This site is a work in progress!!!
*To suggest a link for this list, please click here.
In the News
Collectives
Art and Activism
Manifestos
Situationist International and Psychogeography
Graffiti and Street Art
Articles
Other
In the News
Ephemeral Art’s Lasting Impression: An Interview with Marc and Sara Schiller NEW!
That Mushroom Cloud? They’re Just Svejking Around NEW!
Anarchists in the Aisles? Stores Provide a Stage NEW!
Banksy, the celebrated graffiti artist, is caught in the act for first time
Leo Fitzmaurice: temporary art interventions
An interview with artist William Pope L.
"Artist Draws 'Clean' Graffiti from Dirty Walls"
"Urban Outsider Artists Evoke Society's Margin"
"Spray can prankster tackles Israel's security barrier "
"Culture: Shepard Fairey Has a Posse"
Collectives
The
Abbie Hoffman Brigade
The purpose of the Brigade is public propagation of activist art in a variety
of media and settings. The purposes of the art work varies dependent upon issues
generated within the public context. From the moment of conception all works
are public domain- there are no copyrights, only human rights.
Art
Attack International
During the past twenty years, Art Attack has expressed the multi-disciplinary
ideas and forms of over thirty artists through collaborative work. the composition
and roles of the group changes in response to the changing opportunities that
are presented to them. the process and result of the work is public and most
often the constructions are temporary. the realization of the work is shared,
responsive and visible; and is informed by the collaborative process including
neighborhood dynamics, and the interactive processes of site acquisition, resource
exploitation, design, and implementation.
The Barnstormers
The Barnstormers are a collective of New York/Tokyo-based artists
who create large-scale collaborative paintings, films and performances.
Beige
Beige is a multimedia programming collective.
The
Billboard Liberation Front
Interventions with advertising, includes manifesto and tactical strategies.
Blue
Bricks
"This web-site represents an effort to engage with the environment
that surrounds us in a creative, original and active way. This is intended to
benefit the environment and its occupants. This engagement will add oddity,
colour and new ideas into our surroundings."
The Cacophony
Society
The Cacophony Society is a randomly gathered network of individuals united in
the pursuit of experiences beyond the pale of mainstream society through subversion,
pranks, art, fringe explorations and meaningless madness.
The
Center for Tactical Magic
The Center for Tactical Magic engages in extensive research,
development, and deployment of the pragmatic system known as Tactical Magic.
A fusion force summoned from the ways of the artist, the magician, the ninja,
and the private investigator, Tactical Magic is an amalgam of disparate arts
invoked for the purpose of actively addressing Power on individual, communal,
and transnational fronts. At the CTM we are committed to achieving the Great
Work of Tactical Magic through community-based projects, daily interdiction,
and the activation of latent energies toward positive social transformation.
The Coalition
to Raise Aesthetic Consciousness
An organization dedicated to
raising the level of aesthetic awareness and reflection of the man and woman
on the street. CRAC was formed several years ago by a small enclave of ordinary
citizens concerned about the ever-increasing uglification of our world. Includes
their manifesto, membership opportunities, Operation Ugly-Aware, and news.
Critical
Art Ensemble
Critical Art Ensemble is a collective of five artists of various
specializations dedicated to exploring the intersections between art, technology,
radical politics, and critical theory.
The
Deconstructionist Institute for Surreal Topology
The Deconstructionist Institute for Surreal Topology specializes in Revolutionary
Studies, and the advancement of Applied Autonomy.
e-Xplo
Based in Berlin and New York City, e-Xplo includes Heimo Lattner,
Rene Gabri, and Erin McGonigle. e-Xplo develops maps, routes, sound and film
materials as reflections of a multifaceted investigation into location, context,
social identity, landscape, and the public space of information.
Flux Factory
Inc.
Welcome to Flux Factory Inc. A 501 (c)(3) not-for-profit organization
supporting innovation in things.
General
Idea
A site dedicated to the work of General Idea formed in 1969 by AA Bronson, Felix
Partz and Jorge Zontal.
Glowlab
Glowlab - Collective working in psychogeography and an international project
called Active Slumming.
Guerrilla
Girls
Guerrilla Girls official website - fighting discrimination with facts, humor,
and fake fur since 1985
Instant
Coffee
Instant Coffee is a service oriented artist collective that initiates
and facilitates the creation and execution of artist's projects.
The
Institute for Applied Autonomy
(IAA) was founded in 1998 as a technological research and development
organization dedicated to the cause of individual and collective self-determination.
Our mission is to study the forces and structures which affect self-determination
and to provide technologies which extend the autonomy of human activists. Technologies
include "Little Brother," a propaganda robot, and "Streetwriter,"a
custom built, computer controlled industrial spray painting unit that prints
text messages onto pavement.
