced hundreds of journalists, bloggers, artists and political activists to flee from Iran and seek refuge in the neighbouring countries mainly Iraq and Turkey.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    His work reflects on social and political issues such as conflict, borders, war, racism and gender relations.

    LINKS
    http://www.babakbordbar.com/#/home?i=595127

     

    • sbara

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Sbara | artist : Larissa Sansour  | date : 2008 | Place : Jerusalem

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    In her art, Sansour uses video, photography, book form and web pages, as well as installation art. She includes references to various elements from popular culture such as spaghetti westerns, horror films and superheroes. She also makes use of science fiction as a vehicle for providing an alternative perspective on current social issues

    DESCRIPTION

    Her practice is underscored by the urgency of Palestine’s political problems. She typically deploys dry wit and pop culture references in her work as a means of cutting through cultural divides and connecting the international community with the universal relevance of this situation. Allusions to comic strips, sit coms and Hollywood films feature heavily throughout Sansour’s previous works, however this exhibition focuses specifically on her more recent exploration into the genre of sci-fi.

    LINKS

    http://www.larissasansour.com/

    • Paper cutting

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Paper cutting | artist : Xiyadie | date : – | Place : Varldskultur Museena, Sweden

    THE ARTIST

    Xiyadie was born in a small village in the northern Shaanxi province. He works in Beijing as a doorman, cook and cleaner. Like so many other gay Chinese of his age, he is married. He has two children in their 20s. According to sociological studies, some 90% of all gay men in China are married. In Confucian tradition, there are three types of lack of filial respect, and the worst is not to provide for the family line’s continuation. It is a strong social pressure. “I knew I liked men from an early age, but in the country, it’s completely unthinkable to come out as gay, it’s even seen as criminal.”

     

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Homosexuality

    DESCRIPTION

    Xiyadie has developed this traditional folk art from the expression of collective cultural memories to the depiction and expression of the life and emotions of the individual. His paper cuttings are fearless depictions of same-sex life and his particular path out of the closet. This old traditional art, which faced extinction, becomes a lively modern art form in Xiyadie’s hands. (website)

    LINKS

    http://www.varldskulturmuseerna.se/en/exhibitions/secret-love/artists/xiyadie/

    • Tania Bruguera

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Tania Bruguera | date : – | Place : New York

    THE ARTIST

    Tania Bruguera (born in Havana, Cuba, 1968) currently lives and works in Queens, New York. Bruguera’s work is multifaceted and spans performance, event, action, film, installation, writing and teaching, alongside site-specific works including Untitled (Kassel, 2002) for Documenta 11 and Tatlin’s Whisper #5 (2008) at Tate Modern, alongside long-term projects such as the Cátedra Arte de Conducta (Behaviour Art School), an institution that existed from 2002 to 2009 in Havana, Cuba.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Immigration and citizenship

    DESCRIPTION

    Bruguera is a key player within the fields of performance, interdisciplinary practice and activism. Her work is grounded in the act of ‘doing’ – she calls this ‘behaviour art’ – and her aim is to create art that doesn’t merely describe itself as dealing with politics or society, but that is actually a form of political or social currency, actively addressing cultural power structures rather than representing them. Bruguera is also extremely interested in the role of the museum as an active forum and the role of ‘useful art’ in society at large today.

    LINKS

    http://www.taniabruguera.com/cms/

    • The Meatrix Film & Drink Pee DIY project

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : The Meatrix Film & Drink Pee DIY project | artist : Rebecca Bray and Britta Riley | date : – | Place : USA

    THE ARTIST

    Rebecca Bray may be best known for “The Meatrix” an animated movie, spoofing The Matrix.

    They own an interactive design agency in New York.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Discuss issues about food, factory farming and environmental problems https://artisticactivism.org/2010/04/rebecca-bray-andbritta-riley/

    DESCRIPTION

    The Meatrix attemps to educate  viewers about the problems with factory farming. It went viral, was translated into 30 languages, and directs viwers to a website where they can learn to become advocates of family farms.

    DrinkPee is a project about “the role our bodies play in larger ecosystems”and includes an installation and a DIY kit for turning urine into fertilizer. DrinkPee was featured in both ArtNews, and on the Discovery Channel’s Planet Green. R&D-I-Y is project designed to crowdsource solutions to environmental problems. 

    LINKS

    http://www.themeatrix.com/

    https://artisticactivism.org/2010/04/rebecca-bray-andbritta-riley/

    • Proudly Trans in Turkey videos

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Proudly Trans in Turkey videos | artist : Gabrielle Le Roux in collaboration with Trans Activists | date : – | Place : South Africa

    THE ARTIST

    Gabrielle Le Roux is an artist, storyteller and feminist activist based in South Africa who creates travelling exhibitions of portraits drawn from life accompanied by first person narratives around different social issues. Her work pays tribute to people whose rich contributions to society are forgotten, ignored or discriminated against because of their race, gender, class or sexual orientation.

    Gabrielle ran Women’s Media Watch South Africa for several years. Her background working broadly with women’s rights, and particularly representation (and lack of it) in the media, informs her current work which is the fusion of her creative and political passions.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Transgender stories to expose as a social and political issue.

    DESCRIPTION

    By given voice to Turkish transgender people to tell their stories, the author is promoting a cultural intervention for social justice.

    LINKS

    • Cultural Jamming

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Cultural Jamming | artist : Adbusters Media Foundation | date : – | Place : Vancouver, Canada

    THE ARTIST

    The Adbusters Media Foundation is a Canadian-based no-profit, pro-environment organization founded in 1989 by Kalle Lasn and Bill Schmalz in Vancouver, British Columbia. Adbusters describes itself as “a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age’ (wikipidea) They publish the magazine Adbusters focused on anti consumerism.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Adbusters has launched numerous international campaigns, including Buy Nothing Day, TV Turnoff Week and Occupy Wall Street, and is known for their “subvertisements” that spoof popular advertisements.

    DESCRIPTION

    Cultural Jamming is the of criticizing and subverting advertising and consumerism in the mass media, by methods such as producing advertisements parodying those of global brands.

    LINKS

    https://www.adbusters.org/bnd/

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adbusters

    • Art calendar 2017

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Art calendar 2017 | artist : Musk Ming | date : – | Place : Berlin

    THE ARTIST

    From his unique life background and studies, Musk Ming finds a way to combine the traditional  Classic Chinese arts with the modern, western technique. His artwork reflects an international outlook and cross-cultural perspective The missing or hidden sexuality in classical Chinese art and the relatively open approach in the West are brought to the fore in Musk Ming’s paintings, representing an irony that highlights the marked differences in sexual values between the East and the West. Behind his nude paintings, the topics always focus on the relationship between human being, society and nature. Musk Ming also explores a return to Taoism values as a tolerant alternative and his work visualize the longing for an open-minded China.

     

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Sexuality, focus on the relationship between human beings, society and nature

    DESCRIPTION

    The calendar explores different views of homosexuality using modern and old forms of photography

    LINKS

    www.muskming.com

    • Madalenas de Lisboa – Casa meia assombrada (Haunted house)

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Madalenas de Lisboa – Casa meia assombrada (Haunted house) | artist : GTO LX | date : – | Place : Lisbon

    THE ARTIST

    GTO LX (feminist branch of the theatre of the oppressed collective based in Lisbon)

     

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Madalenas is an international phenomena, that exists in various countries in the world, indicates a group of women dealing with their own questions with the tool of Theatre of the Oppressed. The first encounter, a theatre festival took place in 2009.

    The Madalenas de Lisboa initiative was born inside the collective of the Theatre of the Oppressed Group in Lisbon, by three women, who desired to approach more in depth the issues of gender inequality.  One of the focuses is domestic violence, in Portugal the number of victims has been increasing over the last years.

     

    DESCRIPTION

    Since the group came together, they made some performances, one of them, with most visibility, their participation in the March against violence against women, on the 25th of November 2016, in Lisbon Portugal.

    The performance on the 25th of November March was about ending domestic  violence, raising awareness on the topic.

    LINKS

    https://www.facebook.com/pg/MadalenasLisboa/about/?ref=page_internal

     

    • Cartel Strike project

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Cartel Strike project  | artist : – | date : – | Place : Ukraine

    THE ARTIST

    “Strike Cartel”, as the main way of expressing citizenship, has become a key tool in the hands of artists. Working on the Wiki principle, the project made it possible for anyone to download and print the poster on the printer and go out with him to protest. In everyday life, was even famous the phrase: “Never a small printer felt so hero.” This tactic made possible that each person could feel like an artist, anyone could assign an image in the artistic work created by others, all in the name of the common goal. The popularity of the project among the masses is due to the fact that it is based on the rejection of political slogans and direct propaganda seeking a universal image.

     

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    During the last ten years, Ukraine is experiencing a revolution. In the first wave after the fall of Yanukovich was founded the Art Association REP (Experimental Revolutionary Space), which occupies a special place in Ukrainian art and after events. They emphasized many projects of the community whose catalyst was the social project «Страйк Плакат» (stroke of the cartel).

     

     

    DESCRIPTION

    February 6, 2014: During the months of December, January and February of 2014, peaceful demonstrations were held in protest and for the independence of Ukraine.  Some of them became a real revolution with collisions and victims. Art took a reflexive attitude, visualizing the different facets of the conflict. In addition to the usual political slogans and propaganda, the artists sympathize with the dead, protesting for the security and liberation of the media.

     

    LINKS

    http://www.furfur.me/furfur/culture/culture/169811-protestnoe-iskusstvo-na-maydane

    http://www.lefthandrotation.com/

     

    The drop campaign. “I am a drop in an ocean”

    • Tierra Oskura

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : –  | artist : Tierra Oskura | date : – | Place : Temuco, La Araucanía. Chile

    THE ARTIST

    Collective: Musical group of rock formed in 2003, coming from the city of Temuco, region of the Araucanía in Chile.

     

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Some of his most emblematic songs are “Tierra Oscura”, “Mapuche is the poem”, “To silence and to forget”, among others. The circuit in which they are developed is more underground, where they emphasize activities of political movements, tocatas and festivales of rock

     

    DESCRIPTION

    The musical style is heavy metal, but can also be linked to hard rock with influences of the Mapuche folk. The band has produced four albums; Araucarias (2004), That the flight becomes dark (2010) and Kütral (2011)

    LINKS

    https://www.facebook.com/tierra.oskura?fref=ts

    http://latierraoscura.blogspot.cl

     

    • SpY. Urban artist since 1980

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : –  | artist : SpY.  | date : – | Place : Madrid,  Zaragoza, Vitoria, Sevilla,Berlin, Köln, Breda, México DF, Paris and many other cities

    THE ARTIST

    SpY is an urban artist whose first endeavors date back to the mid-eighties. Shortly after, already a national reference as a graffiti artist, he started to explore other forms of artistic communication in the street. His work involves the appropiation urban elements through transformation or replication, commentary on urban reality, and the interference in its communicative codes.

     

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    This urban artist works mainly with graffiti and collage. Their supports, besides city street walls and buildings such as La Tabacalera (Madrid), are canvas and wood. He is inspired above all by nature, specifically in the animal world. His purpose is to make us reflect on how human beings have lost their bonds with nature.

     

    DESCRIPTION

    SpY’s pieces want to be a parenthesis in the automated inertia of the urban dweller. They are pinches of intention, hidden in a corner for whoever wants to let himself be surprised. Filled with equal parts of irony and positive humor, they appear to raise a smile, incite reflection, and to favor an enlightened conscience

    LINKS

    Home

     

    • Sabek

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : –  | artist : Sabek  | date : – | Place : Madrid

    THE ARTIST

    This urban artist works mainly with graffiti and collage. Their supports, besides city street walls and buildings such as La Tabacalera (Madrid), are canvas and wood. He is inspired above all by nature, specifically in the animal world. His purpose is to make us reflect on how human beings have lost their bonds with nature.

    He considers that urban art “proposes a debate” because of its “democratizing” power since it “opens the public space to free expression”. It allows people to “own a space” that “is usually only accessible to big brands that pay for advertising”.

     

     

    DESCRIPTION

    In addition to the streets of Madrid (Spain), we can find his works in Belsfast (Northern Ireland), Worcester (United States), Muar (Malasya), Bangkok (Thailand) or Bucharest (Romania).

    He has presented works in galleries such as ABV (Atlanta, USA), Nok (Bodo, Norway) or Swinton (Madrid), Festeen 2016 (Madrid, Spain), Wonderfruit (Pattaya, Thailand), Critic Festival, Mad Cool (Madrid, Spain), Creative Disorders (Galicia, Spain) or Festivalasalto (Zaragoza, Spain).

    He has participated in the project “Mind the Wall” that offers temporarily a facade of 30 square meters in San Millán Street (La Latina Neighborhood, Madrid) to urban artists.

     

    LINKS

    https://www.facebook.com/Sabek.nonsense

    http://www.freshpaintgallery.ca/blog/crossing-borders-017-sabek/

    Reversible

    Worcester, Massachusetts, United States, 2016.

    Source: Steven King, https://streetartnews.net/2016/09/reversible-by-sabek-in-worcester-usa.html

    The Bond.

    Muar, Malasya, 2016.

    Source: Kharul Akma, https://streetartnews.net/2016/08/the-bond-by-sabek-in-muar-malaysia.html

    • Rey de la ruina

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : –  | artist : Rey de la ruina | date : 2000~present | Place : Madrid, Spain.

     

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    His works are concentrated in the Lavapiés and Malasaña Neighborhoods (Madrid city center). They stand out for having very contrasted colors and a naive style, strategies with which he tries to get his message easily to those who see them.

    He has collaborated with the Madrid’s City Council through a mural that honors all the women who fought and fight to make this society a more egalitarian and free place.

     

    DESCRIPTION

    In addition to the streets of Madrid (Spain), we can find his works in Belsfast (Northern Ireland), Worcester (United States), Muar (Malasya), Bangkok (Thailand) or Bucharest (Romania).

    He has presented works in galleries such as ABV (Atlanta, USA), Nok (Bodo, Norway) or Swinton (Madrid), Festeen 2016 (Madrid, Spain), Wonderfruit (Pattaya, Thailand), Critic Festival, Mad Cool (Madrid, Spain), Creative Disorders (Galicia, Spain) or Festivalasalto (Zaragoza, Spain).

    He has participated in the project “Mind the Wall” that offers temporarily a facade of 30 square meters in San Millán Street (La Latina Neighborhood, Madrid) to urban artists.

     

    LINKS

    https://www.instagram.com/elreydelaruina/

    http://losartistasdelbarrio.com/2016-el-rey-de-la-ruina/

     

    Socially equal, humanly different, totally free

    Madrid, Lavapiés Neighborhood, 2016.

    Source: Rey de la ruina Twitter.

     

    In love with life.

    Madrid, Malasaña Neighborhood 2016.

    Source: Rey de la ruina Twitter.

    • Peumayyen

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : –  | artist : Peumayyen | date : 1996~present | Place : Gülumapu, Wallmapu (territorio mapuche).Padre Las Casas Warria (ciudad) La Araucanía, Chile

    THE ARTIST

    This band began operating since 1996 in the Region of La Araucanía, Chile, in the context of Mapuche territory; Land of Gülumapu, Wallmapu. Cultivating the style of rock metal with a fusion of Mapuche instruments in a rock mapuche fusion. They are five members in Voz and Trutruka: Pablo “Colelo” Sandoval Hueche, Guitar: Rodrigo Riquelme, Guitar: Angelo Riquelme, Drums: Carlos Epul and in Bajo and Mapuche Instrumentation: Nawel Huisca.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    His only production so far is the album “Mapuche in History and in the Fight” (2009). Today the formation of the disc does not persist, taking its vocalista (Colelo) a way like soloist, sharing scenarios with other exintegrantes of the band. The band made presentations by several zones of Chile and a tour by Europe where it visited France

    DESCRIPTION

    As far as language is concerned,in this musical band the western predominates being the majority of the words used in Spanish and the sounds emitted with modern instruments. However, with regard to the theme present in the lyrics of their songs, the allusions to the Mapuche people are absolute and evident, always being present the concepts of struggle, Mapuche history, the demands, the contemporary political and military tension.

     

    LINKS

    www.myspace.com/pewmayen

    https://www.facebook.com/Peumayen

    • Redd. Musical Group

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : –  | artist : Redd. Musical Group | date : 2000~present | Place : Turkey

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    This well-known Turkish rock band  started its in 1996 under the name “Ten”. They used to play at bars  until they set up their own studio in 2004. Their first album, entitled “50/50”  was published a year later already under the name Redd. Their first original soundtrack album for director Çağan Irmak’s feature film “Sleeping Princess” was released in 2010. Songs from this album managed to enter the European music charts. They have released five albums. The group is composed of Güneş Duru, Doğan Duru, and Berke Özgümüş.

    DESCRIPTION

    Redd sings usually in big cities like Istanbul and Ankara in Turkey and Europe. The members of the group are opponent to Erdogan government, for this reason their works are also critical and opponent to the regime. For example Redd wrote “Freedom was backstabbed” in its album “21” for Hrant Dink, who was the main editor of Armenian Agos Newspaper and had been brutally assassinated on 19 January 2007.

    LINKS

    http://redd.com.tr/

    https://www.youtube.com/reddseyirdefter

    http://bianet.org/bianet/insan-haklari/131351-redd-den-sik-hareket

    Bon Jovi concert in Istanbul, 8th July, 2011

     

    • MIcomicón

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : –  | artist : MIcomicón | date : – | Place : Spain

    THE ARTIST

    Created in 1991, with four young actors specializing in classical theater, the Micomicon Company has been performing for more than twenty-five years and has explored popular theater, classical tragedies and dramas,  touring around twenty European countries and Hispano-american cities.

     

    DESCRIPTION

    Micomicon approach committed theater and activism from 1998 with plays written and directed by Laila Ripoll, as the Trilogy of Memory (AtraBilis (2002), Santa Perpetua (2012), The Blue Triangle (2014)).

    They have worked about the Spanish civil war, the Spanish prisoners in the camp of Mauthausen, the repression in the postwar period, the culture in the time of the second Spanish republic, and recently the disabled children and their integration. It is a theater that expresses through popular language the repression, disinformation and rewriting of Spanish history, seeking its rescue through the staging of its authentic roots.

     

    LINKS

    https://www.facebook.com/micomicon.teatro

    http://apriorigt.org/producciones-micomic%C3%B3n

    The Blue Triangle. (2014)

    Santa Perpetua (2012) – Temporary transit. -Barcelona, 2016. – Source: Hyuro Facebook.

    • Marta and Publio

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Marta and Publio | date : – | Place : Madrid, Spain

    THE ARTIST

    Teachers and artists,  Marta de Gonzalo and Publio Pérez Prieto work in Madrid since 2000 with different artivism and political art activities of installations, video performances, narrative and designs, a.s.o, in a multimedia idea of creation. Their main objective is to connect  theoretical and political reflection and practical work; they develop also teacher and social training, artists training, as well as alphabetizing of youngsters about media, popular culture and politics.

    DESCRIPTION

    Works with Paper, screen, sound, sculpture materials, light, body art, theatrical  performance.

    They have exhibited in Matadero Madrid,  Cáceres; Puertas de Castilla, Murcia; Intermediae Matadero, Madrid; Foundation La Caixa, between other spaces.

    BACKGROUND

    collective shows in C.C.M. Haroldo Conti, Buenos Aires; CAAC, Sevilla,

    Kunst, Karlsruhe; Tel Aviv Museum of Art; Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop

    Kulturunea, San Sebastián and Galerie Art & Essai. Rennes. Your aud jobs Feet, Barcelona; International Film Festival Show, Barcelona; Zinebi. Members of the Gross Domestic Circus (1999-2003). They have directed the Injuve Mobilities for Young artists (2005-2007)  and take active part in Las lindes, research group about education, art and cultural practices of Culture Ministry in Spain.

    LINKS

    http://martaypublio.net/es/inicio/

    Aquí huele a hueso español

    Songs, Drawings, and Video Monocanal. 2012

    Baila la Contrarreforma (2016) Video Performance

    And Song

    • Media Udar: global artivism. From 2011- ongoing

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : global artivism | artist : Media Udar | date : 2011-ongoing | Place : Moscú, Rusia

    THE ARTIST

    An international festival of activist art held in Moscow every fall since 2011. “MediaUdar” can be considered an international community for the study, articulation, documentation, support and development of activist art. MediaUdar is an open platform, its position is not the commitment to a concrete ideology, but the search for openness, equality of participants and direct democracy as the principle of decision-making.

    DESCRIPTION

    The festival is built on the principle of self-organization of the work group of painters, activists, artists and philosophers in the format “BarCamp” – informal conference, created by the participants themselves. This includes assembly, expeditions, publication, exhibitions, presentations, conferences, workshops, debates, literary readings, concerts, video screenings, joint actions on the street. The festival’s events are aimed at creating a platform for interaction between activists from different regions of the country, supporting civic initiatives, building a platform for interaction among oppressed groups in society (immigrants, etc.). ), providing assistance to political prisoners, as well as protecting the environment.

    BACKGROUND

    The first “MediaUdar” festival was in the fall of 2011 as a special project of the 4th Muscovite Contemporary Art Biennial. Subsequent events to the Festival were held in Novosibirsk, Murmansk, Nizhny Novgorod, St. Petersburg, Izhevsk, Ekaterinburg, Togliatti, Samara, Krasnodar and other Russian cities

    LINKS

    http://mediaudar.net/

    http://artguide.com/posts/661

    Photos from the Festival. Vlad Chijenkov

    • Left hand rotation

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Left hand rotation | date : – | Place : They work all over the world. They come from Salamanca, and they used to had headquarters in Madrid. At present time their headquarters are in Lisbon.

    THE ARTIST

    An artistic group that, from 2005 develops projects of intervention in the public space, as well as of documentation of audio-visual quiet materials. “The group is structured as impersonal entity not associated with the individual / author, and approaches every project under the consideration that the community of receipt is not a spectator, but active indispensable part in the transformation of the social reality “.

    DESCRIPTION

    They try to denounce problems punctual and disregarded by the politics, across an artistic exposition. From those problems that they have to see with the gentrification up to the denunciation for the displaced ones. Also they invite to realize projects to different artists and groups

    BACKGROUND

    Gentrification is not a name of lady. Project carried out by the group in 2012 in Charloise’s neighborhood, Rotterdam. It was based on measurements of the percentage of creative class that lives there. The above mentioned neighborhood, as the group explains in the web site, “It receives for years to an artistic community that prospers thanks to facilities of residence for persons of the field of the creativity. His permanency in the neighborhood is supported by the public power, which at the same time controls the economic level of the resident futures, excluding from the area to the lowest classes. Zones of the neighborhood are lived entirely by artists. Nevertheless, the transfer of these spaces has expiry date. When the artists have realized his function of revaluation of the neighborhood the privileges will be eliminated granted to the “creative class” and they themselves will suffer the economic segregation “.

    LINKS

    http://www.lefthandrotation.com/

     

    Creative Charlois control, 2012. Rotterdam

    • Luzinterruptus

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Luzinterruptus | date : 2014 | Place : The group operated in big cities as Madrid and Berlin.

     

    THE ARTIST

    This collaborative and anonymous group was created in 2008. Their three components are characterized for realizing interventions in the public space using the light as raw material.

    DESCRIPTION

    The group tries to denounce punctual problems and disregarded by the municipal politics, which achieve visibility during the time that the light installation lasts

     

    BACKGROUND

    In the year 2014, and in the center of Madrid, they carried out his action The police are present. One of his works more acquaintances, at par that troubled, since he supposed a denunciation and at the same time, a rejection to the known one popularly as “Law Gag”. The above mentioned name refers to the Organic Law of Protection of the Civil Security, approved by the Popular Party in July, 2015.

    LINKS

    http://www.luzinterruptus.com

    https://vimeo.com/luzinterruptus/videos/page:2/sort:date

     

    • La Fiambrera

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : La Fiambrera | date : – | Place : Cities of Madrid and Sevilla, Spain. Nineties 20th century

    THE ARTIST

    An artistic group opened and collaborative. His foundation resides in establishing new links between the art and the social movements, by means of the public and collaborative art. The humor and the  amusement use as strategy of action and basic component. The group, in a beginning, was formed in Madrid, though very soon it divided in two groups, operating in different cities. A part will be named The Working Lunch-basket, which acts in Madrid and which leader artists will be Jordi Claramonte and David Rodríguez. Another group, named The Barroca Lunch-basket, acts in Seville and it will be led by Curro Aix y Santi Bar

    DESCRIPTION

    His concept resides in establishing new links between the art and the social movements, by means of the public and collaborative art. The humor and the amusement use, as strategy of action. Methodology: installations, camouflage and mural stickers

    BACKGROUND

    First one of the artistic projects is Mesón of unemployed people. This work took as a purpose to draw attention one of the most pressing problems that suffers this neighborhood (Lavapiés, Madrid) multicultural: the unemployment. In this case, the group modified the name to two known streets of Lavapiés’s neighborhood, in Madrid. The first one of them, originally is named Mesón de Paredes. The second one is the (Embajadores) Ambassadors’ street. Across the substitution of the name of “Walls” for “Unemployed people”, The Working Lunch-basket wanted to affect in the most well-known and serious aspect of the economic crisis using as strategy the irony, procedure that characterizes good part of his artistic works.

    LINKS

    http://www.sindominio.net/fiambrera/

     

    Mesón de parados// Mesón of unemployed people

     

    • Hyuro

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Hyuro | date : present | Place : Spain

    THE ARTIST

    She lives and works in Valencia (Spain) although she is Argentinean. From time to time, she travels to Madrid to collaborate with initiatives such as Madrid Street Art Project which among other things, has tried to unite art and gender equality.

    DESCRIPTION

    Her works continuously reproduce images of women through sober, low-intensity tones or, directly, in black and white. This generates a sense of loneliness or emptiness that she uses to reflect her own concerns and criticize current society where women carry all the responsibilities: home, children, work, etc … In her own words: “They bear the weight of a patriarchal society that they have not chosen”.

    She believes that street art gives her the opportunity to appropriate the public space, build the city with her own speech, communicate and escape from the system.

    BACKGROUND
    She has worked mainly in Spain but also in Italy, France, Germany, Brazil, the United States or New Zealand.
    She has collaborated with artists such as Escif or Sam3.

    LINKS
    https://www.facebook.com/Hyuro-218117774932597/


    Temporary transit. Barcelona, 2016. Source: Hyuro Facebook.


    Contradiction – Madrid, 2016 – Source: Hyuro Facebook.

    • Eltono

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Eltono or OTono | date : – | Place : Spain, France.

    THE ARTIST
    With an origin in graffiti, the French artist Eltono has been one of the pioneers of the current urban art scene. From his small contextual paintings to his most recent experiments in exhibition spaces, Eltono’s work is characterized by a particularly lucid and subtle environment

    DESCRIPTION
    Urban Art: recovery of sapces through painting, stickers, collages and abstract signs. Recovery of spaces, humanizing social areas and degraded objects and environments, in a humoristic and creative way.

    BACKGROUND
    Eltono is distinguished by its constructive criteria and its sensibility in localization. Improvises in situ shapes and colors to integrate into the existing balance. He almost always chooses unattended surfaces, with the intention of reviving his dignity and taking advantage of the formal load of aged textures. Such supports are often barely visible, which adds privacy to the chance encounter with the work. Renouncing the visibility sacrifices a good number of potential encounters of the viewer with his work, but increases in turn the capacity of penetration of the encounters that come to take place.

    Eltono Line and Surface (2011) por Javier Abarc


    Sticker and graphic design in Madrid.

    • Grey Ghost

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Grey Ghost. American Graffiti | date : From 2000 to present time | Place : New Orleans, USA

    THE ARTIST
    American Fred Radtke, known as the Gray Ghost, is a fifty-one-year-old activist who has turned the fight against graffiti into a personal mission. On his own initiative, without permission and paying for his own materials, Radtke patrols the streets covering all kinds of inscriptions with his characteristic rectangles of gray paint, which have made him, paradoxically, the most active urban artist in his city

    DESCRIPTION
    Urban art through erasing illustrations, signs and posters.

    BACKGROUND
    Radtke’s patches are not limited to attacking graffiti. They also cover more friendly and accepted pieces of urban art, such as the small paintings on canvas that the artist Nola Rising nails trees and streetlights of the city. Advertising is also a target of Gray Ghost, but only illegal, especially the small plastic posters advertising local businesses, common in the suburban gutters of the United States. The humble street paper poster, the traditional tool of communication of music and underground culture, is another form of illegal advertising victim of its attacks. Radtke does not start the posters, but he paints them in gray
    The Gray Ghost himself became the subject of some of Banksy’s New Orleans work, depicted as a bent figure blotting out color on the city’s walls.An example of artivism about artivism, where Banksy painted over huge swaths of Radtke’s gray paint, Radtke came back and painted over many of Banksy’s works of art (captured on video in one case) – without the permission of the property owners.

    Intervention on a Bansky’s painting.

    • Global Art. Artivistic project about the situation in Belarrusia and artistic solidarity

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Artivistic project about the situation in Belarrusia and artistic solidarity | artist : Global Art | date : – | Place : –

    THE ARTIST
    Berlin artist Dmitry Vrubel (author of Brezhnev and Honecker’s kiss on the Berlin Wall) and his co-author Victoria Timofeeva as part of their international street-art project GLOBAL PROJECT, represent “Wednesday exhibition” (“Выставка По средам. “)This is a sign of solidarity with the participants in the” silent protests “which take place every Wednesday in Minsk and other Belarusian cities

    DESCRIPTION
    The  project develops a multi-participatory art exhibition with the help of Internet and digital connection, in which 30 cities in more than 12 countries participate sharing images and drawings.  The concepts like “artist and the spectator”, “center and periphery”, “Original and copy” are being diluted.
    The project is rapidly being transformed into a kind of “discussion platform,” in which “discussions about global art” take place, on hot news of the day, discussions on the challenges of world or local art.

    BACKGROUND
    The ‘GLOBAL ART’ project has affected the media, and this has drawn the attention of readers in the participating countries to events in Belarus. It extends the idea of possible aspects of the formation of an active critical position within the reality of Bielarrusia

    LINKS
    http://neurope.eu/article/2011/09/01/proekt_global_art_belarusskaya_situatsiya_i_art_solidarnost
    http://artaktivist.org/proekt-global-art-belarusskaya-situaciya-i-art-solidarnost/
    http://artaktivist.org/dmitrij-vrubel-global-art-project-v-minske/

    The First Exposition of Wednesdays – New York

    • Dos Jotas

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Dos Jotas | date : 2007 | Place : Madrid

    THE ARTIST
    The support of this artist is the city. He sees it as “a field of action and intervention”. The streets are the best place to “question and criticize our society, our habits and our ideas”. The main criticism of his interventions is directed to some of the aspects that characterize postmodern society such as fame, spectacle, video-surveillance-control, hyperconsumption and privatization of public space. To make citizens reflect about it, he usually introduces small changes in urban furniture and uses the aesthetic codes of the brands and products of consumer society, as well as those of institutions. He calls receiver’s attention through humor and irony.

    DESCRIPTION
    In addition to Madrid, Bilbao, Huesca, Cuenca and Zaragoza (Spain) he has intervened in different cities in the United States, Canada, Holland, France, Germany and Bolivia.
    He has participated in individual exhibitions in Espacio Trapezio, ArtCenter / South Florida, Espacio Alianza Hispánica and José Hierro Public Library. Among its ten collective exhibitions we find: Libertarian Propaganda and Art, Madrid (2015) and Spain Brand “Europe Creative Center ECC”, Berlin (2013). In addition, he has obtained several scholarships and prizes.
    In many cases, his objective is to denounce that the city has become an object of consumption and individuals have a passive role in it (we are, literally, “ghosts”). He demands the citizens to be the owners of the public space, regardless of their purchasing power.

    LINKS
    http://www.dosjotas.org/


    It’s forbidden to be – Madrid and New York Subway, 2007 – Source: Dos Jotas


    Don´t even think – New York, 2014 – Source: Dos Jotas

    • Boamistura

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Boamistura | date : 2001 –  present | Place : Boa Estudio, Madrid, Spain.

