There are two great film festival opportunities to watch “Joey Skaggs: Metamorphosis, Cockroach Miracle Cure“, the sixth film in the new oral history web series, “Joey Skaggs Satire and Art Activism, 1960s to the Present and Beyond“:

  
 
The first, the International Social Change Film Festival, starts on Monday, September 12, 2022 with an online-only screening available for a month. Later in the Fall this festival will have in-person screenings. The time and place are TBA.
 
 
On September 30, 2022, the New Jersey International Film Festival will host an in-person screening at 7pm. Starting at midnight the same day, the film is available for online streaming for 24 hours. Details are here.

Coverage in New Jersey Stage: Cockroaches, Hidden Worlds, Dancing to Agatha Christie, and Forgotten Children are among Highlights of New Jersey Film Festival in September, by Gary Wien, New Jersey Stage, September 2, 2022
 
 

In 1971, Joey Skaggs heard about a beautiful 1890s opera house in Earlville, New York, that was going to be torn down and replaced with a parking lot.

To save it, preserve it, and attempt to return it to its former glory, he bought it. He then donated it to a passionate group of young local people with the stipulation that it would never be sold for a profit and that it would only be used as a cultural performance and art center. Joey’s full story about the opera house is here.

Today, in 2022, the Earlville Opera House is thriving and will celebrate its golden anniversary on September 24, 2022.

Congratulations are due to everyone over the years who has helped this incredible cultural treasure to thrive!

Proclamation excerpt:

Bait your hook and land a great fish story — “Joey Skaggs: Fish Condos”, the short doc with a big message! Available online for 24 hours starting February 11, 2022 at midnight.

Don’t miss this chance to see “Joey Skaggs: Fish Condos”, Episode #5 of the new Oral History Series, “Joey Skaggs Satire and Art Activism”. The 19 minute film is streaming as part of the New Jersey Film Festival Short Program 2 and will be available for 24 hours anywhere, starting tonight at midnight.

Here’s a beautifully insightful review by Justin Almodivar in today’s New Jersey Stage Magazine.

Plus, Our Favorite Stories In Film – An Interview With Joey Skaggs.

39 years after JoJo, the King of the New York Gypsies and leader of Gypsies Against Stereotypical Propaganda (G.A.S.P), launched a media campaign calling for the renaming of the Gypsy Moth, The New York Times reports that the Entomological Society of America is removing gypsy moth as its recognized common name (pdf of NY Times article).

The full story is on joeyskaggs.com.

In 1969 on Valentine’s Day, artist Joey Skaggs satirized male chauvinist Wall Street workers by stretching a fifty foot brassiere across the U.S. Treasury building on Wall Street in New York City. He called it his Big Bust.

Read the whole story here.

50′ Bra Video (no audio)

The back story on Francine Gottfried (from Wikipedia)

Francine Gottfried (born 1947) is a clerical worker in New York City’s Financial District who acquired sudden brief celebrity when, in the space of two weeks in September 1968, increasing numbers of men began watching her as she walked to work. Newspapers dubbed her “Wall Street’s Sweater Girl” as her curvaceous figure seemed to be the sole reason that crowds formed spontaneously around her whenever she appeared in the financial district.

Gottfried started working at Chemical Bank in the financial district on May 27, 1968. By late August, a small band of creeps had noticed her, and that she always followed the same route. They timed her daily arrival and started spreading the word to their colleagues and co-workers. For three weeks, the band of gawkers grew exponentially larger until on September 18 there were 2,000 people waiting for her. (more…)

Joe Enright takes a walk down memory lane and reviews Joey Skaggs Satire and Art Activism, 1960s to the Present and Beyond, the new oral history series debuting at the New Jersey Film Festival on Friday, February 12, 2021

Joey Skaggs: 60 Years of Satire, Psychic Attorneys & Mobile Confessionals, by Joe Enright, Argyle Heights, February 10, 2021

In the mid-1960s, a Lower East Side artist organized crucifixion performances in the East Village on Easter Sunday, protesting social injustice and the Vietnam War. They created…wait for it…wait for it…controversy! The cops swarmed and he was busted. This inspired some Hollywood filmmakers to option his life story for a movie. To which the young man responded: “What life story? I’m only 20!” Indeed, there would be so much more to his story.