Madagascar
Institute
The Madagascar Institute is an art combine in Brooklyn that specializes
in large-scale sculptures and rides, live performances, and guerilla art events.
Northern Arts
Tactical Offensive
Northern Arts Tactical Offensive - a collective resurgence of
radical art - "purveryors of the finest subversive political street art."
The
Organism
A site by the collective, The Organism. Includes the Institute for the Preservation
of Bad Art and pyschogeographical projects.
The
Pink Bloque
The Pink Bloque was founded in 2002. Its first organized protest was May Day
and took issue with wage inequities. Since then it has protested the U.S. Patriot
Act, the Transatlantic Business Dialogue and the war in Iraq, familiar targets
for protesters.
The Praxis
Group
The Praxis Group is a Minneapolis-based unit which stages site-specific, unsanctioned
and unsolicited projects within the confines of public spaces which are privately
owned.
The
Progressive Junta
The Progressive Junta is a broad coalition of American citizens focused on peaceful
and progressive change in America and the world. The Progressive Junta is made
up of thousands of citizens including schoolteachers, engineers, laborers, professionals,
artists, students, professors, journalists, scientists, nurses, doctors, lawyers,
and spiritual leaders. Members of the Progressive Junta guard their anonymity
in a post-9/11 world and prefer to launch a guerilla campaign from the foothills
of the American political landscape.
REBAR
REBAR is a collaborative group of creators, designers and activists
based in San Francisco. Rebar’s work ranges broadly in scale, scope and
context, and therefore belies discrete categorization. It is, at minimum, situated
in the domains of environmental installation, urbanism and absurdity.
Reclaim
the Streets
Reclaim the Streets is a direct action network for global and
local social-ecological revolution(s) to transcend hierarchical and authoritarian
society, (capitalism included), and still be home in time for tea.
Reverend
Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir
Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir believe
that Consumerism is overwhelming our lives.They stage campaigns such as retail
interventions to stop the shopping!
REPOhistory
REPOhistory began in Manhattan in 1989 as a study group of artists,
scholars, teachers, and writers focused on the relationship of history to contemporary
society. It grew into a forum for developing public art projects based on history
and a platform for creating them.
Scultura
Home page of the activist art group, Scultura, headed up by Mike
Garibaldi.
Spurse
Spurse is an international architectural collective with no fixed
content or members. Since 1998, they ahve been dedicated to experimentation
with a trans-urban milieu, producing numerous interventions ranging from buildings
to performance to installation to texts.
Temporary
Services
Temporary Services is a group of three persons: Brett Bloom,
Marc Fischer, and Salem Collo-Julin. We embed the creative work we present within
thoughtful and imaginative social contexts and strive to create participatory
situations. We champion public projects that are temporary,
ephemeral, or that operate outside of conventional or officially sanctioned
categories of public expression.
Visual
Resistance
Visual Resistance is a crew of 8 or 9 artists and activists based
in Brooklyn. We first came together to organize the No RNC Poster Project in
summer 2004. We use art to transform and liberate public space. We are involved
in local struggles around public space, urban development, freedom of speech,
and political repression.
The
Wooster Collective
The Wooster Collective was founded in 2001. This site is dedicated to showcasing
and celebrating ephemeral art placed on streets in cities around the world.
Workhorse
Studios
Formed in 1996, Workhorse Studios is the vision of Logan Hicks,
a classically trained artist who cut his teeth on the urban Baltimore street
scene, currently resides in Los Angeles. Workhorse is active in the urban arts
scene, and also does commercial design work. They are collaborating on a new
project with the Wooster Collective from Boston.
The Yes
Men
The Yes Men have impersonated some of the world's most powerful criminals at
conferences, on the web, and on television, in order to correct their identities.
Artivistic
Artivistic is an international transdisciplinary conference/event
in Montréal on the interPlay between art, information and activism.
Bill Fisher
Page on censored work in Georgia, public arts proposal, etc.
hosted by printmaker and activist Bill Fisher.
Art-Anon
Art-Anon is a loose confederate of New York City-based artists
interested in hacking into the established power structure and offering a self-empowering
alternative to all other repressed or disenfranchised folk.
Bikes Against Bush
Bikes Against Bush is an interactive protest/performance occurring simultaneously
online and on the streets of NYC during the Republican National Convention.
Using a wireless Internet enabled bicycle outfitted with a custom-designed printing
device, the Bikes Against Bush bicycle can print text messages sent from web
users directly onto the streets of Manhattan in water-soluble chalk.