    THE ARTIST
    The team initially consists of five friends who met as teenagers and painted the streets of the neighborhood where they lived. Their name (Boamistura) reflects the diversity of the training of each one of its members: an architect, a road engineer, two graduates in Fine Arts and an illustrator. They have also joined five other people who also have a very different background and knowledge: from graphic designers to an expert on international cooperation. They are all united by their interest in working in the public space of cities with the aim of transforming it to create links between its inhabitants.
    They mainly work with graffiti but they also use stencil painting, brush or roller. In many of their works they use color to convey force, energy, joy and optimism. For example, they have painted numerous buildings in disadvantaged or degraded areas of some cities with these lively colors to revitalize them.

    BACKGROUND
    They have developed projects in many countries besides Spain such as South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Peru, United States, United Kingdom, Georgia, Poland, Algeria, Norway, Serbia and Panama. In Madrid stand out their interventions in Mercado de la Cebada (city center) and  San Cristóbal Neighborhood (Villaverde, outskirts).
    They have exhibited at the Reina Sofía Museum, the DA2 Museum, the CAC Málaga and Casa Encendida in Madrid, as well as participated in the Venezuelan Architecture Biennial (2012), the Ibero-American Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism (2013) and the South Panama Biennial (2013).

    LINKS
    http://www.boamistura.com/


    San Cris de Colores – Project in San Cristóbal Neighborhood (Villaverde, Madrid, 2013) – Source: R2hox y Boa Mistura


    Las Américas – Santiago de Querétaro (México, 2013) – Source: Gozalo P. Martos y Boa Mistura

    • Bleeps. Urban art and digital diffusion.

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Bleeps | date : From 2003 on | Place : Greece, Athens.

    THE ARTIST
    An anonymous painter and urban artist which produces trompe l’oeil, papier maché paintings, murals and graffiti with political and activist messages.

    BACKGROUND
    Mural painting, papier maché collages, installations with trompe l’oeil and illusion effects always with a political and critical message reflecting the economical and social crisis in Greece. Bleeps uses social networking, Instagram account and blog to make a diffusion of his/her messages.

    CONTEXT
    Since the beginning of the Greek financial crisisin 2008, Bleeps has been creating a series of works related to the crisis’ impact on ordinary people and the lower middle class, globally and in his country. His/Her work has been widely studied by artivism experts, such as Myrto Tsilimpounidi and  Walsh Aylwyn.
    Some ideas of the artist concern the need of fighting the virtualization of reality and its gradual de-identification.. The artistic tool becomes extension of the physical limb, but not only. It substitutes the confrontation of reality, introducing a “swipe type” of a pseudo-real. The idea is shocking and questioning the static passivity of urban life.

    LINKS
    http://www.bleeps.gr/

    Motto: Street Art is a Social Diary in Public Display

    Paper and painted trompe l’oeil in a window – Kerameikos neighbourhood. Athens

    • Maria Capaz – a rap song

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Maria Capaz | artist : Capicua (Ana Matos Fernandes) | date : – | Place : Portuga.

    THE ARTIST
    Capicua (Ana Matos Fernandes) Portuguese rap singer , she studied socioly and took a PhD I Barcelona. She was a political activist since her youth, connected an extreme left party in Portugal. Nowadays she does not afiliate to any party but she still identifies with the left wing ideals. She discovered hip-hop when she was 15 on the streets of Porto and decided to start expressing herself through that via. She launched some eps, but only in 2008 and she gain some relevance. She considers herself a feminist and a social activist – and expresses that through her art.

    BACKGROUND

    “ This song, “Maria Capaz”, is the single of my first album. It has about eight words in it and it simply refers to the attitude you need to have while being a rapper. It is foreseen as needed to be a tomboy, but I say otherwise, I say you just need to be brave and courageous. And then, I also introduced a little word play with mc (master of ceremonies) and switched it off to ‘Maria Capaz’ (direct translation – capable mary) as a tease to all the haters. I know it was a little bit risky to do it, but I just wanted to clearly state that for you to be an artist you just need the guerrilla attitude and to be brave!” – interview to Capicua in a feminist Channel (Capazes, which was named after this song)

    CONTEXT

    The context of this song, Maria Capaz (2012), came through due to the misogynistic and patriarchal stigmas in the Portuguese society towards women in the arts. The artist, being a woman in the hip hop world (which as many is mainly populated with men) felt the different treatment and the   increased struggle for a place in this world. So, as the single of her first album she decided to automatically, send a message.

    LINKS
    http://www.capicua.pt/

    Link of the Project :

    Link of the Interview:

    • SCRATCHING THE SURFACE | VHILS

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : scratching the surface| artist : vhils | date : from 2007 on | Place : Mainly portugal, but has walls also in germany, London, romania, etc.

    THE ARTIST
    Portuguese artist Alexandre Farto (1987) has been interacting visually with the urban environment under the name of Vhils since his days as a prolific graffiti writer in the early 2000s.

    BACKGROUND
    Vhils grew up in Seixal, an industrialised suburb across the river from Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, and was deeply influenced by the transformations brought on by the intensive urban development the country underwent in the 1980s and 1990s. He was particularly inspired by the way city walls absorb the social and historical changes that take place around them. Applying his original methods of creative destruction, Vhils digs into the surface layers of our material culture like a contemporary urban archaeologist, exposing what lies beyond the superficiality of things, restoring meaning and beauty to the discarded dimensions buried beneath.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    Mainly, Vhils portraits anonymous people in the streets of different cities. ‘The a face is what turns all my work into one. But also because a face represents a reflexion – the city is my canvas but a face, an anonymous face, represents identity, the individuality of a space in a city. My thoughts, besides being on the city, are mainly about the effect that the city has on people, on their identity, on the way we connect with each other’s and with the city. On the way we see these layers, that we see everyday and that we gather every day, affect our experiences, our dreams, our expectations, lifestyle and life conditions.

    LINKS
    http://vhils.com
    http://www.agendalx.pt/artigo/entrevista-vhils#.WKMwetLhDGg

     

    • Cine sin Autor (Authorless Cinema)

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Cine sin Autor (Authorless Cinema) | artist : – | date : 2007-ongoing | Place : Madrid, Toulouse.

    THE ARTIST
    Fábrica de Cine sin Autor in Intermediae Matadero Madrid. A huge range of participants take part in the different processes of films. the Authorless Cinema Factory in Madrid involves around 300 people.

    BACKGROUND
    CsA develops its first project in close collaboration with Patio Maravillas, occupied space in Madrid and meeting place of assemblies movements related

    to the 15-M, collectives of theater, painting, music, audiovisuals, etc

    CONTEXT
    CsA focuses on collective film and visual arts that have questioned the relationship between knowledge and power, fostering a landcrossing between art, participatory democracy and everyday life. In many works, there are indications of the so called extreme social realism.
    Cinematographic projects in Madrid (Spain) and Toulouse (France) (selection):
    -the web series “Mátame si puedes” (Kill me if you can) (October 2012 – Present), -an audiovisual portrait and videoclip “K de Kalle” in Ca±oroto – July 2014 – Present),-the biopic “Mßs allß de la verdad” (Beyond the truth) with the octogenarian Gioacchino di Blasi and his family (2012 – 2014),-the film “Locura en el colegio” (Madness at school) with students from CEIP Legado Crespo, a primary school in Madrid.(Octubre 2012 – Present),-the generation portrait “Vida Fácil” (The easy life) with precarious youngsters.(2012 – 2014),-the shortfilm “Entrenosotros” (Between us) with a group of young people from Madrid.(2012 – 2014),

    LINKS
    www.cinesinautor.es

    “The hope of immigrants, 2017:

    “Ciak”

    Manifestos of Authorless Cinema.
    http://media.wix.com/ugd/75e5b9_75f881855075472890eff2c7630ba20f.pdf

    • Quinta do Mocho no dia a dia (Everyday life in Quinta do Mocho)

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Quinta do Mocho no dia a dia (Everyday life in Quinta do Mocho) | artist : Will Monteiro | date : – | Place : –

    CONTEXT

    Quinta do Mocho is a social disadvantage neighborhood in Lisboa, Portugal, characterized by deviant behavior such as drugs and arms traffic and a high number of criminality. This neighborhood is populated mainly by African migrants communities from all over Portuguese speaking African countries.

    There are a lot of social projects that have been implemented in this neighborhood but, even so, the popularity of the quartier is still the same and the levels of criminality continue to arise – such as bad media coverage (racist and xenophobic). One of the projects that was implemented in the quartier involved street artists grafters that painted a new look to the neighborhood – whit that, the project involved walks in the area so people from  outside could look into the graffiti’s

    BACKGROUND

    After these walks started to begin in the neighborhood, the locals decided to make a response, using youtube, showing the day to day life in the neighborhood, expressing it through rap songs – showing that you cannot understand the living situation of the neighborhood just by passing through the street and watching the grafitis. The walks did not consider the locals, so this was a way of giving a response to it. The rap songs are tough, maybe even rude, but clearly showing life as it is on the neighborhood.Here is a piece of the song:˝hey motherfucker, (…) crime aqui non stop estamos aqui no meio do mocho,vida sempre louca, querem me comprar droga, aqui está tudo à venda, a minha cabeca anda à roda, deus está do meu lado, sim ele está comigomas sinto-me um foragido neste mundo tao antigo, desde pequenino que ando for a da leidesde pequenino que eu pequei mas nunca me entreguei a minha alma nao quebrei continuo dignopois quero dar coragem ao meu unico filho (…)˝Translation: hey motherfucker/ crime here does not stop/ we are in the middle of the hood/ life is always crazy here/ they want to buy me drugs/ in here, everything is for sale/ my head is turning like crazy/ God is by my side/yes, He is with me/ but I feel like a fugitive in the old old world/ since childhood that I have been an outlaw/ since I was a child, I have sinned/ but I never give myself/ I never gave my soul away/ I am still worthy/ because I want to give courage to my only child (…)

    • MUSÉE PRÉCAIRE ALBINET | THOMAS HIRSHHORN

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : Musée précaire d’Albinet (which means in english : the temporary museum of Albinet) | Artist : Thomas Hirshborn, order of the Laboratoire d’Aubervilliers, directed by Yvane Chapuis | Date : 19/04/14 – 04/06/14 | Location : the housing area of Albinet in Aubervilliers (France)

    THE ARTIST
    Thomas Hirshhorn is a swiss artist and also an activist born on 16 may 1957. He lives and works in Paris. He focuses on the creation of handmade temporary sculptures. They are made from materials used in our daily lives. He wishes to give birth to his works outside of the traditional exhibition areas.

    BACKGROUND
    The majority of French museums are located inside Paris. In addition, these museums are visited by the part of the French population who has the easiest access to exhibitions (managers, students, etc.). Museums struggle to reach the young people who are coming from disadvantaged neighbourhoods.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    Le Musée Précaire d’Albinet is a piece of art that was made for a short-term period and created in the public space. The piece itself is an exhibition space which displays works of artists such as Duchamp, Malevitch, Mondrian, Dali, Beuys, Le Corbusier, Warhol, Léger. The museum was designed at the foot of the buildings of Albinet, a poor neighbourhood in the Parisian suburbs. Young people were recruited on the spot, as people were needed to be in charge of the security, the installing, deinstalling of the exhibition as well as to liven up the space. The museum was created with modest materials: wood, plastic from packages, cardboard, Scotch tape, photocopies, writings made with marker pens, etc… The purpose of this work was to “give life to art outside its usual exhibition spaces”.

    • DO WOMEN HAVE TO BE NAKED TO GET INTO THE MET. MUSEUM? | GUERILLA GIRLS

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Do women have to be naked to get into the met. musem ? artist : guerilla girls | date : 1989/2011 | Place : new york (usa)

    THE ARTIST
    Guerilla Girls is a collective of women, based in New York, USA, who produce visual campaigns, provides workshops, their main topic is the exclusion and discrimination of women in the art world. The anonymous women artists always wear masks of gorillas and have names of famous former female artists.

    BACKGROUND
    Exclusion of women artists from the prestigious institutions and the art world.
    “(…) That work is more than a quarter-century old, but the Guerrilla Girls have updated it over the years – with the results just as discouraging. The 2011 version states that women represent 4 percent of the artists in the modern-art sections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art but 76 percent of the nudes.” (guerrillagirls.com)

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    The group began in 1984 as a response to The Museum of Modern Art’s exhibit An International Survery of Painting and Sculpture where 100% of the artists exhibited were white and less than 8% were women. The members of guerilla girls are calling attention and challenge the hegemony of the art world, they also fight against racial and political discrimination. They use posters, street art, videos and other easy and accessible channels to transmit their mostly ironic messages, organize street actions, protests and forums, edit books.

     

    LINKS
    https://guerrillagirls.squarespace.com/#open

    Guide how to behave (manifesto kind of video)

     

    complain department

     

    (sources of the videos and photos too: guerillagirls.com)

    https://www.instagram.com/guerrillagirls/

    • MUSÉE PRÉCAIRE ALBINET | THOMAS HIRSHHORN

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : Musée précaire d’Albinet (which means in english : the temporary museum of Albinet) | Artist : Thomas Hirshborn, order of the Laboratoire d’Aubervilliers, directed by Yvane Chapuis | Date : 19/04/14 – 04/06/14 | Location : the housing area of Albinet in Aubervilliers (France)

    THE ARTIST
    Thomas Hirshhorn is a swiss artist and also an activist born on 16 may 1957. He lives and works in Paris. He focuses on the creation of handmade temporary sculptures. They are made from materials used in our daily lives. He wishes to give birth to his works outside of the traditional exhibition areas.

    BACKGROUND
    The majority of French museums are located inside Paris. In addition, these museums are visited by the part of the French population who has the easiest access to exhibitions (managers, students, etc.). Museums struggle to reach the young people who are coming from disadvantaged neighbourhoods.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    Le Musée Précaire d’Albinet is a piece of art that was made for a short-term period and created in the public space. The piece itself is an exhibition space which displays works of artists such as Duchamp, Malevitch, Mondrian, Dali, Beuys, Le Corbusier, Warhol, Léger. The museum was designed at the foot of the buildings of Albinet, a poor neighbourhood in the Parisian suburbs. Young people were recruited on the spot, as people were needed to be in charge of the security, the installing, deinstalling of the exhibition as well as to liven up the space. The museum was created with modest materials: wood, plastic from packages, cardboard, Scotch tape, photocopies, writings made with marker pens, etc… The purpose of this work was to “give life to art outside its usual exhibition spaces”.

    • CARCASS | PIOTR PAVLENSKI

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : Carcass | Artist : Piotr Pavlenski | Date : 3rd May 2013 | Location : Legislative assembly of Saint-Petersburg, Russia | Medium : performance

    THE ARTIST
    Piotr Pavlenski is a Russian performer artist and a political activist born on 8th March 1984 in Leningrad. His work explicitly denounces the Russian government. Among his actions, he stitched his mouth during the Pussy Riot trial, nailed down his testicles on the pavement of the Red Square, cut a piece of his ear in front of the Serbsky centre. The artist uses his body to defy Russian authorities and condemn censorship, the arbitrary and authoritarian regime of Vladimir Poutine.
    “FIRST OF ALL, I WANT TO SHOW TO EVERYBODY THAT ACTIVISM IS EASY AND POSSIBLE. YOUR RAW MATERIALS MIGHT AS WELL BE YOUR DOMESTIC APPLIANCES THAN YOUR OWN BODY; YOU NEED NO MONEY TO CARRY OUT AN ACTIVIST ACTION. YOU JUST NEED A BIT OF MOTIVATION AND WILL TO GET OVER FEARS IMPOSED BY THOSE IN POWER. THEN, ACTIONS MAKE PEOPLE REACT AND CRITICISE. CALL IT A SOCIAL REFLEX, IF YOU WANT. THESE ACTIONS QUESTION WHAT IS HAPPENING AND GIVE AN ACCOUNT OF THE POWERFUL PROPAGANDA ESTABLISHED BY THE TOTALITARIAN IDEOLOGIES”.

    BACKGROUND
    This performance took place in response to a series of laws aiming to stop civic activism, more and more frequent intimidations towards the population, the rising number of political prisoners, anti-NGO laws, laws in favour of censorship, laws against “homosexual propaganda” and “anti-blasphemy” laws in Russia.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    On 3rd May 2013, Piotr Pavlenski accomplished a performance to protest against the political repression that is led by the Russian government. His assistants carried him naked wound around barbed wire and put him in front of the main entrance of the Legislative Assembly of Saint Petersburg. The artist remained silent. In his barbed cocoon, the artist did not say a word to the remarks of the people watching at him until he had been set free by the police.

    This performance occurred against a series of repressive laws that did not target criminals but individual liberties. The human body is naked, like a carcass dressed in barbed wire, that same wire that was made up to protect a cattle. The artist wishes to make people aware that these laws are just like this wire: they imprison people in a toxic nest, depriving them of their human rights and liberties.

    LINKS
    http://www.liberation.fr/planete/2017/01/31/russie-piotr-pavlenski-les-zones-dombres-d-un-exil_1545381

     

    • THE PROGRESS | TINO SEHGAL

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : The Progress | Artist : Tino Sehgal | Date : 2016 | Location : Palais de Tokyo, Paris (France) | Medium : performance

    THE ARTIST
    Tino Sehgal is a British and German artist born in 1976. The performance, the dance and more particularly, the choreographic part plays an important role in his work. However, the artist does not define himself as a “performer”, but as a “situation designer”. Tino Sehgal strives to challenge the limits of what makes the definition of a work of art by involving directly the public in his pieces. We can also see in them that he disapproves of the market value of art and the artist protects his private life: he cares to never leave a trace. He does not sell tickets to his exhibitions nor send invitations, he does not organise openings, he refuses to give interviews, his name is not written on any billboards… He also refuses that people film or take pictures during his exhibitions.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    The visitor enters an empty room with white walls. He is welcomed by a teenager who asks him “What is progress?”. The visitor is invited to talk with the teenager while they show them the way to a second room. Here an adult is waiting for them. The teenager summarises their conversation and leaves the visitor. The adult then takes over from the teenager and continues the conversation with the visitor, while leading them into a third room where a senior is waiting for them. The adult summarises the situation to the senior and leaves the room. The senior tells a private anecdote to the visitor and walks him to the exit.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    Throughout his works, Tino Sehgal raises questions about another possible economy for the art world. Indeed, his works are temporary and, thus, fall outside the scope of the art market economy. Nor a trace is left after the performances: no photographs, no videos, no posters, no tickets… Beside the trace left in our memory. His performances, thus, puts in value people meeting together, interactions, the power of speech as opposed to the art market. Perhaps that is what progress means according to the artist? Beside making encounters happen, Tino Sehgal’s works give them food for political, economic and social thinking about our contemporary societies.
    Therefore, in the situations Tino Sehgal designs the visitor is not a passive one anymore, simply visiting an exhibition, but living a fully-fledged experience.

    LINKS
    http://www.palaisdetokyo.com/fr/evenement/tino-sehgal

    Source : http://salonkritik.net/index_colaboradores.php

    • SANS-TITRE | THE YES MEN

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : Sans-titre | Artist : The Yes Men | Date : 16 août 2001 | Location : Tampere (Finland), intervention during an international conference entitled “The clothes of the future” | Medium : Performance

    THE ARTIST COLLECTIVE
    The Yes Men (Jacques Servin & Igor Vamos) form an American artist and activist duo, that was born in 1993. The artists fight against capitalism, in particular against the privatisation of the public space and the relocation of firms. They also give performances against G. W. Bush and the Iraq war. The artists criticises neo-liberalism by using its own codes and make a mockery of them: hoaxes and caricatures are their favourite weapons.
    BACKGROUND
    In 1995, the WTO (World Trade Organisation) established international agreements enabling multinational companies to dissociate totally the place of goods production from their point-of-sale. Multinational firms can, therefore, delocalise their businesses in countries where social taxes and labour cost will be undeniably lower. In doing so, they have the guarantee to generate certain and immediate profits.

    DESCRIPTION OF THE PIECE
    The performance took place during an international conference in Tampere, the second biggest city of Finland, about the future of the textile industry and new technologies. During the conference, the two artists stepped in and pretended to be two representatives for the WTO: Mr Hank Hardy Hunruh and his assistant. Mr Unruh begins his intervention with a comparison supported by statistics about the cost of a slave and a worker from developing countries. “The WTO is against slavery. Indeed, if we add up the expenses for food, clothing and accommodation required for a slave, the sum of their expenses is obviously higher than the cost needed for an Asian child hired by a firm like Nike. That is the reason why the American Civil War turned out to be a waste of money for the United States, as slavery, that is unprofitable, would have disappeared anyway”. No reaction in the conference hall. Hank Hardy Unruh carried on with some compliments about Gandhi:

    “This idiot had harmful protectionist reflexes”.
    As he noticed no reaction in the audience, he then showed a golden prop in the shape of a phallus that stood as a symbol of a tool to control and subdue the employee.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    This performance mocks multinational firms with a satirical discourse on the privatisation of the market and the apology of domestic slavery. The Yes Men use their favourite weapons: their sense of humour, pastiche and grotesqueness to denounce and debunk liberalism.

    LINKS
    Performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo-1W_8otS4


    Source : http://www.cinemetroart.com/film/film-the-yes-men-152.html

    • POWER : FROM THE MOUTHS OF THE OCCUPIED | PATRICE CULLORS

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : Power : From the Mouths of the Occupied | Artist : Patrice Cullors | Date : 2015 | Location : United States | Medium : performance

    THE ARTIST
    The artist is the Afro-American artist and activist Patrisse Cullors. She is the co-founder of the “Black Lives Matter” movement born in 1983 in Los Angeles. Using techniques belonging to the theatre and dance world, she blends visuals with sounds in ways that enable to name her works as art-therapy, promoting healing through art. She is particularly committed to curing traumas caused by the State and fights against the systemic violence it inflicts. Her purpose is to transform acts of violence into something positive through art.

    BACKGROUND
    The Power – From the Mouths of the Occupied performance, conceived by Patrisse Cullors, took place during her involvement in the Afro-American activist movement of the “Black Lives Matter”. Founded in 2013 in the United States, this movement stands up to the systemic violence and racism towards Black people and organises many demonstrations against repeated killings of Black people perpetrated by policemen.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    The performance displays stories of members of the Afro-American community who happened to be victims of the police and/or state violence. It is a collaborative performance that aims to reveal those stories that remain too often unspoken. The idea is to help the community, to heal traumas and bring about positive change through art. Their personal stories are combined with dialogue recordings, music, theatre and multimedia.

    LINKS
    Performance :

    https://seattlechannel.org/FrontRow/episodes?videoid=x68750

     

    Sources:
    https://highwaysperformance.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/PowerFlyer_web.jpg
    http://www.cityartsonline.com/sites/default/files/inline_images/Power_Ishisaka-8747.jpg https://seattlechannel.org/FrontRow/episodes?videoid=x68750

    • HOTEL EUROPA | GTO LX – NETWORK TOGETHER

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    TITLE : HOTEL EUROPA ARTIST : GTOLX – TOGETHER NETWORK | DATE : 2017 | PLACE : LISBON, PORTUGAL

    THE ARTIST
    GTO LXA – group of Theatre of the Oppressed based in Lisbon, developing different activities in the framework of Theatre of the Oppressed. This theatrical framework works with disadvantaged communities and their questions, topics, creating a framework by the play where the shared doubts can be discussed and strategies can be developped to resolve the crisis what the thetre play makes visible.

    BACKGROUND
    GTO LX is a group who practices diverse forms of Theatre of the Oppressed in various communities of Portugal, treating topics as gender equality, housing and intergenerational dialogue.
    Together is an international network of Theatre of the Oppressed institutions.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    Inspired by the events of the European crisis of the last years, Hotel Europa brings together an international cast from seven European countries to develop a Forum Theatre play about it. For two years, the cast worked and learned together exploring and understanding all themes connected to the European crisis.
    The play tells the story of a middle-class family, affected by the austerity measures imposed by governments and the accompanying striving for more profit from an unreformed banking sector. Examining the historical foundations of the current crisis, the piece invites the audience to ask themselves how is it possible to change the current situation, how would a different future for Europe look like?

    LINKS
    http://www.gtolx.org




    Co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union

    • KNOWLEDGE IS POWER | KRISTOF HORVATH

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : a tudás6alom (knowledge is power)| artist : kristóf hováth and the kids | date : 2014 | Place : hungary

    THE ARTIST
    Kristóf Horváth is a slammer and actor

    BACKGROUND
    In Hungary the Roma youngsters often leave the school before gaining qualification. Discrimination and negative stereotypes in the education system are strongly present, even after many years of different attempts of integration projects.

     

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    The original project consists on one hand of professional music videos presenting slam poetry or traditional folk songs where the text encourages Roma youngsters to learn, not to feel ashamed in school, because as the main message says: knowledge is power.  The song calls to combat prejudices and discrimination, speaking to young people, and in the same time raising awareness among the majority of society as well on the inequalities.

    Kristóf Horváth (Színész Bob) is a slammer, actor, working in various artistic-social projects.

    LINKS

    • Protest Art About Independence

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Agostamiento Abierto x obras | artist : Basurama | date : 2016 | Place : Madrid

    THE ARTIST
    Basurama; It is a group dedicated to the investigation, creation and cultural environmental production founded in 2001, that has focused their area of study and action on the productive processes, the generation of waste that these imply, and the creative possibilities that provoke these contemporary conjunctures.

    BACKGROUND
    In 2016 the Hungarian Government launched a massive anti-immigration billboard campaign. The slogans were calling attention to the respect of the Hungarian national culture, the workplaces of the people and the nationallaws. The billboards texts were addressing the immigrants directly, although it was all in Hungarian, and all the different phrases started with the same question: Did you know? The campaign was important part in the creation of the central anti – refugee, anti – migrant narrative in Hungary.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    The project Agostamiento is an intervention site-specific  realized by Basurama for the Opened program x Works and that takes place in the former cold-storage room of the one that was Legazpi’s slaughter house in Madrid. Basurama proposes an interior landscape extracted from the plantation of  7000 sunflowers that has cultivated together with the neighbors of the Great Route of the South-east, in Vallecas’s Widening, Madrid. A public space that, in Basurama’s words, “It invites to chat and to eat pipes, looking at the future from the darkest thing”.  This project was realized in Madrid, in 2016.

    LINKS
    http://www.furfur.me/furfur/culture/culture/169811-protestnoe-iskusstvo-na-maydane

    http://www.furfur.me/furfur/culture/culture/176987-kak-graffiti-stanovitsya-yazykom-gosudarstvennoy-propagandy

     

    • NO FUTURE

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : no future| artist : Banksy | date : – | Place : Bristol, UK

    THE ARTIST

    Banksy is an anonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist and film director of unverified identity. Their satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine dark humour with graffiti.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Graffiti

    DESCRIPTION

    Banksy once characterised graffiti as a form of underclass “revenge”, or guerilla warfare that allows an individual to snatch away power, territory and glory from a bigger and better equipped enemy. Banksy sees a social class component to this struggle, remarking “If you don’t own a train company then you go and paint on one instead.” Banksy’s work has also shown a desire to mock centralised power, hoping that his work will show the public that although power does exist and works against you, that power is not terribly efficient and it can and should be deceived.

    Banksy’s works have dealt with various political and social themes, including anti-war, anti-consumerism, anti-fascism, anti-imperialism, anti-authoritarianism, anarchism, nihilism, and existentialism. Additionally, the components of the human condition that the works commonly critique are greed, poverty, hypocrisy, boredom, despair, absurdity, and alienation. Although Banksy’s works usually rely on visual imagery and iconography to put forth his message, Bansky has made several politically related comments in his various books. In summarising their list of “people who should be shot”, they listed “Fascist thugs, religious fundamentalists, (and) people who write lists telling you who should be shot.” While facetiously describing their political nature, Banksy declared that “Sometimes I feel so sick at the state of the world, I can’t even finish my second apple pie.”

    LINKS

    http://www.banksy.co.uk/

     

    • My Chinese-Canadian Boyfriend

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : My Chinese-Canadian Boyfriend | artist : Wayne Yung  | date : – | Place : Berlin

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Issues related to queer, Asian, and European identity and life

    DESCRIPTION

    In a way, Wayne Yung really is my Chinese-Canadian boyfriend. I met Wayne when I curated my first film festival in 2003 shortly after moving to Amsterdam.  We had a blast at the festival as he generously helped guide a very enthusiastic but very inexperienced festival organizer through lost tapes and bad subtitles. We quickly became partners in crime and over the years, brainstormed of ways to radicalize the Asians and Queers in Europe, to not be ashamed to show their faces and hear their own voices and desires on screen and off. As members of the silent model minority in North America, the so-called “good studious immigrant Asian kids”, we slowly but surely became rebels with a cause. We held queer karaoke “happenings” from Berlin to Amsterdam to show that anyone could make a video, have fun doing it and bring the queer community closer together. In the meantime Wayne also continued making videos about his queer, Asian, and now European identity and life as he became a fusion of different cultures and identities. In his work he has always sought to create dialogue with himself and others about who he is as he has always done in his more than 20 year career of making video art. Wayne is one of the pioneers of the queer video art form and continues to bravely explore his personal life and space to bring us the insights of his discoveries.

    LINKS

    Wayneyung.webhosting.softronics.ch/yeung.html

    • Paper cutting

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Paper cutting | artist : Xiyadie | date : – | Place : Varldskultur Museena, Sweden

    THE ARTIST

    Xiyadie was born in a small village in the northern Shaanxi province. He works in Beijing as a doorman, cook and cleaner. Like so many other gay Chinese of his age, he is married. He has two children in their 20s. According to sociological studies, some 90% of all gay men in China are married. In Confucian tradition, there are three types of lack of filial respect, and the worst is not to provide for the family line’s continuation. It is a strong social pressure. “I knew I liked men from an early age, but in the country, it’s completely unthinkable to come out as gay, it’s even seen as criminal.”

     

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Homosexuality

    DESCRIPTION

    Xiyadie has developed this traditional folk art from the expression of collective cultural memories to the depiction and expression of the life and emotions of the individual. His paper cuttings are fearless depictions of same-sex life and his particular path out of the closet. This old traditional art, which faced extinction, becomes a lively modern art form in Xiyadie’s hands. (website)

    LINKS

    http://www.varldskulturmuseerna.se/en/exhibitions/secret-love/artists/xiyadie/

    • Art calendar 2017

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Art calendar 2017 | artist : Musk Ming | date : – | Place : Berlin

    THE ARTIST

    From his unique life background and studies, Musk Ming finds a way to combine the traditional  Classic Chinese arts with the modern, western technique. His artwork reflects an international outlook and cross-cultural perspective The missing or hidden sexuality in classical Chinese art and the relatively open approach in the West are brought to the fore in Musk Ming’s paintings, representing an irony that highlights the marked differences in sexual values between the East and the West. Behind his nude paintings, the topics always focus on the relationship between human being, society and nature. Musk Ming also explores a return to Taoism values as a tolerant alternative and his work visualize the longing for an open-minded China.

     

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Sexuality, focus on the relationship between human beings, society and nature

    DESCRIPTION

    The calendar explores different views of homosexuality using modern and old forms of photography

    LINKS

    www.muskming.com

    • Madalenas de Lisboa – Casa meia assombrada (Haunted house)

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Madalenas de Lisboa – Casa meia assombrada (Haunted house) | artist : GTO LX | date : – | Place : Lisbon

    THE ARTIST

    GTO LX (feminist branch of the theatre of the oppressed collective based in Lisbon)

     

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Madalenas is an international phenomena, that exists in various countries in the world, indicates a group of women dealing with their own questions with the tool of Theatre of the Oppressed. The first encounter, a theatre festival took place in 2009.

    The Madalenas de Lisboa initiative was born inside the collective of the Theatre of the Oppressed Group in Lisbon, by three women, who desired to approach more in depth the issues of gender inequality.  One of the focuses is domestic violence, in Portugal the number of victims has been increasing over the last years.

     

    DESCRIPTION

    Since the group came together, they made some performances, one of them, with most visibility, their participation in the March against violence against women, on the 25th of November 2016, in Lisbon Portugal.

