…Exploring the role of the prankster as artist, activist and social observer and the significance of the prank in society.
Whether you’re raising awareness about food waste or trying to keep people from smoking, tons of carrots seem to be the way to do it…
32 tons of carrots dumped on London street for art installation, by Ben Hooper, September 30, 2020
Angry French tobacconists dump tons of carrots on Paris streets, by Robert Myles, July 24 2015
Read a Trump lie on air at Radio Free Brooklyn and help promote voter registration.
Wall of Lies
A public art project displaying more than 20,000 Trump lies with voter registration drive
October 3rd – October 4th noon to 7pm
at Pine Box Rock Shop, 12 Grattan Street, Bushwick
Independent community radio station Radio Free Brooklyn (RFB) announces “Wall of Lies,” a groundbreaking visual art project one month before the presidential election of 2020. The project demonstrates the unprecedented lack of honesty from our current Commander-in-Chief.
Wall of Lies is a 50-foot by 10-foot outdoor mural with the 20,000+ lies told by Donald Trump (so far) while in office, documented and fact-checked by The Washington Post. Wall of Lies will be on public view on Grattan St from noon Saturday Oct 3rd until 7p Sunday October 4th.
“The countdown to Election Day is underway and Americans are already beginning to vote across the nation, in this time where misinformation is rampant, we feel it’s vital to use our voice to call out these untruths in a visually-provoking way,” says RFB Executive Director Tom Tenney.
The socially-distanced live event accompanying the mural includes a voter registration drive, and a live Radio Free Brooklyn broadcast on Sunday from 3-6 pm, Radio Free Brooklyn will be inviting members of the public to read some of Trump’s most egregious lies on the air.
“The original idea of the project was for a radio marathon, 24/7 on-air reading of all of Trumps’ lies on Radio Free Brooklyn for a full week before the election,” said Tenney, who has been in touch with The Washington Post and granted access to its database of Trump’s false and misleading statements. “However, once the pandemic hit and our operations moved to remote locations, the project was shelved. It was artist Phil Buehler who suggested reviving it as a visual art project.”
“It was just too good an idea not to happen somehow,” Buehler added, “since I’ve been making large-scale panoramic photographs of political events, a gigantic mural of all the lies seemed the perfect match to Tom’s original idea. Seen from a distance, it looks like chaos – perhaps an apt metaphor for this presidency, but when you step closer, you can read the individual lies, which are in chronological order color-coded by categories like coronavirus, Russia, immigration, the environment and jobs. Then when you step back, you can recognize patterns in Trump’s lying.”
The final piece of the project came together when Heather Rush, the owner of Pine Box Rock Shop, coordinated with grassroots voting activists Rep Your Block to set up voter registration next to the mural.
Read more in the Bushwick Daily: “Wall of Lies” Mural in Bushwick Will Display Over 20,000 Donald Trump Lies.
Don’t look down Mr. Trump.
Trump To Be Greeted In England By 650-Foot Crop Circle With A Very Rude Message
by Ed Mazza
Huffington Post
July 12, 2018
Massive message should be visible from the left window of the president’s chopper on Friday.
President Donald Trump may not want to look out the window as he passes over the English countryside later this week.
An artist has turned part of a field at Moat Farm in Stoke Mandeville into a 650-foot crop circle with “Fuck Trump” written in Russian, according to local newspaper Bucks Herald.
The Herald said the crop circle should be visible from the president’s chopper as he flies to a meeting with Prime Minister Theresa May at Chequers, the premier’s country home.
Read the rest of this article here.
Update from thetab.com about artist, Ginger (thanks Sal): Meet the sculptor behind the naked Donald Trump statues
A Cleveland-based group, INDECLINE, erected flacid Trump statues overnight in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Cleveland and Seattle.
Wall Street Journal reporter Josh Dawsey tweeted the New York City Parks Department comment about the statue’s removal:
Watch the “making of” video:
Read more here, here, and here. Thanks Nancy.
From W.J. Elvin: Not that it’s too difficult to find bizarre humor in politics today but here’s an interesting sidelight from former colleague Glenn Garvin.
Scamsters, jokers: this PAC”s for you
by Glenn Garvin
Miami Herald
September 5, 2015
Finally it”s arrived: High-rolling fat-cat campaign finance for the rest of us! The days when it took Donald Trump”s bank account and a battalion of lawyers to buy and sell political candidates like bags of potatoes are behind us. Now anybody with access to a computer, 20 minutes to spare and a low boredom threshold can set up a political action committee to funnel unlimited campaign contributions to the issue or candidate of his choice, no matter how weird, prankish or “” let”s be honest here “”stupid.
Seriously “” well, “seriously” is probably not exactly the right word, but you get it “” nothing is too bizarre, too arcane or too ridiculous to have its own super PAC. If you”re sick of American politicians who badmouth Darth Vader, you can give money to The Empire Strikes PAC, which helps candidates who favor “the construction of a safer, more x-wing resistant Death Star.”
And if you grieve that we haven”t had a bewhiskered president in the 122 years since Benjamin Harrison left the White House, send all the money you want to Bearded Entrepreneurs for the Advancement of a Responsible Democracy (that”s right, BEARD PAC), which imperiously decrees that “the time is now to bring facial hair back into politics.”
And yes, there”s even a PAC for the uncounted hordes who believe Virginia psychologist Anna Hornberger”s cat Xavier would make a good president: the My Cat Xavier for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow PAC. (Even you dog people have to admit that a president who comes with a full-time shrink attached is an idea whose time may have arrived.)
When the U.S. Supreme Court paved the way for Super PACS in 2010 with a pair of decisions “” Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission and SpeechNOW.org v. Federal Elections Commission “” that established the rights of Americans to make unlimited campaign contributions as long as they go to independent committees and not directly to candidates or political parties, some political scientists predicted disastrous corruption. Others foresaw a robust expansion of the First Amendment.
What nobody expected is that creating super PACS would turn into a sort of performance art that, depending on your perspective, either joyously celebrates or cynically mocks the American political system.
Read the rest of this article here.