Reynolds 10-5-10

The Yes Men are said to have a “hactivist approach to art.” I looked up the definitions of hacker + activist. Activists: “the actions of those who try and bring about political or social change. Hackers: those who gain unauthorized access to computer data or some system, and/or innovative users of digital media.” When you combine the definitions they describe some of the methods used by performance artist’s in the film The Yes Men. According to Wikipedia ‘The Yes Men’ do culture jamming which “is a tactic used by many consumer social movements to disrupt or subvert mainstream cultural institutions.” http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&search=cultural+jamming

The way their website was formatted mirrored that of the WTO, “an organization that intends to supervise and liberalize international trade.” The website was extremely believable, people would contact ‘The Yes Men’ group thinking that they actually were the WTO. Then the Yes Men would set up interviews or meetings with media sources with these organizations.

As hacktivists, they assumed aliases and impersonated representatives of the WTO at several conferences and media interviews. During interviews and presentations they appeared to be believable representatives, but they made radical, and avant-garde statements said in a subversive and satirical way. People often don’t question authority figures or those who are supposedly highly respected in their field. Their message not only made fun of the WTO, but through parody they delivered ridiculous strategies on how to fix the global economy.

I looked up the definition of “tactical media art” in Wikipedia and found the following website that uses activism through humor and politics in an attempt to create public awareness about specific issues. It’s not exactly like The Yes Men group and there are similarities, but they are social activists.

http://www.appliedautonomy.com/mission.html

http://www.appliedautonomy.com/lb.html

The conventional thought of a studio artist is someone who creates art in a studio like painting, sculpture, photography, etc. within a studio. The Yes Men used their website, and also their satirical fake personas as performance artists as their medium to express themselves artistically. I think art mixed with constantly changing technology has changed the “artist as genius” model. Borat is a performance artist who is somewhat of a hactivist who also uses exaggeration and imitation in films.

The Yes men are performance artists and hactivists who use parody to make social commentaries. The other two artists used websites and parody also to make social commentaries.

Example: net art’s “manifesto” and etched tablets, and Fluidity.... used a lot of humor about the future of net art.

I have ambivalent feelings in regards to whether or not The Yes Men’ are ‘artists.’ This hesitance to call their work ‘art’ or the group ‘artists’ has to do with my own internal struggle as to what defines ‘art’ and who is an ‘artist.’ On one hand, I feel that their work is mainly hactivism and not art because their main goal is essentially political. On the other hand, I think they have a very unique style and approach which I can see as performance art. After trying to decipher my own interpretations of the Yes Men and film, I came to the conclusion that I really do consider them ‘artists,’ because the ability to take on pseudonymous personas and act or perform the part is a form of art.