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ArtoftheMOOC.org

a wiki of socially engaged art

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  • Student Work
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      • Displacement
      • Movement at Site of Tension
      • Invent a Country, Church or Corporation
      • Transform an Institution
      • Anti-Lecture
      • Mass Drawing Experiment
    • Assignments for Activism and Social Movements
      • Circulate a Joke
      • Call to Action
      • Plant, Garden, Cook, Eat
      • Intervention at a Cultural Institution
      • Daily Performance
      • Masking or Covering
  • Global Actions
    • Against Normalized Shit
  • Social Practice Lab

Bartleby, the Scrivener

“Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street” (1853) is a short story by the American writer Herman Melville, first serialized anonymously in two parts in the November and December editions of Putnam’s Magazine, and reprinted with minor textual alterations in his The Piazza Tales in 1856. The narrator, an elderly, unnamed Manhattan lawyer with a comfortable …

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The Trainee

The Trainee has been produced in a collaboration with Deloitte and Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art. In order to realize the project, the artist was working for a month as a trainee “Johanna Takala” in the marketing departement of Deloitte where only few people knew the true nature of the project. During the month long …

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Guy Debord

Guy Louis Debord (December 28, 1931 – November 30, 1994) was a French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situationist International (SI). He was also briefly a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie.

Yippies

The Youth International Party, whose members were commonly called Yippies, was a radically youth-oriented and countercultural revolutionary offshoot of thefree speech and anti-war movements of the 1960s. It was founded on December 31, 1967. They employed theatrical gestures, such as advancing a pig (“Pigasus the Immortal”) as a candidate for President in 1968, to mock …

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Pilvi Takala

Pilvi Takala, a Finnish artist, typically trespasses in smaller microcosms, using herself or hired actors and a hidden camera to document a single, subtle act of transgression of established social conduct. In doing so, she unsettles the unspoken rules of these ambiguous societies. Takala, with her unassuming but stubborn demeanour, has just the right tenor …

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YES MEN

The Yes Men are a culture jamming activist duo and network of supporters created by Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos. Through actions of tactical media, the Yes Men primarily aim to raise awareness about what they consider problematic social and political issues. To date, the duo has produced three films: The Yes Men (2003), The Yes …

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Asco

Asco was an East Los Angeles based Chicano artist collective, active from 1972 to 1987. Asco adopted its name as a collective in1973, making a direct reference to the word’s significance in Spanish (“asco”), which is disgust or repulsion. Asco’s work throughout 1970s and 1980s responded specifically to socioeconomic and political problems surrounding the Chicano …

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Nancy Holt

Nancy Holt (April 5, 1938 – February 8, 2014) was an American artist most known for her public sculpture, installation art and land art. In 1974, she collaborated with fellow artist Richard Serra on Boomerang, in which he videotaped her listening to her own voice echoing back into a pair of headphones after a time …

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Rirkrit Tiravanija

Rirkrit Tiravanija was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1961. His installations often take the form of stages or rooms for sharing meals, cooking, reading or playing music; architecture or structures for living and socializing are a core element in his work. His practice defies media-based description combining traditional object making, public and private performances, …

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Pedro Lasch

Pedro Lasch was born and raised in Mexico City. He divides his time between North Carolina, where he teaches art, art theory, and visual studies at Duke University since 2002, and New York (NY), where he leads on-going projects with immigrant communities and art collectives, such as 16 Beaver Group since 1999. His solo exhibitions and …

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Lygia Pape

Lygia Pape (7 April 1927 – 3 May 2004) is an influential Brazilian artist, active in both the Concrete and Neo-Concrete Movement in Brazil during the 1950s and 1960s. Later on in the 1960s and 1970s, Pape produced more videos and installations using sarcastic and critical metaphors against the Brazilian dictatorship. From the 1980s onward, these …

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Yves Klein

Yves Klein (28 April 1928 – 6 June 1962) was a French artist considered an important figure in post-war European art. He is the leading member of the French artistic movement of Nouveau réalisme founded in 1960 by art critic Pierre Restany. Klein was a pioneer in the development of performance art, and is seen …

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