    The performance on the 25th of November March was about ending domestic  violence, raising awareness on the topic.

    LINKS

    https://www.facebook.com/pg/MadalenasLisboa/about/?ref=page_internal

     

    • Cartel Strike project

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Cartel Strike project  | artist : – | date : – | Place : Ukraine

    THE ARTIST

    “Strike Cartel”, as the main way of expressing citizenship, has become a key tool in the hands of artists. Working on the Wiki principle, the project made it possible for anyone to download and print the poster on the printer and go out with him to protest. In everyday life, was even famous the phrase: “Never a small printer felt so hero.” This tactic made possible that each person could feel like an artist, anyone could assign an image in the artistic work created by others, all in the name of the common goal. The popularity of the project among the masses is due to the fact that it is based on the rejection of political slogans and direct propaganda seeking a universal image.

     

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    During the last ten years, Ukraine is experiencing a revolution. In the first wave after the fall of Yanukovich was founded the Art Association REP (Experimental Revolutionary Space), which occupies a special place in Ukrainian art and after events. They emphasized many projects of the community whose catalyst was the social project «Страйк Плакат» (stroke of the cartel).

     

     

    DESCRIPTION

    February 6, 2014: During the months of December, January and February of 2014, peaceful demonstrations were held in protest and for the independence of Ukraine.  Some of them became a real revolution with collisions and victims. Art took a reflexive attitude, visualizing the different facets of the conflict. In addition to the usual political slogans and propaganda, the artists sympathize with the dead, protesting for the security and liberation of the media.

     

    LINKS

    http://www.furfur.me/furfur/culture/culture/169811-protestnoe-iskusstvo-na-maydane

    http://www.lefthandrotation.com/

     

    The drop campaign. “I am a drop in an ocean”

    • Sabek

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : –  | artist : Sabek  | date : – | Place : Madrid

    THE ARTIST

    This urban artist works mainly with graffiti and collage. Their supports, besides city street walls and buildings such as La Tabacalera (Madrid), are canvas and wood. He is inspired above all by nature, specifically in the animal world. His purpose is to make us reflect on how human beings have lost their bonds with nature.

    He considers that urban art “proposes a debate” because of its “democratizing” power since it “opens the public space to free expression”. It allows people to “own a space” that “is usually only accessible to big brands that pay for advertising”.

     

     

    DESCRIPTION

    In addition to the streets of Madrid (Spain), we can find his works in Belsfast (Northern Ireland), Worcester (United States), Muar (Malasya), Bangkok (Thailand) or Bucharest (Romania).

    He has presented works in galleries such as ABV (Atlanta, USA), Nok (Bodo, Norway) or Swinton (Madrid), Festeen 2016 (Madrid, Spain), Wonderfruit (Pattaya, Thailand), Critic Festival, Mad Cool (Madrid, Spain), Creative Disorders (Galicia, Spain) or Festivalasalto (Zaragoza, Spain).

    He has participated in the project “Mind the Wall” that offers temporarily a facade of 30 square meters in San Millán Street (La Latina Neighborhood, Madrid) to urban artists.

     

    LINKS

    https://www.facebook.com/Sabek.nonsense

    http://www.freshpaintgallery.ca/blog/crossing-borders-017-sabek/

    Reversible

    Worcester, Massachusetts, United States, 2016.

    Source: Steven King, https://streetartnews.net/2016/09/reversible-by-sabek-in-worcester-usa.html

    The Bond.

    Muar, Malasya, 2016.

    Source: Kharul Akma, https://streetartnews.net/2016/08/the-bond-by-sabek-in-muar-malaysia.html

    • My Chinese-Canadian Boyfriend

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : My Chinese-Canadian Boyfriend | artist : Wayne Yung  | date : – | Place : Berlin

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Issues related to queer, Asian, and European identity and life

    DESCRIPTION

    In a way, Wayne Yung really is my Chinese-Canadian boyfriend. I met Wayne when I curated my first film festival in 2003 shortly after moving to Amsterdam.  We had a blast at the festival as he generously helped guide a very enthusiastic but very inexperienced festival organizer through lost tapes and bad subtitles. We quickly became partners in crime and over the years, brainstormed of ways to radicalize the Asians and Queers in Europe, to not be ashamed to show their faces and hear their own voices and desires on screen and off. As members of the silent model minority in North America, the so-called “good studious immigrant Asian kids”, we slowly but surely became rebels with a cause. We held queer karaoke “happenings” from Berlin to Amsterdam to show that anyone could make a video, have fun doing it and bring the queer community closer together. In the meantime Wayne also continued making videos about his queer, Asian, and now European identity and life as he became a fusion of different cultures and identities. In his work he has always sought to create dialogue with himself and others about who he is as he has always done in his more than 20 year career of making video art. Wayne is one of the pioneers of the queer video art form and continues to bravely explore his personal life and space to bring us the insights of his discoveries.

    LINKS

    Wayneyung.webhosting.softronics.ch/yeung.html

    • Rey de la ruina

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : –  | artist : Rey de la ruina | date : 2000~present | Place : Madrid, Spain.

     

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    His works are concentrated in the Lavapiés and Malasaña Neighborhoods (Madrid city center). They stand out for having very contrasted colors and a naive style, strategies with which he tries to get his message easily to those who see them.

    He has collaborated with the Madrid’s City Council through a mural that honors all the women who fought and fight to make this society a more egalitarian and free place.

     

    DESCRIPTION

    In addition to the streets of Madrid (Spain), we can find his works in Belsfast (Northern Ireland), Worcester (United States), Muar (Malasya), Bangkok (Thailand) or Bucharest (Romania).

    He has presented works in galleries such as ABV (Atlanta, USA), Nok (Bodo, Norway) or Swinton (Madrid), Festeen 2016 (Madrid, Spain), Wonderfruit (Pattaya, Thailand), Critic Festival, Mad Cool (Madrid, Spain), Creative Disorders (Galicia, Spain) or Festivalasalto (Zaragoza, Spain).

    He has participated in the project “Mind the Wall” that offers temporarily a facade of 30 square meters in San Millán Street (La Latina Neighborhood, Madrid) to urban artists.

     

    LINKS

    https://www.instagram.com/elreydelaruina/

    http://losartistasdelbarrio.com/2016-el-rey-de-la-ruina/

     

    Socially equal, humanly different, totally free

    Madrid, Lavapiés Neighborhood, 2016.

    Source: Rey de la ruina Twitter.

     

    In love with life.

    Madrid, Malasaña Neighborhood 2016.

    Source: Rey de la ruina Twitter.

    • MIcomicón

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : –  | artist : MIcomicón | date : – | Place : Spain

    THE ARTIST

    Created in 1991, with four young actors specializing in classical theater, the Micomicon Company has been performing for more than twenty-five years and has explored popular theater, classical tragedies and dramas,  touring around twenty European countries and Hispano-american cities.

     

    DESCRIPTION

    Micomicon approach committed theater and activism from 1998 with plays written and directed by Laila Ripoll, as the Trilogy of Memory (AtraBilis (2002), Santa Perpetua (2012), The Blue Triangle (2014)).

    They have worked about the Spanish civil war, the Spanish prisoners in the camp of Mauthausen, the repression in the postwar period, the culture in the time of the second Spanish republic, and recently the disabled children and their integration. It is a theater that expresses through popular language the repression, disinformation and rewriting of Spanish history, seeking its rescue through the staging of its authentic roots.

     

    LINKS

    https://www.facebook.com/micomicon.teatro

    http://apriorigt.org/producciones-micomic%C3%B3n

    The Blue Triangle. (2014)

    Santa Perpetua (2012) – Temporary transit. -Barcelona, 2016. – Source: Hyuro Facebook.

    • Marta and Publio

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Marta and Publio | date : – | Place : Madrid, Spain

    THE ARTIST

    Teachers and artists,  Marta de Gonzalo and Publio Pérez Prieto work in Madrid since 2000 with different artivism and political art activities of installations, video performances, narrative and designs, a.s.o, in a multimedia idea of creation. Their main objective is to connect  theoretical and political reflection and practical work; they develop also teacher and social training, artists training, as well as alphabetizing of youngsters about media, popular culture and politics.

    DESCRIPTION

    Works with Paper, screen, sound, sculpture materials, light, body art, theatrical  performance.

    They have exhibited in Matadero Madrid,  Cáceres; Puertas de Castilla, Murcia; Intermediae Matadero, Madrid; Foundation La Caixa, between other spaces.

    BACKGROUND

    collective shows in C.C.M. Haroldo Conti, Buenos Aires; CAAC, Sevilla,

    Kunst, Karlsruhe; Tel Aviv Museum of Art; Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop

    Kulturunea, San Sebastián and Galerie Art & Essai. Rennes. Your aud jobs Feet, Barcelona; International Film Festival Show, Barcelona; Zinebi. Members of the Gross Domestic Circus (1999-2003). They have directed the Injuve Mobilities for Young artists (2005-2007)  and take active part in Las lindes, research group about education, art and cultural practices of Culture Ministry in Spain.

    LINKS

    http://martaypublio.net/es/inicio/

    Aquí huele a hueso español

    Songs, Drawings, and Video Monocanal. 2012

    Baila la Contrarreforma (2016) Video Performance

    And Song

    • Media Udar: global artivism. From 2011- ongoing

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : global artivism | artist : Media Udar | date : 2011-ongoing | Place : Moscú, Rusia

    THE ARTIST

    An international festival of activist art held in Moscow every fall since 2011. “MediaUdar” can be considered an international community for the study, articulation, documentation, support and development of activist art. MediaUdar is an open platform, its position is not the commitment to a concrete ideology, but the search for openness, equality of participants and direct democracy as the principle of decision-making.

    DESCRIPTION

    The festival is built on the principle of self-organization of the work group of painters, activists, artists and philosophers in the format “BarCamp” – informal conference, created by the participants themselves. This includes assembly, expeditions, publication, exhibitions, presentations, conferences, workshops, debates, literary readings, concerts, video screenings, joint actions on the street. The festival’s events are aimed at creating a platform for interaction between activists from different regions of the country, supporting civic initiatives, building a platform for interaction among oppressed groups in society (immigrants, etc.). ), providing assistance to political prisoners, as well as protecting the environment.

    BACKGROUND

    The first “MediaUdar” festival was in the fall of 2011 as a special project of the 4th Muscovite Contemporary Art Biennial. Subsequent events to the Festival were held in Novosibirsk, Murmansk, Nizhny Novgorod, St. Petersburg, Izhevsk, Ekaterinburg, Togliatti, Samara, Krasnodar and other Russian cities

    LINKS

    http://mediaudar.net/

    http://artguide.com/posts/661

    Photos from the Festival. Vlad Chijenkov

    • Left hand rotation

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Left hand rotation | date : – | Place : They work all over the world. They come from Salamanca, and they used to had headquarters in Madrid. At present time their headquarters are in Lisbon.

    THE ARTIST

    An artistic group that, from 2005 develops projects of intervention in the public space, as well as of documentation of audio-visual quiet materials. “The group is structured as impersonal entity not associated with the individual / author, and approaches every project under the consideration that the community of receipt is not a spectator, but active indispensable part in the transformation of the social reality “.

    DESCRIPTION

    They try to denounce problems punctual and disregarded by the politics, across an artistic exposition. From those problems that they have to see with the gentrification up to the denunciation for the displaced ones. Also they invite to realize projects to different artists and groups

    BACKGROUND

    Gentrification is not a name of lady. Project carried out by the group in 2012 in Charloise’s neighborhood, Rotterdam. It was based on measurements of the percentage of creative class that lives there. The above mentioned neighborhood, as the group explains in the web site, “It receives for years to an artistic community that prospers thanks to facilities of residence for persons of the field of the creativity. His permanency in the neighborhood is supported by the public power, which at the same time controls the economic level of the resident futures, excluding from the area to the lowest classes. Zones of the neighborhood are lived entirely by artists. Nevertheless, the transfer of these spaces has expiry date. When the artists have realized his function of revaluation of the neighborhood the privileges will be eliminated granted to the “creative class” and they themselves will suffer the economic segregation “.

    LINKS

    http://www.lefthandrotation.com/

     

    Creative Charlois control, 2012. Rotterdam

    • Dos Jotas

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Dos Jotas | date : 2007 | Place : Madrid

    THE ARTIST
    The support of this artist is the city. He sees it as “a field of action and intervention”. The streets are the best place to “question and criticize our society, our habits and our ideas”. The main criticism of his interventions is directed to some of the aspects that characterize postmodern society such as fame, spectacle, video-surveillance-control, hyperconsumption and privatization of public space. To make citizens reflect about it, he usually introduces small changes in urban furniture and uses the aesthetic codes of the brands and products of consumer society, as well as those of institutions. He calls receiver’s attention through humor and irony.

    DESCRIPTION
    In addition to Madrid, Bilbao, Huesca, Cuenca and Zaragoza (Spain) he has intervened in different cities in the United States, Canada, Holland, France, Germany and Bolivia.
    He has participated in individual exhibitions in Espacio Trapezio, ArtCenter / South Florida, Espacio Alianza Hispánica and José Hierro Public Library. Among its ten collective exhibitions we find: Libertarian Propaganda and Art, Madrid (2015) and Spain Brand “Europe Creative Center ECC”, Berlin (2013). In addition, he has obtained several scholarships and prizes.
    In many cases, his objective is to denounce that the city has become an object of consumption and individuals have a passive role in it (we are, literally, “ghosts”). He demands the citizens to be the owners of the public space, regardless of their purchasing power.

    LINKS
    http://www.dosjotas.org/


    It’s forbidden to be – Madrid and New York Subway, 2007 – Source: Dos Jotas


    Don´t even think – New York, 2014 – Source: Dos Jotas

    • La Fiambrera

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : La Fiambrera | date : – | Place : Cities of Madrid and Sevilla, Spain. Nineties 20th century

    THE ARTIST

    An artistic group opened and collaborative. His foundation resides in establishing new links between the art and the social movements, by means of the public and collaborative art. The humor and the  amusement use as strategy of action and basic component. The group, in a beginning, was formed in Madrid, though very soon it divided in two groups, operating in different cities. A part will be named The Working Lunch-basket, which acts in Madrid and which leader artists will be Jordi Claramonte and David Rodríguez. Another group, named The Barroca Lunch-basket, acts in Seville and it will be led by Curro Aix y Santi Bar

    DESCRIPTION

    His concept resides in establishing new links between the art and the social movements, by means of the public and collaborative art. The humor and the amusement use, as strategy of action. Methodology: installations, camouflage and mural stickers

    BACKGROUND

    First one of the artistic projects is Mesón of unemployed people. This work took as a purpose to draw attention one of the most pressing problems that suffers this neighborhood (Lavapiés, Madrid) multicultural: the unemployment. In this case, the group modified the name to two known streets of Lavapiés’s neighborhood, in Madrid. The first one of them, originally is named Mesón de Paredes. The second one is the (Embajadores) Ambassadors’ street. Across the substitution of the name of “Walls” for “Unemployed people”, The Working Lunch-basket wanted to affect in the most well-known and serious aspect of the economic crisis using as strategy the irony, procedure that characterizes good part of his artistic works.

    LINKS

    http://www.sindominio.net/fiambrera/

     

    Mesón de parados// Mesón of unemployed people

     

    • Hyuro

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Hyuro | date : present | Place : Spain

    THE ARTIST

    She lives and works in Valencia (Spain) although she is Argentinean. From time to time, she travels to Madrid to collaborate with initiatives such as Madrid Street Art Project which among other things, has tried to unite art and gender equality.

    DESCRIPTION

    Her works continuously reproduce images of women through sober, low-intensity tones or, directly, in black and white. This generates a sense of loneliness or emptiness that she uses to reflect her own concerns and criticize current society where women carry all the responsibilities: home, children, work, etc … In her own words: “They bear the weight of a patriarchal society that they have not chosen”.

    She believes that street art gives her the opportunity to appropriate the public space, build the city with her own speech, communicate and escape from the system.

    BACKGROUND
    She has worked mainly in Spain but also in Italy, France, Germany, Brazil, the United States or New Zealand.
    She has collaborated with artists such as Escif or Sam3.

    LINKS
    https://www.facebook.com/Hyuro-218117774932597/


    Temporary transit. Barcelona, 2016. Source: Hyuro Facebook.


    Contradiction – Madrid, 2016 – Source: Hyuro Facebook.

    • Eltono

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Eltono or OTono | date : – | Place : Spain, France.

    THE ARTIST
    With an origin in graffiti, the French artist Eltono has been one of the pioneers of the current urban art scene. From his small contextual paintings to his most recent experiments in exhibition spaces, Eltono’s work is characterized by a particularly lucid and subtle environment

    DESCRIPTION
    Urban Art: recovery of sapces through painting, stickers, collages and abstract signs. Recovery of spaces, humanizing social areas and degraded objects and environments, in a humoristic and creative way.

    BACKGROUND
    Eltono is distinguished by its constructive criteria and its sensibility in localization. Improvises in situ shapes and colors to integrate into the existing balance. He almost always chooses unattended surfaces, with the intention of reviving his dignity and taking advantage of the formal load of aged textures. Such supports are often barely visible, which adds privacy to the chance encounter with the work. Renouncing the visibility sacrifices a good number of potential encounters of the viewer with his work, but increases in turn the capacity of penetration of the encounters that come to take place.

    Eltono Line and Surface (2011) por Javier Abarc


    Sticker and graphic design in Madrid.

    • Boamistura

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Boamistura | date : 2001 –  present | Place : Boa Estudio, Madrid, Spain.

    THE ARTIST
    The team initially consists of five friends who met as teenagers and painted the streets of the neighborhood where they lived. Their name (Boamistura) reflects the diversity of the training of each one of its members: an architect, a road engineer, two graduates in Fine Arts and an illustrator. They have also joined five other people who also have a very different background and knowledge: from graphic designers to an expert on international cooperation. They are all united by their interest in working in the public space of cities with the aim of transforming it to create links between its inhabitants.
    They mainly work with graffiti but they also use stencil painting, brush or roller. In many of their works they use color to convey force, energy, joy and optimism. For example, they have painted numerous buildings in disadvantaged or degraded areas of some cities with these lively colors to revitalize them.

    BACKGROUND
    They have developed projects in many countries besides Spain such as South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Peru, United States, United Kingdom, Georgia, Poland, Algeria, Norway, Serbia and Panama. In Madrid stand out their interventions in Mercado de la Cebada (city center) and  San Cristóbal Neighborhood (Villaverde, outskirts).
    They have exhibited at the Reina Sofía Museum, the DA2 Museum, the CAC Málaga and Casa Encendida in Madrid, as well as participated in the Venezuelan Architecture Biennial (2012), the Ibero-American Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism (2013) and the South Panama Biennial (2013).

    LINKS
    http://www.boamistura.com/


    San Cris de Colores – Project in San Cristóbal Neighborhood (Villaverde, Madrid, 2013) – Source: R2hox y Boa Mistura


    Las Américas – Santiago de Querétaro (México, 2013) – Source: Gozalo P. Martos y Boa Mistura

    • Maria Capaz – a rap song

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Maria Capaz | artist : Capicua (Ana Matos Fernandes) | date : – | Place : Portuga.

    THE ARTIST
    Capicua (Ana Matos Fernandes) Portuguese rap singer , she studied socioly and took a PhD I Barcelona. She was a political activist since her youth, connected an extreme left party in Portugal. Nowadays she does not afiliate to any party but she still identifies with the left wing ideals. She discovered hip-hop when she was 15 on the streets of Porto and decided to start expressing herself through that via. She launched some eps, but only in 2008 and she gain some relevance. She considers herself a feminist and a social activist – and expresses that through her art.

    BACKGROUND

    “ This song, “Maria Capaz”, is the single of my first album. It has about eight words in it and it simply refers to the attitude you need to have while being a rapper. It is foreseen as needed to be a tomboy, but I say otherwise, I say you just need to be brave and courageous. And then, I also introduced a little word play with mc (master of ceremonies) and switched it off to ‘Maria Capaz’ (direct translation – capable mary) as a tease to all the haters. I know it was a little bit risky to do it, but I just wanted to clearly state that for you to be an artist you just need the guerrilla attitude and to be brave!” – interview to Capicua in a feminist Channel (Capazes, which was named after this song)

    CONTEXT

    The context of this song, Maria Capaz (2012), came through due to the misogynistic and patriarchal stigmas in the Portuguese society towards women in the arts. The artist, being a woman in the hip hop world (which as many is mainly populated with men) felt the different treatment and the   increased struggle for a place in this world. So, as the single of her first album she decided to automatically, send a message.

    LINKS
    http://www.capicua.pt/

    Link of the Project :

    Link of the Interview:

    • Basurama

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Basurama | date : – | Place : They borned in the School of Architecture of Madrid. They have realized more than 100 projects in five continents. Have their base in Madrid and a permanent office in Milan and Bilbao.

    THE ARTIST
    It is a group dedicated to the investigation, creation and cultural environmental production founded in 2001, that has focused their area of study and action on the productive processes, the generation of waste that these imply, and the creative possibilities that provoke these contemporary conjunctures.

    BACKGROUND

    They studied phenomena inherent in the massive production of royal and virtual garbage in the company of consumption.

    retrieval of rubbish and residues to an artivistic expression of protes.

    CONTEXT

    The project Agostamiento is an intervention site-specific  realized by Basurama for the Opened program x Works and that takes place in the former cold-storage room of the one that was Legazpi’s slaughter house in Madrid. Basurama proposes an interior landscape extracted from the plantation of  7000 sunflowers that has cultivated together with the neighbors of the Great Route of the South-east, in Vallecas’s Widening, Madrid. A public space that, in Basurama’s words, “It invites to chat and to eat pipes, looking at the future from the darkest thing”.  This project was realized in Madrid, in 2016

    LINKS
    https://basurama.org/proyectos/
    https://basurama.org/basurama/

    • Cine sin Autor (Authorless Cinema)

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Cine sin Autor (Authorless Cinema) | artist : – | date : 2007-ongoing | Place : Madrid, Toulouse.

    THE ARTIST
    Fábrica de Cine sin Autor in Intermediae Matadero Madrid. A huge range of participants take part in the different processes of films. the Authorless Cinema Factory in Madrid involves around 300 people.

    BACKGROUND
    CsA develops its first project in close collaboration with Patio Maravillas, occupied space in Madrid and meeting place of assemblies movements related

    to the 15-M, collectives of theater, painting, music, audiovisuals, etc

    CONTEXT
    CsA focuses on collective film and visual arts that have questioned the relationship between knowledge and power, fostering a landcrossing between art, participatory democracy and everyday life. In many works, there are indications of the so called extreme social realism.
    Cinematographic projects in Madrid (Spain) and Toulouse (France) (selection):
    -the web series “Mátame si puedes” (Kill me if you can) (October 2012 – Present), -an audiovisual portrait and videoclip “K de Kalle” in Ca±oroto – July 2014 – Present),-the biopic “Mßs allß de la verdad” (Beyond the truth) with the octogenarian Gioacchino di Blasi and his family (2012 – 2014),-the film “Locura en el colegio” (Madness at school) with students from CEIP Legado Crespo, a primary school in Madrid.(Octubre 2012 – Present),-the generation portrait “Vida Fácil” (The easy life) with precarious youngsters.(2012 – 2014),-the shortfilm “Entrenosotros” (Between us) with a group of young people from Madrid.(2012 – 2014),

    LINKS
    www.cinesinautor.es

    “The hope of immigrants, 2017:

    “Ciak”

    Manifestos of Authorless Cinema.
    http://media.wix.com/ugd/75e5b9_75f881855075472890eff2c7630ba20f.pdf

    • Quinta do Mocho no dia a dia (Everyday life in Quinta do Mocho)

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Quinta do Mocho no dia a dia (Everyday life in Quinta do Mocho) | artist : Will Monteiro | date : – | Place : –

    CONTEXT

    Quinta do Mocho is a social disadvantage neighborhood in Lisboa, Portugal, characterized by deviant behavior such as drugs and arms traffic and a high number of criminality. This neighborhood is populated mainly by African migrants communities from all over Portuguese speaking African countries.

    There are a lot of social projects that have been implemented in this neighborhood but, even so, the popularity of the quartier is still the same and the levels of criminality continue to arise – such as bad media coverage (racist and xenophobic). One of the projects that was implemented in the quartier involved street artists grafters that painted a new look to the neighborhood – whit that, the project involved walks in the area so people from  outside could look into the graffiti’s

    BACKGROUND

    After these walks started to begin in the neighborhood, the locals decided to make a response, using youtube, showing the day to day life in the neighborhood, expressing it through rap songs – showing that you cannot understand the living situation of the neighborhood just by passing through the street and watching the grafitis. The walks did not consider the locals, so this was a way of giving a response to it. The rap songs are tough, maybe even rude, but clearly showing life as it is on the neighborhood.Here is a piece of the song:˝hey motherfucker, (…) crime aqui non stop estamos aqui no meio do mocho,vida sempre louca, querem me comprar droga, aqui está tudo à venda, a minha cabeca anda à roda, deus está do meu lado, sim ele está comigomas sinto-me um foragido neste mundo tao antigo, desde pequenino que ando for a da leidesde pequenino que eu pequei mas nunca me entreguei a minha alma nao quebrei continuo dignopois quero dar coragem ao meu unico filho (…)˝Translation: hey motherfucker/ crime here does not stop/ we are in the middle of the hood/ life is always crazy here/ they want to buy me drugs/ in here, everything is for sale/ my head is turning like crazy/ God is by my side/yes, He is with me/ but I feel like a fugitive in the old old world/ since childhood that I have been an outlaw/ since I was a child, I have sinned/ but I never give myself/ I never gave my soul away/ I am still worthy/ because I want to give courage to my only child (…)

    • MUSÉE PRÉCAIRE ALBINET | THOMAS HIRSHHORN

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : Musée précaire d’Albinet (which means in english : the temporary museum of Albinet) | Artist : Thomas Hirshborn, order of the Laboratoire d’Aubervilliers, directed by Yvane Chapuis | Date : 19/04/14 – 04/06/14 | Location : the housing area of Albinet in Aubervilliers (France)

    THE ARTIST
    Thomas Hirshhorn is a swiss artist and also an activist born on 16 may 1957. He lives and works in Paris. He focuses on the creation of handmade temporary sculptures. They are made from materials used in our daily lives. He wishes to give birth to his works outside of the traditional exhibition areas.

    BACKGROUND
    The majority of French museums are located inside Paris. In addition, these museums are visited by the part of the French population who has the easiest access to exhibitions (managers, students, etc.). Museums struggle to reach the young people who are coming from disadvantaged neighbourhoods.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    Le Musée Précaire d’Albinet is a piece of art that was made for a short-term period and created in the public space. The piece itself is an exhibition space which displays works of artists such as Duchamp, Malevitch, Mondrian, Dali, Beuys, Le Corbusier, Warhol, Léger. The museum was designed at the foot of the buildings of Albinet, a poor neighbourhood in the Parisian suburbs. Young people were recruited on the spot, as people were needed to be in charge of the security, the installing, deinstalling of the exhibition as well as to liven up the space. The museum was created with modest materials: wood, plastic from packages, cardboard, Scotch tape, photocopies, writings made with marker pens, etc… The purpose of this work was to “give life to art outside its usual exhibition spaces”.

    • CARCASS | PIOTR PAVLENSKI

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : Carcass | Artist : Piotr Pavlenski | Date : 3rd May 2013 | Location : Legislative assembly of Saint-Petersburg, Russia | Medium : performance

    THE ARTIST
    Piotr Pavlenski is a Russian performer artist and a political activist born on 8th March 1984 in Leningrad. His work explicitly denounces the Russian government. Among his actions, he stitched his mouth during the Pussy Riot trial, nailed down his testicles on the pavement of the Red Square, cut a piece of his ear in front of the Serbsky centre. The artist uses his body to defy Russian authorities and condemn censorship, the arbitrary and authoritarian regime of Vladimir Poutine.
    “FIRST OF ALL, I WANT TO SHOW TO EVERYBODY THAT ACTIVISM IS EASY AND POSSIBLE. YOUR RAW MATERIALS MIGHT AS WELL BE YOUR DOMESTIC APPLIANCES THAN YOUR OWN BODY; YOU NEED NO MONEY TO CARRY OUT AN ACTIVIST ACTION. YOU JUST NEED A BIT OF MOTIVATION AND WILL TO GET OVER FEARS IMPOSED BY THOSE IN POWER. THEN, ACTIONS MAKE PEOPLE REACT AND CRITICISE. CALL IT A SOCIAL REFLEX, IF YOU WANT. THESE ACTIONS QUESTION WHAT IS HAPPENING AND GIVE AN ACCOUNT OF THE POWERFUL PROPAGANDA ESTABLISHED BY THE TOTALITARIAN IDEOLOGIES”.

    BACKGROUND
    This performance took place in response to a series of laws aiming to stop civic activism, more and more frequent intimidations towards the population, the rising number of political prisoners, anti-NGO laws, laws in favour of censorship, laws against “homosexual propaganda” and “anti-blasphemy” laws in Russia.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    On 3rd May 2013, Piotr Pavlenski accomplished a performance to protest against the political repression that is led by the Russian government. His assistants carried him naked wound around barbed wire and put him in front of the main entrance of the Legislative Assembly of Saint Petersburg. The artist remained silent. In his barbed cocoon, the artist did not say a word to the remarks of the people watching at him until he had been set free by the police.

    This performance occurred against a series of repressive laws that did not target criminals but individual liberties. The human body is naked, like a carcass dressed in barbed wire, that same wire that was made up to protect a cattle. The artist wishes to make people aware that these laws are just like this wire: they imprison people in a toxic nest, depriving them of their human rights and liberties.

    LINKS
    http://www.liberation.fr/planete/2017/01/31/russie-piotr-pavlenski-les-zones-dombres-d-un-exil_1545381

     

    • KISSING DOESN’T KILL: GREED AND INDIFFERENCE DO | Gran Fury

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : Kissing doesn’t kill : greed and indifference do | Artist : Gran Fury | Date : 1988 | Location : New-York City, United States | Medium : Awareness-raising campaign against homophobia

    THE ARTIST COLLECTIVE
    Gran fury is a group of American artists and activists who are part of AIDS, an association fighting for the prevention of the HIV virus. The collective was founded in 1988 and was dissolved in 1995. It is made up of eleven members. The collective define themselves as a group of artists united by their anger and they are committed to using the power of art to fight Aids and homophobia.

    BACKGROUND
    The artist collective Gran Fury appeared in the United States in reaction to the constant homophobia and discourse accusing homosexual people of being responsible of the Aids outbreak, that discourse which is spread by the government and sustained by many institutions and citizens.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    Gran Fury convey a political message, adapting the communication means and design of advertising and mass media to their own ends. They wish to share information about homosexuality and Aids with a very broad audience. The first step of the project was to send by post a card showing gay couples kissing each other. Next to the card, there was a sentence: Kissing doesn’t kill: greed and indifference do. On the back of the card it was written: “Greed of firms, inaction of government and indifference of people make Aids a political crisis”. Then, the collective used the usual means of advertising: billboards in the public space, on buses, stickers, t-shirts, posters, etc…

    LINKS
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gran_Fury

    Sources :
    https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/objects/read-my-lips-girls
    http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2016/06/22/73695

    • NO WALLS | AMMAR ABO BAKR

  •  THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : No Walls | Artist : Amar Abo Bakr | Date : 2012 | Location : Cairo (Egypt) | Medium : Grafiti

    THE ARTIST
    Ammar Abu Bakr is a visual artist and a former teacher at the Fine Arts School of Louxor in Egypt. He also contributed to the famous mural painting in Mohamed Mahmoud street. In 2011, he began with other graffiti artists to create stencils and mural paintings as a protest against the police and in favour of the uprising. He took photo portraits of twelve people among the dozens who lost an eye in the battles and used the colours of the national flag in the background. In February 2012, along with artists such as Alaa Awad et Mohamed Khaled, he drew a great painting on the wall of the American University of Cairo in the Mohamed Mahmoud street representing the martyrs of the football team el Ahly who were killed in the Port Said Stadium confrontations. Ammar Abo Bakr found their portraits on Facebook and showed them with angel wings or framed them with a black stripe as a mark of grief. He says that these wings are the ones of the Coptic saints that we can see in churches, thus showing that the Egyptian heritage is at the same time Coptic, Pharaonic and Islamic.

