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Enter the Illuminator, a New York-based art activist collective, whose shifting membership has mastered the legal grey zone that regulates projection in public.
[...] the Illuminator takes the normally stationary technology out of the classroom and onto the streets, affixing a high-powered, 12,000-lumens projector atop a van — or, when special nimbleness is required, a trolley — to ignite urban façades with political statements that are as bold as they are temporary.
— Urban Omnibus
Image: The Illuminator Collective.For this recent Urban Omnibus feature, digital media scholar Eli Horwatt interviews art-activist collective The Illuminator. Since capturing the public attention with their Occupy-inspired 99% Bat Signal projection in 2011, the collective has been, quite... View full entry
In looking to the past at professionals in the design and architecture professions, they found that alliances, networks, groups and affiliations were the mechanisms through which architects could become the activists they yearned to be. “[...] we want to show that architects are important allies to activists,” Rafson says.
“Those alliances where architects are working as a critical part of the team is what we emphasize.”
— Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times takes a closer look at ArchiteXX's “Now What?! Advocacy, Activism and Alliances in American Architecture Since 1968” exhibition currently at the WUHO Gallery. It examines the little-known history of architects and designers who were — and still remain — at the... View full entry
Chinese authorities are razing one of the Beijing studios of dissident artist Ai Weiwei. He said that demolition crews showed up without advance warning, and have begun the process of tearing down the studio.
Ai has been a longtime critic of the government, and on Saturday, he began posting videos to his Instagram feed of the studio's destruction. "Farewell," Ai wrote. "They started to demolish my studio 'Zuoyuo' in Beijing with no precaution."
— NPR
Ai, who has been living in self-imposed exile in Berlin since Chinese authorities returned his confiscated passport in 2015, responded to NPR about the sudden demolition of his Zuoyou studio in Beijing: We didn't receive any advance warning or announcement of the demolition. We were required to... View full entry
Each year, the Curry Stone Design Prize is awarded to projects that “use design to address pressing social justice issues.” To mark the 10th anniversary of the award, the Curry Stone Foundation will award 100 projects—“the most compelling social design leaders from across the world.”... View full entry
Block a highway, and you upend the economic life of a city, as well as the spatial logic that has long allowed people to pass through them without encountering their poverty or problems. Block a highway, and you command a lot more attention than would a rally outside a church or city hall — from traffic helicopters, immobile commuters, alarmed officials. — the Washington Post
The article notes that, historically, highway construction decimated black communities, such as in St. Paul, Minneapolis, Baltimore, Oakland, and many other cities. In New York, Robert Moses explicitly used highways to clear "slums," in the process devastating parts of the Bronx and other black... View full entry
The Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei is visiting Lesbos to document the plight of thousands of refugees who arrive daily on the Greek island by boat from Turkey. For the past two days, Ai has been photographing orange rubber dinghies coming into shore, families huddled around fires, people queuing to register at the Moria refugee camp and piles of discarded lifejackets, among other scenes [...]
It is understood Ai will be creating a work in response to the refugee crisis.
— theartnewspaper.com
Here are just a few of Ai Weiwei's recent photos from the Lesbos refugee camp; giving a human face to people and entire families escaping war and persecution in their home countries of Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, as well as documenting humanitarian workers, such as the Norwegian group, Drop... View full entry
"'Are you going to do beautiful architecture or do-gooder architecture?' I want to do neither and both." [...]
"It's not like you're going to design some single product that revolutionizes the way people shape the world around them," Surface said. "You have to change fundamentally how your organization is structured, how your resources are allocated, stop thinking of yourself as a gatekeeper. It's about redistributing how power and decision making and resources are divided between people."
— thestranger.com
Prompted by her work with Design in Public in Seattle, this profile of Susan Surface dips into her professional and personal background to designing like she gives a damn, covering the diversity of ways she seeks to question the power structures that perpetuate socially irresponsible or... View full entry
Cooper Union students pinned red felt squares to their graduation gowns and refused to acknowledge president Jamshed Bharucha, in the latest protest against the school's instatement of undergraduate tuition. The protest took place at the 2015 Commencement Ceremony yesterday, and was... View full entry
Open data, and the interactive mapping and data visualization that can come of it, has become a de facto engagement and storytelling tool among contemporary journalists, social justice activists, and civic-minded technologists. But despite its allure, open data’s potential for fostering civic engagement and creating transparency and dialogue is plagued by issues of usability, access, and quality control. — urbanomnibus.net
Let's admit it, we architects much too often get lost in narcissistic own-horn-tooting, passionate ego-inflating, disillusioned navel-gazing, vile shit-flinging or simply in the mundane day-to-day operations for the paying clientele. But all is not completely lost thanks to the tireless work and... View full entry
We call it “destructoporn” (since 2007, according to Urban Dictionary) and it comes, unbidden, via digital media. Where did I see that Tod Williams and Billie Tsien’s Folk Art Museum, just thirteen years old, was down to steel and rubble? The art critic Jerry Saltz’s Instagram. [...]
The dailiness, even hourliness, of social media makes it a perfect vehicle for documenting each thump of the wrecking ball, each crunch of the backhoe. Its visual slant is ideal for activism wrapped up in pictures.
— newyorker.com
It's the urban planning equivalent of Rinaldo. Except instead of the siege of Jerusalem, it's the battle for Greenwich Village.
The legendary 1960s struggle pitted planning czar Robert Moses against neighborhood activist Jane Jacobs. Moses wanted to make the city easily navigable by car [...]
But the powerful planner met his match when he proposed an expressway through Lower Manhattan. Though she had little institutional support, Jacobs built a citizen coalition that ultimately defeated Moses.
— theatlanticcities.com
Thursday, MoMA director Glenn D. Lowry sent a memo to MoMA's trustees and staff announcing the museum had retained Diller Scofidio + Renfro to "work with us to design a plan that will integrate the Museum's current building with the property of the American Folk Art Museum. . . . We readily agreed to consider a range of options, and look forward to seeing their results." — AM New York
Thursday, MoMA director Glenn D. Lowry sent a memo to MoMA's trustees and staff announcing the museum had retained Diller Scofidio + Renfro to "work with us to design a plan that will integrate the Museum's current building with the property of the American Folk Art Museum. . . . We readily... View full entry
As the commercial art world in America rides a boom unlike any it has ever experienced, another kind of art world growing rapidly in its shadows is beginning to assert itself. And art institutions around the country are grappling with how to bring it within museum walls and make the case that it can be appreciated along with paintings, sculpture and other more tangible works. — nytimes.com
We live in a culture of not virtual reality, but real virtuality because our virtuality - meaning the internet networks - are a fundamental part of our reality.
All the studies on the internet show that people who are more social on the internet are also more social face-to-face.
— bbc.co.uk