Joey Skaggs went on to become a satirist and prankster with an extraordinary history of accomplishments, only some of which were crammed into the hilarious 2015 documentary, Art of the Prank. But many scholars also consider him a progenitor of “culture jamming” and “reality hacking,” decades before such high-falutin’ terms were invented to describe his sly takeover of the language and visual trappings of American culture in order to subversively critique it. His pranks are never vicious, never illegal, but they do require a deadpan sense of humor, good acting skills, well-crafted press releases, financing for props, costumes, videos and above all, a wonderful imagination with the planning necessary to carry it all forward.

Skaggs is foremost a very versatile artist, but when pressed for a definitive occupational title I could pin on him for this profile, Joey chose “Pataphysician,” defined by the 19th century French writer Alfred Jarry as a practitioner of “the science of imaginary solutions.” Among Skaggs’ long list of solutions that have brought joy to many fellow citizens, and embarrassment to bamboozled reporters and societal gate-keepers, some stand out for their sheer audacity. Read the whole article here.

Join us at the 34th Annual April Fools’ Day Parade and 3rd Annual Trumpathon, April 1, 2019. The theme this year is “Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire.” The Grand Marshall, once again, is Donald Trump, who will be wearing flaming pants and pushing his Trump Kool-Aid Cart.

Watch the prep video here:

Chased by a mob of fact-checkers screaming, “Liar, liar, pants on fire!” Trump will steer the parade to Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue where the crowd of Trump look-alikes will toast his greatness while drinking his Kool-Aid.

The parade leaves from 5th Avenue & 59th Street at 12:00 Noon and will make one stop at Trump Tower to toast the President with his own Kool-Aid.

Read the details and print a Trump mask to bring to the parade here:
https://joeyskaggs.com/april-fools-day-parade-press-release.

A good prank attempts to shed light on issues to change perceptions or awareness by jolting sensibilities. MutualArt pays homage to Joey Skaggs’ April Fools’ Day Parade. In 2017, it became real with Trump’s Golden Throne.

A Look Behind Some of the Biggest Pranks in Art History
by Adam Heardman
MutualArt
October 8, 2018

Pretty-much-anonymous street artist Banksy was back in the headlines this weekend thanks to his self-shredding picture. We take a look at other classic art-world pranks that have confounded and delighted through history.

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As a street artist and activist, Banksy’s career has consisted almost exclusively of anti-establishment pranks and stunts. On Friday evening, at Sotheby’s Contemporary Art auction, the hammer fell on a print of his Balloon Girl image at a price of $1.1 million. Seconds later, an alarm sounded through the room and the print began feeding through the bottom of its own frame, inside which was a hidden shredder, leaving half of the work in ribbons.

Promptly, the piece’s value doubled. Commodification appears to move as quickly as protest in the contemporary market-place.

Speculation already abounds as to how far Banksy collaborated with Sotheby’s in setting up the stunt. It certainly seems far-fetched that the auction house’s handlers wouldn’t have noticed the machinery in the frame.

But the impact of the prank has been huge, bringing Banksy his biggest burst of media-attention since Dismaland closed. His market-value has increased. Haters have been won over. The search for his true identity is back on. All in all, it’s been a successful prank.

As a space in which publicity, politics, and aesthetics can meet, ‘the prank’ is an established mode within the art world. Here are some of the more prominent and successful examples from art history.

1. Hogarth and Wilson’s Rembrandt Roast – Read this here.

2. Joey Skaggs’ Fake ‘Fake Parade’

Prank artist Joey Skaggs

Joey Skaggs is the maybe the most prolific prankster out there. Over the years, the performance artist and writer has staged the thieving of celebrity sperm, “attempted” to “windsurf across the Pacific”, and exposed Western racism by fooling people into thinking that a Chinese businessman was buying dogs to make into soup.