    BACKGROUND
    While phone lines and Internet connexions were cut for the population, the art of graffiti spread in Egypt during the Arab Spring, although it existed before. If graffiti artists contributed to “inform” the revolution and the political events happening in the country, their tags also symbolised a form of artivism. In fact, within a few months graffiti artists have become influential activists, displaying satire, catch-phrases, powerful visuals to express their rejection of the government.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    In March 2012 Ammar Abo Bakr launched the collective graffiti campaign “No Walls”, in protest against the walls set up by the army in the middle of Cairo. These seven walls blocked access to the ministry of Interior after football supporters of the el Ahly football team died in the confrontations with the police in Port Said.
    Thus, on these walls artists drew and painted rainbows, kids playing, trees, smiles… They did it in trompe-l’oeil style, extending the street perspective and giving the illusion that the street is not blocked anymore. They wish to free the district and the inhabitants from the walls imposed by the army. One of the most well-known paintings is the trompe-l’oeil of the Sheikh Rihan street –– meticulously replicating the perspective of the street and the details architecture of the American University of Cairo.

    LINKS
    http://wallsoffreedom.com/
    https://www.facebook.com/Ammar.Abo.Bakr/


    Source : http://dbprng00ikc2j.cloudfront.net/userimages/101642/4cut/20141216200450-5._MunirSayegh_AmmarAbouBakr.jpg

    • Cartel Strike project

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Cartel Strike project  | artist : – | date : – | Place : Ukraine

    THE ARTIST

    “Strike Cartel”, as the main way of expressing citizenship, has become a key tool in the hands of artists. Working on the Wiki principle, the project made it possible for anyone to download and print the poster on the printer and go out with him to protest. In everyday life, was even famous the phrase: “Never a small printer felt so hero.” This tactic made possible that each person could feel like an artist, anyone could assign an image in the artistic work created by others, all in the name of the common goal. The popularity of the project among the masses is due to the fact that it is based on the rejection of political slogans and direct propaganda seeking a universal image.

     

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    During the last ten years, Ukraine is experiencing a revolution. In the first wave after the fall of Yanukovich was founded the Art Association REP (Experimental Revolutionary Space), which occupies a special place in Ukrainian art and after events. They emphasized many projects of the community whose catalyst was the social project «Страйк Плакат» (stroke of the cartel).

     

     

    DESCRIPTION

    February 6, 2014: During the months of December, January and February of 2014, peaceful demonstrations were held in protest and for the independence of Ukraine.  Some of them became a real revolution with collisions and victims. Art took a reflexive attitude, visualizing the different facets of the conflict. In addition to the usual political slogans and propaganda, the artists sympathize with the dead, protesting for the security and liberation of the media.

     

    LINKS

    http://www.furfur.me/furfur/culture/culture/169811-protestnoe-iskusstvo-na-maydane

    http://www.lefthandrotation.com/

     

    The drop campaign. “I am a drop in an ocean”

    • Tierra Oskura

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : –  | artist : Tierra Oskura | date : – | Place : Temuco, La Araucanía. Chile

    THE ARTIST

    Collective: Musical group of rock formed in 2003, coming from the city of Temuco, region of the Araucanía in Chile.

     

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Some of his most emblematic songs are “Tierra Oscura”, “Mapuche is the poem”, “To silence and to forget”, among others. The circuit in which they are developed is more underground, where they emphasize activities of political movements, tocatas and festivales of rock

     

    DESCRIPTION

    The musical style is heavy metal, but can also be linked to hard rock with influences of the Mapuche folk. The band has produced four albums; Araucarias (2004), That the flight becomes dark (2010) and Kütral (2011)

    LINKS

    https://www.facebook.com/tierra.oskura?fref=ts

    http://latierraoscura.blogspot.cl

     

    • Rey de la ruina

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : –  | artist : Rey de la ruina | date : 2000~present | Place : Madrid, Spain.

     

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    His works are concentrated in the Lavapiés and Malasaña Neighborhoods (Madrid city center). They stand out for having very contrasted colors and a naive style, strategies with which he tries to get his message easily to those who see them.

    He has collaborated with the Madrid’s City Council through a mural that honors all the women who fought and fight to make this society a more egalitarian and free place.

     

    DESCRIPTION

    In addition to the streets of Madrid (Spain), we can find his works in Belsfast (Northern Ireland), Worcester (United States), Muar (Malasya), Bangkok (Thailand) or Bucharest (Romania).

    He has presented works in galleries such as ABV (Atlanta, USA), Nok (Bodo, Norway) or Swinton (Madrid), Festeen 2016 (Madrid, Spain), Wonderfruit (Pattaya, Thailand), Critic Festival, Mad Cool (Madrid, Spain), Creative Disorders (Galicia, Spain) or Festivalasalto (Zaragoza, Spain).

    He has participated in the project “Mind the Wall” that offers temporarily a facade of 30 square meters in San Millán Street (La Latina Neighborhood, Madrid) to urban artists.

     

    LINKS

    https://www.instagram.com/elreydelaruina/

    http://losartistasdelbarrio.com/2016-el-rey-de-la-ruina/

     

    Socially equal, humanly different, totally free

    Madrid, Lavapiés Neighborhood, 2016.

    Source: Rey de la ruina Twitter.

     

    In love with life.

    Madrid, Malasaña Neighborhood 2016.

    Source: Rey de la ruina Twitter.

    • Redd. Musical Group

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : –  | artist : Redd. Musical Group | date : 2000~present | Place : Turkey

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    This well-known Turkish rock band  started its in 1996 under the name “Ten”. They used to play at bars  until they set up their own studio in 2004. Their first album, entitled “50/50”  was published a year later already under the name Redd. Their first original soundtrack album for director Çağan Irmak’s feature film “Sleeping Princess” was released in 2010. Songs from this album managed to enter the European music charts. They have released five albums. The group is composed of Güneş Duru, Doğan Duru, and Berke Özgümüş.

    DESCRIPTION

    Redd sings usually in big cities like Istanbul and Ankara in Turkey and Europe. The members of the group are opponent to Erdogan government, for this reason their works are also critical and opponent to the regime. For example Redd wrote “Freedom was backstabbed” in its album “21” for Hrant Dink, who was the main editor of Armenian Agos Newspaper and had been brutally assassinated on 19 January 2007.

    LINKS

    http://redd.com.tr/

    https://www.youtube.com/reddseyirdefter

    http://bianet.org/bianet/insan-haklari/131351-redd-den-sik-hareket

    Bon Jovi concert in Istanbul, 8th July, 2011

     

    • Luzinterruptus

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Luzinterruptus | date : 2014 | Place : The group operated in big cities as Madrid and Berlin.

     

    THE ARTIST

    This collaborative and anonymous group was created in 2008. Their three components are characterized for realizing interventions in the public space using the light as raw material.

    DESCRIPTION

    The group tries to denounce punctual problems and disregarded by the municipal politics, which achieve visibility during the time that the light installation lasts

     

    BACKGROUND

    In the year 2014, and in the center of Madrid, they carried out his action The police are present. One of his works more acquaintances, at par that troubled, since he supposed a denunciation and at the same time, a rejection to the known one popularly as “Law Gag”. The above mentioned name refers to the Organic Law of Protection of the Civil Security, approved by the Popular Party in July, 2015.

    LINKS

    http://www.luzinterruptus.com

    https://vimeo.com/luzinterruptus/videos/page:2/sort:date

     

    • FACES & PHASES | ZANELE MUHOLI

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : Faces & Phases | Artist : Zanele Muholi | Date : from 2007 – ongoing | Location: South Africa | Medium : photography

    THE ARTIST
    Zanele Muholi is a South African artist and photographer born in 1972 in Umlazi, Durban. She is an active member involved in the LGBT cause. She works as an activist on the condition and identity of lesbians in her country.

    BACKGROUND
    Since the end of Apartheid, gay and lesbian human rights in South Africa are enshrined in the Constitution and the law. Gay marriage has become legal in 2006: South Africa, thus, became the fifth country in the world and the first in the African continent to legalise gay marriage. Nevertheless, discriminations and crimes against lesbians still remain widespread. Nowadays, members of the LGBT community want to show that their sexual identity is not conflicting with their African identity.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    Consisting in a series of photographs in black and white, Faces & Phases has started in 2006. It compounds more than two hundred portraits of Black-African women, lesbians and transgender people. The project is entitled to protect, preserve and expose their visual stories: it gives them visibility and suggests positive and gratifying representations of the community in the media and exhibitions places. But this work is also meant to be a protest call against violences that Black-African lesbians and queers suffer: the artist photographs many people who underwent homophobic attacks.

    LINKS
    https://aperture.org/blog/magazine-zanele-muholis-faces-%C2%9D-phases/

    Tumi Nkopane, KwaThema, Springs, Johannesburg, 2010

     

    Teekay Khumalo, BB Section, Umlazi, Durban, 2012

    • KISSING DOESN’T KILL: GREED AND INDIFFERENCE DO | Gran Fury

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : Kissing doesn’t kill : greed and indifference do | Artist : Gran Fury | Date : 1988 | Location : New-York City, United States | Medium : Awareness-raising campaign against homophobia

    THE ARTIST COLLECTIVE
    Gran fury is a group of American artists and activists who are part of AIDS, an association fighting for the prevention of the HIV virus. The collective was founded in 1988 and was dissolved in 1995. It is made up of eleven members. The collective define themselves as a group of artists united by their anger and they are committed to using the power of art to fight Aids and homophobia.

    BACKGROUND
    The artist collective Gran Fury appeared in the United States in reaction to the constant homophobia and discourse accusing homosexual people of being responsible of the Aids outbreak, that discourse which is spread by the government and sustained by many institutions and citizens.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    Gran Fury convey a political message, adapting the communication means and design of advertising and mass media to their own ends. They wish to share information about homosexuality and Aids with a very broad audience. The first step of the project was to send by post a card showing gay couples kissing each other. Next to the card, there was a sentence: Kissing doesn’t kill: greed and indifference do. On the back of the card it was written: “Greed of firms, inaction of government and indifference of people make Aids a political crisis”. Then, the collective used the usual means of advertising: billboards in the public space, on buses, stickers, t-shirts, posters, etc…

    LINKS
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gran_Fury

    Sources :
    https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/objects/read-my-lips-girls
    http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2016/06/22/73695

    • My Chinese-Canadian Boyfriend

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : My Chinese-Canadian Boyfriend | artist : Wayne Yung  | date : – | Place : Berlin

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Issues related to queer, Asian, and European identity and life

    DESCRIPTION

    In a way, Wayne Yung really is my Chinese-Canadian boyfriend. I met Wayne when I curated my first film festival in 2003 shortly after moving to Amsterdam.  We had a blast at the festival as he generously helped guide a very enthusiastic but very inexperienced festival organizer through lost tapes and bad subtitles. We quickly became partners in crime and over the years, brainstormed of ways to radicalize the Asians and Queers in Europe, to not be ashamed to show their faces and hear their own voices and desires on screen and off. As members of the silent model minority in North America, the so-called “good studious immigrant Asian kids”, we slowly but surely became rebels with a cause. We held queer karaoke “happenings” from Berlin to Amsterdam to show that anyone could make a video, have fun doing it and bring the queer community closer together. In the meantime Wayne also continued making videos about his queer, Asian, and now European identity and life as he became a fusion of different cultures and identities. In his work he has always sought to create dialogue with himself and others about who he is as he has always done in his more than 20 year career of making video art. Wayne is one of the pioneers of the queer video art form and continues to bravely explore his personal life and space to bring us the insights of his discoveries.

    LINKS

    Wayneyung.webhosting.softronics.ch/yeung.html

    • Paper cutting

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Paper cutting | artist : Xiyadie | date : – | Place : Varldskultur Museena, Sweden

    THE ARTIST

    Xiyadie was born in a small village in the northern Shaanxi province. He works in Beijing as a doorman, cook and cleaner. Like so many other gay Chinese of his age, he is married. He has two children in their 20s. According to sociological studies, some 90% of all gay men in China are married. In Confucian tradition, there are three types of lack of filial respect, and the worst is not to provide for the family line’s continuation. It is a strong social pressure. “I knew I liked men from an early age, but in the country, it’s completely unthinkable to come out as gay, it’s even seen as criminal.”

     

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Homosexuality

    DESCRIPTION

    Xiyadie has developed this traditional folk art from the expression of collective cultural memories to the depiction and expression of the life and emotions of the individual. His paper cuttings are fearless depictions of same-sex life and his particular path out of the closet. This old traditional art, which faced extinction, becomes a lively modern art form in Xiyadie’s hands. (website)

    LINKS

    http://www.varldskulturmuseerna.se/en/exhibitions/secret-love/artists/xiyadie/

    • Proudly Trans in Turkey videos

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Proudly Trans in Turkey videos | artist : Gabrielle Le Roux in collaboration with Trans Activists | date : – | Place : South Africa

    THE ARTIST

    Gabrielle Le Roux is an artist, storyteller and feminist activist based in South Africa who creates travelling exhibitions of portraits drawn from life accompanied by first person narratives around different social issues. Her work pays tribute to people whose rich contributions to society are forgotten, ignored or discriminated against because of their race, gender, class or sexual orientation.

    Gabrielle ran Women’s Media Watch South Africa for several years. Her background working broadly with women’s rights, and particularly representation (and lack of it) in the media, informs her current work which is the fusion of her creative and political passions.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Transgender stories to expose as a social and political issue.

    DESCRIPTION

    By given voice to Turkish transgender people to tell their stories, the author is promoting a cultural intervention for social justice.

    LINKS

    • Art calendar 2017

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Art calendar 2017 | artist : Musk Ming | date : – | Place : Berlin

    THE ARTIST

    From his unique life background and studies, Musk Ming finds a way to combine the traditional  Classic Chinese arts with the modern, western technique. His artwork reflects an international outlook and cross-cultural perspective The missing or hidden sexuality in classical Chinese art and the relatively open approach in the West are brought to the fore in Musk Ming’s paintings, representing an irony that highlights the marked differences in sexual values between the East and the West. Behind his nude paintings, the topics always focus on the relationship between human being, society and nature. Musk Ming also explores a return to Taoism values as a tolerant alternative and his work visualize the longing for an open-minded China.

     

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Sexuality, focus on the relationship between human beings, society and nature

    DESCRIPTION

    The calendar explores different views of homosexuality using modern and old forms of photography

    LINKS

    www.muskming.com

    • FACES & PHASES | ZANELE MUHOLI

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : Faces & Phases | Artist : Zanele Muholi | Date : from 2007 – ongoing | Location: South Africa | Medium : photography

    THE ARTIST
    Zanele Muholi is a South African artist and photographer born in 1972 in Umlazi, Durban. She is an active member involved in the LGBT cause. She works as an activist on the condition and identity of lesbians in her country.

    BACKGROUND
    Since the end of Apartheid, gay and lesbian human rights in South Africa are enshrined in the Constitution and the law. Gay marriage has become legal in 2006: South Africa, thus, became the fifth country in the world and the first in the African continent to legalise gay marriage. Nevertheless, discriminations and crimes against lesbians still remain widespread. Nowadays, members of the LGBT community want to show that their sexual identity is not conflicting with their African identity.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    Consisting in a series of photographs in black and white, Faces & Phases has started in 2006. It compounds more than two hundred portraits of Black-African women, lesbians and transgender people. The project is entitled to protect, preserve and expose their visual stories: it gives them visibility and suggests positive and gratifying representations of the community in the media and exhibitions places. But this work is also meant to be a protest call against violences that Black-African lesbians and queers suffer: the artist photographs many people who underwent homophobic attacks.

    LINKS
    https://aperture.org/blog/magazine-zanele-muholis-faces-%C2%9D-phases/

    Tumi Nkopane, KwaThema, Springs, Johannesburg, 2010

     

    Teekay Khumalo, BB Section, Umlazi, Durban, 2012

    • ASIAN WOMEN ARE NOT | SAD ASIAN GIRLS CLUB

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : Asian Women are not | Artist : Sad Asian Girls Club | Date : 2015 | Location : United States | Medium : posters

    THE ARTIST COLLECTIVE
    The Sad Asian Girls Club is a group of artists, which was founded by two graphic design students of the Rhode Island School of Design (United States). They wanted to respond to the prejudices they had suffered in their school as well as in other institutions. They gather with their Asian and American friends and break the silence on their experiences through debates on racism and feminism. Thanks to different artistic projects, they wish to denounce, but also offer a greater visibility to Asian women from all origins around the world. Thus, they produced awareness-raising campaigns and intervened in many institutions.

    BACKGROUND
    In 2017, Asian-Americans people in the United States represent roughly five percent of the whole population. This community bears racism and stereotypes, but, at the same time,is often praised to be a discreet “model minority”, hardworking and well integrated. For women, this type of stereotypes often involves other sexist stereotypes leading to a double oppression as a result of their status of women from Asian origins.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    The project kicked off with an online campaign: the group of artists asked Asian women to finish the following sentence “Asian women are not…”. Then, they received hundreds of suggestions and selected a hundred of them. Sentences refer to the fetishism towards Asian women, the myth of the exemplary integration and other stereotypes that they have to go through. This project targets further non-Asian people. The artists collected these stereotypes so that the public could realise that micro-aggressions do exist and they can be hurtful.

     

    • BAILE DE FAVELA- RESPOSTA | MARIANA NOLASCO

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Baile de Favela – Resposta| artist : Mariana Nolasco | date : uploaded at may 2016 | Place : Brasil /youtube

    THE ARTIST
    Mariana Nolasco is an example for this youtube viral video art that fights sexism

    BACKGROUND
    The Brazilian Funk is common in the Favelas (Rio de Janeiro) where also the number of teen pregnancies (and rape) have been increasing day by day, becoming a national problem, and turning Brazil into one of the worst numbers on this statistics.
    In the favelas, poverty, drugs, arms, poor educational system, no health care, are the most common problems that influence the art created in this same place. So the Funkeiros, sing about what they see around them, normally, over sexualizing women in the lyrics and on the video clips which actually started a new dance trend called daggering (where men stick their reproductive organs into the women – in a very explicit way).
    For the huge spread of sexist speech and other hate speech by these very popular songs, some youtuber decided to create a counter narrative to these songs – where they grab the lyrics of the music and they turn into something that can be used for awareness raising.
    One of the things that the youtubers clearly state, is that they mean to disrespect  the authors of the songs, and by doing this they are just trying to include more love on the world and to offer their opinion on the topic.

    LINKS
    Original video

    Response Video

    • DO WOMEN HAVE TO BE NAKED TO GET INTO THE MET. MUSEUM? | GUERILLA GIRLS

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Do women have to be naked to get into the met. musem ? artist : guerilla girls | date : 1989/2011 | Place : new york (usa)

    THE ARTIST
    Guerilla Girls is a collective of women, based in New York, USA, who produce visual campaigns, provides workshops, their main topic is the exclusion and discrimination of women in the art world. The anonymous women artists always wear masks of gorillas and have names of famous former female artists.

    BACKGROUND
    Exclusion of women artists from the prestigious institutions and the art world.
    “(…) That work is more than a quarter-century old, but the Guerrilla Girls have updated it over the years – with the results just as discouraging. The 2011 version states that women represent 4 percent of the artists in the modern-art sections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art but 76 percent of the nudes.” (guerrillagirls.com)

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    The group began in 1984 as a response to The Museum of Modern Art’s exhibit An International Survery of Painting and Sculpture where 100% of the artists exhibited were white and less than 8% were women. The members of guerilla girls are calling attention and challenge the hegemony of the art world, they also fight against racial and political discrimination. They use posters, street art, videos and other easy and accessible channels to transmit their mostly ironic messages, organize street actions, protests and forums, edit books.

     

    LINKS
    https://guerrillagirls.squarespace.com/#open

    Guide how to behave (manifesto kind of video)

     

    complain department

     

    (sources of the videos and photos too: guerillagirls.com)

    https://www.instagram.com/guerrillagirls/

    • Proudly Trans in Turkey videos

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Proudly Trans in Turkey videos | artist : Gabrielle Le Roux in collaboration with Trans Activists | date : – | Place : South Africa

    THE ARTIST

    Gabrielle Le Roux is an artist, storyteller and feminist activist based in South Africa who creates travelling exhibitions of portraits drawn from life accompanied by first person narratives around different social issues. Her work pays tribute to people whose rich contributions to society are forgotten, ignored or discriminated against because of their race, gender, class or sexual orientation.

    Gabrielle ran Women’s Media Watch South Africa for several years. Her background working broadly with women’s rights, and particularly representation (and lack of it) in the media, informs her current work which is the fusion of her creative and political passions.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Transgender stories to expose as a social and political issue.

    DESCRIPTION

    By given voice to Turkish transgender people to tell their stories, the author is promoting a cultural intervention for social justice.

    LINKS

    • Madalenas de Lisboa – Casa meia assombrada (Haunted house)

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Madalenas de Lisboa – Casa meia assombrada (Haunted house) | artist : GTO LX | date : – | Place : Lisbon

    THE ARTIST

    GTO LX (feminist branch of the theatre of the oppressed collective based in Lisbon)

     

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Madalenas is an international phenomena, that exists in various countries in the world, indicates a group of women dealing with their own questions with the tool of Theatre of the Oppressed. The first encounter, a theatre festival took place in 2009.

    The Madalenas de Lisboa initiative was born inside the collective of the Theatre of the Oppressed Group in Lisbon, by three women, who desired to approach more in depth the issues of gender inequality.  One of the focuses is domestic violence, in Portugal the number of victims has been increasing over the last years.

     

    DESCRIPTION

    Since the group came together, they made some performances, one of them, with most visibility, their participation in the March against violence against women, on the 25th of November 2016, in Lisbon Portugal.

    The performance on the 25th of November March was about ending domestic  violence, raising awareness on the topic.

    LINKS

    https://www.facebook.com/pg/MadalenasLisboa/about/?ref=page_internal

     

    • Hyuro

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Hyuro | date : present | Place : Spain

    THE ARTIST

    She lives and works in Valencia (Spain) although she is Argentinean. From time to time, she travels to Madrid to collaborate with initiatives such as Madrid Street Art Project which among other things, has tried to unite art and gender equality.

    DESCRIPTION

    Her works continuously reproduce images of women through sober, low-intensity tones or, directly, in black and white. This generates a sense of loneliness or emptiness that she uses to reflect her own concerns and criticize current society where women carry all the responsibilities: home, children, work, etc … In her own words: “They bear the weight of a patriarchal society that they have not chosen”.

    She believes that street art gives her the opportunity to appropriate the public space, build the city with her own speech, communicate and escape from the system.

    BACKGROUND
    She has worked mainly in Spain but also in Italy, France, Germany, Brazil, the United States or New Zealand.
    She has collaborated with artists such as Escif or Sam3.

    LINKS
    https://www.facebook.com/Hyuro-218117774932597/


    Temporary transit. Barcelona, 2016. Source: Hyuro Facebook.


    Contradiction – Madrid, 2016 – Source: Hyuro Facebook.

    • ASIAN WOMEN ARE NOT | SAD ASIAN GIRLS CLUB

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : Asian Women are not | Artist : Sad Asian Girls Club | Date : 2015 | Location : United States | Medium : posters

    THE ARTIST COLLECTIVE
    The Sad Asian Girls Club is a group of artists, which was founded by two graphic design students of the Rhode Island School of Design (United States). They wanted to respond to the prejudices they had suffered in their school as well as in other institutions. They gather with their Asian and American friends and break the silence on their experiences through debates on racism and feminism. Thanks to different artistic projects, they wish to denounce, but also offer a greater visibility to Asian women from all origins around the world. Thus, they produced awareness-raising campaigns and intervened in many institutions.

    BACKGROUND
    In 2017, Asian-Americans people in the United States represent roughly five percent of the whole population. This community bears racism and stereotypes, but, at the same time,is often praised to be a discreet “model minority”, hardworking and well integrated. For women, this type of stereotypes often involves other sexist stereotypes leading to a double oppression as a result of their status of women from Asian origins.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    The project kicked off with an online campaign: the group of artists asked Asian women to finish the following sentence “Asian women are not…”. Then, they received hundreds of suggestions and selected a hundred of them. Sentences refer to the fetishism towards Asian women, the myth of the exemplary integration and other stereotypes that they have to go through. This project targets further non-Asian people. The artists collected these stereotypes so that the public could realise that micro-aggressions do exist and they can be hurtful.

     

    • FACES & PHASES | ZANELE MUHOLI

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : Faces & Phases | Artist : Zanele Muholi | Date : from 2007 – ongoing | Location: South Africa | Medium : photography

    THE ARTIST
    Zanele Muholi is a South African artist and photographer born in 1972 in Umlazi, Durban. She is an active member involved in the LGBT cause. She works as an activist on the condition and identity of lesbians in her country.

    BACKGROUND
    Since the end of Apartheid, gay and lesbian human rights in South Africa are enshrined in the Constitution and the law. Gay marriage has become legal in 2006: South Africa, thus, became the fifth country in the world and the first in the African continent to legalise gay marriage. Nevertheless, discriminations and crimes against lesbians still remain widespread. Nowadays, members of the LGBT community want to show that their sexual identity is not conflicting with their African identity.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    Consisting in a series of photographs in black and white, Faces & Phases has started in 2006. It compounds more than two hundred portraits of Black-African women, lesbians and transgender people. The project is entitled to protect, preserve and expose their visual stories: it gives them visibility and suggests positive and gratifying representations of the community in the media and exhibitions places. But this work is also meant to be a protest call against violences that Black-African lesbians and queers suffer: the artist photographs many people who underwent homophobic attacks.

    LINKS
    https://aperture.org/blog/magazine-zanele-muholis-faces-%C2%9D-phases/

    Tumi Nkopane, KwaThema, Springs, Johannesburg, 2010

     

    Teekay Khumalo, BB Section, Umlazi, Durban, 2012

    • ASIAN WOMEN ARE NOT | SAD ASIAN GIRLS CLUB

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : Asian Women are not | Artist : Sad Asian Girls Club | Date : 2015 | Location : United States | Medium : posters

    THE ARTIST COLLECTIVE
    The Sad Asian Girls Club is a group of artists, which was founded by two graphic design students of the Rhode Island School of Design (United States). They wanted to respond to the prejudices they had suffered in their school as well as in other institutions. They gather with their Asian and American friends and break the silence on their experiences through debates on racism and feminism. Thanks to different artistic projects, they wish to denounce, but also offer a greater visibility to Asian women from all origins around the world. Thus, they produced awareness-raising campaigns and intervened in many institutions.

    BACKGROUND
    In 2017, Asian-Americans people in the United States represent roughly five percent of the whole population. This community bears racism and stereotypes, but, at the same time,is often praised to be a discreet “model minority”, hardworking and well integrated. For women, this type of stereotypes often involves other sexist stereotypes leading to a double oppression as a result of their status of women from Asian origins.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    The project kicked off with an online campaign: the group of artists asked Asian women to finish the following sentence “Asian women are not…”. Then, they received hundreds of suggestions and selected a hundred of them. Sentences refer to the fetishism towards Asian women, the myth of the exemplary integration and other stereotypes that they have to go through. This project targets further non-Asian people. The artists collected these stereotypes so that the public could realise that micro-aggressions do exist and they can be hurtful.

     

    • sbara

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Sbara | artist : Larissa Sansour  | date : 2008 | Place : Jerusalem

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    In her art, Sansour uses video, photography, book form and web pages, as well as installation art. She includes references to various elements from popular culture such as spaghetti westerns, horror films and superheroes. She also makes use of science fiction as a vehicle for providing an alternative perspective on current social issues

    DESCRIPTION

    Her practice is underscored by the urgency of Palestine’s political problems. She typically deploys dry wit and pop culture references in her work as a means of cutting through cultural divides and connecting the international community with the universal relevance of this situation. Allusions to comic strips, sit coms and Hollywood films feature heavily throughout Sansour’s previous works, however this exhibition focuses specifically on her more recent exploration into the genre of sci-fi.

    LINKS

    http://www.larissasansour.com/

    • The Meatrix Film & Drink Pee DIY project

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : The Meatrix Film & Drink Pee DIY project | artist : Rebecca Bray and Britta Riley | date : – | Place : USA

    THE ARTIST

    Rebecca Bray may be best known for “The Meatrix” an animated movie, spoofing The Matrix.

    They own an interactive design agency in New York.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Discuss issues about food, factory farming and environmental problems https://artisticactivism.org/2010/04/rebecca-bray-andbritta-riley/

    DESCRIPTION

    The Meatrix attemps to educate  viewers about the problems with factory farming. It went viral, was translated into 30 languages, and directs viwers to a website where they can learn to become advocates of family farms.

    DrinkPee is a project about “the role our bodies play in larger ecosystems”and includes an installation and a DIY kit for turning urine into fertilizer. DrinkPee was featured in both ArtNews, and on the Discovery Channel’s Planet Green. R&D-I-Y is project designed to crowdsource solutions to environmental problems. 

    LINKS

    http://www.themeatrix.com/

    https://artisticactivism.org/2010/04/rebecca-bray-andbritta-riley/

    • Basurama

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Basurama | date : – | Place : They borned in the School of Architecture of Madrid. They have realized more than 100 projects in five continents. Have their base in Madrid and a permanent office in Milan and Bilbao.

    THE ARTIST
    It is a group dedicated to the investigation, creation and cultural environmental production founded in 2001, that has focused their area of study and action on the productive processes, the generation of waste that these imply, and the creative possibilities that provoke these contemporary conjunctures.

    BACKGROUND

    They studied phenomena inherent in the massive production of royal and virtual garbage in the company of consumption.

    retrieval of rubbish and residues to an artivistic expression of protes.

    CONTEXT

    The project Agostamiento is an intervention site-specific  realized by Basurama for the Opened program x Works and that takes place in the former cold-storage room of the one that was Legazpi’s slaughter house in Madrid. Basurama proposes an interior landscape extracted from the plantation of  7000 sunflowers that has cultivated together with the neighbors of the Great Route of the South-east, in Vallecas’s Widening, Madrid. A public space that, in Basurama’s words, “It invites to chat and to eat pipes, looking at the future from the darkest thing”.  This project was realized in Madrid, in 2016

    LINKS
    https://basurama.org/proyectos/
    https://basurama.org/basurama/

    • ASIAN WOMEN ARE NOT | SAD ASIAN GIRLS CLUB

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : Asian Women are not | Artist : Sad Asian Girls Club | Date : 2015 | Location : United States | Medium : posters

    THE ARTIST COLLECTIVE
    The Sad Asian Girls Club is a group of artists, which was founded by two graphic design students of the Rhode Island School of Design (United States). They wanted to respond to the prejudices they had suffered in their school as well as in other institutions. They gather with their Asian and American friends and break the silence on their experiences through debates on racism and feminism. Thanks to different artistic projects, they wish to denounce, but also offer a greater visibility to Asian women from all origins around the world. Thus, they produced awareness-raising campaigns and intervened in many institutions.

    BACKGROUND
    In 2017, Asian-Americans people in the United States represent roughly five percent of the whole population. This community bears racism and stereotypes, but, at the same time,is often praised to be a discreet “model minority”, hardworking and well integrated. For women, this type of stereotypes often involves other sexist stereotypes leading to a double oppression as a result of their status of women from Asian origins.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    The project kicked off with an online campaign: the group of artists asked Asian women to finish the following sentence “Asian women are not…”. Then, they received hundreds of suggestions and selected a hundred of them. Sentences refer to the fetishism towards Asian women, the myth of the exemplary integration and other stereotypes that they have to go through. This project targets further non-Asian people. The artists collected these stereotypes so that the public could realise that micro-aggressions do exist and they can be hurtful.

     

    • CORPORATE FLAG | ADBUSTER

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : Corporate flag | Artist : Adbusters (Shi-Zhe Yung) | Date : 2000 | Location : United States | Medium : printing on a fabric

    THE ARTIST COLLECTIVE
    Adbusters is a network of activists, writers and artists founded in 1989 in Canada. They are involved in numerous social and political causes, many of which are opposed to consumerism and capitalism. They promote a type of activism that is specific to our contemporary information age.

