One horribly smart stunt: tMark and The Yes Men
Tactical media with artistic borders

Internet and other new media practices have multiplied dimensions of the political engagement by artists. The capability to participate in the translocal construction of an alternative mediasphere is perhaps the most tangible shift, while collaboration and working through group branding is not entirely a new phenomenon. However, work done under brands tMark and The Yes Men are prime examples of tactical media and arts usage which are not only difficult to border within contemporary or historical art forms, but which point out how controversial the very effort to do so can be.

One of the key frustrations that I have had with some of the contemporary art “world” since the early 1990s, besides the problematics of its “worldness” pointed out by the internationalism debate, is how politics or critical theory are often appropriated merely as material or rendered to rhetorical decoration. I found media art an interersting possibility to bypass and to address some of these problems, which at least partially derive from the combination of contemporary art curatorial practices and romanticist notions of an Artist. 

The radical possibilities that I believe new media practice can have is an ability to be both “the context and content provider”. This does not mean that work happens in the vaccuum, on the contrary, media art is only what it claims to be if it’s embeddedness in a complex media cultural reality is made explicit. While maintaining a critical position towards the kind of gallery which celebrates the white box, I am equally critical of media art that is satisfied with thea media art festival black box, the video screen, or even worse, the beige computer box. What I mean by the latter is that media art in its least interesting form is medium art, work which only reflects its techonological frame of reference. The most retro-modern take of this kind I have heard recently was a talk by Florian Cramer at the ReadMe software art festival, where he talked about the “beauty of the command line”. In other words, how the text-based programming interface and its textuality are easthetically beautiful. In other words: the range of media art is vast, and the level of engagement with contexts varies.

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 “One Horribly Stupid Stunt” is a title for a documentary video on WTO actions by The Yes Men, an tMark spin off. Perhaps one reason why I want to discuss their projects in particular has to do with them being very explicit of their tactics of subversion when they appropriate one medium and cross a particular boundary. That is largely where their “art” is, or the pleasure/pain of the witness or participant in their actions. 

In 1998 Ars Electronica festival invited tMark to jury a 1000 USD prize. In the same year, the Golden Nica prize was given to the special effects lab of the film Titanic. tMark gave their prize to a fishing village called Popotla in Baja Callilfornia, Mexico, a site which had been colonized by the 20th Century Fox studios to make the sea footage to the film. A huge model of Titanic was not something that could have been built on the Californian coast; here it destroyed kelp forests and sea urchins. The local economy only benefitted from selling scrap of the ship model as souvenirs. tMark gave the prize for resistance, symbolised by a wall mural that local villagers attached to a huge cement wall of the studio. 

The story about the “movie maquiladora” that exploits a third world country in digital and film production, revealed a local lived experience and the grim material reality behind the Hollywood blockbuster. Like reverse engineering, this is reverse media spinning. While media spinning is what think tanks, PR and advertising agencies do secretly, tMark reveals the plot. They call it “tactical embarrasment”, catching politicians and the corporate sector with their pants down.

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A point yet to make of the Popotla action at Ars Eclectronica is also that it is one of the few projects that have addressed the power relations and politics within media art. Ars Electronica in particular has glowed with fascination of new technologies and corporate success stories. This year the theme was “Code”. When discussing collaborative software, they had Macromedia and Adobe as presenters. That as such could be interesting, if only the border crossing was addressed, discussed, made explicit, meaningful. It wasn’t, but there was critical discussion on mailing lists that addressed the problem of media festivals appropriating critical discourse on code and the area of software art. 

What struck me in the otherwise quite valid post Ars Electronica debate by Lev Manovich was the fact that he positioned software art as a contemporary avant garde. This notion, combined with a recent outcry of the Walker Art Center closing its media art department strengthened a few concerns: 1) the proposed avantgardisation of media art is in fact rendering it to a contemporary art or film historical canon and turning its politics into artistic means rather than its artistic means into politics, and 2) “the state” of the media art is often perceived through North america and few powerful centers in Central Europe. Many people in the field could not care less if an American art institution is closing its media arts section because they were not interested in entering that realm in the first place. And while agreeing with the critique of the Ars Electronica discourse, it does not define the field. If one does agree with the two statements however, that would turn media arts into a field that has lost its potential.