Nobody Died
"Nobody Died When Clinton Lied" is a guerilla slogan campaign
spreading the word via t-shirts and bumperstickers. The web site also keeps
a blog of viewer sightings.
BTS
Break the Silence Mural and Arts Project (BTS) is an arts/activist
group committed to using creative projects to facilitate social change and greater
awareness of the complexities of the conflict in Occupied Palestine.
Billionaires for Bush
Billionaires for Bush is a strategic media and street theater
campaign whose combustible mix of humor, savvy messaging, grassroots participation,
and cutting edge internet organizing tools will flush out the truth about the
Bush administration's disastrous economic policies and help turn the fatcats
out of power in November.
Flash Mobs
Flash mobs are sudden gatherings of people at a predetermined
location at a predetermined time. People in flash mobs usually perform
according to a written script, then disperse quickly.
The Surveillance Camera Players
The Surveillance Camera Players protest against the use of surveillance
cameras in public places by performing specially adapted plays in front of these
cameras.
Republic Art
Republic Art is a transnational research project exploring and developing progressive
practices of public art.
http://www.wsu.edu/~amerstu/smc/art.html
Art activism links
Public Art as Social Intervention
Public Art as Social Intervention, a site housed at Concordia University in
Montreal and created for symposium on public art. Includes examples of interventions
and an extensive bibliography.
Art in the Public Interest
Art in the Public Interest (API) is a nonprofit organization that supports the
belief that the arts are an integral part of a healthy culture, and that community-based
arts provide significant value both to communities and artists.
Santarchy
Each December for the last 10 years Cacophonous Santas have been taking to streets
in major metropolitan areas and generating a bit of naughty Noël mayhem.
It all started back in 1994 when several dozen Cheap Suit Santas paid a visit
to downtown San Francisco for a night of Kringle Kaos. Things have now reached
Critical Xmas and these infamous Santacons are now held in over a dozen cities
each year.
Manifestos
http://www.spunk.org/library/anarcfem/sp001291.txt
Valerie Solanas' SCUM Manifesto was written in 1967 and published in 1968, the year she shot and wounded Andy Warhol.
http://www.transhumanist.biz/extropic.htm
Extropic Art Manifesto of Transhumanist Arts
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Labyrinth/8584/howto.html
How to write a manifesto
http://www.stuckism.com/manifest.html
a list of links to manifestos
http://www.aisling.net/bus/cheapart.htm
Here is the Cheap Art Manifesto, originally distributed by the
Bread and Puppet Theater in 1984.
http://www.abrupt.org/CJ/manifesto.html
Culture jamming group Abrupt’s manifesto
http://www.pugzine.com/arch12.html
Antonin Artaud's manifesto
Graffiti and Street Art
Little People - A Tiny Street Art Project
NEW!
Little handpainted people left on the streets in London to fend for themselves.
Streetsy
Streetsy is a daily street art site whose goal is to create the largest curated street art site on the web. Streetsy defines street art as being art created in public places, often without permission. Street art is made in a number of mediums, including stencils, stickers, posters, paint, and sculpture. In mathematical, political, criminal, and philosophical terms, streetart is a subset of graffiti.
The
God Bless Graffiti Coalition, Inc.
The God Bless Graffiti Coalition, Inc. was founded in 2000 in
Chicago in order to combat growing national and international anti-graffiti
trends.
Space
Invaders
Space Invaders has inspired a form of street art, championed
in partular by an artist named "Invader". Using ceramic tiles, Invader
cements together mosaic images of traditional Space Invader aliens, bonus spaceships,
and variations on those themes.
Toynbee tiles
Toynbee tiles are messages of mysterious origin found embedded
in asphalt in several major cities in the United States, with at least two known
examples in South America as well.
Obey Giant
Obey Giant Art, a guerilla stickering/postering group? individual? started by
Shepard Fairey. Gives guerilla tactics and an extensive list of links to other
guerilla sites.
Banksy
British art activist
Robbie Conal and Art Attack
Robbie Conal and Art Attack. L.A. based painter and guerilla posterer Robbie
Conal.
Ron English's billboards
Artist and culture jammer Ron English's illegal billboards. Check
out the article about him from the link, "Here's the Latest Billboard Event."
WK Interact
Street artist who's hit the big time doing projects for Adidas
and Dr. Martens. Large scale figurative public work.
Stencil Revolution
One of the best and most complete art stencil websites with
tons of images, artist profiles, tutorials on stenciling methods, news on art,
links, etc.
Stensoul
Site of Peat Wollaeger, St. Louis stencil and graffiti artist.
50mm Los Angeles
L.A.'s first Graffiti Art website established in 1996 by Too
Tall Jahmal and designed by veteran L.A. graf artist Unit One. Check the gallery
for freights, bombs, productions and more.