    BACKGROUND
    The piece of art appeared against the backdrop of modern capitalism, where everything seems to be good for selling and consumption. It should be noted that the political and economic background is part of the piece, as it is a criticism of modern capitalism.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    At first glance, the piece looks like the flag of the United States. In fact, it is not the real one: the stars – normally representing the different Federation states – has been replaced by the logos of important American firms. The aim is to protest against what activists call the hegemony of firms and consumerism in the American policy. Since 2001, Adbusters has been suggesting to replace the real flag of the USA with the Corporate flag – that you can purchase on their website – during the Independence Day, which is a national bank holiday in the United States.

    LINKS
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gran_Fury

    An activist waves the Corporate flag during a demonstration in Washington on the day of the second inauguration of the President George W. Bush.
    Source : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_flag

    • KISSING DOESN’T KILL: GREED AND INDIFFERENCE DO | Gran Fury

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : Kissing doesn’t kill : greed and indifference do | Artist : Gran Fury | Date : 1988 | Location : New-York City, United States | Medium : Awareness-raising campaign against homophobia

    THE ARTIST COLLECTIVE
    Gran fury is a group of American artists and activists who are part of AIDS, an association fighting for the prevention of the HIV virus. The collective was founded in 1988 and was dissolved in 1995. It is made up of eleven members. The collective define themselves as a group of artists united by their anger and they are committed to using the power of art to fight Aids and homophobia.

    BACKGROUND
    The artist collective Gran Fury appeared in the United States in reaction to the constant homophobia and discourse accusing homosexual people of being responsible of the Aids outbreak, that discourse which is spread by the government and sustained by many institutions and citizens.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    Gran Fury convey a political message, adapting the communication means and design of advertising and mass media to their own ends. They wish to share information about homosexuality and Aids with a very broad audience. The first step of the project was to send by post a card showing gay couples kissing each other. Next to the card, there was a sentence: Kissing doesn’t kill: greed and indifference do. On the back of the card it was written: “Greed of firms, inaction of government and indifference of people make Aids a political crisis”. Then, the collective used the usual means of advertising: billboards in the public space, on buses, stickers, t-shirts, posters, etc…

    LINKS
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gran_Fury

    Sources :
    https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/objects/read-my-lips-girls
    http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2016/06/22/73695

    • POWER : FROM THE MOUTHS OF THE OCCUPIED | PATRICE CULLORS

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : Power : From the Mouths of the Occupied | Artist : Patrice Cullors | Date : 2015 | Location : United States | Medium : performance

    THE ARTIST
    The artist is the Afro-American artist and activist Patrisse Cullors. She is the co-founder of the “Black Lives Matter” movement born in 1983 in Los Angeles. Using techniques belonging to the theatre and dance world, she blends visuals with sounds in ways that enable to name her works as art-therapy, promoting healing through art. She is particularly committed to curing traumas caused by the State and fights against the systemic violence it inflicts. Her purpose is to transform acts of violence into something positive through art.

    BACKGROUND
    The Power – From the Mouths of the Occupied performance, conceived by Patrisse Cullors, took place during her involvement in the Afro-American activist movement of the “Black Lives Matter”. Founded in 2013 in the United States, this movement stands up to the systemic violence and racism towards Black people and organises many demonstrations against repeated killings of Black people perpetrated by policemen.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    The performance displays stories of members of the Afro-American community who happened to be victims of the police and/or state violence. It is a collaborative performance that aims to reveal those stories that remain too often unspoken. The idea is to help the community, to heal traumas and bring about positive change through art. Their personal stories are combined with dialogue recordings, music, theatre and multimedia.

    LINKS
    Performance :

    https://seattlechannel.org/FrontRow/episodes?videoid=x68750

     

    Sources:
    https://highwaysperformance.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/PowerFlyer_web.jpg
    http://www.cityartsonline.com/sites/default/files/inline_images/Power_Ishisaka-8747.jpg https://seattlechannel.org/FrontRow/episodes?videoid=x68750

    • DO WOMEN HAVE TO BE NAKED TO GET INTO THE MET. MUSEUM? | GUERILLA GIRLS

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Do women have to be naked to get into the met. musem ? artist : guerilla girls | date : 1989/2011 | Place : new york (usa)

    THE ARTIST
    Guerilla Girls is a collective of women, based in New York, USA, who produce visual campaigns, provides workshops, their main topic is the exclusion and discrimination of women in the art world. The anonymous women artists always wear masks of gorillas and have names of famous former female artists.

    BACKGROUND
    Exclusion of women artists from the prestigious institutions and the art world.
    “(…) That work is more than a quarter-century old, but the Guerrilla Girls have updated it over the years – with the results just as discouraging. The 2011 version states that women represent 4 percent of the artists in the modern-art sections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art but 76 percent of the nudes.” (guerrillagirls.com)

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    The group began in 1984 as a response to The Museum of Modern Art’s exhibit An International Survery of Painting and Sculpture where 100% of the artists exhibited were white and less than 8% were women. The members of guerilla girls are calling attention and challenge the hegemony of the art world, they also fight against racial and political discrimination. They use posters, street art, videos and other easy and accessible channels to transmit their mostly ironic messages, organize street actions, protests and forums, edit books.

     

    LINKS
    https://guerrillagirls.squarespace.com/#open

    Guide how to behave (manifesto kind of video)

     

    complain department

     

    (sources of the videos and photos too: guerillagirls.com)

    https://www.instagram.com/guerrillagirls/

    • Tania Bruguera

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Tania Bruguera | date : – | Place : New York

    THE ARTIST

    Tania Bruguera (born in Havana, Cuba, 1968) currently lives and works in Queens, New York. Bruguera’s work is multifaceted and spans performance, event, action, film, installation, writing and teaching, alongside site-specific works including Untitled (Kassel, 2002) for Documenta 11 and Tatlin’s Whisper #5 (2008) at Tate Modern, alongside long-term projects such as the Cátedra Arte de Conducta (Behaviour Art School), an institution that existed from 2002 to 2009 in Havana, Cuba.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Immigration and citizenship

    DESCRIPTION

    Bruguera is a key player within the fields of performance, interdisciplinary practice and activism. Her work is grounded in the act of ‘doing’ – she calls this ‘behaviour art’ – and her aim is to create art that doesn’t merely describe itself as dealing with politics or society, but that is actually a form of political or social currency, actively addressing cultural power structures rather than representing them. Bruguera is also extremely interested in the role of the museum as an active forum and the role of ‘useful art’ in society at large today.

    LINKS

    http://www.taniabruguera.com/cms/

    • The Meatrix Film & Drink Pee DIY project

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : The Meatrix Film & Drink Pee DIY project | artist : Rebecca Bray and Britta Riley | date : – | Place : USA

    THE ARTIST

    Rebecca Bray may be best known for “The Meatrix” an animated movie, spoofing The Matrix.

    They own an interactive design agency in New York.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Discuss issues about food, factory farming and environmental problems https://artisticactivism.org/2010/04/rebecca-bray-andbritta-riley/

    DESCRIPTION

    The Meatrix attemps to educate  viewers about the problems with factory farming. It went viral, was translated into 30 languages, and directs viwers to a website where they can learn to become advocates of family farms.

    DrinkPee is a project about “the role our bodies play in larger ecosystems”and includes an installation and a DIY kit for turning urine into fertilizer. DrinkPee was featured in both ArtNews, and on the Discovery Channel’s Planet Green. R&D-I-Y is project designed to crowdsource solutions to environmental problems. 

    LINKS

    http://www.themeatrix.com/

    https://artisticactivism.org/2010/04/rebecca-bray-andbritta-riley/

    • Cultural Jamming

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Cultural Jamming | artist : Adbusters Media Foundation | date : – | Place : Vancouver, Canada

    THE ARTIST

    The Adbusters Media Foundation is a Canadian-based no-profit, pro-environment organization founded in 1989 by Kalle Lasn and Bill Schmalz in Vancouver, British Columbia. Adbusters describes itself as “a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age’ (wikipidea) They publish the magazine Adbusters focused on anti consumerism.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Adbusters has launched numerous international campaigns, including Buy Nothing Day, TV Turnoff Week and Occupy Wall Street, and is known for their “subvertisements” that spoof popular advertisements.

    DESCRIPTION

    Cultural Jamming is the of criticizing and subverting advertising and consumerism in the mass media, by methods such as producing advertisements parodying those of global brands.

    LINKS

    https://www.adbusters.org/bnd/

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adbusters

    • Grey Ghost

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Grey Ghost. American Graffiti | date : From 2000 to present time | Place : New Orleans, USA

    THE ARTIST
    American Fred Radtke, known as the Gray Ghost, is a fifty-one-year-old activist who has turned the fight against graffiti into a personal mission. On his own initiative, without permission and paying for his own materials, Radtke patrols the streets covering all kinds of inscriptions with his characteristic rectangles of gray paint, which have made him, paradoxically, the most active urban artist in his city

    DESCRIPTION
    Urban art through erasing illustrations, signs and posters.

    BACKGROUND
    Radtke’s patches are not limited to attacking graffiti. They also cover more friendly and accepted pieces of urban art, such as the small paintings on canvas that the artist Nola Rising nails trees and streetlights of the city. Advertising is also a target of Gray Ghost, but only illegal, especially the small plastic posters advertising local businesses, common in the suburban gutters of the United States. The humble street paper poster, the traditional tool of communication of music and underground culture, is another form of illegal advertising victim of its attacks. Radtke does not start the posters, but he paints them in gray
    The Gray Ghost himself became the subject of some of Banksy’s New Orleans work, depicted as a bent figure blotting out color on the city’s walls.An example of artivism about artivism, where Banksy painted over huge swaths of Radtke’s gray paint, Radtke came back and painted over many of Banksy’s works of art (captured on video in one case) – without the permission of the property owners.

    Intervention on a Bansky’s painting.

    • My Chinese-Canadian Boyfriend

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : My Chinese-Canadian Boyfriend | artist : Wayne Yung  | date : – | Place : Berlin

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Issues related to queer, Asian, and European identity and life

    DESCRIPTION

    In a way, Wayne Yung really is my Chinese-Canadian boyfriend. I met Wayne when I curated my first film festival in 2003 shortly after moving to Amsterdam.  We had a blast at the festival as he generously helped guide a very enthusiastic but very inexperienced festival organizer through lost tapes and bad subtitles. We quickly became partners in crime and over the years, brainstormed of ways to radicalize the Asians and Queers in Europe, to not be ashamed to show their faces and hear their own voices and desires on screen and off. As members of the silent model minority in North America, the so-called “good studious immigrant Asian kids”, we slowly but surely became rebels with a cause. We held queer karaoke “happenings” from Berlin to Amsterdam to show that anyone could make a video, have fun doing it and bring the queer community closer together. In the meantime Wayne also continued making videos about his queer, Asian, and now European identity and life as he became a fusion of different cultures and identities. In his work he has always sought to create dialogue with himself and others about who he is as he has always done in his more than 20 year career of making video art. Wayne is one of the pioneers of the queer video art form and continues to bravely explore his personal life and space to bring us the insights of his discoveries.

    LINKS

    Wayneyung.webhosting.softronics.ch/yeung.html

    • Paper cutting

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Paper cutting | artist : Xiyadie | date : – | Place : Varldskultur Museena, Sweden

    THE ARTIST

    Xiyadie was born in a small village in the northern Shaanxi province. He works in Beijing as a doorman, cook and cleaner. Like so many other gay Chinese of his age, he is married. He has two children in their 20s. According to sociological studies, some 90% of all gay men in China are married. In Confucian tradition, there are three types of lack of filial respect, and the worst is not to provide for the family line’s continuation. It is a strong social pressure. “I knew I liked men from an early age, but in the country, it’s completely unthinkable to come out as gay, it’s even seen as criminal.”

     

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Homosexuality

    DESCRIPTION

    Xiyadie has developed this traditional folk art from the expression of collective cultural memories to the depiction and expression of the life and emotions of the individual. His paper cuttings are fearless depictions of same-sex life and his particular path out of the closet. This old traditional art, which faced extinction, becomes a lively modern art form in Xiyadie’s hands. (website)

    LINKS

    http://www.varldskulturmuseerna.se/en/exhibitions/secret-love/artists/xiyadie/

    • Art calendar 2017

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Art calendar 2017 | artist : Musk Ming | date : – | Place : Berlin

    THE ARTIST

    From his unique life background and studies, Musk Ming finds a way to combine the traditional  Classic Chinese arts with the modern, western technique. His artwork reflects an international outlook and cross-cultural perspective The missing or hidden sexuality in classical Chinese art and the relatively open approach in the West are brought to the fore in Musk Ming’s paintings, representing an irony that highlights the marked differences in sexual values between the East and the West. Behind his nude paintings, the topics always focus on the relationship between human being, society and nature. Musk Ming also explores a return to Taoism values as a tolerant alternative and his work visualize the longing for an open-minded China.

     

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Sexuality, focus on the relationship between human beings, society and nature

    DESCRIPTION

    The calendar explores different views of homosexuality using modern and old forms of photography

    LINKS

    www.muskming.com

    • CARCASS | PIOTR PAVLENSKI

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : Carcass | Artist : Piotr Pavlenski | Date : 3rd May 2013 | Location : Legislative assembly of Saint-Petersburg, Russia | Medium : performance

    THE ARTIST
    Piotr Pavlenski is a Russian performer artist and a political activist born on 8th March 1984 in Leningrad. His work explicitly denounces the Russian government. Among his actions, he stitched his mouth during the Pussy Riot trial, nailed down his testicles on the pavement of the Red Square, cut a piece of his ear in front of the Serbsky centre. The artist uses his body to defy Russian authorities and condemn censorship, the arbitrary and authoritarian regime of Vladimir Poutine.
    “FIRST OF ALL, I WANT TO SHOW TO EVERYBODY THAT ACTIVISM IS EASY AND POSSIBLE. YOUR RAW MATERIALS MIGHT AS WELL BE YOUR DOMESTIC APPLIANCES THAN YOUR OWN BODY; YOU NEED NO MONEY TO CARRY OUT AN ACTIVIST ACTION. YOU JUST NEED A BIT OF MOTIVATION AND WILL TO GET OVER FEARS IMPOSED BY THOSE IN POWER. THEN, ACTIONS MAKE PEOPLE REACT AND CRITICISE. CALL IT A SOCIAL REFLEX, IF YOU WANT. THESE ACTIONS QUESTION WHAT IS HAPPENING AND GIVE AN ACCOUNT OF THE POWERFUL PROPAGANDA ESTABLISHED BY THE TOTALITARIAN IDEOLOGIES”.

    BACKGROUND
    This performance took place in response to a series of laws aiming to stop civic activism, more and more frequent intimidations towards the population, the rising number of political prisoners, anti-NGO laws, laws in favour of censorship, laws against “homosexual propaganda” and “anti-blasphemy” laws in Russia.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    On 3rd May 2013, Piotr Pavlenski accomplished a performance to protest against the political repression that is led by the Russian government. His assistants carried him naked wound around barbed wire and put him in front of the main entrance of the Legislative Assembly of Saint Petersburg. The artist remained silent. In his barbed cocoon, the artist did not say a word to the remarks of the people watching at him until he had been set free by the police.

    This performance occurred against a series of repressive laws that did not target criminals but individual liberties. The human body is naked, like a carcass dressed in barbed wire, that same wire that was made up to protect a cattle. The artist wishes to make people aware that these laws are just like this wire: they imprison people in a toxic nest, depriving them of their human rights and liberties.

    LINKS
    http://www.liberation.fr/planete/2017/01/31/russie-piotr-pavlenski-les-zones-dombres-d-un-exil_1545381

     

    • THE PROGRESS | TINO SEHGAL

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : The Progress | Artist : Tino Sehgal | Date : 2016 | Location : Palais de Tokyo, Paris (France) | Medium : performance

    THE ARTIST
    Tino Sehgal is a British and German artist born in 1976. The performance, the dance and more particularly, the choreographic part plays an important role in his work. However, the artist does not define himself as a “performer”, but as a “situation designer”. Tino Sehgal strives to challenge the limits of what makes the definition of a work of art by involving directly the public in his pieces. We can also see in them that he disapproves of the market value of art and the artist protects his private life: he cares to never leave a trace. He does not sell tickets to his exhibitions nor send invitations, he does not organise openings, he refuses to give interviews, his name is not written on any billboards… He also refuses that people film or take pictures during his exhibitions.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    The visitor enters an empty room with white walls. He is welcomed by a teenager who asks him “What is progress?”. The visitor is invited to talk with the teenager while they show them the way to a second room. Here an adult is waiting for them. The teenager summarises their conversation and leaves the visitor. The adult then takes over from the teenager and continues the conversation with the visitor, while leading them into a third room where a senior is waiting for them. The adult summarises the situation to the senior and leaves the room. The senior tells a private anecdote to the visitor and walks him to the exit.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    Throughout his works, Tino Sehgal raises questions about another possible economy for the art world. Indeed, his works are temporary and, thus, fall outside the scope of the art market economy. Nor a trace is left after the performances: no photographs, no videos, no posters, no tickets… Beside the trace left in our memory. His performances, thus, puts in value people meeting together, interactions, the power of speech as opposed to the art market. Perhaps that is what progress means according to the artist? Beside making encounters happen, Tino Sehgal’s works give them food for political, economic and social thinking about our contemporary societies.
    Therefore, in the situations Tino Sehgal designs the visitor is not a passive one anymore, simply visiting an exhibition, but living a fully-fledged experience.

    LINKS
    http://www.palaisdetokyo.com/fr/evenement/tino-sehgal

    Source : http://salonkritik.net/index_colaboradores.php

    • SANS-TITRE | THE YES MEN

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : Sans-titre | Artist : The Yes Men | Date : 16 août 2001 | Location : Tampere (Finland), intervention during an international conference entitled “The clothes of the future” | Medium : Performance

    THE ARTIST COLLECTIVE
    The Yes Men (Jacques Servin & Igor Vamos) form an American artist and activist duo, that was born in 1993. The artists fight against capitalism, in particular against the privatisation of the public space and the relocation of firms. They also give performances against G. W. Bush and the Iraq war. The artists criticises neo-liberalism by using its own codes and make a mockery of them: hoaxes and caricatures are their favourite weapons.
    BACKGROUND
    In 1995, the WTO (World Trade Organisation) established international agreements enabling multinational companies to dissociate totally the place of goods production from their point-of-sale. Multinational firms can, therefore, delocalise their businesses in countries where social taxes and labour cost will be undeniably lower. In doing so, they have the guarantee to generate certain and immediate profits.

    DESCRIPTION OF THE PIECE
    The performance took place during an international conference in Tampere, the second biggest city of Finland, about the future of the textile industry and new technologies. During the conference, the two artists stepped in and pretended to be two representatives for the WTO: Mr Hank Hardy Hunruh and his assistant. Mr Unruh begins his intervention with a comparison supported by statistics about the cost of a slave and a worker from developing countries. “The WTO is against slavery. Indeed, if we add up the expenses for food, clothing and accommodation required for a slave, the sum of their expenses is obviously higher than the cost needed for an Asian child hired by a firm like Nike. That is the reason why the American Civil War turned out to be a waste of money for the United States, as slavery, that is unprofitable, would have disappeared anyway”. No reaction in the conference hall. Hank Hardy Unruh carried on with some compliments about Gandhi:

    “This idiot had harmful protectionist reflexes”.
    As he noticed no reaction in the audience, he then showed a golden prop in the shape of a phallus that stood as a symbol of a tool to control and subdue the employee.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    This performance mocks multinational firms with a satirical discourse on the privatisation of the market and the apology of domestic slavery. The Yes Men use their favourite weapons: their sense of humour, pastiche and grotesqueness to denounce and debunk liberalism.

    LINKS
    Performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo-1W_8otS4


    Source : http://www.cinemetroart.com/film/film-the-yes-men-152.html

    • POWER : FROM THE MOUTHS OF THE OCCUPIED | PATRICE CULLORS

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : Power : From the Mouths of the Occupied | Artist : Patrice Cullors | Date : 2015 | Location : United States | Medium : performance

    THE ARTIST
    The artist is the Afro-American artist and activist Patrisse Cullors. She is the co-founder of the “Black Lives Matter” movement born in 1983 in Los Angeles. Using techniques belonging to the theatre and dance world, she blends visuals with sounds in ways that enable to name her works as art-therapy, promoting healing through art. She is particularly committed to curing traumas caused by the State and fights against the systemic violence it inflicts. Her purpose is to transform acts of violence into something positive through art.

    BACKGROUND
    The Power – From the Mouths of the Occupied performance, conceived by Patrisse Cullors, took place during her involvement in the Afro-American activist movement of the “Black Lives Matter”. Founded in 2013 in the United States, this movement stands up to the systemic violence and racism towards Black people and organises many demonstrations against repeated killings of Black people perpetrated by policemen.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    The performance displays stories of members of the Afro-American community who happened to be victims of the police and/or state violence. It is a collaborative performance that aims to reveal those stories that remain too often unspoken. The idea is to help the community, to heal traumas and bring about positive change through art. Their personal stories are combined with dialogue recordings, music, theatre and multimedia.

    LINKS
    Performance :

    https://seattlechannel.org/FrontRow/episodes?videoid=x68750

     

    Sources:
    https://highwaysperformance.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/PowerFlyer_web.jpg
    http://www.cityartsonline.com/sites/default/files/inline_images/Power_Ishisaka-8747.jpg https://seattlechannel.org/FrontRow/episodes?videoid=x68750

    • HOTEL EUROPA | GTO LX – NETWORK TOGETHER

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    TITLE : HOTEL EUROPA ARTIST : GTOLX – TOGETHER NETWORK | DATE : 2017 | PLACE : LISBON, PORTUGAL

    THE ARTIST
    GTO LXA – group of Theatre of the Oppressed based in Lisbon, developing different activities in the framework of Theatre of the Oppressed. This theatrical framework works with disadvantaged communities and their questions, topics, creating a framework by the play where the shared doubts can be discussed and strategies can be developped to resolve the crisis what the thetre play makes visible.

    BACKGROUND
    GTO LX is a group who practices diverse forms of Theatre of the Oppressed in various communities of Portugal, treating topics as gender equality, housing and intergenerational dialogue.
    Together is an international network of Theatre of the Oppressed institutions.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    Inspired by the events of the European crisis of the last years, Hotel Europa brings together an international cast from seven European countries to develop a Forum Theatre play about it. For two years, the cast worked and learned together exploring and understanding all themes connected to the European crisis.
    The play tells the story of a middle-class family, affected by the austerity measures imposed by governments and the accompanying striving for more profit from an unreformed banking sector. Examining the historical foundations of the current crisis, the piece invites the audience to ask themselves how is it possible to change the current situation, how would a different future for Europe look like?

    LINKS
    http://www.gtolx.org




    Co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union

    • CHALK TV & STREET CHANNEL| PNEUMA SZÖV.

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : chalk tv, street channel | artist : pneuma szöv./mókusok | date : 2014/2016 | Place : budapest, hungary

    THE ARTIST
    Pneuma Szöv. is a Budapest based international artist cooperative and network that defines the term Pneuma (ancient Greek word for “breath”, “spirit” or “soul”) as a quest for free space created through common breathing and through the alchemy of art.

    BACKGROUND
    Since 2008, Pneuma Szöv. has been creating temporary common spaces, where people are inspired to resist the segregations and constraints of society through imagination and play. Pneuma Szöv.’s work is a chain of actions, nomadic street media shows and theatrical events on the verge of activism, encouraging people to take part in shaping the conditions in which they live.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    Both of the actions consist of several ocassions, are performed in the public space and spread also through social media channels. During the Chalk TV action questions and messages were written on the ground wth chalk, asking the locals about their opinion. The authorities, not having other tool for repression, interviened with a cleaning machine to erase the messages written by the group. Street Channel focuses on news related to the locals, discussing questions of housing, cooking, talking with activists in the frame of a talkshow, recorded on a square in front of a Market hall.

    LINKS

    films about the actions :

    page :

    http://pneumaszov.org/hu/

    • Tania Bruguera

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Tania Bruguera | date : – | Place : New York

    THE ARTIST

    Tania Bruguera (born in Havana, Cuba, 1968) currently lives and works in Queens, New York. Bruguera’s work is multifaceted and spans performance, event, action, film, installation, writing and teaching, alongside site-specific works including Untitled (Kassel, 2002) for Documenta 11 and Tatlin’s Whisper #5 (2008) at Tate Modern, alongside long-term projects such as the Cátedra Arte de Conducta (Behaviour Art School), an institution that existed from 2002 to 2009 in Havana, Cuba.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Immigration and citizenship

    DESCRIPTION

    Bruguera is a key player within the fields of performance, interdisciplinary practice and activism. Her work is grounded in the act of ‘doing’ – she calls this ‘behaviour art’ – and her aim is to create art that doesn’t merely describe itself as dealing with politics or society, but that is actually a form of political or social currency, actively addressing cultural power structures rather than representing them. Bruguera is also extremely interested in the role of the museum as an active forum and the role of ‘useful art’ in society at large today.

    LINKS

    http://www.taniabruguera.com/cms/

    • Madalenas de Lisboa – Casa meia assombrada (Haunted house)

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Madalenas de Lisboa – Casa meia assombrada (Haunted house) | artist : GTO LX | date : – | Place : Lisbon

    THE ARTIST

    GTO LX (feminist branch of the theatre of the oppressed collective based in Lisbon)

     

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Madalenas is an international phenomena, that exists in various countries in the world, indicates a group of women dealing with their own questions with the tool of Theatre of the Oppressed. The first encounter, a theatre festival took place in 2009.

    The Madalenas de Lisboa initiative was born inside the collective of the Theatre of the Oppressed Group in Lisbon, by three women, who desired to approach more in depth the issues of gender inequality.  One of the focuses is domestic violence, in Portugal the number of victims has been increasing over the last years.

     

    DESCRIPTION

    Since the group came together, they made some performances, one of them, with most visibility, their participation in the March against violence against women, on the 25th of November 2016, in Lisbon Portugal.

    The performance on the 25th of November March was about ending domestic  violence, raising awareness on the topic.

    LINKS

    https://www.facebook.com/pg/MadalenasLisboa/about/?ref=page_internal

     

    • MIcomicón

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : –  | artist : MIcomicón | date : – | Place : Spain

    THE ARTIST

    Created in 1991, with four young actors specializing in classical theater, the Micomicon Company has been performing for more than twenty-five years and has explored popular theater, classical tragedies and dramas,  touring around twenty European countries and Hispano-american cities.

     

    DESCRIPTION

    Micomicon approach committed theater and activism from 1998 with plays written and directed by Laila Ripoll, as the Trilogy of Memory (AtraBilis (2002), Santa Perpetua (2012), The Blue Triangle (2014)).

    They have worked about the Spanish civil war, the Spanish prisoners in the camp of Mauthausen, the repression in the postwar period, the culture in the time of the second Spanish republic, and recently the disabled children and their integration. It is a theater that expresses through popular language the repression, disinformation and rewriting of Spanish history, seeking its rescue through the staging of its authentic roots.

     

    LINKS

    https://www.facebook.com/micomicon.teatro

    http://apriorigt.org/producciones-micomic%C3%B3n

    The Blue Triangle. (2014)

    Santa Perpetua (2012) – Temporary transit. -Barcelona, 2016. – Source: Hyuro Facebook.

    • Left hand rotation

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Left hand rotation | date : – | Place : They work all over the world. They come from Salamanca, and they used to had headquarters in Madrid. At present time their headquarters are in Lisbon.

    THE ARTIST

    An artistic group that, from 2005 develops projects of intervention in the public space, as well as of documentation of audio-visual quiet materials. “The group is structured as impersonal entity not associated with the individual / author, and approaches every project under the consideration that the community of receipt is not a spectator, but active indispensable part in the transformation of the social reality “.

    DESCRIPTION

    They try to denounce problems punctual and disregarded by the politics, across an artistic exposition. From those problems that they have to see with the gentrification up to the denunciation for the displaced ones. Also they invite to realize projects to different artists and groups

    BACKGROUND

    Gentrification is not a name of lady. Project carried out by the group in 2012 in Charloise’s neighborhood, Rotterdam. It was based on measurements of the percentage of creative class that lives there. The above mentioned neighborhood, as the group explains in the web site, “It receives for years to an artistic community that prospers thanks to facilities of residence for persons of the field of the creativity. His permanency in the neighborhood is supported by the public power, which at the same time controls the economic level of the resident futures, excluding from the area to the lowest classes. Zones of the neighborhood are lived entirely by artists. Nevertheless, the transfer of these spaces has expiry date. When the artists have realized his function of revaluation of the neighborhood the privileges will be eliminated granted to the “creative class” and they themselves will suffer the economic segregation “.

    LINKS

    http://www.lefthandrotation.com/

     

    Creative Charlois control, 2012. Rotterdam

    • Luzinterruptus

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Luzinterruptus | date : 2014 | Place : The group operated in big cities as Madrid and Berlin.

     

    THE ARTIST

    This collaborative and anonymous group was created in 2008. Their three components are characterized for realizing interventions in the public space using the light as raw material.

    DESCRIPTION

    The group tries to denounce punctual problems and disregarded by the municipal politics, which achieve visibility during the time that the light installation lasts

     

    BACKGROUND

    In the year 2014, and in the center of Madrid, they carried out his action The police are present. One of his works more acquaintances, at par that troubled, since he supposed a denunciation and at the same time, a rejection to the known one popularly as “Law Gag”. The above mentioned name refers to the Organic Law of Protection of the Civil Security, approved by the Popular Party in July, 2015.

    LINKS

    http://www.luzinterruptus.com

    https://vimeo.com/luzinterruptus/videos/page:2/sort:date

     

    • THE PROGRESS | TINO SEHGAL

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : The Progress | Artist : Tino Sehgal | Date : 2016 | Location : Palais de Tokyo, Paris (France) | Medium : performance

    THE ARTIST
    Tino Sehgal is a British and German artist born in 1976. The performance, the dance and more particularly, the choreographic part plays an important role in his work. However, the artist does not define himself as a “performer”, but as a “situation designer”. Tino Sehgal strives to challenge the limits of what makes the definition of a work of art by involving directly the public in his pieces. We can also see in them that he disapproves of the market value of art and the artist protects his private life: he cares to never leave a trace. He does not sell tickets to his exhibitions nor send invitations, he does not organise openings, he refuses to give interviews, his name is not written on any billboards… He also refuses that people film or take pictures during his exhibitions.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    The visitor enters an empty room with white walls. He is welcomed by a teenager who asks him “What is progress?”. The visitor is invited to talk with the teenager while they show them the way to a second room. Here an adult is waiting for them. The teenager summarises their conversation and leaves the visitor. The adult then takes over from the teenager and continues the conversation with the visitor, while leading them into a third room where a senior is waiting for them. The adult summarises the situation to the senior and leaves the room. The senior tells a private anecdote to the visitor and walks him to the exit.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    Throughout his works, Tino Sehgal raises questions about another possible economy for the art world. Indeed, his works are temporary and, thus, fall outside the scope of the art market economy. Nor a trace is left after the performances: no photographs, no videos, no posters, no tickets… Beside the trace left in our memory. His performances, thus, puts in value people meeting together, interactions, the power of speech as opposed to the art market. Perhaps that is what progress means according to the artist? Beside making encounters happen, Tino Sehgal’s works give them food for political, economic and social thinking about our contemporary societies.
    Therefore, in the situations Tino Sehgal designs the visitor is not a passive one anymore, simply visiting an exhibition, but living a fully-fledged experience.

    LINKS
    http://www.palaisdetokyo.com/fr/evenement/tino-sehgal

    Source : http://salonkritik.net/index_colaboradores.php

    • CORPORATE FLAG | ADBUSTER

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : Corporate flag | Artist : Adbusters (Shi-Zhe Yung) | Date : 2000 | Location : United States | Medium : printing on a fabric

    THE ARTIST COLLECTIVE
    Adbusters is a network of activists, writers and artists founded in 1989 in Canada. They are involved in numerous social and political causes, many of which are opposed to consumerism and capitalism. They promote a type of activism that is specific to our contemporary information age.

