…Exploring the role of the prankster as artist, activist and social observer and the significance of the prank in society.
Submitted by William of FORA.tv:
FORA.tv presents Joline Blais, in cooperation with the Long Now Organization, discussing the artwork of the Yes Men’s internet pranks that focus the world’s attention on big corporations and global political entities.
Joline Blais is co-author of At the Edge of Art
Related links:
Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity
For years the do-it-yourself (DIY)/punk underground has worked against the logic of mass production and creative uniformity, disseminating radical ideas and directly making and trading goods and services. But what happens when the underground becomes just another market? What happens when the very tools that the artists and activists have used to build word of mouth are coopted by corporate America? What happens to cultural resistance when it becomes just another marketing platform?
Unmarketable examines the corrosive effects of corporate infiltration of the underground. Activist and author Anne Elizabeth Moore takes a critical look at the savvy advertising agencies, corporate marketing teams, and branding experts who use DIY techniques to reach a youth market””and at members of the underground who have helped forward corporate agendas through their own artistic, and occasionally activist, projects.
Covering everything from Adbusters to Tylenol”s indie-star-studded Ouch! campaign, Unmarketable is a lively, funny, and much-needed look at what”s happening to the underground and what it means for activism, commerce, and integrity in a world dominated by corporations.
Anne Elizabeth Moore is the co-editor of Punk Planet, the Best American Comics series editor, and the author of Hey, Kidz! Buy This Book: A Radical Primer on Corporate and Governmental Propaganda and Artistic Activism for Short People
To get more of a sense of what this book is about, check out Rob Walker’s very interesting interview with Anne Elizabeth Moore from his blog Murketing.
First, a simple explainer as to the issues causing the Writers Strike, from the Writers Guild of America (WGA) via Ellen Sandler:
The Writers Strike: Why We Fight
Thanks Erin. Now, a look at the world of television without writers:
Writers Strike Means Reality Boom Times
by Lynn Elber
AP Television Writer
November 27, 2007
Los Angeles (AP) — For five years, John Langley tried and failed to sell a cinema verite-style TV series tracking police officers on patrol. Then came the 1988 Hollywood writers strike.
“That’s when Fox bought `Cops,’ because a series with no narrator, no host, no script, no re-enactments sounded very good to them at the time,” recalled Langley, who just marked the show’s 700th episode.
The nearly five-month ’88 Writers Guild of America walkout that started in March didn’t unleash a flood of reality, because filming on sitcoms and dramas had largely wrapped and because alternative shows had yet to become a trend.
But the current WGA strike fell smack during production as well as the Age of Reality, putting the brakes on scripted shows and giving networks a quick fix for schedule holes. It remains to be seen how viewers – or the reality genre itself – will withstand the onslaught.
Networks have readied a slate of nearly 40 shows that are stacked up like jetliners over Christmas Eve runways awaiting the go-ahead to land. Continue reading “Writers Strike Spawns More Exploitation TV”
Consuming War
An exhibition curated by Barbara Koenen
November 4 to January 20, 2008
Hyde Park Art Center
5020 S. Cornell Avenue
Chicago, IL 60615
Featuring works by Lynda Barry, Wafaa Bilal, Mary Brogger, Adam Brooks, Burtonwood & Holmes, Michael Hernandez de Luna, Fred Holland, Harold Mendez, Michael Rakowitz, Ellen Rothenberg, Edra Soto, Paula White and Dolores Wilber.
Focusing on the U.S. conflict in the Middle East over the past 10 years, Consuming War addresses the ways the American media and consumer culture have manipulated and influenced our perceptions of war, often turning it into a spectacle for American consumption. While war is an underlying theme in all the works, each addresses the concept of war, and our relationship to it, from a variety of angles, creating pieces that range from political cartoons to sculptures that recreate the archeological artifacts looted from the National Museum of Iraq and large suspended papier mâché bombs made from sale advertisements. Timely in its subject matter, Consuming War offers an innovative platform in which the complex and multifarious connections between war, capitalism, American consumer culture, and our everyday lives can be re-situated and critically examined.
Related links:
image: Proposed work by Burtonwood & Holmes, 2007
via Art Threat
A film review by Shane Lavalette /Journal, November 10, 2007:
Orson Welles is generally known for his 1938 radio broadcast of the science fiction novella War of the Worlds. If not for that, then for co-writing, directing, producing and starring in Citizen Kane (1941), commonly referred to as “the greatest film ever made.” Orson Welles is, however, not so known for his last major film, F For Fake (1974) – a pseudo-documentary and playful meditation on “art, experts and fakery.” Here”s a quick synopsis taken from The Criterion Collection (released the film on DVD in 2005):
Trickery. Deceit. Magic. In Orson Welles” free-form documentary F for Fake, the legendary filmmaker (and self-described charlatan) gleefully engages the central preoccupation of his career””the tenuous line between truth and illusion, art and lies. Beginning with portraits of world-renowned art forger Elmyr de Hory and his equally devious biographer, Clifford Irving, Welles embarks on a dizzying cinematic journey that simultaneously exposes and revels in fakery and fakers of all stripes””not the least of whom is Welles himself. Charming and inventive, F for Fake is an inspired prank and a searching examination of the essential duplicity of cinema.