Pranks 2

by V. Vale (Editor)

Overview

Despite the best efforts of intellectuals from Marshall McLuhan to Noam Chomsky, all their thinking and opining has done little to shake the masses out of hopeless complacency. Pranks offer a much more direct and stimulating approach. This inspiring all new volume collects some of the finest, most outlandish actions recently undertaken in the war against mass media. A worthy successor to their first investigation into the art of prankery, Re/Search Publication’s Pranks 2 focuses on provocations from the Suicide Club, Cacophony Society, the Billboard Liberation Front, and other secret collectives dedicated to upending the status quo. The book’s many illustrations include photographs of the artists in action, flyers and letters used in the pranking process, and the often unintentionally hilarious news articles and editorial responses to the happenings. Interviews profile Ron English, Joey Skaggs, Jeffrey Vallance, monochrom, Bruce Conner, John Waters, Jello Biafra, and other noted pranksters.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781889307084
Publisher:	RE/Search Publications
Publication date:	10/25/2006
Pages:	212
Product dimensions:	8.00(w) x 9.88(h) x (d)

Read an Excerpt

Introduction of section: On-Line Satire

The corporate-government mass media now demonizes so-called “hackers,” equating them to terrorists. But many of them are gifted youth driven by the curiosity to find out everything a computer can do. And everything a hacker does is something a computer connected to the Internet was designed to do.

If hackers lampoon illegitimate authority and greedy corporate marketing scams, isn’t that their right? Isn’t satire a form of protected speech under our Constitution and Bill of Rights? We say “yes!”

A parody website is in principle no different from an issue of National Lampoon or Mad magazine. Now, we do not regard stealing of credit card information as a prank—it’s just plain greed and theft. But if George W. Bush or Enron or the W.T.O. or any other global corporate plunderers and polluters can be satirized and lampooned, then why not?

If on-line satire and parody is demonized and equated to “terrorism,” then the U.S.A. has just become the U.S.S.R . . .

Table of Contents

• Jihad Jerry (Gerald V. Casale of DEVO)
• Jello Biafra
• Al Jourgensen
• Jarico Reese
• Bambi Lake
• The Yes Men
• Suicide Club
• Cacophony Society
• Reverend Al
• Julia Solis - Urban Exploration
• Billboard Liberation Front
• Reverend Al
• Marc Powell
• Frank Discussion
• Paul Krassner
• Margaret Cho
• John Waters
• Ron English
• Joey Skaggs
• Survival Research Laboratories
• monochrom
• Lydia Lunch and Monte Cazazza
• Situationist Graffiti

Preface

Imagine we are fish swimming in the sea, and no matter where we look we see advertising, branding, marketing, and corporate/governmental coercive messages everywhere. What we once thought of as news, knowledge, politics, culture, art, music, and wisdom has all become one with this ocean of marketing and mind-control. What to do? How to keep one’s sanity, sense of freedom, and unique identity? What can we do to resist?

Resistance is ultimately dispiriting unless we can also have fun. “The society that has abolished adventure makes its own abolishing the only adventure.” [Situationist slogan] The last remaining quasi-legal territory of imaginative, humorous, creative, dissenting expression is signposted by pranks.

What are pranks? For us, pranks are any humorous deeds, propaganda, sound bites, visual bites, performances and creative projects which pierce the veil of illusion and tell “the truth.” Pranks unseriously challenge accepted reality and rigid behavioral codes and speech. Pranks deftly undermine phoniness and hypocrisy. Pranks lampoon sanctimoniousness, self-glorification, self-mythologizing and self-aggrandizement. Pranks force the laziest muscle in the body, the imagination, to be exercised, stretched, and thus transcend its former self. The imagination is what creates the future; that which will be.

Why prank our world? When we look around and can see nothing but corporate propaganda as far as the eye can see, our only “communication freedom” lies in creatively talking back, any way we can. Who gave corporations the monolithic ownership of our total environment to force their one-way coercive messages upon us? So if we replace their messages and symbols with our own, we must wear big hats and sunglasses and mufflers to hide our chins, so their ubiquitous surveillance cameras can be pranked. (Or, preserve our Internet anonymity behind layers of evasive tactics.) Imagine if everybody became artists and pranksters and poets and freely changed any noxious corporate message in sight? (It is too much to hope for our so-called legislators to come up with a bill outlawing all corporate advertising in public space, even though the majority of voters might endorse this.)

If we are not slaves and robots, it also behooves us to systematically start thinking about reclaiming all the freedoms that have, inch by inch, been taken from us over the years to serve the interests of corporations and wealthy landholders. Freedom is never willingly given; it must be taken. And Americans have definitely become less free since 1776, hundreds of thousands of laws later. In fact, how have so many humans worldwide been bamboozled into being content with their paltry, miserable lot in life?

Pranks may be our last remaining freedom of expression in post-Constitutional, post-Bill of Rights, post G.W. Bush America. This book is a mere introduction to the enormous body of unheralded, uncelebrated, undocumented pranking that has occurred just within the past hundred years. And this book may be imperfectly organized, because pranks often elude facile categorization, and the same goes for the persons interviewed, who may sprawl ungainly over several categories. However, if a mere low-tech book can offer provocation, inspiration and laughter to a small but enlightened, freedom-loving readership all over the planet, then our mission has succeeded. If you’ve read this far, we say: Thanks for your support, and Happy Reading!

—V. Vale, founder of RE/Search/Search & Destroy in 1977, San Francisco