    BACKGROUND
    The piece of art appeared against the backdrop of modern capitalism, where everything seems to be good for selling and consumption. It should be noted that the political and economic background is part of the piece, as it is a criticism of modern capitalism.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    At first glance, the piece looks like the flag of the United States. In fact, it is not the real one: the stars – normally representing the different Federation states – has been replaced by the logos of important American firms. The aim is to protest against what activists call the hegemony of firms and consumerism in the American policy. Since 2001, Adbusters has been suggesting to replace the real flag of the USA with the Corporate flag – that you can purchase on their website – during the Independence Day, which is a national bank holiday in the United States.

    LINKS
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gran_Fury

    An activist waves the Corporate flag during a demonstration in Washington on the day of the second inauguration of the President George W. Bush.
    Source : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_flag

    • SANS-TITRE | THE YES MEN

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : Sans-titre | Artist : The Yes Men | Date : 16 août 2001 | Location : Tampere (Finland), intervention during an international conference entitled “The clothes of the future” | Medium : Performance

    THE ARTIST COLLECTIVE
    The Yes Men (Jacques Servin & Igor Vamos) form an American artist and activist duo, that was born in 1993. The artists fight against capitalism, in particular against the privatisation of the public space and the relocation of firms. They also give performances against G. W. Bush and the Iraq war. The artists criticises neo-liberalism by using its own codes and make a mockery of them: hoaxes and caricatures are their favourite weapons.
    BACKGROUND
    In 1995, the WTO (World Trade Organisation) established international agreements enabling multinational companies to dissociate totally the place of goods production from their point-of-sale. Multinational firms can, therefore, delocalise their businesses in countries where social taxes and labour cost will be undeniably lower. In doing so, they have the guarantee to generate certain and immediate profits.

    DESCRIPTION OF THE PIECE
    The performance took place during an international conference in Tampere, the second biggest city of Finland, about the future of the textile industry and new technologies. During the conference, the two artists stepped in and pretended to be two representatives for the WTO: Mr Hank Hardy Hunruh and his assistant. Mr Unruh begins his intervention with a comparison supported by statistics about the cost of a slave and a worker from developing countries. “The WTO is against slavery. Indeed, if we add up the expenses for food, clothing and accommodation required for a slave, the sum of their expenses is obviously higher than the cost needed for an Asian child hired by a firm like Nike. That is the reason why the American Civil War turned out to be a waste of money for the United States, as slavery, that is unprofitable, would have disappeared anyway”. No reaction in the conference hall. Hank Hardy Unruh carried on with some compliments about Gandhi:

    “This idiot had harmful protectionist reflexes”.
    As he noticed no reaction in the audience, he then showed a golden prop in the shape of a phallus that stood as a symbol of a tool to control and subdue the employee.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    This performance mocks multinational firms with a satirical discourse on the privatisation of the market and the apology of domestic slavery. The Yes Men use their favourite weapons: their sense of humour, pastiche and grotesqueness to denounce and debunk liberalism.

    LINKS
    Performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo-1W_8otS4


    Source : http://www.cinemetroart.com/film/film-the-yes-men-152.html

    • Cultural Jamming

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Cultural Jamming | artist : Adbusters Media Foundation | date : – | Place : Vancouver, Canada

    THE ARTIST

    The Adbusters Media Foundation is a Canadian-based no-profit, pro-environment organization founded in 1989 by Kalle Lasn and Bill Schmalz in Vancouver, British Columbia. Adbusters describes itself as “a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age’ (wikipidea) They publish the magazine Adbusters focused on anti consumerism.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Adbusters has launched numerous international campaigns, including Buy Nothing Day, TV Turnoff Week and Occupy Wall Street, and is known for their “subvertisements” that spoof popular advertisements.

    DESCRIPTION

    Cultural Jamming is the of criticizing and subverting advertising and consumerism in the mass media, by methods such as producing advertisements parodying those of global brands.

    LINKS

    https://www.adbusters.org/bnd/

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adbusters

    • HOTEL EUROPA | GTO LX – NETWORK TOGETHER

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    TITLE : HOTEL EUROPA ARTIST : GTOLX – TOGETHER NETWORK | DATE : 2017 | PLACE : LISBON, PORTUGAL

    THE ARTIST
    GTO LXA – group of Theatre of the Oppressed based in Lisbon, developing different activities in the framework of Theatre of the Oppressed. This theatrical framework works with disadvantaged communities and their questions, topics, creating a framework by the play where the shared doubts can be discussed and strategies can be developped to resolve the crisis what the thetre play makes visible.

    BACKGROUND
    GTO LX is a group who practices diverse forms of Theatre of the Oppressed in various communities of Portugal, treating topics as gender equality, housing and intergenerational dialogue.
    Together is an international network of Theatre of the Oppressed institutions.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    Inspired by the events of the European crisis of the last years, Hotel Europa brings together an international cast from seven European countries to develop a Forum Theatre play about it. For two years, the cast worked and learned together exploring and understanding all themes connected to the European crisis.
    The play tells the story of a middle-class family, affected by the austerity measures imposed by governments and the accompanying striving for more profit from an unreformed banking sector. Examining the historical foundations of the current crisis, the piece invites the audience to ask themselves how is it possible to change the current situation, how would a different future for Europe look like?

    LINKS
    http://www.gtolx.org




    Co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union

    • NO WALLS | AMMAR ABO BAKR

  •  THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : No Walls | Artist : Amar Abo Bakr | Date : 2012 | Location : Cairo (Egypt) | Medium : Grafiti

    THE ARTIST
    Ammar Abu Bakr is a visual artist and a former teacher at the Fine Arts School of Louxor in Egypt. He also contributed to the famous mural painting in Mohamed Mahmoud street. In 2011, he began with other graffiti artists to create stencils and mural paintings as a protest against the police and in favour of the uprising. He took photo portraits of twelve people among the dozens who lost an eye in the battles and used the colours of the national flag in the background. In February 2012, along with artists such as Alaa Awad et Mohamed Khaled, he drew a great painting on the wall of the American University of Cairo in the Mohamed Mahmoud street representing the martyrs of the football team el Ahly who were killed in the Port Said Stadium confrontations. Ammar Abo Bakr found their portraits on Facebook and showed them with angel wings or framed them with a black stripe as a mark of grief. He says that these wings are the ones of the Coptic saints that we can see in churches, thus showing that the Egyptian heritage is at the same time Coptic, Pharaonic and Islamic.

    BACKGROUND
    While phone lines and Internet connexions were cut for the population, the art of graffiti spread in Egypt during the Arab Spring, although it existed before. If graffiti artists contributed to “inform” the revolution and the political events happening in the country, their tags also symbolised a form of artivism. In fact, within a few months graffiti artists have become influential activists, displaying satire, catch-phrases, powerful visuals to express their rejection of the government.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    In March 2012 Ammar Abo Bakr launched the collective graffiti campaign “No Walls”, in protest against the walls set up by the army in the middle of Cairo. These seven walls blocked access to the ministry of Interior after football supporters of the el Ahly football team died in the confrontations with the police in Port Said.
    Thus, on these walls artists drew and painted rainbows, kids playing, trees, smiles… They did it in trompe-l’oeil style, extending the street perspective and giving the illusion that the street is not blocked anymore. They wish to free the district and the inhabitants from the walls imposed by the army. One of the most well-known paintings is the trompe-l’oeil of the Sheikh Rihan street –– meticulously replicating the perspective of the street and the details architecture of the American University of Cairo.

    LINKS
    http://wallsoffreedom.com/
    https://www.facebook.com/Ammar.Abo.Bakr/


    Source : http://dbprng00ikc2j.cloudfront.net/userimages/101642/4cut/20141216200450-5._MunirSayegh_AmmarAbouBakr.jpg

    • Babak Bordbar

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Babak Bordbar | date : – | Place : Turkey

    THE ARTIST

    Babak Bordbar is an Iranian photojournalist, who has sought asylum in France after the government crackdown following the disputed presidential election in 2009. This event forced hundreds of journalists, bloggers, artists and political activists to flee from Iran and seek refuge in the neighbouring countries mainly Iraq and Turkey.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    His work reflects on social and political issues such as conflict, borders, war, racism and gender relations.

    LINKS
    http://www.babakbordbar.com/#/home?i=595127

     

    • sbara

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Sbara | artist : Larissa Sansour  | date : 2008 | Place : Jerusalem

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    In her art, Sansour uses video, photography, book form and web pages, as well as installation art. She includes references to various elements from popular culture such as spaghetti westerns, horror films and superheroes. She also makes use of science fiction as a vehicle for providing an alternative perspective on current social issues

    DESCRIPTION

    Her practice is underscored by the urgency of Palestine’s political problems. She typically deploys dry wit and pop culture references in her work as a means of cutting through cultural divides and connecting the international community with the universal relevance of this situation. Allusions to comic strips, sit coms and Hollywood films feature heavily throughout Sansour’s previous works, however this exhibition focuses specifically on her more recent exploration into the genre of sci-fi.

    LINKS

    http://www.larissasansour.com/

    • Proudly Trans in Turkey videos

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Proudly Trans in Turkey videos | artist : Gabrielle Le Roux in collaboration with Trans Activists | date : – | Place : South Africa

    THE ARTIST

    Gabrielle Le Roux is an artist, storyteller and feminist activist based in South Africa who creates travelling exhibitions of portraits drawn from life accompanied by first person narratives around different social issues. Her work pays tribute to people whose rich contributions to society are forgotten, ignored or discriminated against because of their race, gender, class or sexual orientation.

    Gabrielle ran Women’s Media Watch South Africa for several years. Her background working broadly with women’s rights, and particularly representation (and lack of it) in the media, informs her current work which is the fusion of her creative and political passions.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Transgender stories to expose as a social and political issue.

    DESCRIPTION

    By given voice to Turkish transgender people to tell their stories, the author is promoting a cultural intervention for social justice.

    LINKS

    • Redd. Musical Group

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : –  | artist : Redd. Musical Group | date : 2000~present | Place : Turkey

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    This well-known Turkish rock band  started its in 1996 under the name “Ten”. They used to play at bars  until they set up their own studio in 2004. Their first album, entitled “50/50”  was published a year later already under the name Redd. Their first original soundtrack album for director Çağan Irmak’s feature film “Sleeping Princess” was released in 2010. Songs from this album managed to enter the European music charts. They have released five albums. The group is composed of Güneş Duru, Doğan Duru, and Berke Özgümüş.

    DESCRIPTION

    Redd sings usually in big cities like Istanbul and Ankara in Turkey and Europe. The members of the group are opponent to Erdogan government, for this reason their works are also critical and opponent to the regime. For example Redd wrote “Freedom was backstabbed” in its album “21” for Hrant Dink, who was the main editor of Armenian Agos Newspaper and had been brutally assassinated on 19 January 2007.

    LINKS

    http://redd.com.tr/

    https://www.youtube.com/reddseyirdefter

    http://bianet.org/bianet/insan-haklari/131351-redd-den-sik-hareket

    Bon Jovi concert in Istanbul, 8th July, 2011

     

    • NO WALLS | AMMAR ABO BAKR

  •  THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : No Walls | Artist : Amar Abo Bakr | Date : 2012 | Location : Cairo (Egypt) | Medium : Grafiti

    THE ARTIST
    Ammar Abu Bakr is a visual artist and a former teacher at the Fine Arts School of Louxor in Egypt. He also contributed to the famous mural painting in Mohamed Mahmoud street. In 2011, he began with other graffiti artists to create stencils and mural paintings as a protest against the police and in favour of the uprising. He took photo portraits of twelve people among the dozens who lost an eye in the battles and used the colours of the national flag in the background. In February 2012, along with artists such as Alaa Awad et Mohamed Khaled, he drew a great painting on the wall of the American University of Cairo in the Mohamed Mahmoud street representing the martyrs of the football team el Ahly who were killed in the Port Said Stadium confrontations. Ammar Abo Bakr found their portraits on Facebook and showed them with angel wings or framed them with a black stripe as a mark of grief. He says that these wings are the ones of the Coptic saints that we can see in churches, thus showing that the Egyptian heritage is at the same time Coptic, Pharaonic and Islamic.

    BACKGROUND
    While phone lines and Internet connexions were cut for the population, the art of graffiti spread in Egypt during the Arab Spring, although it existed before. If graffiti artists contributed to “inform” the revolution and the political events happening in the country, their tags also symbolised a form of artivism. In fact, within a few months graffiti artists have become influential activists, displaying satire, catch-phrases, powerful visuals to express their rejection of the government.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    In March 2012 Ammar Abo Bakr launched the collective graffiti campaign “No Walls”, in protest against the walls set up by the army in the middle of Cairo. These seven walls blocked access to the ministry of Interior after football supporters of the el Ahly football team died in the confrontations with the police in Port Said.
    Thus, on these walls artists drew and painted rainbows, kids playing, trees, smiles… They did it in trompe-l’oeil style, extending the street perspective and giving the illusion that the street is not blocked anymore. They wish to free the district and the inhabitants from the walls imposed by the army. One of the most well-known paintings is the trompe-l’oeil of the Sheikh Rihan street –– meticulously replicating the perspective of the street and the details architecture of the American University of Cairo.

    LINKS
    http://wallsoffreedom.com/
    https://www.facebook.com/Ammar.Abo.Bakr/


    Source : http://dbprng00ikc2j.cloudfront.net/userimages/101642/4cut/20141216200450-5._MunirSayegh_AmmarAbouBakr.jpg

    • CHALK TV & STREET CHANNEL| PNEUMA SZÖV.

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : chalk tv, street channel | artist : pneuma szöv./mókusok | date : 2014/2016 | Place : budapest, hungary

    THE ARTIST
    Pneuma Szöv. is a Budapest based international artist cooperative and network that defines the term Pneuma (ancient Greek word for “breath”, “spirit” or “soul”) as a quest for free space created through common breathing and through the alchemy of art.

    BACKGROUND
    Since 2008, Pneuma Szöv. has been creating temporary common spaces, where people are inspired to resist the segregations and constraints of society through imagination and play. Pneuma Szöv.’s work is a chain of actions, nomadic street media shows and theatrical events on the verge of activism, encouraging people to take part in shaping the conditions in which they live.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    Both of the actions consist of several ocassions, are performed in the public space and spread also through social media channels. During the Chalk TV action questions and messages were written on the ground wth chalk, asking the locals about their opinion. The authorities, not having other tool for repression, interviened with a cleaning machine to erase the messages written by the group. Street Channel focuses on news related to the locals, discussing questions of housing, cooking, talking with activists in the frame of a talkshow, recorded on a square in front of a Market hall.

    LINKS

    films about the actions :

    page :

    http://pneumaszov.org/hu/

    • PIMP MY CARROÇA | MUNDANO

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Pimp my Carroca| artist : mundano | date : from 2012 on | Place : Sao Paolo, Rio de Janeiro, curitiba states in Brasil

    THE ARTIST
    The movement Pimp my carroça was initiated my a graffity artist Mundano, who believes that the catadores are working for the whole society and they are heroes without recognition. For now other artists, companies and volunteers joined the movement.

    BACKGROUND
    In Brazil and in other Latin-American countries waste is creating huge problems. The catadores (waste collectors) are people who are living in a marginalized position, earning very little money from the waste they collect on the streets, surrounded by the prejudices of the rest of the

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    The aim is to give voice and visibility to these people, support their self esteem and raise recognition among the maiority society about their work in recycling and environmental protection. After painting  more than 200 cars Mundano launched a fundraising campaign to provide tools and renovation for the waste collectors’ cars, involving 800 volunteers and graffity artists. In Brasil the movements focuses on Sao Paolo, Rio de Janeiro and Curitiba, but Mundano calls attention to all the people living and working in similar conditions all around the world, to valorize them and the effort they do for the society.

    LINKS
    http://pimpmycarroca.com
    https://www.ted.com/talks/mundano_pimp_my_trash_cart

    • Protest Art About Independence

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Agostamiento Abierto x obras | artist : Basurama | date : 2016 | Place : Madrid

    THE ARTIST
    Basurama; It is a group dedicated to the investigation, creation and cultural environmental production founded in 2001, that has focused their area of study and action on the productive processes, the generation of waste that these imply, and the creative possibilities that provoke these contemporary conjunctures.

    BACKGROUND
    In 2016 the Hungarian Government launched a massive anti-immigration billboard campaign. The slogans were calling attention to the respect of the Hungarian national culture, the workplaces of the people and the nationallaws. The billboards texts were addressing the immigrants directly, although it was all in Hungarian, and all the different phrases started with the same question: Did you know? The campaign was important part in the creation of the central anti – refugee, anti – migrant narrative in Hungary.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    The project Agostamiento is an intervention site-specific  realized by Basurama for the Opened program x Works and that takes place in the former cold-storage room of the one that was Legazpi’s slaughter house in Madrid. Basurama proposes an interior landscape extracted from the plantation of  7000 sunflowers that has cultivated together with the neighbors of the Great Route of the South-east, in Vallecas’s Widening, Madrid. A public space that, in Basurama’s words, “It invites to chat and to eat pipes, looking at the future from the darkest thing”.  This project was realized in Madrid, in 2016.

    LINKS
    http://www.furfur.me/furfur/culture/culture/169811-protestnoe-iskusstvo-na-maydane

    http://www.furfur.me/furfur/culture/culture/176987-kak-graffiti-stanovitsya-yazykom-gosudarstvennoy-propagandy

     

    • NO FUTURE

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : no future| artist : Banksy | date : – | Place : Bristol, UK

    THE ARTIST

    Banksy is an anonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist and film director of unverified identity. Their satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine dark humour with graffiti.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Graffiti

    DESCRIPTION

    Banksy once characterised graffiti as a form of underclass “revenge”, or guerilla warfare that allows an individual to snatch away power, territory and glory from a bigger and better equipped enemy. Banksy sees a social class component to this struggle, remarking “If you don’t own a train company then you go and paint on one instead.” Banksy’s work has also shown a desire to mock centralised power, hoping that his work will show the public that although power does exist and works against you, that power is not terribly efficient and it can and should be deceived.

    Banksy’s works have dealt with various political and social themes, including anti-war, anti-consumerism, anti-fascism, anti-imperialism, anti-authoritarianism, anarchism, nihilism, and existentialism. Additionally, the components of the human condition that the works commonly critique are greed, poverty, hypocrisy, boredom, despair, absurdity, and alienation. Although Banksy’s works usually rely on visual imagery and iconography to put forth his message, Bansky has made several politically related comments in his various books. In summarising their list of “people who should be shot”, they listed “Fascist thugs, religious fundamentalists, (and) people who write lists telling you who should be shot.” While facetiously describing their political nature, Banksy declared that “Sometimes I feel so sick at the state of the world, I can’t even finish my second apple pie.”

    LINKS

    http://www.banksy.co.uk/

     

    • SpY. Urban artist since 1980

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : –  | artist : SpY.  | date : – | Place : Madrid,  Zaragoza, Vitoria, Sevilla,Berlin, Köln, Breda, México DF, Paris and many other cities

    THE ARTIST

    SpY is an urban artist whose first endeavors date back to the mid-eighties. Shortly after, already a national reference as a graffiti artist, he started to explore other forms of artistic communication in the street. His work involves the appropiation urban elements through transformation or replication, commentary on urban reality, and the interference in its communicative codes.

     

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    This urban artist works mainly with graffiti and collage. Their supports, besides city street walls and buildings such as La Tabacalera (Madrid), are canvas and wood. He is inspired above all by nature, specifically in the animal world. His purpose is to make us reflect on how human beings have lost their bonds with nature.

     

    DESCRIPTION

    SpY’s pieces want to be a parenthesis in the automated inertia of the urban dweller. They are pinches of intention, hidden in a corner for whoever wants to let himself be surprised. Filled with equal parts of irony and positive humor, they appear to raise a smile, incite reflection, and to favor an enlightened conscience

    LINKS

    Home

     

    • Sabek

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : –  | artist : Sabek  | date : – | Place : Madrid

    THE ARTIST

    This urban artist works mainly with graffiti and collage. Their supports, besides city street walls and buildings such as La Tabacalera (Madrid), are canvas and wood. He is inspired above all by nature, specifically in the animal world. His purpose is to make us reflect on how human beings have lost their bonds with nature.

    He considers that urban art “proposes a debate” because of its “democratizing” power since it “opens the public space to free expression”. It allows people to “own a space” that “is usually only accessible to big brands that pay for advertising”.

     

     

    DESCRIPTION

    In addition to the streets of Madrid (Spain), we can find his works in Belsfast (Northern Ireland), Worcester (United States), Muar (Malasya), Bangkok (Thailand) or Bucharest (Romania).

    He has presented works in galleries such as ABV (Atlanta, USA), Nok (Bodo, Norway) or Swinton (Madrid), Festeen 2016 (Madrid, Spain), Wonderfruit (Pattaya, Thailand), Critic Festival, Mad Cool (Madrid, Spain), Creative Disorders (Galicia, Spain) or Festivalasalto (Zaragoza, Spain).

    He has participated in the project “Mind the Wall” that offers temporarily a facade of 30 square meters in San Millán Street (La Latina Neighborhood, Madrid) to urban artists.

     

    LINKS

    https://www.facebook.com/Sabek.nonsense

    http://www.freshpaintgallery.ca/blog/crossing-borders-017-sabek/

    Reversible

    Worcester, Massachusetts, United States, 2016.

    Source: Steven King, https://streetartnews.net/2016/09/reversible-by-sabek-in-worcester-usa.html

    The Bond.

    Muar, Malasya, 2016.

    Source: Kharul Akma, https://streetartnews.net/2016/08/the-bond-by-sabek-in-muar-malaysia.html

    • Rey de la ruina

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : –  | artist : Rey de la ruina | date : 2000~present | Place : Madrid, Spain.

     

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    His works are concentrated in the Lavapiés and Malasaña Neighborhoods (Madrid city center). They stand out for having very contrasted colors and a naive style, strategies with which he tries to get his message easily to those who see them.

    He has collaborated with the Madrid’s City Council through a mural that honors all the women who fought and fight to make this society a more egalitarian and free place.

     

    DESCRIPTION

    In addition to the streets of Madrid (Spain), we can find his works in Belsfast (Northern Ireland), Worcester (United States), Muar (Malasya), Bangkok (Thailand) or Bucharest (Romania).

    He has presented works in galleries such as ABV (Atlanta, USA), Nok (Bodo, Norway) or Swinton (Madrid), Festeen 2016 (Madrid, Spain), Wonderfruit (Pattaya, Thailand), Critic Festival, Mad Cool (Madrid, Spain), Creative Disorders (Galicia, Spain) or Festivalasalto (Zaragoza, Spain).

    He has participated in the project “Mind the Wall” that offers temporarily a facade of 30 square meters in San Millán Street (La Latina Neighborhood, Madrid) to urban artists.

     

    LINKS

    https://www.instagram.com/elreydelaruina/

    http://losartistasdelbarrio.com/2016-el-rey-de-la-ruina/

     

    Socially equal, humanly different, totally free

    Madrid, Lavapiés Neighborhood, 2016.

    Source: Rey de la ruina Twitter.

     

    In love with life.

    Madrid, Malasaña Neighborhood 2016.

    Source: Rey de la ruina Twitter.

    • La Fiambrera

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : La Fiambrera | date : – | Place : Cities of Madrid and Sevilla, Spain. Nineties 20th century

    THE ARTIST

    An artistic group opened and collaborative. His foundation resides in establishing new links between the art and the social movements, by means of the public and collaborative art. The humor and the  amusement use as strategy of action and basic component. The group, in a beginning, was formed in Madrid, though very soon it divided in two groups, operating in different cities. A part will be named The Working Lunch-basket, which acts in Madrid and which leader artists will be Jordi Claramonte and David Rodríguez. Another group, named The Barroca Lunch-basket, acts in Seville and it will be led by Curro Aix y Santi Bar

    DESCRIPTION

    His concept resides in establishing new links between the art and the social movements, by means of the public and collaborative art. The humor and the amusement use, as strategy of action. Methodology: installations, camouflage and mural stickers

    BACKGROUND

    First one of the artistic projects is Mesón of unemployed people. This work took as a purpose to draw attention one of the most pressing problems that suffers this neighborhood (Lavapiés, Madrid) multicultural: the unemployment. In this case, the group modified the name to two known streets of Lavapiés’s neighborhood, in Madrid. The first one of them, originally is named Mesón de Paredes. The second one is the (Embajadores) Ambassadors’ street. Across the substitution of the name of “Walls” for “Unemployed people”, The Working Lunch-basket wanted to affect in the most well-known and serious aspect of the economic crisis using as strategy the irony, procedure that characterizes good part of his artistic works.

    LINKS

    http://www.sindominio.net/fiambrera/

     

    Mesón de parados// Mesón of unemployed people

     

    • Hyuro

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Hyuro | date : present | Place : Spain

    THE ARTIST

    She lives and works in Valencia (Spain) although she is Argentinean. From time to time, she travels to Madrid to collaborate with initiatives such as Madrid Street Art Project which among other things, has tried to unite art and gender equality.

    DESCRIPTION

    Her works continuously reproduce images of women through sober, low-intensity tones or, directly, in black and white. This generates a sense of loneliness or emptiness that she uses to reflect her own concerns and criticize current society where women carry all the responsibilities: home, children, work, etc … In her own words: “They bear the weight of a patriarchal society that they have not chosen”.

    She believes that street art gives her the opportunity to appropriate the public space, build the city with her own speech, communicate and escape from the system.

    BACKGROUND
    She has worked mainly in Spain but also in Italy, France, Germany, Brazil, the United States or New Zealand.
    She has collaborated with artists such as Escif or Sam3.

    LINKS
    https://www.facebook.com/Hyuro-218117774932597/


    Temporary transit. Barcelona, 2016. Source: Hyuro Facebook.


    Contradiction – Madrid, 2016 – Source: Hyuro Facebook.

    • Eltono

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Eltono or OTono | date : – | Place : Spain, France.

    THE ARTIST
    With an origin in graffiti, the French artist Eltono has been one of the pioneers of the current urban art scene. From his small contextual paintings to his most recent experiments in exhibition spaces, Eltono’s work is characterized by a particularly lucid and subtle environment

    DESCRIPTION
    Urban Art: recovery of sapces through painting, stickers, collages and abstract signs. Recovery of spaces, humanizing social areas and degraded objects and environments, in a humoristic and creative way.

    BACKGROUND
    Eltono is distinguished by its constructive criteria and its sensibility in localization. Improvises in situ shapes and colors to integrate into the existing balance. He almost always chooses unattended surfaces, with the intention of reviving his dignity and taking advantage of the formal load of aged textures. Such supports are often barely visible, which adds privacy to the chance encounter with the work. Renouncing the visibility sacrifices a good number of potential encounters of the viewer with his work, but increases in turn the capacity of penetration of the encounters that come to take place.

    Eltono Line and Surface (2011) por Javier Abarc


    Sticker and graphic design in Madrid.

    • Grey Ghost

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Grey Ghost. American Graffiti | date : From 2000 to present time | Place : New Orleans, USA

    THE ARTIST
    American Fred Radtke, known as the Gray Ghost, is a fifty-one-year-old activist who has turned the fight against graffiti into a personal mission. On his own initiative, without permission and paying for his own materials, Radtke patrols the streets covering all kinds of inscriptions with his characteristic rectangles of gray paint, which have made him, paradoxically, the most active urban artist in his city

    DESCRIPTION
    Urban art through erasing illustrations, signs and posters.

    BACKGROUND
    Radtke’s patches are not limited to attacking graffiti. They also cover more friendly and accepted pieces of urban art, such as the small paintings on canvas that the artist Nola Rising nails trees and streetlights of the city. Advertising is also a target of Gray Ghost, but only illegal, especially the small plastic posters advertising local businesses, common in the suburban gutters of the United States. The humble street paper poster, the traditional tool of communication of music and underground culture, is another form of illegal advertising victim of its attacks. Radtke does not start the posters, but he paints them in gray
    The Gray Ghost himself became the subject of some of Banksy’s New Orleans work, depicted as a bent figure blotting out color on the city’s walls.An example of artivism about artivism, where Banksy painted over huge swaths of Radtke’s gray paint, Radtke came back and painted over many of Banksy’s works of art (captured on video in one case) – without the permission of the property owners.

    Intervention on a Bansky’s painting.

    • Global Art. Artivistic project about the situation in Belarrusia and artistic solidarity

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Artivistic project about the situation in Belarrusia and artistic solidarity | artist : Global Art | date : – | Place : –

    THE ARTIST
    Berlin artist Dmitry Vrubel (author of Brezhnev and Honecker’s kiss on the Berlin Wall) and his co-author Victoria Timofeeva as part of their international street-art project GLOBAL PROJECT, represent “Wednesday exhibition” (“Выставка По средам. “)This is a sign of solidarity with the participants in the” silent protests “which take place every Wednesday in Minsk and other Belarusian cities

    DESCRIPTION
    The  project develops a multi-participatory art exhibition with the help of Internet and digital connection, in which 30 cities in more than 12 countries participate sharing images and drawings.  The concepts like “artist and the spectator”, “center and periphery”, “Original and copy” are being diluted.
    The project is rapidly being transformed into a kind of “discussion platform,” in which “discussions about global art” take place, on hot news of the day, discussions on the challenges of world or local art.

    BACKGROUND
    The ‘GLOBAL ART’ project has affected the media, and this has drawn the attention of readers in the participating countries to events in Belarus. It extends the idea of possible aspects of the formation of an active critical position within the reality of Bielarrusia

    LINKS
    http://neurope.eu/article/2011/09/01/proekt_global_art_belarusskaya_situatsiya_i_art_solidarnost
    http://artaktivist.org/proekt-global-art-belarusskaya-situaciya-i-art-solidarnost/
    http://artaktivist.org/dmitrij-vrubel-global-art-project-v-minske/

    The First Exposition of Wednesdays – New York

    • Dos Jotas

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Dos Jotas | date : 2007 | Place : Madrid

    THE ARTIST
    The support of this artist is the city. He sees it as “a field of action and intervention”. The streets are the best place to “question and criticize our society, our habits and our ideas”. The main criticism of his interventions is directed to some of the aspects that characterize postmodern society such as fame, spectacle, video-surveillance-control, hyperconsumption and privatization of public space. To make citizens reflect about it, he usually introduces small changes in urban furniture and uses the aesthetic codes of the brands and products of consumer society, as well as those of institutions. He calls receiver’s attention through humor and irony.

    DESCRIPTION
    In addition to Madrid, Bilbao, Huesca, Cuenca and Zaragoza (Spain) he has intervened in different cities in the United States, Canada, Holland, France, Germany and Bolivia.
    He has participated in individual exhibitions in Espacio Trapezio, ArtCenter / South Florida, Espacio Alianza Hispánica and José Hierro Public Library. Among its ten collective exhibitions we find: Libertarian Propaganda and Art, Madrid (2015) and Spain Brand “Europe Creative Center ECC”, Berlin (2013). In addition, he has obtained several scholarships and prizes.
    In many cases, his objective is to denounce that the city has become an object of consumption and individuals have a passive role in it (we are, literally, “ghosts”). He demands the citizens to be the owners of the public space, regardless of their purchasing power.

    LINKS
    http://www.dosjotas.org/


    It’s forbidden to be – Madrid and New York Subway, 2007 – Source: Dos Jotas


    Don´t even think – New York, 2014 – Source: Dos Jotas

    • Boamistura

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Boamistura | date : 2001 –  present | Place : Boa Estudio, Madrid, Spain.

    THE ARTIST
    The team initially consists of five friends who met as teenagers and painted the streets of the neighborhood where they lived. Their name (Boamistura) reflects the diversity of the training of each one of its members: an architect, a road engineer, two graduates in Fine Arts and an illustrator. They have also joined five other people who also have a very different background and knowledge: from graphic designers to an expert on international cooperation. They are all united by their interest in working in the public space of cities with the aim of transforming it to create links between its inhabitants.
    They mainly work with graffiti but they also use stencil painting, brush or roller. In many of their works they use color to convey force, energy, joy and optimism. For example, they have painted numerous buildings in disadvantaged or degraded areas of some cities with these lively colors to revitalize them.

