…Exploring the role of the prankster as artist, activist and social observer and the significance of the prank in society.
“Joey Skaggs: Stop BioPEEP,” the 10th film in the “Joey Skaggs Satire and Art Activism, 1960s to the Present and Beyond” oral history series, is screening at the New Jersey Film Festival at 7 pm on Friday, September 20, 2024. It’s also available to stream online for 24 hours. Details are here.
30 years ago, I perpetrated a media hoax called Dog Meat Soup in which, pretending to be a Korean entrepreneur, I solicited dog shelters for their unwanted dogs to be used as food for human consumption. My intent was to expose hostility and racism that permeates both the public discourse and the media’s coverage. As I expected, all hell broke loose, as gullible animal lovers spewed outrageous invectives against ALL Asians (they apparently couldn’t tell the difference between Koreans, Japanese, Chinese and others) accusing them of outrageous acts of violence against animals and telling all Asians to go back to their countries and cook their own babies.
This cultural intolerance is eerily like what’s happening now based on fake information perpetrated by politicians with an agenda, targeting immigrants and accusing them of eating family pets in Springfield Ohio. Prejudiced and biased opinions about this are dominating our news and social media platforms. Let’s not be fooled by reactionary politicians who have a political agenda to confuse and divide the public.
Check out John Tierney’s 1994 expose of the Dog Meat Soup hoax for The New York Sunday Times Magazine.
And watch the Dog Meat Soup segment of a 2003 ABC TV 20/20 interview.
Check out Anita LaBelle’s wonderful film review of the oral history film “Joey Skaggs: Stop BioPEEP” for New Jersey Stage. This film, which is about Joey Skaggs’ 1998 hoax Stop BioPEEP, is screening at the New Jersey Film Festival on September 20, 2024. Festival details are in the link.
Joey Skaggs: Stop BioPEEP is the tenth installment of the oral history series Joey Skaggs Satire and Art Activism, 1960s to the Present and Beyond, a film episodic that the New Jersey Film Festival has shown every episode of. Giuseppe Scaggoli, or as he is better known, Joey Skaggs has used artistic mediums and prank behavior to push pivotal societal issues into questioning. Through news clips, old prank footage, and modern interview excerpts conducted by Joey Skaggs and Judy Drosd, each episodic endeavor is thoroughly documented and hilariously explained. Skaggs’ work, though often gaining controversy at first, seems to always later reach critical acclaim due to retrospect and perhaps his own air of anthropological foresight. In this latest episode, Skaggs targets the still-topical issues of genetic mutation and government intervention, except this time, his audience goes global. Unfolding in 1998 when Joseph Howard (Joey Skaggs) plays the role of a corporate whistleblower, he foils BioPEEP’s 1997 corporate project to genetically alter and addict humans to chosen products, thus creating “consumer junkies” and targeted “gene-ocide”. When the information is leaked to the press via Skaggs, protests against BioPEEP occur in both the U.S. and Australia. Even more unexpected, was the mass alarm that the whole affair caused in Slovenia. Whether international conspiracy or guerilla artwork, audiences will be shocked by the inner workings and affairs of the piece, including the reach one story can take, and the media’s lust to grab any sensational story rather than the hard-hitting truth.
It is with sadness that I have to say goodbye to my long-time friend Steffani Martin who left us September 1, 2024. I knew Steff for over 50 years. She was a profound thinker and was extremely funny with a quick wit. Whenever I called on her to take on a role as a co-conspirator in one of my performances, she was always there for me. She appeared in the Fat Squad portraying a “fat client” when I hoaxed David Hartman on Good Morning America in 1986.
In 1990, she played a telephone receptionist for both Comacocoon and Hair Today, LTD., launched simultaneously from the same apartment, and she appeared on Italy’s RAI TV coverage of the two performances. In 1995, she played a computer technician in the Solomon Project, my hoax about AI replacing the American judicial system, a fabrication that CNN fell for hook, line and sinker.
In real life, among other endeavors, she was a college administrator and later a pioneer supporting equal rights for women, particularly in the field of pornography. She was sought-after as a spokesperson on porn made specifically for women by women. Steff deserves a long and colorful obit to laud her many accomplishments, as well as a book about her life.
“Joey Skaggs: The Solomon Project” (16:22) will screen at Miami Web Fest
In 1995, Dr. Joseph Bonuso, Ph.D. (a.k.a. Joey Skaggs), announced that he, along with 150 computer scientists and attorneys specializing in artificial intelligence, had developed a solution to the crisis of American jurisprudence, They were poised to radically revamp the entire judicial system using a distributed program running on a set of super computers that could deliberate on evidence and render swift, unassailable equal justice for all, putting judges in the back seat and relegating juries to history.
This is the tenth film in the oral history series “Joey Skaggs Satire and Art Activism oral history series“.