Creative Activism - The Art of the Prank

March 2, 2026March 2, 2026

The US Department of Hate

George Orwell was right…

“The US Department of Hate” by Coco Fusco, Noah Fischer, Pablo Helguera, Hyperallergic, February 20, 2026.

The Siren is back for a fourth edition. Read, ponder, and rise up before it’s too late.

The editors of The Siren have been thinking about the parallels between our current political moment and the dystopian world of George Orwell’s novel 1984 for quite a while, but the escalating efforts by the Trump Administration to wage war against immigrants and silence critics compelled us to devote our latest issue to highlighting those connections. After witnessing the killing, torture, and forced expulsion of immigrants by federal agents, as well as the execution of US citizens and the criminalization of activists, we have no choice but to conclude that Orwell’s “Hate Week” has arrived.

We’ve done our best to bring the perspectives of those who are under attack, and who have survived totalitarian regimes, to the foreground. Writers Junot Diaz, Enrique Del Risco, and Pamela Sneed shed light on the ways that authoritarianism is taking over our world. Political cartoonists hailing from Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, the Philippines, and the Americas offer their perspectives on the impact of tyrannical forces in our lives. Read the whole article here.

March 2, 2026

Hangin’ in the Louvre

He made a fake ICE deportation tip line. Then a kindergarten teacher called.

GUILTY… Until proven otherwise.

“He made a fake ICE deportation tip line. Then a kindergarten teacher called.” by Drew Harwell, Washington Post, February 20, 2026.

A Nashville comedian’s deportation hotline, set up as a joke, has gone viral among viewers who say it shows the “banality of evil personified.”

Ben Palmer, a stand-up comic in Nashville, has built a following online with his signature style of elaborate deadpan pranks, stumbling his way onto court TV shows and pyramid-scheme calls to poke fun at the latent absurdities of American life.

Then in January of last year, he had an idea for a new bit: He’d set up a fake tip line that people could use to report anyone they thought was an undocumented immigrant. It was darker than his other stunts, but it felt topical, the kind of challenge he wanted to try. At the very least, he thought, he might get a few calls he could talk about at his next show. Read the whole article here.

February 11, 2026

Pataphysics Lives On!

Inspired by Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi (1896), Trump gets his comeuppance in Germany. Merde!

“‘Monster’s Paradise,’ lampooning US President Donald Trump, has world premiere at Hamburg Opera,” by Ronald Blum, AP News, February 3, 2026.

HAMBURG, Germany (AP) — Tobias Kratzer spoke in disbelief ahead of the world premiere of “Monster’s Paradise” by Olga Neuwirth and Elfriede Jelinek, which features a gluttonous, ravenous, insatiable President-King, lampooning U.S. President Donald Trump.

“The metaphor has become a reality,” the Hamburg State Opera artistic director said in his office Sunday morning. “I’m really hoping in — what is it, eight hours? — the piece is not completely outdated because up until now it has always gone closer and closer to not being a satire but being reality.”

Jelinek, 79 and winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature, collaborated with Neuwirth for the first time in two decades, the Austrian duo combining on a German-language libretto. The 57-year-old Neuwirth won the 2022 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, three years after she became the first woman composer with a work presented at the Vienna State Opera. Read the whole article here.