    BACKGROUND
    They have developed projects in many countries besides Spain such as South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Peru, United States, United Kingdom, Georgia, Poland, Algeria, Norway, Serbia and Panama. In Madrid stand out their interventions in Mercado de la Cebada (city center) and  San Cristóbal Neighborhood (Villaverde, outskirts).
    They have exhibited at the Reina Sofía Museum, the DA2 Museum, the CAC Málaga and Casa Encendida in Madrid, as well as participated in the Venezuelan Architecture Biennial (2012), the Ibero-American Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism (2013) and the South Panama Biennial (2013).

    LINKS
    http://www.boamistura.com/


    San Cris de Colores – Project in San Cristóbal Neighborhood (Villaverde, Madrid, 2013) – Source: R2hox y Boa Mistura


    Las Américas – Santiago de Querétaro (México, 2013) – Source: Gozalo P. Martos y Boa Mistura

    • SANS-TITRE | THE YES MEN

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : Sans-titre | Artist : The Yes Men | Date : 16 août 2001 | Location : Tampere (Finland), intervention during an international conference entitled “The clothes of the future” | Medium : Performance

    THE ARTIST COLLECTIVE
    The Yes Men (Jacques Servin & Igor Vamos) form an American artist and activist duo, that was born in 1993. The artists fight against capitalism, in particular against the privatisation of the public space and the relocation of firms. They also give performances against G. W. Bush and the Iraq war. The artists criticises neo-liberalism by using its own codes and make a mockery of them: hoaxes and caricatures are their favourite weapons.
    BACKGROUND
    In 1995, the WTO (World Trade Organisation) established international agreements enabling multinational companies to dissociate totally the place of goods production from their point-of-sale. Multinational firms can, therefore, delocalise their businesses in countries where social taxes and labour cost will be undeniably lower. In doing so, they have the guarantee to generate certain and immediate profits.

    DESCRIPTION OF THE PIECE
    The performance took place during an international conference in Tampere, the second biggest city of Finland, about the future of the textile industry and new technologies. During the conference, the two artists stepped in and pretended to be two representatives for the WTO: Mr Hank Hardy Hunruh and his assistant. Mr Unruh begins his intervention with a comparison supported by statistics about the cost of a slave and a worker from developing countries. “The WTO is against slavery. Indeed, if we add up the expenses for food, clothing and accommodation required for a slave, the sum of their expenses is obviously higher than the cost needed for an Asian child hired by a firm like Nike. That is the reason why the American Civil War turned out to be a waste of money for the United States, as slavery, that is unprofitable, would have disappeared anyway”. No reaction in the conference hall. Hank Hardy Unruh carried on with some compliments about Gandhi:

    “This idiot had harmful protectionist reflexes”.
    As he noticed no reaction in the audience, he then showed a golden prop in the shape of a phallus that stood as a symbol of a tool to control and subdue the employee.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    This performance mocks multinational firms with a satirical discourse on the privatisation of the market and the apology of domestic slavery. The Yes Men use their favourite weapons: their sense of humour, pastiche and grotesqueness to denounce and debunk liberalism.

    LINKS
    Performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo-1W_8otS4


    Source : http://www.cinemetroart.com/film/film-the-yes-men-152.html

    • BILLBOARD CAMPAIGN | TWO TAILED DOG PARTY

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : billboard  campaign against the government propaganda| artist : twotailed dog party | date : 2016 | Place : hungary
    THE ARTIST
    The Two tailed dog Party started as a street art group in Szeged, at a bigger town in Hungary, for some years now they define themselves as a party. Their program consists of providing eternal life by abolish diseases, the general and total relief of taxation and payment without working. They create creative actions, renovate the public spaces and  make guerilla gardening, among other missions.
    BACKGROUND
    In 2016 the Hungarian Government launched a massive anti-immigration billboard campaign. The slogans were calling attention to the respect of the Hungarian national culture, the workplaces of the people and the nationallaws. The billboards texts were addressing the immigrants directly, although it was all in Hungarian, and all the different phrases started with the same question: Did you know? The campaign was important part in the creation of the central anti – refugee, anti – migrant narrative in Hungary.
    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    As a reaction for the anti-immigration campaign they crow funded money to create billboards with information they consider important the people should know (following the question: Did you know?) and created messages that either absurd or has some connection to the messages of the government and migration, like “There is war in Syria” or “You can come to Hungary, we already work in the UK” or “70 weasel can easily occlude an average size tunnel”.
    LINKS
    http://ketfarkukutya.com/?page_id=1233

    http://mkkp.hu

    • Cultural Jamming

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Cultural Jamming | artist : Adbusters Media Foundation | date : – | Place : Vancouver, Canada

    THE ARTIST

    The Adbusters Media Foundation is a Canadian-based no-profit, pro-environment organization founded in 1989 by Kalle Lasn and Bill Schmalz in Vancouver, British Columbia. Adbusters describes itself as “a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age’ (wikipidea) They publish the magazine Adbusters focused on anti consumerism.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Adbusters has launched numerous international campaigns, including Buy Nothing Day, TV Turnoff Week and Occupy Wall Street, and is known for their “subvertisements” that spoof popular advertisements.

    DESCRIPTION

    Cultural Jamming is the of criticizing and subverting advertising and consumerism in the mass media, by methods such as producing advertisements parodying those of global brands.

    LINKS

    https://www.adbusters.org/bnd/

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adbusters

    • SpY. Urban artist since 1980

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : –  | artist : SpY.  | date : – | Place : Madrid,  Zaragoza, Vitoria, Sevilla,Berlin, Köln, Breda, México DF, Paris and many other cities

    THE ARTIST

    SpY is an urban artist whose first endeavors date back to the mid-eighties. Shortly after, already a national reference as a graffiti artist, he started to explore other forms of artistic communication in the street. His work involves the appropiation urban elements through transformation or replication, commentary on urban reality, and the interference in its communicative codes.

     

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    This urban artist works mainly with graffiti and collage. Their supports, besides city street walls and buildings such as La Tabacalera (Madrid), are canvas and wood. He is inspired above all by nature, specifically in the animal world. His purpose is to make us reflect on how human beings have lost their bonds with nature.

     

    DESCRIPTION

    SpY’s pieces want to be a parenthesis in the automated inertia of the urban dweller. They are pinches of intention, hidden in a corner for whoever wants to let himself be surprised. Filled with equal parts of irony and positive humor, they appear to raise a smile, incite reflection, and to favor an enlightened conscience

    LINKS

    Home

     

    • La Fiambrera

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : La Fiambrera | date : – | Place : Cities of Madrid and Sevilla, Spain. Nineties 20th century

    THE ARTIST

    An artistic group opened and collaborative. His foundation resides in establishing new links between the art and the social movements, by means of the public and collaborative art. The humor and the  amusement use as strategy of action and basic component. The group, in a beginning, was formed in Madrid, though very soon it divided in two groups, operating in different cities. A part will be named The Working Lunch-basket, which acts in Madrid and which leader artists will be Jordi Claramonte and David Rodríguez. Another group, named The Barroca Lunch-basket, acts in Seville and it will be led by Curro Aix y Santi Bar

    DESCRIPTION

    His concept resides in establishing new links between the art and the social movements, by means of the public and collaborative art. The humor and the amusement use, as strategy of action. Methodology: installations, camouflage and mural stickers

    BACKGROUND

    First one of the artistic projects is Mesón of unemployed people. This work took as a purpose to draw attention one of the most pressing problems that suffers this neighborhood (Lavapiés, Madrid) multicultural: the unemployment. In this case, the group modified the name to two known streets of Lavapiés’s neighborhood, in Madrid. The first one of them, originally is named Mesón de Paredes. The second one is the (Embajadores) Ambassadors’ street. Across the substitution of the name of “Walls” for “Unemployed people”, The Working Lunch-basket wanted to affect in the most well-known and serious aspect of the economic crisis using as strategy the irony, procedure that characterizes good part of his artistic works.

    LINKS

    http://www.sindominio.net/fiambrera/

     

    Mesón de parados// Mesón of unemployed people

     

    • Eltono

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Eltono or OTono | date : – | Place : Spain, France.

    THE ARTIST
    With an origin in graffiti, the French artist Eltono has been one of the pioneers of the current urban art scene. From his small contextual paintings to his most recent experiments in exhibition spaces, Eltono’s work is characterized by a particularly lucid and subtle environment

    DESCRIPTION
    Urban Art: recovery of sapces through painting, stickers, collages and abstract signs. Recovery of spaces, humanizing social areas and degraded objects and environments, in a humoristic and creative way.

    BACKGROUND
    Eltono is distinguished by its constructive criteria and its sensibility in localization. Improvises in situ shapes and colors to integrate into the existing balance. He almost always chooses unattended surfaces, with the intention of reviving his dignity and taking advantage of the formal load of aged textures. Such supports are often barely visible, which adds privacy to the chance encounter with the work. Renouncing the visibility sacrifices a good number of potential encounters of the viewer with his work, but increases in turn the capacity of penetration of the encounters that come to take place.

    Eltono Line and Surface (2011) por Javier Abarc


    Sticker and graphic design in Madrid.

    • Dos Jotas

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Dos Jotas | date : 2007 | Place : Madrid

    THE ARTIST
    The support of this artist is the city. He sees it as “a field of action and intervention”. The streets are the best place to “question and criticize our society, our habits and our ideas”. The main criticism of his interventions is directed to some of the aspects that characterize postmodern society such as fame, spectacle, video-surveillance-control, hyperconsumption and privatization of public space. To make citizens reflect about it, he usually introduces small changes in urban furniture and uses the aesthetic codes of the brands and products of consumer society, as well as those of institutions. He calls receiver’s attention through humor and irony.

    DESCRIPTION
    In addition to Madrid, Bilbao, Huesca, Cuenca and Zaragoza (Spain) he has intervened in different cities in the United States, Canada, Holland, France, Germany and Bolivia.
    He has participated in individual exhibitions in Espacio Trapezio, ArtCenter / South Florida, Espacio Alianza Hispánica and José Hierro Public Library. Among its ten collective exhibitions we find: Libertarian Propaganda and Art, Madrid (2015) and Spain Brand “Europe Creative Center ECC”, Berlin (2013). In addition, he has obtained several scholarships and prizes.
    In many cases, his objective is to denounce that the city has become an object of consumption and individuals have a passive role in it (we are, literally, “ghosts”). He demands the citizens to be the owners of the public space, regardless of their purchasing power.

    LINKS
    http://www.dosjotas.org/


    It’s forbidden to be – Madrid and New York Subway, 2007 – Source: Dos Jotas


    Don´t even think – New York, 2014 – Source: Dos Jotas

    • KNOWLEDGE IS POWER | KRISTOF HORVATH

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : a tudás6alom (knowledge is power)| artist : kristóf hováth and the kids | date : 2014 | Place : hungary

    THE ARTIST
    Kristóf Horváth is a slammer and actor

    BACKGROUND
    In Hungary the Roma youngsters often leave the school before gaining qualification. Discrimination and negative stereotypes in the education system are strongly present, even after many years of different attempts of integration projects.

     

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    The original project consists on one hand of professional music videos presenting slam poetry or traditional folk songs where the text encourages Roma youngsters to learn, not to feel ashamed in school, because as the main message says: knowledge is power.  The song calls to combat prejudices and discrimination, speaking to young people, and in the same time raising awareness among the majority of society as well on the inequalities.

    Kristóf Horváth (Színész Bob) is a slammer, actor, working in various artistic-social projects.

    LINKS

    • Babak Bordbar

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Babak Bordbar | date : – | Place : Turkey

    THE ARTIST

    Babak Bordbar is an Iranian photojournalist, who has sought asylum in France after the government crackdown following the disputed presidential election in 2009. This event forced hundreds of journalists, bloggers, artists and political activists to flee from Iran and seek refuge in the neighbouring countries mainly Iraq and Turkey.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    His work reflects on social and political issues such as conflict, borders, war, racism and gender relations.

    LINKS
    http://www.babakbordbar.com/#/home?i=595127

     

    • HOTEL EUROPA | GTO LX – NETWORK TOGETHER

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    TITLE : HOTEL EUROPA ARTIST : GTOLX – TOGETHER NETWORK | DATE : 2017 | PLACE : LISBON, PORTUGAL

    THE ARTIST
    GTO LXA – group of Theatre of the Oppressed based in Lisbon, developing different activities in the framework of Theatre of the Oppressed. This theatrical framework works with disadvantaged communities and their questions, topics, creating a framework by the play where the shared doubts can be discussed and strategies can be developped to resolve the crisis what the thetre play makes visible.

    BACKGROUND
    GTO LX is a group who practices diverse forms of Theatre of the Oppressed in various communities of Portugal, treating topics as gender equality, housing and intergenerational dialogue.
    Together is an international network of Theatre of the Oppressed institutions.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    Inspired by the events of the European crisis of the last years, Hotel Europa brings together an international cast from seven European countries to develop a Forum Theatre play about it. For two years, the cast worked and learned together exploring and understanding all themes connected to the European crisis.
    The play tells the story of a middle-class family, affected by the austerity measures imposed by governments and the accompanying striving for more profit from an unreformed banking sector. Examining the historical foundations of the current crisis, the piece invites the audience to ask themselves how is it possible to change the current situation, how would a different future for Europe look like?

    LINKS
    http://www.gtolx.org




    Co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union

    • Madalenas de Lisboa – Casa meia assombrada (Haunted house)

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Madalenas de Lisboa – Casa meia assombrada (Haunted house) | artist : GTO LX | date : – | Place : Lisbon

    THE ARTIST

    GTO LX (feminist branch of the theatre of the oppressed collective based in Lisbon)

     

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Madalenas is an international phenomena, that exists in various countries in the world, indicates a group of women dealing with their own questions with the tool of Theatre of the Oppressed. The first encounter, a theatre festival took place in 2009.

    The Madalenas de Lisboa initiative was born inside the collective of the Theatre of the Oppressed Group in Lisbon, by three women, who desired to approach more in depth the issues of gender inequality.  One of the focuses is domestic violence, in Portugal the number of victims has been increasing over the last years.

     

    DESCRIPTION

    Since the group came together, they made some performances, one of them, with most visibility, their participation in the March against violence against women, on the 25th of November 2016, in Lisbon Portugal.

    The performance on the 25th of November March was about ending domestic  violence, raising awareness on the topic.

    LINKS

    https://www.facebook.com/pg/MadalenasLisboa/about/?ref=page_internal

     

    • MIcomicón

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : –  | artist : MIcomicón | date : – | Place : Spain

    THE ARTIST

    Created in 1991, with four young actors specializing in classical theater, the Micomicon Company has been performing for more than twenty-five years and has explored popular theater, classical tragedies and dramas,  touring around twenty European countries and Hispano-american cities.

     

    DESCRIPTION

    Micomicon approach committed theater and activism from 1998 with plays written and directed by Laila Ripoll, as the Trilogy of Memory (AtraBilis (2002), Santa Perpetua (2012), The Blue Triangle (2014)).

    They have worked about the Spanish civil war, the Spanish prisoners in the camp of Mauthausen, the repression in the postwar period, the culture in the time of the second Spanish republic, and recently the disabled children and their integration. It is a theater that expresses through popular language the repression, disinformation and rewriting of Spanish history, seeking its rescue through the staging of its authentic roots.

     

    LINKS

    https://www.facebook.com/micomicon.teatro

    http://apriorigt.org/producciones-micomic%C3%B3n

    The Blue Triangle. (2014)

    Santa Perpetua (2012) – Temporary transit. -Barcelona, 2016. – Source: Hyuro Facebook.

    • Cartel Strike project

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Cartel Strike project  | artist : – | date : – | Place : Ukraine

    THE ARTIST

    “Strike Cartel”, as the main way of expressing citizenship, has become a key tool in the hands of artists. Working on the Wiki principle, the project made it possible for anyone to download and print the poster on the printer and go out with him to protest. In everyday life, was even famous the phrase: “Never a small printer felt so hero.” This tactic made possible that each person could feel like an artist, anyone could assign an image in the artistic work created by others, all in the name of the common goal. The popularity of the project among the masses is due to the fact that it is based on the rejection of political slogans and direct propaganda seeking a universal image.

     

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    During the last ten years, Ukraine is experiencing a revolution. In the first wave after the fall of Yanukovich was founded the Art Association REP (Experimental Revolutionary Space), which occupies a special place in Ukrainian art and after events. They emphasized many projects of the community whose catalyst was the social project «Страйк Плакат» (stroke of the cartel).

     

     

    DESCRIPTION

    February 6, 2014: During the months of December, January and February of 2014, peaceful demonstrations were held in protest and for the independence of Ukraine.  Some of them became a real revolution with collisions and victims. Art took a reflexive attitude, visualizing the different facets of the conflict. In addition to the usual political slogans and propaganda, the artists sympathize with the dead, protesting for the security and liberation of the media.

     

    LINKS

    http://www.furfur.me/furfur/culture/culture/169811-protestnoe-iskusstvo-na-maydane

    http://www.lefthandrotation.com/

     

    The drop campaign. “I am a drop in an ocean”

    • Marta and Publio

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Marta and Publio | date : – | Place : Madrid, Spain

    THE ARTIST

    Teachers and artists,  Marta de Gonzalo and Publio Pérez Prieto work in Madrid since 2000 with different artivism and political art activities of installations, video performances, narrative and designs, a.s.o, in a multimedia idea of creation. Their main objective is to connect  theoretical and political reflection and practical work; they develop also teacher and social training, artists training, as well as alphabetizing of youngsters about media, popular culture and politics.

    DESCRIPTION

    Works with Paper, screen, sound, sculpture materials, light, body art, theatrical  performance.

    They have exhibited in Matadero Madrid,  Cáceres; Puertas de Castilla, Murcia; Intermediae Matadero, Madrid; Foundation La Caixa, between other spaces.

    BACKGROUND

    collective shows in C.C.M. Haroldo Conti, Buenos Aires; CAAC, Sevilla,

    Kunst, Karlsruhe; Tel Aviv Museum of Art; Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop

    Kulturunea, San Sebastián and Galerie Art & Essai. Rennes. Your aud jobs Feet, Barcelona; International Film Festival Show, Barcelona; Zinebi. Members of the Gross Domestic Circus (1999-2003). They have directed the Injuve Mobilities for Young artists (2005-2007)  and take active part in Las lindes, research group about education, art and cultural practices of Culture Ministry in Spain.

    LINKS

    http://martaypublio.net/es/inicio/

    Aquí huele a hueso español

    Songs, Drawings, and Video Monocanal. 2012

    Baila la Contrarreforma (2016) Video Performance

    And Song

    • Media Udar: global artivism. From 2011- ongoing

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : global artivism | artist : Media Udar | date : 2011-ongoing | Place : Moscú, Rusia

    THE ARTIST

    An international festival of activist art held in Moscow every fall since 2011. “MediaUdar” can be considered an international community for the study, articulation, documentation, support and development of activist art. MediaUdar is an open platform, its position is not the commitment to a concrete ideology, but the search for openness, equality of participants and direct democracy as the principle of decision-making.

    DESCRIPTION

    The festival is built on the principle of self-organization of the work group of painters, activists, artists and philosophers in the format “BarCamp” – informal conference, created by the participants themselves. This includes assembly, expeditions, publication, exhibitions, presentations, conferences, workshops, debates, literary readings, concerts, video screenings, joint actions on the street. The festival’s events are aimed at creating a platform for interaction between activists from different regions of the country, supporting civic initiatives, building a platform for interaction among oppressed groups in society (immigrants, etc.). ), providing assistance to political prisoners, as well as protecting the environment.

    BACKGROUND

    The first “MediaUdar” festival was in the fall of 2011 as a special project of the 4th Muscovite Contemporary Art Biennial. Subsequent events to the Festival were held in Novosibirsk, Murmansk, Nizhny Novgorod, St. Petersburg, Izhevsk, Ekaterinburg, Togliatti, Samara, Krasnodar and other Russian cities

    LINKS

    http://mediaudar.net/

    http://artguide.com/posts/661

    Photos from the Festival. Vlad Chijenkov

    • Left hand rotation

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Left hand rotation | date : – | Place : They work all over the world. They come from Salamanca, and they used to had headquarters in Madrid. At present time their headquarters are in Lisbon.

    THE ARTIST

    An artistic group that, from 2005 develops projects of intervention in the public space, as well as of documentation of audio-visual quiet materials. “The group is structured as impersonal entity not associated with the individual / author, and approaches every project under the consideration that the community of receipt is not a spectator, but active indispensable part in the transformation of the social reality “.

    DESCRIPTION

    They try to denounce problems punctual and disregarded by the politics, across an artistic exposition. From those problems that they have to see with the gentrification up to the denunciation for the displaced ones. Also they invite to realize projects to different artists and groups

    BACKGROUND

    Gentrification is not a name of lady. Project carried out by the group in 2012 in Charloise’s neighborhood, Rotterdam. It was based on measurements of the percentage of creative class that lives there. The above mentioned neighborhood, as the group explains in the web site, “It receives for years to an artistic community that prospers thanks to facilities of residence for persons of the field of the creativity. His permanency in the neighborhood is supported by the public power, which at the same time controls the economic level of the resident futures, excluding from the area to the lowest classes. Zones of the neighborhood are lived entirely by artists. Nevertheless, the transfer of these spaces has expiry date. When the artists have realized his function of revaluation of the neighborhood the privileges will be eliminated granted to the “creative class” and they themselves will suffer the economic segregation “.

    LINKS

    http://www.lefthandrotation.com/

     

    Creative Charlois control, 2012. Rotterdam

    • La Fiambrera

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : La Fiambrera | date : – | Place : Cities of Madrid and Sevilla, Spain. Nineties 20th century

    THE ARTIST

    An artistic group opened and collaborative. His foundation resides in establishing new links between the art and the social movements, by means of the public and collaborative art. The humor and the  amusement use as strategy of action and basic component. The group, in a beginning, was formed in Madrid, though very soon it divided in two groups, operating in different cities. A part will be named The Working Lunch-basket, which acts in Madrid and which leader artists will be Jordi Claramonte and David Rodríguez. Another group, named The Barroca Lunch-basket, acts in Seville and it will be led by Curro Aix y Santi Bar

    DESCRIPTION

    His concept resides in establishing new links between the art and the social movements, by means of the public and collaborative art. The humor and the amusement use, as strategy of action. Methodology: installations, camouflage and mural stickers

    BACKGROUND

    First one of the artistic projects is Mesón of unemployed people. This work took as a purpose to draw attention one of the most pressing problems that suffers this neighborhood (Lavapiés, Madrid) multicultural: the unemployment. In this case, the group modified the name to two known streets of Lavapiés’s neighborhood, in Madrid. The first one of them, originally is named Mesón de Paredes. The second one is the (Embajadores) Ambassadors’ street. Across the substitution of the name of “Walls” for “Unemployed people”, The Working Lunch-basket wanted to affect in the most well-known and serious aspect of the economic crisis using as strategy the irony, procedure that characterizes good part of his artistic works.

    LINKS

    http://www.sindominio.net/fiambrera/

     

    Mesón de parados// Mesón of unemployed people

     

    • Global Art. Artivistic project about the situation in Belarrusia and artistic solidarity

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Artivistic project about the situation in Belarrusia and artistic solidarity | artist : Global Art | date : – | Place : –

    THE ARTIST
    Berlin artist Dmitry Vrubel (author of Brezhnev and Honecker’s kiss on the Berlin Wall) and his co-author Victoria Timofeeva as part of their international street-art project GLOBAL PROJECT, represent “Wednesday exhibition” (“Выставка По средам. “)This is a sign of solidarity with the participants in the” silent protests “which take place every Wednesday in Minsk and other Belarusian cities

    DESCRIPTION
    The  project develops a multi-participatory art exhibition with the help of Internet and digital connection, in which 30 cities in more than 12 countries participate sharing images and drawings.  The concepts like “artist and the spectator”, “center and periphery”, “Original and copy” are being diluted.
    The project is rapidly being transformed into a kind of “discussion platform,” in which “discussions about global art” take place, on hot news of the day, discussions on the challenges of world or local art.

    BACKGROUND
    The ‘GLOBAL ART’ project has affected the media, and this has drawn the attention of readers in the participating countries to events in Belarus. It extends the idea of possible aspects of the formation of an active critical position within the reality of Bielarrusia

    LINKS
    http://neurope.eu/article/2011/09/01/proekt_global_art_belarusskaya_situatsiya_i_art_solidarnost
    http://artaktivist.org/proekt-global-art-belarusskaya-situaciya-i-art-solidarnost/
    http://artaktivist.org/dmitrij-vrubel-global-art-project-v-minske/

    The First Exposition of Wednesdays – New York

    • Cartel Strike project

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Cartel Strike project  | artist : – | date : – | Place : Ukraine

    THE ARTIST

    “Strike Cartel”, as the main way of expressing citizenship, has become a key tool in the hands of artists. Working on the Wiki principle, the project made it possible for anyone to download and print the poster on the printer and go out with him to protest. In everyday life, was even famous the phrase: “Never a small printer felt so hero.” This tactic made possible that each person could feel like an artist, anyone could assign an image in the artistic work created by others, all in the name of the common goal. The popularity of the project among the masses is due to the fact that it is based on the rejection of political slogans and direct propaganda seeking a universal image.

     

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    During the last ten years, Ukraine is experiencing a revolution. In the first wave after the fall of Yanukovich was founded the Art Association REP (Experimental Revolutionary Space), which occupies a special place in Ukrainian art and after events. They emphasized many projects of the community whose catalyst was the social project «Страйк Плакат» (stroke of the cartel).

     

     

    DESCRIPTION

    February 6, 2014: During the months of December, January and February of 2014, peaceful demonstrations were held in protest and for the independence of Ukraine.  Some of them became a real revolution with collisions and victims. Art took a reflexive attitude, visualizing the different facets of the conflict. In addition to the usual political slogans and propaganda, the artists sympathize with the dead, protesting for the security and liberation of the media.

     

    LINKS

    http://www.furfur.me/furfur/culture/culture/169811-protestnoe-iskusstvo-na-maydane

    http://www.lefthandrotation.com/

     

    The drop campaign. “I am a drop in an ocean”

    • Marta and Publio

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Marta and Publio | date : – | Place : Madrid, Spain

    THE ARTIST

    Teachers and artists,  Marta de Gonzalo and Publio Pérez Prieto work in Madrid since 2000 with different artivism and political art activities of installations, video performances, narrative and designs, a.s.o, in a multimedia idea of creation. Their main objective is to connect  theoretical and political reflection and practical work; they develop also teacher and social training, artists training, as well as alphabetizing of youngsters about media, popular culture and politics.

    DESCRIPTION

    Works with Paper, screen, sound, sculpture materials, light, body art, theatrical  performance.

    They have exhibited in Matadero Madrid,  Cáceres; Puertas de Castilla, Murcia; Intermediae Matadero, Madrid; Foundation La Caixa, between other spaces.

    BACKGROUND

    collective shows in C.C.M. Haroldo Conti, Buenos Aires; CAAC, Sevilla,

    Kunst, Karlsruhe; Tel Aviv Museum of Art; Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop

    Kulturunea, San Sebastián and Galerie Art & Essai. Rennes. Your aud jobs Feet, Barcelona; International Film Festival Show, Barcelona; Zinebi. Members of the Gross Domestic Circus (1999-2003). They have directed the Injuve Mobilities for Young artists (2005-2007)  and take active part in Las lindes, research group about education, art and cultural practices of Culture Ministry in Spain.

    LINKS

    http://martaypublio.net/es/inicio/

    Aquí huele a hueso español

    Songs, Drawings, and Video Monocanal. 2012

    Baila la Contrarreforma (2016) Video Performance

    And Song

    • BILLBOARD CAMPAIGN | TWO TAILED DOG PARTY

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : billboard  campaign against the government propaganda| artist : twotailed dog party | date : 2016 | Place : hungary
    THE ARTIST
    The Two tailed dog Party started as a street art group in Szeged, at a bigger town in Hungary, for some years now they define themselves as a party. Their program consists of providing eternal life by abolish diseases, the general and total relief of taxation and payment without working. They create creative actions, renovate the public spaces and  make guerilla gardening, among other missions.
    BACKGROUND
    In 2016 the Hungarian Government launched a massive anti-immigration billboard campaign. The slogans were calling attention to the respect of the Hungarian national culture, the workplaces of the people and the nationallaws. The billboards texts were addressing the immigrants directly, although it was all in Hungarian, and all the different phrases started with the same question: Did you know? The campaign was important part in the creation of the central anti – refugee, anti – migrant narrative in Hungary.
    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    As a reaction for the anti-immigration campaign they crow funded money to create billboards with information they consider important the people should know (following the question: Did you know?) and created messages that either absurd or has some connection to the messages of the government and migration, like “There is war in Syria” or “You can come to Hungary, we already work in the UK” or “70 weasel can easily occlude an average size tunnel”.
    LINKS
    http://ketfarkukutya.com/?page_id=1233

    http://mkkp.hu

    • Protest Art About Independence

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Agostamiento Abierto x obras | artist : Basurama | date : 2016 | Place : Madrid

    THE ARTIST
    Basurama; It is a group dedicated to the investigation, creation and cultural environmental production founded in 2001, that has focused their area of study and action on the productive processes, the generation of waste that these imply, and the creative possibilities that provoke these contemporary conjunctures.

    BACKGROUND
    In 2016 the Hungarian Government launched a massive anti-immigration billboard campaign. The slogans were calling attention to the respect of the Hungarian national culture, the workplaces of the people and the nationallaws. The billboards texts were addressing the immigrants directly, although it was all in Hungarian, and all the different phrases started with the same question: Did you know? The campaign was important part in the creation of the central anti – refugee, anti – migrant narrative in Hungary.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    The project Agostamiento is an intervention site-specific  realized by Basurama for the Opened program x Works and that takes place in the former cold-storage room of the one that was Legazpi’s slaughter house in Madrid. Basurama proposes an interior landscape extracted from the plantation of  7000 sunflowers that has cultivated together with the neighbors of the Great Route of the South-east, in Vallecas’s Widening, Madrid. A public space that, in Basurama’s words, “It invites to chat and to eat pipes, looking at the future from the darkest thing”.  This project was realized in Madrid, in 2016.

    LINKS
    http://www.furfur.me/furfur/culture/culture/169811-protestnoe-iskusstvo-na-maydane

    http://www.furfur.me/furfur/culture/culture/176987-kak-graffiti-stanovitsya-yazykom-gosudarstvennoy-propagandy

     

    • Tania Bruguera

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Tania Bruguera | date : – | Place : New York

    THE ARTIST

    Tania Bruguera (born in Havana, Cuba, 1968) currently lives and works in Queens, New York. Bruguera’s work is multifaceted and spans performance, event, action, film, installation, writing and teaching, alongside site-specific works including Untitled (Kassel, 2002) for Documenta 11 and Tatlin’s Whisper #5 (2008) at Tate Modern, alongside long-term projects such as the Cátedra Arte de Conducta (Behaviour Art School), an institution that existed from 2002 to 2009 in Havana, Cuba.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Immigration and citizenship

    DESCRIPTION

    Bruguera is a key player within the fields of performance, interdisciplinary practice and activism. Her work is grounded in the act of ‘doing’ – she calls this ‘behaviour art’ – and her aim is to create art that doesn’t merely describe itself as dealing with politics or society, but that is actually a form of political or social currency, actively addressing cultural power structures rather than representing them. Bruguera is also extremely interested in the role of the museum as an active forum and the role of ‘useful art’ in society at large today.

    LINKS

    http://www.taniabruguera.com/cms/

    • Cine sin Autor (Authorless Cinema)

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Cine sin Autor (Authorless Cinema) | artist : – | date : 2007-ongoing | Place : Madrid, Toulouse.

    THE ARTIST
    Fábrica de Cine sin Autor in Intermediae Matadero Madrid. A huge range of participants take part in the different processes of films. the Authorless Cinema Factory in Madrid involves around 300 people.