Art Crimes
A gallery of graffiti art from around the world.
Stencil Archive
A site that focuses on documenting stencil art around a number
of cities.
Urban and Adventurous Artists
Incomplete encyclopedia of Urban & Adventurous Artists. Includes a great
annotated history and illustrations of public projects.
Guerrilla One
Great archives of guerilla art work
Art Crimes: Alternative Media Links
Links to grafitti and zine sites
on the web.
Graffiti Links
Tons of links to graffiti sites and images. Includes stickering and stenciling.
Urbanize
Check out the Intersections link for more links.
Other links
Resurrected Dead
A Hot Weather Activity for Lonely Asphalt Near You (Toynbee style)
Peel Magazine
Peel Magazine - stickers, stencils, and street art - site includes
subscription info, a forum for sticker discussions, and more.
Guerrilla Innovation
Copenhagen based Sebastian Campion has put this fantastic site
together demonstrating "TECHNOCULTURAL TRENDS, RESEARCH & CREATIVE
INTERVENTION." Public art and web site categories are Activistic, Architectural,
Audible, Cinematic, Conceptual, Graphic, Scientific, Sensorial, Strategic, Surface,
Wireless.
ARTEXTE Information Centre
ARTEXTE Information Centre, Quebec, provides an extensive, searchable
database of public art projects done in Quebec and Canada since the 1960's.
WIPP - Sandia National Lab
An awesome design challenge for the public realm. Sandia National
Laboratories charged a panel of outside experts with the task to design a 10,000-year
marking system for the WIPP (Waste Isolation Pilot Plant) site, and estimate
the efficacy of the system against various types of intrusion.
Bread and Puppet Theater
The Bread and Puppet Theater (often known simply as Bread &
Puppet) is a politically radical puppet theater, active since the 1960s, currently
based in Glover, Vermont. Its founder and director is Peter Schumann.
The name Bread & Puppet derives from the theater's practice of sharing its
own fresh bread, for free, with the audience of each performance as a means
of creating community, and from its central principle that art should be as
basic to life as bread.
Adbusters
Adbusters - We are 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. Our aim is to topple existing power structures
and forge a major shift in the way we will live in the 21st century.
Printed Matter
Printed Matter, Inc. – the world’s largest non-profit dedicated to
the promotion of publications made by artists in a book like format.
Fluxus
FLUXUS PORTAL FOR THE INTERNET
Negativland
Counter culture group Negativland’s site
Creative Time
For 30 years, Creative Time, a New York-based nonprofit organization, has commissioned
and presented adventurous public arts projects of all disciplines. From the
Brooklyn Bridge Anchorage, Grand Central Terminal, and Times Square to milk
cartons, the Internet, and billboards, Creative Time has supported artists in
invigorating our urban landscape.
Abrupt
Abrupt’s culture jamming page
Free Words
FREE WORDS is a book which belongs to whoever finds it. 3000 copies have been
produced by artist Sal Randolph and are being distributed free worldwide. The
books are placed on the shelves of bookstores and libraries creating an art
situation that infiltrates public and commercial space.
http://www.ibiblio.org/stayfree/9/adbusters.htm
More Culture Jamming info
Bureau of Public Secrets
Bureau of Public Secrets’ Minimum Definition of Revolutionary Organizations.
Not Bored
NOT BORED! is an anarchist, situationist-inspired, low-budget, irregularly published,
photocopied journal.
The Gunk Foundation
The Gunk Foundation – a charitable organization awarding grants for the
production of non-traditional public art projects. Site contains info on applying
for grants and an archive of previous recipient work.
http://socialfiction.org/psychogeography/index.html
Generative psychogeography
http://www.socialfiction.org/index.html
Psychogeography site. Self described carthographic sadism, gabber avant- gardism,
disco socialism, peripatetic hedonism, autonomous spacetravel
http://www.nothingness.org/
Links to Situationists International and Social Anarchism, and a great list
of on-line Art and Culture links.
http://www.monoculartimes.co.uk/city-tours/psychogeography/workingdefinition.shtml
Working definition of pyschogeography
http://www.notbored.org/organization.html
The question of organization for the Situationist International, written by
founder Guy Debord in 1968.
Articles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerilla_art
Guerrilla Art definition and citations, from Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia.
http://www.rhizome.org/carnivore/press/cotter.htm
"Doing Their Own Thing, Making Art Together", an article
by Holand Cotter about contemporary artists' collaboratives.
http://www.artic.edu/~gshole/pages/writings.htm
A large list of articles and links written by Gregory Sholette,
one of the founding members of REPOhistory.