Even though and perhaps precisely because of tMark is from North America, it provides a viable platform to discuss politics of media and the act of branding in contemporary mediaculture. The Horribly Smart Stunt or The Yes Men WTO actions reveal the danger of stupidity, or being stupedified by a plausible presentation, no matter what the content. The story is a bit complex… tMark had appropriated the WTO (World Trade Organisation) website and created their own version at www.gatt.org, to which many search engines direct a WTO seeker duet to that being an earlier name for free trade agreements organisation. Already the remodeled site, which openly talks about exploitation of the poor by free trade agreements should cause any avid reader to be able to tell it is not the site of WTO. And yet… invitations to speak as the WTO kept coming in. What to do? Say yes? Introduce The Yes Men. 

They anticipated that the outrageous commentaries by “Dr. Bichlbauer” would immediately reveal their fakeness when talking to business executives in a Salzburg convention. Turns out they could say almost anything ranging between colonial fantasies, racist remarks, plans for exploitation and illogical arguments for free trade agreements and STILL be seen as the true WTO. OK, they thought. We were just not radical enough, let’s go to the textile industry conference in Finland and see how far we need to go to get a response. In a report by New York Times on-line edition, in January 2001, The Yes Men commented them sending a new delegate to the Tampere conference: “We think the ethical thing to do is to represent the W.T.O. more honestly than they represent themselves."

Witnessed by EU officers, researchers, journalists and textile industry CEOs, Hank Hardy Unruh from the WTO gave a talk that should not leave any critical mind undisturbed. For example, drawing on effective results of slavery and automation, why not use a smart textile outfit to control and monitor the workforce? In the midst of the presentation, WTO speaker’s assistant helps him to take off a business suit, revealing a golden shiny spandex outfit. A 3D animation on the screen shows the family man CEO walking in the forest. How to manage the factory remotely? He opens up a zipper, and a meter long phallus inflates, as if a support for a control video monitor. Does the audience throw tomatoes?

"Management Leisure Suit", as Hank presented it to the audience, was designed for managers “to control their remote workforces in the developing world. Using a video interface at the end of the phallus, the manager can see the workers and give them electric shocks when they don't work fast enough.” No comments from the audience.

Aamulehti, the Tampere daily reports a full story on the future of textiles in industry featuring Unruh in his outfit. Only after The Yes Men gave a press release revealing their act, Helsingin Sanomat picked it up. The business executives and researchers were indeed caught with their pants down having taken for granted what ever the WTO would say as the thing to applaud. I think Michel Foucault, or perhaps in particular, Louis Althusser should have lived to witness to which extent the interpellating power of ideologies can work in a live performance. Interestingly Helsingin Sanomat gave a very fair report on the action and considered it’s approach valid. 

Since the Tampere gig in August 2001, the re-named Mr. Granwyth Hulatberi of the WTO participated on CNBC’s “European Marketwrap” talking with Vernon Ellis, International Chairman of Andersen Consulting. For the WTO action series, the Sydney conference of accountants was to be a turning point. There Mr. Andy Bichlbaum announced WTO in its current form to cease to exist. He stated the WTO would reconstitute as a new organization dedicated to assisting the world's poor instead of the rich. The audience congratulated them on the move and gave good advice on how tto proceed. Consequences of the WTO’s radical change of direction were discussed even on the floor of the Canadian parliament.