    BACKGROUND
    CsA develops its first project in close collaboration with Patio Maravillas, occupied space in Madrid and meeting place of assemblies movements related

    to the 15-M, collectives of theater, painting, music, audiovisuals, etc

    CONTEXT
    CsA focuses on collective film and visual arts that have questioned the relationship between knowledge and power, fostering a landcrossing between art, participatory democracy and everyday life. In many works, there are indications of the so called extreme social realism.
    Cinematographic projects in Madrid (Spain) and Toulouse (France) (selection):
    -the web series “Mátame si puedes” (Kill me if you can) (October 2012 – Present), -an audiovisual portrait and videoclip “K de Kalle” in Ca±oroto – July 2014 – Present),-the biopic “Mßs allß de la verdad” (Beyond the truth) with the octogenarian Gioacchino di Blasi and his family (2012 – 2014),-the film “Locura en el colegio” (Madness at school) with students from CEIP Legado Crespo, a primary school in Madrid.(Octubre 2012 – Present),-the generation portrait “Vida Fácil” (The easy life) with precarious youngsters.(2012 – 2014),-the shortfilm “Entrenosotros” (Between us) with a group of young people from Madrid.(2012 – 2014),

    LINKS
    www.cinesinautor.es

    “The hope of immigrants, 2017:

    “Ciak”

    Manifestos of Authorless Cinema.
    http://media.wix.com/ugd/75e5b9_75f881855075472890eff2c7630ba20f.pdf

    • Quinta do Mocho no dia a dia (Everyday life in Quinta do Mocho)

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Quinta do Mocho no dia a dia (Everyday life in Quinta do Mocho) | artist : Will Monteiro | date : – | Place : –

    CONTEXT

    Quinta do Mocho is a social disadvantage neighborhood in Lisboa, Portugal, characterized by deviant behavior such as drugs and arms traffic and a high number of criminality. This neighborhood is populated mainly by African migrants communities from all over Portuguese speaking African countries.

    There are a lot of social projects that have been implemented in this neighborhood but, even so, the popularity of the quartier is still the same and the levels of criminality continue to arise – such as bad media coverage (racist and xenophobic). One of the projects that was implemented in the quartier involved street artists grafters that painted a new look to the neighborhood – whit that, the project involved walks in the area so people from  outside could look into the graffiti’s

    BACKGROUND

    After these walks started to begin in the neighborhood, the locals decided to make a response, using youtube, showing the day to day life in the neighborhood, expressing it through rap songs – showing that you cannot understand the living situation of the neighborhood just by passing through the street and watching the grafitis. The walks did not consider the locals, so this was a way of giving a response to it. The rap songs are tough, maybe even rude, but clearly showing life as it is on the neighborhood.Here is a piece of the song:˝hey motherfucker, (…) crime aqui non stop estamos aqui no meio do mocho,vida sempre louca, querem me comprar droga, aqui está tudo à venda, a minha cabeca anda à roda, deus está do meu lado, sim ele está comigomas sinto-me um foragido neste mundo tao antigo, desde pequenino que ando for a da leidesde pequenino que eu pequei mas nunca me entreguei a minha alma nao quebrei continuo dignopois quero dar coragem ao meu unico filho (…)˝Translation: hey motherfucker/ crime here does not stop/ we are in the middle of the hood/ life is always crazy here/ they want to buy me drugs/ in here, everything is for sale/ my head is turning like crazy/ God is by my side/yes, He is with me/ but I feel like a fugitive in the old old world/ since childhood that I have been an outlaw/ since I was a child, I have sinned/ but I never give myself/ I never gave my soul away/ I am still worthy/ because I want to give courage to my only child (…)

    • BAILE DE FAVELA- RESPOSTA | MARIANA NOLASCO

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Baile de Favela – Resposta| artist : Mariana Nolasco | date : uploaded at may 2016 | Place : Brasil /youtube

    THE ARTIST
    Mariana Nolasco is an example for this youtube viral video art that fights sexism

    BACKGROUND
    The Brazilian Funk is common in the Favelas (Rio de Janeiro) where also the number of teen pregnancies (and rape) have been increasing day by day, becoming a national problem, and turning Brazil into one of the worst numbers on this statistics.
    In the favelas, poverty, drugs, arms, poor educational system, no health care, are the most common problems that influence the art created in this same place. So the Funkeiros, sing about what they see around them, normally, over sexualizing women in the lyrics and on the video clips which actually started a new dance trend called daggering (where men stick their reproductive organs into the women – in a very explicit way).
    For the huge spread of sexist speech and other hate speech by these very popular songs, some youtuber decided to create a counter narrative to these songs – where they grab the lyrics of the music and they turn into something that can be used for awareness raising.
    One of the things that the youtubers clearly state, is that they mean to disrespect  the authors of the songs, and by doing this they are just trying to include more love on the world and to offer their opinion on the topic.

    LINKS
    Original video

    Response Video

    • PIMP MY CARROÇA | MUNDANO

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Pimp my Carroca| artist : mundano | date : from 2012 on | Place : Sao Paolo, Rio de Janeiro, curitiba states in Brasil

    THE ARTIST
    The movement Pimp my carroça was initiated my a graffity artist Mundano, who believes that the catadores are working for the whole society and they are heroes without recognition. For now other artists, companies and volunteers joined the movement.

    BACKGROUND
    In Brazil and in other Latin-American countries waste is creating huge problems. The catadores (waste collectors) are people who are living in a marginalized position, earning very little money from the waste they collect on the streets, surrounded by the prejudices of the rest of the

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    The aim is to give voice and visibility to these people, support their self esteem and raise recognition among the maiority society about their work in recycling and environmental protection. After painting  more than 200 cars Mundano launched a fundraising campaign to provide tools and renovation for the waste collectors’ cars, involving 800 volunteers and graffity artists. In Brasil the movements focuses on Sao Paolo, Rio de Janeiro and Curitiba, but Mundano calls attention to all the people living and working in similar conditions all around the world, to valorize them and the effort they do for the society.

    LINKS
    http://pimpmycarroca.com
    https://www.ted.com/talks/mundano_pimp_my_trash_cart

    • BAILE DE FAVELA- RESPOSTA | MARIANA NOLASCO

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Baile de Favela – Resposta| artist : Mariana Nolasco | date : uploaded at may 2016 | Place : Brasil /youtube

    THE ARTIST
    Mariana Nolasco is an example for this youtube viral video art that fights sexism

    BACKGROUND
    The Brazilian Funk is common in the Favelas (Rio de Janeiro) where also the number of teen pregnancies (and rape) have been increasing day by day, becoming a national problem, and turning Brazil into one of the worst numbers on this statistics.
    In the favelas, poverty, drugs, arms, poor educational system, no health care, are the most common problems that influence the art created in this same place. So the Funkeiros, sing about what they see around them, normally, over sexualizing women in the lyrics and on the video clips which actually started a new dance trend called daggering (where men stick their reproductive organs into the women – in a very explicit way).
    For the huge spread of sexist speech and other hate speech by these very popular songs, some youtuber decided to create a counter narrative to these songs – where they grab the lyrics of the music and they turn into something that can be used for awareness raising.
    One of the things that the youtubers clearly state, is that they mean to disrespect  the authors of the songs, and by doing this they are just trying to include more love on the world and to offer their opinion on the topic.

    LINKS
    Original video

    Response Video

    • KNOWLEDGE IS POWER | KRISTOF HORVATH

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : a tudás6alom (knowledge is power)| artist : kristóf hováth and the kids | date : 2014 | Place : hungary

    THE ARTIST
    Kristóf Horváth is a slammer and actor

    BACKGROUND
    In Hungary the Roma youngsters often leave the school before gaining qualification. Discrimination and negative stereotypes in the education system are strongly present, even after many years of different attempts of integration projects.

     

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    The original project consists on one hand of professional music videos presenting slam poetry or traditional folk songs where the text encourages Roma youngsters to learn, not to feel ashamed in school, because as the main message says: knowledge is power.  The song calls to combat prejudices and discrimination, speaking to young people, and in the same time raising awareness among the majority of society as well on the inequalities.

    Kristóf Horváth (Színész Bob) is a slammer, actor, working in various artistic-social projects.

    LINKS

    • Tierra Oskura

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : –  | artist : Tierra Oskura | date : – | Place : Temuco, La Araucanía. Chile

    THE ARTIST

    Collective: Musical group of rock formed in 2003, coming from the city of Temuco, region of the Araucanía in Chile.

     

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Some of his most emblematic songs are “Tierra Oscura”, “Mapuche is the poem”, “To silence and to forget”, among others. The circuit in which they are developed is more underground, where they emphasize activities of political movements, tocatas and festivales of rock

     

    DESCRIPTION

    The musical style is heavy metal, but can also be linked to hard rock with influences of the Mapuche folk. The band has produced four albums; Araucarias (2004), That the flight becomes dark (2010) and Kütral (2011)

    LINKS

    https://www.facebook.com/tierra.oskura?fref=ts

    http://latierraoscura.blogspot.cl

     

    • Peumayyen

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : –  | artist : Peumayyen | date : 1996~present | Place : Gülumapu, Wallmapu (territorio mapuche).Padre Las Casas Warria (ciudad) La Araucanía, Chile

    THE ARTIST

    This band began operating since 1996 in the Region of La Araucanía, Chile, in the context of Mapuche territory; Land of Gülumapu, Wallmapu. Cultivating the style of rock metal with a fusion of Mapuche instruments in a rock mapuche fusion. They are five members in Voz and Trutruka: Pablo “Colelo” Sandoval Hueche, Guitar: Rodrigo Riquelme, Guitar: Angelo Riquelme, Drums: Carlos Epul and in Bajo and Mapuche Instrumentation: Nawel Huisca.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    His only production so far is the album “Mapuche in History and in the Fight” (2009). Today the formation of the disc does not persist, taking its vocalista (Colelo) a way like soloist, sharing scenarios with other exintegrantes of the band. The band made presentations by several zones of Chile and a tour by Europe where it visited France

    DESCRIPTION

    As far as language is concerned,in this musical band the western predominates being the majority of the words used in Spanish and the sounds emitted with modern instruments. However, with regard to the theme present in the lyrics of their songs, the allusions to the Mapuche people are absolute and evident, always being present the concepts of struggle, Mapuche history, the demands, the contemporary political and military tension.

     

    LINKS

    www.myspace.com/pewmayen

    https://www.facebook.com/Peumayen

    • Redd. Musical Group

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : –  | artist : Redd. Musical Group | date : 2000~present | Place : Turkey

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    This well-known Turkish rock band  started its in 1996 under the name “Ten”. They used to play at bars  until they set up their own studio in 2004. Their first album, entitled “50/50”  was published a year later already under the name Redd. Their first original soundtrack album for director Çağan Irmak’s feature film “Sleeping Princess” was released in 2010. Songs from this album managed to enter the European music charts. They have released five albums. The group is composed of Güneş Duru, Doğan Duru, and Berke Özgümüş.

    DESCRIPTION

    Redd sings usually in big cities like Istanbul and Ankara in Turkey and Europe. The members of the group are opponent to Erdogan government, for this reason their works are also critical and opponent to the regime. For example Redd wrote “Freedom was backstabbed” in its album “21” for Hrant Dink, who was the main editor of Armenian Agos Newspaper and had been brutally assassinated on 19 January 2007.

    LINKS

    http://redd.com.tr/

    https://www.youtube.com/reddseyirdefter

    http://bianet.org/bianet/insan-haklari/131351-redd-den-sik-hareket

    Bon Jovi concert in Istanbul, 8th July, 2011

     

    • Basurama

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Basurama | date : – | Place : They borned in the School of Architecture of Madrid. They have realized more than 100 projects in five continents. Have their base in Madrid and a permanent office in Milan and Bilbao.

    THE ARTIST
    It is a group dedicated to the investigation, creation and cultural environmental production founded in 2001, that has focused their area of study and action on the productive processes, the generation of waste that these imply, and the creative possibilities that provoke these contemporary conjunctures.

    BACKGROUND

    They studied phenomena inherent in the massive production of royal and virtual garbage in the company of consumption.

    retrieval of rubbish and residues to an artivistic expression of protes.

    CONTEXT

    The project Agostamiento is an intervention site-specific  realized by Basurama for the Opened program x Works and that takes place in the former cold-storage room of the one that was Legazpi’s slaughter house in Madrid. Basurama proposes an interior landscape extracted from the plantation of  7000 sunflowers that has cultivated together with the neighbors of the Great Route of the South-east, in Vallecas’s Widening, Madrid. A public space that, in Basurama’s words, “It invites to chat and to eat pipes, looking at the future from the darkest thing”.  This project was realized in Madrid, in 2016

    LINKS
    https://basurama.org/proyectos/
    https://basurama.org/basurama/

    • NO WALLS | AMMAR ABO BAKR

  •  THE PIECE OF ART
    Title : No Walls | Artist : Amar Abo Bakr | Date : 2012 | Location : Cairo (Egypt) | Medium : Grafiti

    THE ARTIST
    Ammar Abu Bakr is a visual artist and a former teacher at the Fine Arts School of Louxor in Egypt. He also contributed to the famous mural painting in Mohamed Mahmoud street. In 2011, he began with other graffiti artists to create stencils and mural paintings as a protest against the police and in favour of the uprising. He took photo portraits of twelve people among the dozens who lost an eye in the battles and used the colours of the national flag in the background. In February 2012, along with artists such as Alaa Awad et Mohamed Khaled, he drew a great painting on the wall of the American University of Cairo in the Mohamed Mahmoud street representing the martyrs of the football team el Ahly who were killed in the Port Said Stadium confrontations. Ammar Abo Bakr found their portraits on Facebook and showed them with angel wings or framed them with a black stripe as a mark of grief. He says that these wings are the ones of the Coptic saints that we can see in churches, thus showing that the Egyptian heritage is at the same time Coptic, Pharaonic and Islamic.

    BACKGROUND
    While phone lines and Internet connexions were cut for the population, the art of graffiti spread in Egypt during the Arab Spring, although it existed before. If graffiti artists contributed to “inform” the revolution and the political events happening in the country, their tags also symbolised a form of artivism. In fact, within a few months graffiti artists have become influential activists, displaying satire, catch-phrases, powerful visuals to express their rejection of the government.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    In March 2012 Ammar Abo Bakr launched the collective graffiti campaign “No Walls”, in protest against the walls set up by the army in the middle of Cairo. These seven walls blocked access to the ministry of Interior after football supporters of the el Ahly football team died in the confrontations with the police in Port Said.
    Thus, on these walls artists drew and painted rainbows, kids playing, trees, smiles… They did it in trompe-l’oeil style, extending the street perspective and giving the illusion that the street is not blocked anymore. They wish to free the district and the inhabitants from the walls imposed by the army. One of the most well-known paintings is the trompe-l’oeil of the Sheikh Rihan street –– meticulously replicating the perspective of the street and the details architecture of the American University of Cairo.

    LINKS
    http://wallsoffreedom.com/
    https://www.facebook.com/Ammar.Abo.Bakr/


    Source : http://dbprng00ikc2j.cloudfront.net/userimages/101642/4cut/20141216200450-5._MunirSayegh_AmmarAbouBakr.jpg

    • PIMP MY CARROÇA | MUNDANO

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Pimp my Carroca| artist : mundano | date : from 2012 on | Place : Sao Paolo, Rio de Janeiro, curitiba states in Brasil

    THE ARTIST
    The movement Pimp my carroça was initiated my a graffity artist Mundano, who believes that the catadores are working for the whole society and they are heroes without recognition. For now other artists, companies and volunteers joined the movement.

    BACKGROUND
    In Brazil and in other Latin-American countries waste is creating huge problems. The catadores (waste collectors) are people who are living in a marginalized position, earning very little money from the waste they collect on the streets, surrounded by the prejudices of the rest of the

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    The aim is to give voice and visibility to these people, support their self esteem and raise recognition among the maiority society about their work in recycling and environmental protection. After painting  more than 200 cars Mundano launched a fundraising campaign to provide tools and renovation for the waste collectors’ cars, involving 800 volunteers and graffity artists. In Brasil the movements focuses on Sao Paolo, Rio de Janeiro and Curitiba, but Mundano calls attention to all the people living and working in similar conditions all around the world, to valorize them and the effort they do for the society.

    LINKS
    http://pimpmycarroca.com
    https://www.ted.com/talks/mundano_pimp_my_trash_cart

    • Cultural Jamming

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Cultural Jamming | artist : Adbusters Media Foundation | date : – | Place : Vancouver, Canada

    THE ARTIST

    The Adbusters Media Foundation is a Canadian-based no-profit, pro-environment organization founded in 1989 by Kalle Lasn and Bill Schmalz in Vancouver, British Columbia. Adbusters describes itself as “a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age’ (wikipidea) They publish the magazine Adbusters focused on anti consumerism.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Adbusters has launched numerous international campaigns, including Buy Nothing Day, TV Turnoff Week and Occupy Wall Street, and is known for their “subvertisements” that spoof popular advertisements.

    DESCRIPTION

    Cultural Jamming is the of criticizing and subverting advertising and consumerism in the mass media, by methods such as producing advertisements parodying those of global brands.

    LINKS

    https://www.adbusters.org/bnd/

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adbusters

    • sbara

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Sbara | artist : Larissa Sansour  | date : 2008 | Place : Jerusalem

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    In her art, Sansour uses video, photography, book form and web pages, as well as installation art. She includes references to various elements from popular culture such as spaghetti westerns, horror films and superheroes. She also makes use of science fiction as a vehicle for providing an alternative perspective on current social issues

    DESCRIPTION

    Her practice is underscored by the urgency of Palestine’s political problems. She typically deploys dry wit and pop culture references in her work as a means of cutting through cultural divides and connecting the international community with the universal relevance of this situation. Allusions to comic strips, sit coms and Hollywood films feature heavily throughout Sansour’s previous works, however this exhibition focuses specifically on her more recent exploration into the genre of sci-fi.

    LINKS

    http://www.larissasansour.com/

    • SpY. Urban artist since 1980

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : –  | artist : SpY.  | date : – | Place : Madrid,  Zaragoza, Vitoria, Sevilla,Berlin, Köln, Breda, México DF, Paris and many other cities

    THE ARTIST

    SpY is an urban artist whose first endeavors date back to the mid-eighties. Shortly after, already a national reference as a graffiti artist, he started to explore other forms of artistic communication in the street. His work involves the appropiation urban elements through transformation or replication, commentary on urban reality, and the interference in its communicative codes.

     

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    This urban artist works mainly with graffiti and collage. Their supports, besides city street walls and buildings such as La Tabacalera (Madrid), are canvas and wood. He is inspired above all by nature, specifically in the animal world. His purpose is to make us reflect on how human beings have lost their bonds with nature.

     

    DESCRIPTION

    SpY’s pieces want to be a parenthesis in the automated inertia of the urban dweller. They are pinches of intention, hidden in a corner for whoever wants to let himself be surprised. Filled with equal parts of irony and positive humor, they appear to raise a smile, incite reflection, and to favor an enlightened conscience

    LINKS

    Home

     

    • Left hand rotation

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Left hand rotation | date : – | Place : They work all over the world. They come from Salamanca, and they used to had headquarters in Madrid. At present time their headquarters are in Lisbon.

    THE ARTIST

    An artistic group that, from 2005 develops projects of intervention in the public space, as well as of documentation of audio-visual quiet materials. “The group is structured as impersonal entity not associated with the individual / author, and approaches every project under the consideration that the community of receipt is not a spectator, but active indispensable part in the transformation of the social reality “.

    DESCRIPTION

    They try to denounce problems punctual and disregarded by the politics, across an artistic exposition. From those problems that they have to see with the gentrification up to the denunciation for the displaced ones. Also they invite to realize projects to different artists and groups

    BACKGROUND

    Gentrification is not a name of lady. Project carried out by the group in 2012 in Charloise’s neighborhood, Rotterdam. It was based on measurements of the percentage of creative class that lives there. The above mentioned neighborhood, as the group explains in the web site, “It receives for years to an artistic community that prospers thanks to facilities of residence for persons of the field of the creativity. His permanency in the neighborhood is supported by the public power, which at the same time controls the economic level of the resident futures, excluding from the area to the lowest classes. Zones of the neighborhood are lived entirely by artists. Nevertheless, the transfer of these spaces has expiry date. When the artists have realized his function of revaluation of the neighborhood the privileges will be eliminated granted to the “creative class” and they themselves will suffer the economic segregation “.

    LINKS

    http://www.lefthandrotation.com/

     

    Creative Charlois control, 2012. Rotterdam

    • Maria Capaz – a rap song

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Maria Capaz | artist : Capicua (Ana Matos Fernandes) | date : – | Place : Portuga.

    THE ARTIST
    Capicua (Ana Matos Fernandes) Portuguese rap singer , she studied socioly and took a PhD I Barcelona. She was a political activist since her youth, connected an extreme left party in Portugal. Nowadays she does not afiliate to any party but she still identifies with the left wing ideals. She discovered hip-hop when she was 15 on the streets of Porto and decided to start expressing herself through that via. She launched some eps, but only in 2008 and she gain some relevance. She considers herself a feminist and a social activist – and expresses that through her art.

    BACKGROUND

    “ This song, “Maria Capaz”, is the single of my first album. It has about eight words in it and it simply refers to the attitude you need to have while being a rapper. It is foreseen as needed to be a tomboy, but I say otherwise, I say you just need to be brave and courageous. And then, I also introduced a little word play with mc (master of ceremonies) and switched it off to ‘Maria Capaz’ (direct translation – capable mary) as a tease to all the haters. I know it was a little bit risky to do it, but I just wanted to clearly state that for you to be an artist you just need the guerrilla attitude and to be brave!” – interview to Capicua in a feminist Channel (Capazes, which was named after this song)

    CONTEXT

    The context of this song, Maria Capaz (2012), came through due to the misogynistic and patriarchal stigmas in the Portuguese society towards women in the arts. The artist, being a woman in the hip hop world (which as many is mainly populated with men) felt the different treatment and the   increased struggle for a place in this world. So, as the single of her first album she decided to automatically, send a message.

    LINKS
    http://www.capicua.pt/

    Link of the Project :

    Link of the Interview:

    • Marta and Publio

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Marta and Publio | date : – | Place : Madrid, Spain

    THE ARTIST

    Teachers and artists,  Marta de Gonzalo and Publio Pérez Prieto work in Madrid since 2000 with different artivism and political art activities of installations, video performances, narrative and designs, a.s.o, in a multimedia idea of creation. Their main objective is to connect  theoretical and political reflection and practical work; they develop also teacher and social training, artists training, as well as alphabetizing of youngsters about media, popular culture and politics.

    DESCRIPTION

    Works with Paper, screen, sound, sculpture materials, light, body art, theatrical  performance.

    They have exhibited in Matadero Madrid,  Cáceres; Puertas de Castilla, Murcia; Intermediae Matadero, Madrid; Foundation La Caixa, between other spaces.

    BACKGROUND

    collective shows in C.C.M. Haroldo Conti, Buenos Aires; CAAC, Sevilla,

    Kunst, Karlsruhe; Tel Aviv Museum of Art; Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop

    Kulturunea, San Sebastián and Galerie Art & Essai. Rennes. Your aud jobs Feet, Barcelona; International Film Festival Show, Barcelona; Zinebi. Members of the Gross Domestic Circus (1999-2003). They have directed the Injuve Mobilities for Young artists (2005-2007)  and take active part in Las lindes, research group about education, art and cultural practices of Culture Ministry in Spain.

    LINKS

    http://martaypublio.net/es/inicio/

    Aquí huele a hueso español

    Songs, Drawings, and Video Monocanal. 2012

    Baila la Contrarreforma (2016) Video Performance

    And Song

    • My Chinese-Canadian Boyfriend

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : My Chinese-Canadian Boyfriend | artist : Wayne Yung  | date : – | Place : Berlin

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Issues related to queer, Asian, and European identity and life

    DESCRIPTION

    In a way, Wayne Yung really is my Chinese-Canadian boyfriend. I met Wayne when I curated my first film festival in 2003 shortly after moving to Amsterdam.  We had a blast at the festival as he generously helped guide a very enthusiastic but very inexperienced festival organizer through lost tapes and bad subtitles. We quickly became partners in crime and over the years, brainstormed of ways to radicalize the Asians and Queers in Europe, to not be ashamed to show their faces and hear their own voices and desires on screen and off. As members of the silent model minority in North America, the so-called “good studious immigrant Asian kids”, we slowly but surely became rebels with a cause. We held queer karaoke “happenings” from Berlin to Amsterdam to show that anyone could make a video, have fun doing it and bring the queer community closer together. In the meantime Wayne also continued making videos about his queer, Asian, and now European identity and life as he became a fusion of different cultures and identities. In his work he has always sought to create dialogue with himself and others about who he is as he has always done in his more than 20 year career of making video art. Wayne is one of the pioneers of the queer video art form and continues to bravely explore his personal life and space to bring us the insights of his discoveries.

    LINKS

    Wayneyung.webhosting.softronics.ch/yeung.html

    • The Meatrix Film & Drink Pee DIY project

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : The Meatrix Film & Drink Pee DIY project | artist : Rebecca Bray and Britta Riley | date : – | Place : USA

    THE ARTIST

    Rebecca Bray may be best known for “The Meatrix” an animated movie, spoofing The Matrix.

    They own an interactive design agency in New York.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Discuss issues about food, factory farming and environmental problems https://artisticactivism.org/2010/04/rebecca-bray-andbritta-riley/

    DESCRIPTION

    The Meatrix attemps to educate  viewers about the problems with factory farming. It went viral, was translated into 30 languages, and directs viwers to a website where they can learn to become advocates of family farms.

    DrinkPee is a project about “the role our bodies play in larger ecosystems”and includes an installation and a DIY kit for turning urine into fertilizer. DrinkPee was featured in both ArtNews, and on the Discovery Channel’s Planet Green. R&D-I-Y is project designed to crowdsource solutions to environmental problems. 

    LINKS

    http://www.themeatrix.com/

    https://artisticactivism.org/2010/04/rebecca-bray-andbritta-riley/

    • Proudly Trans in Turkey videos

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Proudly Trans in Turkey videos | artist : Gabrielle Le Roux in collaboration with Trans Activists | date : – | Place : South Africa

    THE ARTIST

    Gabrielle Le Roux is an artist, storyteller and feminist activist based in South Africa who creates travelling exhibitions of portraits drawn from life accompanied by first person narratives around different social issues. Her work pays tribute to people whose rich contributions to society are forgotten, ignored or discriminated against because of their race, gender, class or sexual orientation.

    Gabrielle ran Women’s Media Watch South Africa for several years. Her background working broadly with women’s rights, and particularly representation (and lack of it) in the media, informs her current work which is the fusion of her creative and political passions.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Transgender stories to expose as a social and political issue.

    DESCRIPTION

    By given voice to Turkish transgender people to tell their stories, the author is promoting a cultural intervention for social justice.

    LINKS

    • Maria Capaz – a rap song

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Maria Capaz | artist : Capicua (Ana Matos Fernandes) | date : – | Place : Portuga.

    THE ARTIST
    Capicua (Ana Matos Fernandes) Portuguese rap singer , she studied socioly and took a PhD I Barcelona. She was a political activist since her youth, connected an extreme left party in Portugal. Nowadays she does not afiliate to any party but she still identifies with the left wing ideals. She discovered hip-hop when she was 15 on the streets of Porto and decided to start expressing herself through that via. She launched some eps, but only in 2008 and she gain some relevance. She considers herself a feminist and a social activist – and expresses that through her art.

    BACKGROUND

    “ This song, “Maria Capaz”, is the single of my first album. It has about eight words in it and it simply refers to the attitude you need to have while being a rapper. It is foreseen as needed to be a tomboy, but I say otherwise, I say you just need to be brave and courageous. And then, I also introduced a little word play with mc (master of ceremonies) and switched it off to ‘Maria Capaz’ (direct translation – capable mary) as a tease to all the haters. I know it was a little bit risky to do it, but I just wanted to clearly state that for you to be an artist you just need the guerrilla attitude and to be brave!” – interview to Capicua in a feminist Channel (Capazes, which was named after this song)

    CONTEXT

    The context of this song, Maria Capaz (2012), came through due to the misogynistic and patriarchal stigmas in the Portuguese society towards women in the arts. The artist, being a woman in the hip hop world (which as many is mainly populated with men) felt the different treatment and the   increased struggle for a place in this world. So, as the single of her first album she decided to automatically, send a message.

    LINKS
    http://www.capicua.pt/

    Link of the Project :

    Link of the Interview:

    • Quinta do Mocho no dia a dia (Everyday life in Quinta do Mocho)

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Quinta do Mocho no dia a dia (Everyday life in Quinta do Mocho) | artist : Will Monteiro | date : – | Place : –

    CONTEXT

    Quinta do Mocho is a social disadvantage neighborhood in Lisboa, Portugal, characterized by deviant behavior such as drugs and arms traffic and a high number of criminality. This neighborhood is populated mainly by African migrants communities from all over Portuguese speaking African countries.

    There are a lot of social projects that have been implemented in this neighborhood but, even so, the popularity of the quartier is still the same and the levels of criminality continue to arise – such as bad media coverage (racist and xenophobic). One of the projects that was implemented in the quartier involved street artists grafters that painted a new look to the neighborhood – whit that, the project involved walks in the area so people from  outside could look into the graffiti’s

    BACKGROUND

    After these walks started to begin in the neighborhood, the locals decided to make a response, using youtube, showing the day to day life in the neighborhood, expressing it through rap songs – showing that you cannot understand the living situation of the neighborhood just by passing through the street and watching the grafitis. The walks did not consider the locals, so this was a way of giving a response to it. The rap songs are tough, maybe even rude, but clearly showing life as it is on the neighborhood.Here is a piece of the song:˝hey motherfucker, (…) crime aqui non stop estamos aqui no meio do mocho,vida sempre louca, querem me comprar droga, aqui está tudo à venda, a minha cabeca anda à roda, deus está do meu lado, sim ele está comigomas sinto-me um foragido neste mundo tao antigo, desde pequenino que ando for a da leidesde pequenino que eu pequei mas nunca me entreguei a minha alma nao quebrei continuo dignopois quero dar coragem ao meu unico filho (…)˝Translation: hey motherfucker/ crime here does not stop/ we are in the middle of the hood/ life is always crazy here/ they want to buy me drugs/ in here, everything is for sale/ my head is turning like crazy/ God is by my side/yes, He is with me/ but I feel like a fugitive in the old old world/ since childhood that I have been an outlaw/ since I was a child, I have sinned/ but I never give myself/ I never gave my soul away/ I am still worthy/ because I want to give courage to my only child (…)

    • Babak Bordbar

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : – | artist : Babak Bordbar | date : – | Place : Turkey

    THE ARTIST

    Babak Bordbar is an Iranian photojournalist, who has sought asylum in France after the government crackdown following the disputed presidential election in 2009. This event forced hundreds of journalists, bloggers, artists and political activists to flee from Iran and seek refuge in the neighbouring countries mainly Iraq and Turkey.

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE
    His work reflects on social and political issues such as conflict, borders, war, racism and gender relations.

    LINKS
    http://www.babakbordbar.com/#/home?i=595127

     

    • Art calendar 2017

  • THE PIECE OF ART
    title : Art calendar 2017 | artist : Musk Ming | date : – | Place : Berlin

    THE ARTIST

    From his unique life background and studies, Musk Ming finds a way to combine the traditional  Classic Chinese arts with the modern, western technique. His artwork reflects an international outlook and cross-cultural perspective The missing or hidden sexuality in classical Chinese art and the relatively open approach in the West are brought to the fore in Musk Ming’s paintings, representing an irony that highlights the marked differences in sexual values between the East and the West. Behind his nude paintings, the topics always focus on the relationship between human being, society and nature. Musk Ming also explores a return to Taoism values as a tolerant alternative and his work visualize the longing for an open-minded China.

     

    EXPLANATION OF THE PIECE

    Sexuality, focus on the relationship between human beings, society and nature

    DESCRIPTION

    The calendar explores different views of homosexuality using modern and old forms of photography

    LINKS

    www.muskming.com