Every April Fools’ Day since 1986, Skaggs has held a Parade with floats, banners, streamers extensive press coverage and pertinent contemporary themes. Except that the Parade doesn’t ever actually take place, existing purely within the press-hype. Fake News.

Until last year, that is. In a neat reversal of his own prank, Skaggs actually did hold a real-life parade on April 1st, 2017 after 31 years of pretending. The march functioned as a protest against Donald Trump’s presidency and was also the largest gathering of Trump-look-alikes in history. The imposters marched to Trump Tower and sat tweeting on golden thrones. Maybe Joey Skaggs’ greatest prank was to make Fake News real.

3. Stromberg’s Stickers – Read the rest of this article here.

How to get the attention of an audience on the go…

“German artists stage a quirky performance for passing trains”
by Rusty Blazenhoff
BoingBoing
September 21, 2017

Over 500 volunteers and residents in the “Bewegtes Land” art project entertained passengers with a super fun and quirky art performance, all happening along the train’s nearly 19-mile route.

Watch the video to see how they surprised their moving audience along the way.

The route went from Jena to Naumburg, a quiet area in the Saale valley’s countryside not known for tourists. Read more.

Donald Trump’s real estate holdings have provided excellent venues for pranksters, performance artists, and activists of all stripes. The Russian activist punk band Pussy Riot is using Trump’s Russia controversies to draw attention to the plight of political prisoners – and they know of what they protest.

“Pussy Riot storms Trump Tower”
by Gabrielle Fonrouge
The New York Post
October 24, 2017

Pussy Riot is at it again.

The infamous Russian feminist punk rock group, clad in bright dresses and wool masks that covered their faces, stormed Trump Tower on Monday night to protest the incarceration of political prisoners.

Hidden behind their usual makeshift balaclavas, this time in green, pink and purple, the women unfurled a massive sign from an upper floor of the 58-story skyscraper that said "Free Sentsov" and dropped what appears to be a series of photographs, [the] video shows.

Frantic security guards rushed up the stairs to stop the girls, who were not arrested for their actions as portions of Trump Tower are open to the public.

"We're calling on you today to raise attention to two guys from Ukraine: film director Oleg Sentsov and anarchist Olexandr Kolchenko, who are in Russian prison right now. Sentsov got 20 years in prison, Kolchenko got 10 years. Because they, like you, did not sit by - they were fighting for their freedom in Crimea, which was annexed by Putin," the bad-girl group posted on Facebook.

"We decided to do an action right now, while we are in New York, with activists here because we believe there are no borders to our solidarity." Read more.

The Story of the ‘Portofess,' the Prank Confessional Booth at the 1992 Democratic Convention
by Sarah Laskow
Atlas Obscura
July 14, 2017

Artist Joey Skaggs fooled everyone and pedaled off.

At 1992's Democratic National Convention, a Dominican priest showed up on a tricycle. Attached to the back was a confessional booth, with a sign that read "Portofess." The priest said he biked to New York, where the convention was held, all the way from California. The church, according to the priest, needed to take a "more aggressive stance and go where the sinners are." He was ready to take confession from any politician who wanted or needed it.

The Portofess made papers all over the country. But soon enough Reuters revealed that the Archdiocese in California had never heard of this priest, who called himself Father Anthony Joseph or, sometimes, Father William. All other efforts to find him after the convention failed, as well, because he wasn't a priest at all, but a character conceived by artist and activist Joey Skaggs, who has perfected the art of pranking the media.

Skaggs's works include "Fish Condos" for upwardly mobile guppies, "Santa's Missile Tow," which featured Santa and his elves bringing a missile to the United Nations, and many other sculptures and performances. He talked to Atlas Obscura about what it took to create the Portofess and what reactions he got from the police, protestors, and the public. Read the full interview here.

