How Creative Hoaxes and Pranks Can Inspire Your Next Artistic Activism Campaign

Inspiration can come from unexpected sources. In the spirit of April Fool’s Day, here’s a few hoaxes, pranks, and stunts that have inspired me, and might inspire an element of your next successful artistic action. Steve Lambert Czech Dream How two filmmakers pulled off a massive ad campaign for a superstore that turned out to …

April Fool’s for Big Pharma

Pharmaceutical companies pay accountants, attorneys, and even ombudsmen to make sure they are held accountable to their finances, the law, and ethics. So this April Fool’s we wondered, why are we holding them accountable for free? Today we sent invoices to companies like Gilead Sciences, Johnson & Johnson, and Purdue Pharmaceuticals for our work to …

The Donald gets duped: Harvard Lampoon tricks Trump with phony endorsement — and he’s not happy about it | Salon

The Donald’s been duped. In what’s been called a “a prank of presidential proportions,” the staff at Harvard University’s humor magazine, the Harvard Lampoon, targeted Donald Trump for their latest prank in a longstanding rivalry with the University’s daily student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson. Trump, the real-estate mogul turned Republican presidential frontrunner, inadvertently became the center of …

Miami's Community Avengers

Have No Fear the Community Avengers are Here! As the right wing mob mobilizes to shut down democratic debate on health care reform; as Van Jones is forced from the White House through distortions of the truth and plays on racial and political fears; as the recession deepens – the masked marauders known as the …

Art Hoax Unites Europe in Displeasure

This is a beautiful example of how activist-pranksters can exploit bureaucracy’s Achilles heel. The artist commissioned for this work, David Cerny “is notorious for thumbing his nose at the establishment,” says the article. I mean, just look at his website. The man once painted a tank, part of a a soviet war memorial in the …

Utah Student Wrecks Federal Land Auction

This guy is great. He saw an opportunity and jumped on it, disrupting a corrupt auction, costing major corporations money, and drawing attention to an issue that easily could have been buried under the mountain of year-end top 10 lists and countless other examples of Bush Administration corruption. What started out as a spur of …

Candy Raver Russian Revolutionaries

Not everyone has much faith in art-activism, but you can’t please ’em all. Do symbolic protests accomplish anything more than raising morale for the protesters? If not is it enough to simply raise morale? Or do actions like this War prank create temporary autonomous zones and manifest, albeit briefly, the type of reality the activists …

Larry Flynt Producing 'Palin porno' political parody

I think the key line here actually comes at the end. “Whatever you think of Larry Flynt, the man knows his First Amendment,” Kelly concluded. Seriously, that smut monger is a true champion of the First Ammendment, and we should all remember that the freedom of speech is the freedom to be offended. Now is …

San Francisco to vote on naming sewer after George Bush

Is this art? Is it activistm? Certainly, the power elite are not shaking in their boots over such stunts, but this just viscerally seems right. via: the Independet By Guy Adams in Los Angeles Friday, 27 June 2008 San Francisco Public Utilities Commission The plant that could be renamed the George W Bush Sewage Plant …

NYT – April Fool! The Purpose of Pranks

By BENEDICT CAREY Published: April 1, 2008 Keep it above the belt, stop short of total humiliation and, if possible, mix in some irony, some drama, maybe even a bogus call from the person’s old flame or new boss. A good prank, of course, involves good stagecraft. But it also requires emotional intuition. “You want …