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ABOUT 19 YEARS
19 Years is an artwork made with the intention
to visualize the extent of popular mass-protesting on a global
level since 1989. The artwork is an animation that displays
almost two thousand events on a political world map, in chronological
order, in around 30 seconds. This website allows you to browse
all data that is used in the animation.
The data may not be as strictly presented as you would probably
demand had it been made for an academic paper or the like.
In many cases you will find that the date is the publishing
date of the article rather than the date of the event and
similar anomalies. The animation does not require a high level
of preciseness. I nevertheless want to present the data as
a complement to the animation for those who are interested
to know what sources and definitions I've used. If you would
like to help me to fill in the missing blanks or suggest corrections,
please don't hesitate to contact me at jon
AT brunberg DOT se.
19 Years was made for the exhibition Changing
Matters-the Resilience Exhibition, wich is currently shown
April 11 to September 7, 2008 at Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet
in Stockholm.
STATS
Number of protest events in the database: 1821
Number of places in the database: 561
LINKS
More about
my work
Changing
Matters-The Resilience Exhibition
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DEFINITIONS
I'm defining "popular mass-protest" as a demonstration,
strike, march, rally or similar in which at least 10,000 people
participated in one day in one geographical place. I've not
included petitions, internet campaigns or the like.
It is difficult to get correct estimations of the number
of people involved in each event and I have in many cases
decided to include events where it is unclear if as many as
10,000 participated. Many news articles count crowds in the
"thousands" or "tens of thousands", or
in a similar fashion, and in such cases I've accepted events
where it was stated that "thousands" participated.
In some cases I've also taken into account the numbers of
inhabitants in the country where the event occured.
I have not included actions that were directly organized
by a government, nor rallies that were held as a part of a
"normal" election campaign, even though exceptions
occur. Most of these actions were intended to be peaceful
from the outset even though some may have escalated to riot
or even to civil war.
SOURCES
The research is based on a number of sources, almost all
available for free on the internet. The bulk of data was collected
from New York Times' excellent online archive, but there are
many complementary sources such as Wikipedia, BBC, WSW, IPS
News, Amnesty International, Eurozine and many more. You'll
find the links in the leftmost column in the data table. I
am specially grateful to IPS News who gave me free access
to their articles.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank the jury for Changing Matters
and all organizing bodies, that made the production of this
work possible. A special thanks to Marc Bjersbo Asp who made
the programming for the animation, Frida Cornell, project
manager for Changing Matters and Björn Norberg, curator
at Mejan Labs.
This work is dedicated to my father for whom the events of
1989 was of great importance.
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