Prank News - The Art of the Prank

August 26, 2017December 15, 2023

ART OF THE PRANK to screen Sept 11 in NYC

This screening is free and everyone is invited!

SVA After School Special screening

Andrea Marini’s award winning documentary film, ART OF THE PRANK, about the life and work of Joey Skaggs, has been selected to open the SVA Alumni Film and Animation Festival at the beautiful SVA Theatre on West 23rd Street in New York.

When:
September 11, 2017

Where:
SVA Theatre
333 West 23rd Street
New York, NY

Joey Skaggs will be there and will do a Q&A after the screening.

This will be a great chance to see the film on the big screen in New York
before it is released on the digital platforms like iTunes, Amazon, Googleplay in October
(stay tuned for details).

TICKET DETAILS:
THIS SCREENING IS FREE!
General Admission RSVPs via Eventbrite are appreciated
but not necessary, and do not guarantee admittance.
Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis.
Doors will open approximately 30 minutes prior to each screening.

May 21, 2017December 15, 2023

Emoluments Welcome

Update: A new work from artist Robin Bell–Artist Projects Image Of Jeff Sessions In KKK Hood Across DOJ Building

The Trump Administration is so riddled with scandal, pranksters can hardly keep up with desecrating Trump’s properties. Thanks Naomi.

“Artist Projects ‘Pay Trump Bribes Here’ Message on President’s DC Hotel”
by Nick Visser
The Huffington Post
May 16, 2017

A multimedia artist caused a commotion in Washington, D.C., late Monday when he projected a series of images on Trump International Hotel that skewered the president over accusations about his business ties with foreign governments.

Robin Bell, a Washington-based artist known for his political projections, said the work was meant to highlight benefits Donald Trump continues to reap since his ascension to the presidency, including revenue generated at his D.C. hotel. The artwork, which went up around 10 p.m. local time, quickly spread on Twitter before it was shut down by hotel security.

“It seems like a very clear case of his impropriety,” Bell said. “It”s a great visualization of a clear-cut example of the laws that he”s breaking.”

Staff reached at Trump International Hotel declined to comment about the messages. Read more.

March 3, 2017December 15, 2023

R.I.P. Gustav Metzger

Gustav Metzger, a fiercely political artist, challenged and mocked consumerism and inspired several generations of creative “auto-destructivists”. He was 90 years old.

“Gustav Metzger, Pioneer of Auto-Destructive Art, Dies at 90”
by Mark Brown
The Guardian
March 1, 2017

Gustav Metzger, the inventor of auto-destructive art who spent a lifetime baffling, infuriating and thrilling audiences, as well as influencing generations of younger artists, has died aged 90.

A spokeswoman for the artist said he died at his home in London.

Metzger was born in Nuremberg to Polish-Jewish parents in 1926 and arrived with his brother in Britain on the Kindertransport in 1939. Much of his immediate family, including his parents, were murdered in the Holocaust.

He studied art in Cambridge, London, Antwerp and Oxford, and by the late 1950s was heavily involved in anti-capitalist and anti-consumerist movements, as well as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

This political activism was the motivation for his auto-destructive art manifesto of 1959 – which he described “as a desperate last-minute subversive political weapon … an attack on the capitalist system … an attack also on art dealers and collectors who manipulate modern art for profit”. Read more.

February 8, 2017December 15, 2023

Trump’s Security Detail Unimpressed With Ballsy Golf Course Stunt

Noted British prankster Simon Brodkin hits Donald Trump where it hurts, and columnist Pat Kane reflects. (Feel free to share your own testicular puns through social media.)

“Why Serious Stuff Still Demands a Sense of Humour”
by Pat Kane
The National
February 4, 2017

So if you”re going to prank Donald Trump by chucking swastika-covered golfballs at him, as he opens one of his tremendous courses, you should do it at Trump Turnberry.

According to the comedian Simon Brodkin, whose stage name is Lee Nelson and who perpetrated said stunt last June, he was slumped in custody when a Scottish sergeant noted: “You”re that guy”.

“In that moment I realised I had an ally,” recalled Brodkin this week. “They loosened the cuffs so the blood went back to my fingers and asked if I wanted some Lucozade. Big love for the Scottish police.”

In next week”s Channel Four documentary Britain”s Greatest Hoaxer, Brodkin also relates that the Scottish police refused to let Trump”s secret service people interview him. Instead they sped him to the nearest airport and told him to “get the hell out of the country”.

As the furore rises around Trump”s potential state visit, the question of how modern dissent and protest is most effectively expressed comes to the fore. On this occasion, should it be a dignified boycott by political leaders (as all the Scottish political leaders did last June), and a protest action mutually agreed between activists and police? Or is Brodkin”s kind of hoax the best way to get an oppositional message under the plates of the Great Narcissist?

Watching the enthusiastic Brodkin”s preparations for his hoax – involving disguise, costume (a Trump Turnberry sweatshirt), bags hidden under hotel beds and the ludicrously easy detection of the Sunbed God”s itinerary – you imagine this kind of prank will never be achievable again.

The scene where his goons are scrabbling around the grass, filling red Trump caps with Nazi-balls, is inordinately pleasing. But no doubt the full apparatus – human and technological – of American and British national security will be sweeping and detecting every clump of cells that gets anywhere near the man-baby. Read more.

October 24, 2016December 15, 2023

James O’Keefe’s October Surprise

It wouldn’t feel like an election year without a fresh sting from right-wing culture jammer James O’Keefe.

“Everything We Know About the Latest James O’Keefe Video Sting”
by Philip Elliot
Time
October 18, 2016

James O'keefe

The latest ‘gotcha” videos from conservative provocateur James O”Keefe”s Project Veritas Action have some shocking claims that, if they are true, would indicate Democrats are playing dirty to get Hillary Clinton elected.

In one video, a contractor seems to brag about sending homeless and mentally ill people to harass Republicans. Someone identified as a Democratic National Committee staffer appears to claim credit for pushing Republican contender Donald Trump”s rally in Chicago toward violence. In another, consultants look like they are describing a plan to bus voters across state lines and registering immigrants in the country illegally to vote.

But if O”Keefe”s previous efforts to infiltrate and expose his foes such as ACORN and NPR are to offer a hint, there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical. O”Keefe has previously spliced videos together to imply its subjects were saying things they were not.

Even so, the latest video has cost someone identified by the Democratic National Committee chairwoman “a temporary, regional sub-contractor” his job. Another established DNC vendor gave up his contract. Another protester who says she was at the Chicago melee linked herself to Clinton”s campaign, although she was paid for work in Arizona in the weeks before anything happened in Illinois.

The release of the videos made conservatives giddy that O”Keefe had claimed yet more scalps for his long-standing effort to show liberal hypocrisy through hidden-camera footage. And more embarrassing videos are expected to come before Election Day, O”Keefe promised. Donald Trump urged his audiences in Colorado on Tuesday to go online and watch them. Read more.