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Translator: Timothy Covell Reviewer: Morton Bast
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Twelve years ago, I was in the street writing my name
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to say, "I exist."
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Then I went to taking photos of people to paste them on the street
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to say, "They exist."
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From the suburbs of Paris to the wall of Israel and Palestine,
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the rooftops of Kenya
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to the favelas of Rio,
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paper and glue -- as easy as that.
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I asked a question last year:
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Can art change the world?
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Well let me tell you,
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in terms of changing the world there has been a lot of competition this year,
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because the Arab Spring is still spreading,
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the Eurozone has collapsed ... what else?
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The Occupy movement found a voice,
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and I still have to speak English constantly.
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So there has been a lot of change.
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So when I had my TED wish last year,
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I said, look, I'm going to switch my concept.
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You are going to take the photos.
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You're going to send them to me.
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I'm going to print them and send them back to you.
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Then you're going to paste them where it makes sense
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for you to place your own statement.
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This is Inside Out.
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One hundred thousand posters have been printed this year.
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Those are the kind of posters, let me show you.
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And we keep sending more every day.
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This is the size.
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Just a regular piece of paper with a little bit of ink on it.
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This one was from Haiti.
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When I launched my wish last year,
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hundreds of people stood up and said they wanted to help us.
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But I say it has to be
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under the conditions I've always worked:
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no credit, no logos, no sponsoring.
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A week later, a handful of people were there ready to rock
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and empower the people on the ground
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who wanted to change the world.
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These are the people I want to talk about to you today.
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Two weeks after my speech, in Tunisia,
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hundreds of portraits were made.
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And they pasted [over] every single portrait of the dictator
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[with] their own photos.
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Boom! This is what happened.
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Slim and his friends went through the country
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and pasted hundreds of photos everywhere
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to show the diversity in the country.
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They really make Inside Out their own project.
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Actually, that photo was pasted in a police station,
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and what you see on the ground
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are ID cards of all the photos of people being tracked by the police.
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Russia. Chad wanted to fight against homophobia in Russia.
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He went with his friends in front of every Russian embassy in Europe
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and stood there with the photos
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to say, "We have rights."
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They used Inside Out as a platform for protest.
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Karachi, Pakistan.
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Sharmeen is actually here.
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She organized a TEDx action out there
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and made all the unseen faces of the city
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on the walls in her town.
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And I want to thank her today.
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North Dakota. Standing Rock Nation,
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in this Turtle Island, [unclear name] from the Dakota Lakota tribe
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wanted to show that the Native Americans are still here.
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The seventh generation are still fighting for their rights.
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He pasted up portraits all over his reservation.
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And he's here also today.
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Each time I get a wall in New York,
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I use his photos to continue spreading the project.
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Juarez: You've heard of the border --
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one of the most dangerous borders in the world.
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Monica has taken thousands of portraits with a group of photographers
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and covered the entire border.
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Do you know what it takes to do this?
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People, energy, make the glue, organize the team.
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It was amazing.
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While in Iran at the same time
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Abololo -- of course a nickname --
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has pasted one single face of a woman
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to show his resistance against the government.
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I don't have to explain to you what kind of risk he took for that action.
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There are tons of school projects.
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Twenty percent of the posters we are receiving comes from schools.
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Education is so essential.
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Kids just make photos in a class, the teacher receives them,
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they paste them on the school.
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Here they even got the help of the firemen.
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There should be even more schools doing this kind of project.
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Of course we wanted to go back to Israel and Palestine.
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So we went there with a truck. This is a photobooth truck.
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You go on the back of that truck, it takes your photo,
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30 seconds later take it from the side, you're ready to rock.
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Thousands of people use them
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and each of them signs up for a two-state peace solution
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and then walk in the street.
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This is march, the 450,000 march -- beginning of September.
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They were all holding their photo as a statement.
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On the other side, people were wrapping up streets, buildings.
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It's everywhere.
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Come on, don't tell me that people aren't ready for peace out there.
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These projects took thousands of actions in one year,
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making hundreds of thousands of people participating,
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creating millions of views.
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This is the biggest global art participatory project that's going on.
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So back to the question, "Can art change the world?"
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Maybe not in one year. That's the beginning.
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But maybe we should change the question.
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Can art change people's lives?
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From what I've seen this year, yes.
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And you know what? It's just the beginning.
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Let's turn the world inside out together.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)