Talk show host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones began his career as an Austin eccentric, known for his associations with comedian Joe Rogan and filmmaker Richard Linklater. His paleoconservative media profile has risen steadily since the election of Barack Obama – he's now better known for egging on Charlie Sheen's meltdown, describing the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre as "crisis actors," and throwing his bulk behind the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump.

Now, he's engaged in a vicious custody battle, and his lawyers are suggesting that he's not an increasingly unhinged paranoid maniac, but a performance artist playing a character.

Blogger Ken White adds some insight on the importance of this story.

“Alex Jones Says He's A Performance Artist. Surprisingly, Actual Performance Artists Agree.”
by Priscilla Frank
The Huffington Post
April 19, 2017

Following his 2015 divorce, far-right radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is embroiled in an ugly and somewhat bizarre custody battle.

In response to his ex-wife's claims that the InfoWars founder and Pizzagate controversy propagator is "not a stable person" — and therefore should not receive custody of their children — Jones is arguing that his publicly jacked-up, trumped-up, vitriolic rants are merely instances of "performance art."

Jones' lawyer Randall Wilhite outlined the novel defense, telling those present at a recent pretrial hearing that Jones' InfoWars persona does not reflect who he is as a person. "He's playing a character," Wilhite said. "He is a performance artist."

Jones himself made a similar claim in early April while facing criticism — and potential criminal proceedings — after calling Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) an "archetypal cocksucker" and threatening in an expletive-laden rant to "beat [his] goddamn ass." Jones later posted a follow-up video describing the comments as "clearly tongue-in-cheek and basically art performance, as I do in my rants, which I admit I do, as a form of art."

Jones' most famed "performances" to date include calling the 9/11 attacks an inside job, claiming the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School was "completely fake with actors," and suggesting that the American government is "encouraging homosexuality with chemicals so that people don't have children." Is it possible that Jones has been putting on some sort of persona to stir up controversy and garner public attention? Of course. It is unlikely, however, and ultimately dangerous, that Jones' approximately 2 million listeners — including his most famed fan, President Donald Trump — were all aware that Jones' red-faced tirades are for show.

In calling himself a performance artist, Jones is referencing a controversial live art tradition with roots in the 1950s and ‘60s, involving movements like Gutai and Fluxus and individuals like Marina Abramović and Vito Acconci. One of the earliest artists recognized for her performances is Carolee Schneemann, who was recently awarded the Venice Biennale's Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. In one of her most iconic performances, 1975's "Interior Scroll," Schneemann stood nude on a table, painted her body with mud, and extracted a scroll from her vagina, from which she proceeded to read.

When asked about Jones' performance art defense, Schneemann responded swiftly: "I think it's all a load of crap," she told The Huffington Post. But ultimately, any attempts to strictly classify what is or is not performance art, she clarified, are futile. Read more.

From Dino D’Annibale:

On Trend:Marina Abramovic, Meet Chelsea Handler? How Standup Comedy Became the New Performance Art
by Chloe Wyma
Artspace.com
August 28, 2015

No longer at the margins of the art world, practitioners combining art and comedy are now attracting critical buzz and institutional recognition.

Dynasty Handbag

“Tonight I have cooked up””let me use your language”””˜curated”™ a show tonight,” the artist Jibz Cameron joked in the opening monologue of “Good Morning Good Evening Feelings,” her one-woman motivational variety show at the Kitchen last April. Cameron, performing as her spandex-clad, rubber-faced alter ego Dynasty Handbag, wore pancake makeup and an ill-fitting fluorescent pink satin waistcoat over a flesh-colored unitard. “I hope no one was thinking they were gonna see art,” she goaded the audience. “Are there art people here?” The ensuing lighting-fast hour included a lesson in how to make a smoothie out of immaterial fears and anxieties, an incoherent karaoke rendition of Madonna”™s “Vogue,” and an interview with Womanhood (personified by a British-accented cartoon crotch in white panties.)

