Editor’s note: ArtofthePrank.com editor Joey Skaggs appeared at the 1st Influencers event in 2004. You can check it out here.

Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG and Bani present:

The Influencers, a free three day event, Thursday, February 28 – March 1, 2008, at the Centre de Cultura Contemporánea de Barcelona (CCCB), dedicated to imaginative subversion of contemporary mediascape. Focusing on the first hand testimony of some of the protagonists of the international scene, the festival is a selection of the most subtle, elegant and visionary proposals of parallel narratives in the realm of media and global popular culture.

The Influencers explores controversial forms of art and communication guerrilla, presenting independent projects that play with global popular culture, infiltrate the mass media, and transform fashions, consumption and technological fetishism.

The key to The Influencers is found in its guests and stories: impostors, pseudo-totalitarian musicians, conceptual hackers, deviant geographers, anarchitects and actors from invisible theatre. In these three days they are going to present their work, show known and less known material and speak with the public about challenges, goals and strategies.

See you all in Barcelona!

Editor’s note: Artist and ArtofthePrank.com editor Joey Skaggs will be joining the online class the week of February 18. Check it out!

Tricksters and Pranks with R.U. Sirius – February 11 – March 23, 2008

Pranks and Pranksters, Tricksters & Tricks — the brilliant ones open up a space in the world for magic(k), ambiguity, and novelty. They encourage us to Question Authority and better still, they cause us to Question Reality.

In this course, we will discuss the history of pranks and pranksterism in the contemporary world. We will examine mythical and world historic tricksters like Coyote, Bugs Bunny, Crowley, Puck, Heyoka, Papa Legba, Lucifer, and more. And we’ll explore and discuss the role pranksters and tricksters play in cultures. I will also discuss some of my own pranks and tricks and legendary pranksters Mark Hosler of Negativland and Joey Skaggs will be dropping in on the course to answer questions.

Finally, we will plan pranks, make pranks, and maybe even leave the course with a dedicated prankster cabal. No fooling.

For more information visit the Maybe Logic Institute. If that link doesn’t work, go here.

Related links:

Vilnius, Lithuania – The Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center (JMVAC) in Vilnius, Lithuania proudly announces its premier exhibition, The Avant-Garde: From Futurism to Fluxus, which opens to the public on November 4, 2007 and runs through February 3, 2008.

The exhibition highlights the history of the avant-garde through some of its most pivotal figures and a wide array of mediums including film, film stills, installation, Fluxus objects and documents, sculpture, video, and poetry, which cooperatively stimulated new ways of thinking about art, culture, and society. Furthermore, the exhibition represents a celebratory homecoming for two of Lithuania’s most prolific artists: pioneering avant-garde filmmaker Jonas Mekas and George Maciunas, the impresario and “Chairman” of the 1960’s international art movement Fluxus. (more…)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Alfred Jarry (September 8, 1873 – November 1, 1907) was a French writer born in Laval, Mayenne, France, not far from the border of Brittany; he was of Breton descent on his mother’s side.

Best known for his play Ubu Roi (1896), which is often cited as a forerunner to the theatre of the absurd, Jarry wrote in a variety of genres and styles. He wrote plays, novels, poetry, essays and speculative journalism. His texts present some pioneering work in the field of absurdist literature. Sometimes grotesque or misunderstood (i.e. the opening line in his play Ubu Roi, “Merdre!”, has been translated into English as “Shittr!”, “Shikt!”, and “Pschitt!”), he invented a science called ‘pataphysics.

Biography and works

A precociously brilliant student, Jarry enthralled his classmates with a gift for pranks and troublemaking.

At the lycée in Rennes when he was 15, he led of a group of boys who devoted much time and energy to poking fun at their well-meaning, obese and incompetent physics teacher, a man named Hébert. Jarry and classmate Charles Morin wrote a play they called Les Polonais and performed it with marionettes in the home of one of their friends. The main character, Père Heb, was a blunderer with a huge belly; three teeth (one of stone, one of iron, and one of wood); a single, retractable ear; and a misshapen body. In Jarry’s later work Ubu Roi, Père Heb would develop into Ubu, one of the most monstrous and astonishing characters in French literature.

Read more about Alfred Jarry at Wikipedia…

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

‘Pataphysics, a term coined by the French writer Alfred Jarry, is a philosophy dedicated to studying what lies beyond the realm of metaphysics. It is a parody of the theory and methods of modern science and is often expressed in nonsensical language. A practitioner of ‘pataphysics is a ‘pataphysician or a ‘pataphysicist.

The term first appeared in print in Alfred Jarry’s play text “Guignol” in the 28 April 1893 issue of L’Écho de Paris littéraire illustré. Jarry later defined it as “the science of imaginary solutions, which symbolically attributes the properties of objects, described by their virtuality, to their lineaments” (Gestes et opinions du Docteur Faustroll, II, viii). Raymond Queneau has described ‘pataphysics as resting “on the truth of contradictions and exceptions.”

Jarry mandated the inclusion of the apostrophe in the orthography “to avoid a simple pun,” the pun possibly being patte � physique (leg of physics), as interpreted by Jarry scholars Keith Beaumont and Roger Shattuck, or possibly pas ta physique (not your physics), or maybe “Pâte � physique” (physics dough).

Read more about ‘Pataphysics at Wikipedia…

This article was published in Extra! by FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting) in the 1999 March/April issue. Although I’ve produced many new works since then, the basic premises described below still resonate for me. This should provide a pretty good summary of the intent of my work and why I do it. I hope it also sets a positive and creative tone for this Blog. -JS

We’re living in a time when it seems everything we see on the news is a bad joke: President Clinton and impeachment, Y2K and the end of the world, Viagra raising the dead, cloning your dead pet dog.

So how can a conscientious media prankster make a mark? When reality gets this strange, pranks are needed more than ever to jolt us into reexamining our values.

With the Internet’s immediacy, its availability to anyone wishing to plant an idea, service or product for the world to consume, there’s more opportunity than ever for both pranks and scams. Anyone can send an e-mail, create a rumor on Usenet, make a website and look official with very little effort or cost.

To me the prank is fine art. (more…)

This definition of pranks is from V.Vale’s introduction to his formative book PRANKS, published in 1987 by RE/Search Publications. I’ve always loved this essay. He has graciously allowed us to reprint it here. In 2006, RE/Search Publications released a follow-up book called Pranks! 2 that is equally seminal in its approach to the subject -JS

PRANKS. According to the Merriam-Webster New Collegiate Dictionary, a prank is a “trick . . . a mildly mischievous act . . . a practical joke . . . a ludicrous act.” The best pranks invoke the imagination, poetic imagery, the unexpected and a deep level of irony or social criticism—such as Boyd Rice’s presentation of a skinned sheep’s head on a silver platter to Betty Ford, First Lady of the United States. Great pranks create synaesthetic experiences which are unmistakably exciting, original, and reverberating, as well as creative, metaphoric, poetic and artistic. If these criteria be deemed sufficient, then pranks can be considered as constituting an art form and genre in themselves.

However slighted by Academia, pranks are not without cultural and historical precedent. (more…)