“Dating Deserves Better.” Advertisements of same sex couples, mixed race couples, and interracial couples line many billboards in most urban areas.OkCupid has created advertisements with the agenda to recontextualize the popular slang DTF, or “down to f**k”. The advertisements alter the saying by making it read “DTFlea market” or “DTFix dating”. Online dating has become…

Social media can be used as a tool to combat terrorism. The slogan #JeSuisCharlie became a worldwide phenomenon after Islamic terrorists shot and killed 12 satirists for the French comic newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, in 2015. This trending hashtag  overtook popular culture and stood to promote free speech and freedom of the press. Media has given people…

Want to talk about women? Let’s talk about vaginas. In front of a solely female audience, artist Carolee Schneemann read an interaction with a sexist man aloud as she pulled the typed up encounter out from a scroll tucked away in her vagina. Enabling shock is an impactful method of democratic action. At first glance…

New York needs more public spaces! And open spaces, for that matter, that is why 85 acres of downtown Brooklyn’s waterfront have been converted into a public park. Public parks are extremely democratic by encouraging dissensus through fostering community exchange and activity. In recent years, the city has put more effort into developing infrastructure that…

In today’s society, shoes are way more important than tools to walk in. They are social status indicators, outfit finishers, and collectibles. Although they are the farthest from our eyes, they are often the first things we notice about people’s appearance. This attention-grabbing quality is exactly why artist and marketer Ari Saal Forman chose to…

All that is required to reclaim space for the public is sound—not even a song—only a tone. Bruce Odland & Sam Auinger installation Harmonic Bridge transforms the vibrations of an overpass into the tone C through tuning tubes, relaying the sound to concrete loudspeakers in the space below. Instead of reminding passers-by of the concrete…

A giant reflective inflatable hammer turns out to be a great tool of protest. At the 2010 United Nations climate conference, German artist collective Eclectic Electric Collective!, brought just such a hammer, called El Martillo, to protest for climate change policies. While riot police know exactly how to stop a large group of protesters on…

Barcelona’s Superilles, or superblocks, take back the streets for the people. When cars first became mass produced in 1901, cities started to change. Where roads once were heterogeneous spaces filled with pedestrians, horses, entertainers, and salesmen, the advent of car-society defined the road for only itself. With it we lost an important space for discussion,…

Through community agency, people can find housing where they are the priority, not profits. Baugruppen, or “Building Group” in German, is a movement in Berlin that combats stylistic homogeneity, gentrification, and quality of life issues with new developments. The movement promotes an alternative to the usual developer: self-initiative. In most cases, a group of individuals…

How can you occupy a space that’s not been built for you? This was the question in Ant Farm’s minds when they began producing their Inflatables – blow-up, customizable structures – in 1968. Ant Farm, a group that practiced in avant-garde architecture and environmental design, used these Inflatables as stages for other performances but the…