Cameron”™s performances, which draw liberally from the conventions of standup comedy, are undeniably funny””but they also represent a new hybrid art form. From Jaimie Warren”™s bizarre vaudeville to Jayson Musson (a.k.a Hennessy Youngman”™s) viral Youtube sendups of art world orthodoxies with a dose of hip-hop swagger, contemporary art and alternative comedy have never been more intertwined. In certain cases, they”™re indistinguishable.

Watch the Hennessy Youngman video

“It”™s a cultural zeitgeist thing. I think standup is having an interesting moment, a kind of renaissance,” says Jill Dawsey, curator of the recent “Laugh In: Art Comedy Performance” at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. She counts experimental comics Maria Bamford and Reggie Watts among those who have expanded the genre to embrace unprecedented weirdness. “There”™s this formal kinship where there are more experimental comedic acts that resemble performance art, and then there are a lot of artists who are doing something more like standup comedy.”

Read the rest of the article here.

Afghan artist dons armour to counter men’s street harassment
by Emma Graham-Harrison
The Guardian
12 March 2015

Kubra Khademi”™s eight-minute walk in Kabul wearing steel armour that emphasised her body shape inspires anger and death threats

Kubra Khademi was surrounded by a mainly male crowd, which threw insults and stones during her walk. Photograph: Twitter

It took a month for Kubra Khademi to get the armour made exactly to her design; hours spent with a quiet, patient metalworker who usually made stoves.

The performance artist was an unusual customer on a street of dusty workshops in Kabul, where she chose her craftsman for his lack of curiosity about the outrageous steel plates she sketched out.

In a deeply conservative country where women are expected to shroud their figure and almost every inch of bare skin beyond hands, face and feet, she wanted steel armour that slipped over and emphasised her breasts, belly, crotch and bottom.

“He was a quiet man,” she recalls. “He didn”™t question me at first, maybe because of my attitude. Then he asked: “˜What the hell is it?”™, because other people were asking him.”

It was in fact part of a vanishing occurrence in the Afghan capital: a piece of performance art, planned by 27-year-old Khademi. The armour would be both protection and a defiant rebuke to the men whose groping hands and leering remarks make Kabul”™s streets uncomfortable for almost any woman who walks them unchaperoned.

Photograph: Massoud Hossaini

It was also an almost unimaginable provocation in a city where pornography may be avidly consumed in private, but women”™s appearance is fiercely policed in public. Her performance lasted less than 10 minutes, but pictures soon ricocheted around social media, drawing anger and death threats – genuine worries in a country where women have been murdered for working as news anchors, actors and singers.

Read the rest of this article here.

Emma Sulkowicz says her senior thesis is more performance art than an act of protest. Perhaps it is both.

Columbia Student Will Carry a Mattress Everywhere Until Her Alleged Rapist Is Expelled
By Jessica Roy
New York Magazine
September 2, 2014

Emma Sulkowicz says she was raped in her own dorm bed by a classmate on the first day of her sophomore year of college. Since then, a substantial amount of her time at Columbia University has been spent trying to convince college administrators, police, and even friends that what happened to her really happened, that it was rape, and that her rapist deserves to be punished for what he did.


[Read The Cut’s September 4 interview with Sulkowicz here.]

Sulkowicz is one of 23 students who are part of a federal Title IX complaint filed against Columbia in April for mishandling sexual-assault cases. Though she and two other students reported that the same student had assaulted them, all of their claims were swept under the rug, and the male student was not expelled from campus.

…Now a senior majoring in visual arts, Sulkowicz has devised a senior thesis rooted in performance art that will allow her to protest the fact that her rapist continues to study on campus. She has committed to carrying around a twin-size dorm mattress everywhere she goes on campus, to classes and appointments, “for as long as I attend the same school as my rapist.” Read the rest of this article here.

Watch video of Sulkowicz explaining her thesis project: