Détournement/Culture jamming
Urban living involves a daily onslaught of advertisements, corporate art, and mass-mediated popular culture see THEORY: Society of the spectacle. As oppressive and alienating as this spectacle may be,...
View ArticleEviction blockade
It was a cold March morning in Rochester, NY, when the city marshal approached 9 Ravenwood Avenue in an attempt to carry out what he thought would be a routine eviction. Instead, he was met with eighty...
View ArticleFlash mob
A flash mob is an unrehearsed, spontaneous, contagious, and dispersed mass action. Flash mobs first emerged in 2003 as a form of participatory performance art, with groups of people using email, blogs,...
View ArticleHoax
On April 15, 2011, when General Electric announced that the company would return its illegitimate (but legal) $3.2 billion tax refund, and also lobby to close the sort of corporate tax loopholes that...
View ArticleIdentity correction
When trying to understand how a machine works, it helps to expose its guts. The same can be said of powerful people or corporations who enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else. By catching...
View ArticleInvisible theater
You’re dining in a restaurant when suddenly a lesbian couple and their two children, dining nearby, are accosted by a homophobic server. “These children need a father,” she says. “You’re making...
View ArticleOccupation
The first recorded labor strike was a form of occupation: over 3,000 years ago, ancient Egyptian tomb builders from the desert village of Deir el-Medina repeatedly occupied temples following the...
View ArticlePublic filibuster
Many people know about the U.S. Senate’s procedural filibusters, in which a dissenting senator holds the floor to keep a vote from happening. The people’s version, the public filibuster, is no...
View ArticleStrategic nonviolence
For over a decade, questions of violence, property destruction and confrontational tactics generally have tended to be debated under the frame diversity of tactics, but the time has come to seek a new...
View ArticlePrefigurative intervention
Many of us spend so much time trying to stop bad things from happening that we rarely take the time to sketch out how things could be better, let alone actually go out and create a little slice of the...
View ArticleLight Brigade
Imagine you’re at a nighttime vigil to protest the latest looming war. Candles are lit, speakers share eloquent messages, and suddenly, from a nearby rise overlooking the public square where you’ve...
View ArticleLegislative theater
In 1992, Augusto Boal, the creator of Theater of the Oppressed (see THEORY: Theater of the Oppressed), was faced with a dilemma. His theater work was an international sensation. Centers for the Theater...
View ArticleCacerolazo
As the clock struck 8 pm on a Montréal spring night in May 2012, a sound rose like crickets at dusk: a metallic tapping in the distance that multiplied and spread until a cacophony of clanging pots and...
View ArticleInflatables
Inflatable props, or inflatables, can transform a boring protest march into a playful, memorable and interactive event. Inflatables are pneumatic objects made of thin plastic foil and filled with air...
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