In the 1990’s, social practice artist Suzanne Lacy recognized that Oakland teens were depicted negatively in the news and wanted to provide high school students with the opportunity to control the public dialogue about them. With Annice Jacoby and Chris Johnson, Lacy decided to organize The Roof is on Fire, a public event that was…

Throughout their The Joshua Tree 2017 tour, the Irish band U2 decided to use their fame and the large venues they perform at to their advantage. The band felt that current events, namely the 2016 United States presidential election and the shifting political attitudes towards immigrants resonated with their older album The Joshua Tree. As…

Over 200 Improv Everywhere actors froze in place for five minutes in the Main Concourse of Grand Central Station Terminal. In doing so, Improv Everywhere asked New Yorkers to slow down and notice the world around them. They disrupted New Yorkers’ everyday routines, urging them to get out of their (seemingly impenetrable) productivity bubbles and…

In Maya Stovall’s Liquor Store Theater performance piece, dance foregrounds an ethnographic study on McDougall-Hunt residents as they are marginalized by socio-economic, ethnoracial, and/or gender classifications in post-bankruptcy Detroit. The McDougall-Hunt neighborhood is hard-pressed for resources; the city is untouched by the urban renewal of Downtown Detroit. Stovall chooses to conduct her dance study in…

Suzanne Lacy’s Cleaning Conditions confronts museum-goers with labor that usually goes unseen,  asking them to question the ethics of labor politics. By performing labor during museum hours, Lacy pulls the curtain back on museum upkeep to reveal intersections of immigration, labor, and gender politics in the service industry. The piece also addresses the need for living…

Sophie Sandberg, creator of Instagram account @catcallsofnyc, uses sidewalk chalk to denormalize catcalling and street harassment. Sandberg invites women to share quotes from their street harassers and the locations in which they were catcalled. Sandberg then revisits these sites of harassment, writing a quote from a woman’s story in brightly colored chalk. She tags each…

The Black Panther Party fueled a revolution with the most important meal of the day. The Black Panthers’ Free Breakfast for School Children Program ran from 1969 through the early 1970s, providing breakfast for thousands of hungry students. The program undercut the authority of the federal government, as it exposed the government’s failure to address…

Freak shows at circuses, amusement parks, and the like often feature people considered abnormal or “freaks of nature” by societal standards. Historically, intersex people and people with disabilities have been displayed as spectacles to be gawked and goggled at by fairgoers. Rather than celebrating difference, people too often  make fun of, or treat with disdain,…

Corita Kent’s printmaking practice brings together appropriated images and texts, whose juxtaposition encourages viewers to reflect upon their own understandings of a range of political issues. Her appropriated materials primarily come from popular newspapers, magazines, print advertisements, and product packaging. She also incorporates other elements of popular culture, including song lyrics and text from novels…

For Alexandra Pirici, the site of her performance is just as important as its content. Her thoughtful engagement with place imbues her work with layers of significance that continue to unravel as the performance develops. For Skulptur Projekte Munster, she located her performance at Münster’s former town council and court chambers. Drawing many of the…