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What lies at the strategic core of tMark is to take American corporate law and put it into creative and critical use under the protecion of Freedom of Speech. The individuals are legally quite safe, if they speak for the corporation, and they also act as a venture capitalist through their mutual fund. A recently selected and funded proposal involved producing postcards that dealt with capital punishment. The idea is to produce high quality prints and place them in the stores next to birthday cards. The texts read for instance: “On the eve of your execution.” The mutual fund also supported a deck of cards that depicts American politicians responsible for the human misery in Iraq.

History of actions by tMark goes prior to the introduction of the brand. In 1993 some of the same people created B.L.O, The Barbie Liberation Organisation. They had bought 300 Barbie and G.I. Joe dolls, changed their voice boxes, put them back to stores before xmas with phone helpline information. Soon tens of TV stations featured the Barbie dolls who say “dead men don’t tell lies” and the soldier dolls saying “want to go shopping”. Following the plan by the B.L.O, they also played a tape sent to the stations which showed a barbie with a soldering iron. The doll says they are revolting against the factories that made them because of gender stereotypes harming children.

B.L.O. and other tMark actions involve tactical use of old and new media as well as physical manifestations to engage a specific critical topic. The aesthetics they work with are corporate: powerpoints, charts, slogans, sub brands. They also work with lawyers to know when to pull down a web site. The GWBush.com site generated one of the famous quotes from the then candidate, now US president: “There ought to be limits to freedom”, which in fact was endorsed by his lawyers to close the site down.

tMark actions make manifest how the borders between tactical, independent media and media art related zones such as net.art are blurred. In the tactical media event The Next 5 Minutes in Amsterdam this year, it was apparent that individuals with artist background were working within independent media and activism in different parts of the world. What was interesting, however, is that hardly anybody discussed their work in relation to their art practice. 

It seems that that activism has a rather high currency rate within contemporary art. Contemporary art within activism is regarded with disinterest as a public sphere, while the techniques, aesthetics and particularly media arts skills are used widely. The graphic designs that mark activist branding (not many would like to combine words activist and brand) have even made it to “coffee table books”. Catalogue of Strategies by Mieke Gerritzen, Max Bruinsma and Geert Lovink is largely available in bookshops and design stores. It represents particularly well how the “info design” paradigm connects media arts with the tactical media as a visual rhetoric. However, like with this book in question, there is a local origin to the story. In Netherlands the local media culture scene has its roots in pirate radio and the squat movement, which is reflected in the ways in which festivals and organisations are designed.

I find that the strategic and tactical aspects of media together with cultural and social contexts are  often ignored. Instead aesthetics and conceptual aspects are seen as the “essence” of media art. This is a phenomenon which reduces, like suggested earlier, the media into a medium. This transition has been in particular supported by fine art academies and contemporary art organisations and larger institutions over the last five years or so. 

Minimalist and conceptual net.art and software art are a good example of how retro modernism has gained a strong foothold. It is in many ways a logical next step from the early visually engaging museal work of Bill Viola and Gary Hill forexample. While the recent formalist work suits the traditions of abstract and conceptual minimalist art, the earlier work popular in museums was a perfect match with spectacular painting for contemplative viewing. My point is not about this work not being something that should not be done at all, but rather to question what constitutes media art.

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One needs to ask again and again the questions of the groundedness of the politics involved. Is tMark grounded in the politics it addresses? There is no simple answer to this, but I would like to suggest two kinds of aspects to “groundedness”. 

First notion is to say that the 1990s view of media as implosion suggested by Baudrillard and Virilio should be seen as non-grounded. Even though politicians may spin the media in such a way that the connection between media imagery and every day lives is somewhat blurred. To claim that it ever was different is a nostalgia for a mimetic media that never existed. tMark points out, like in the popotla case, how both fictional and media technological representations are linked with often not widely visible material realities. 

Is a demonstation on the street the only real form of political protest? tMark and The Yes Men say their gatt.org related work is a form of stylish demonstration. It does not undermine street demonstrations nord does it claim to work in a similar way. The Yes Men brand puts the performer’s bodies into such a position that it becomes very difficult for the main stream media to enframe them as a demonstration. As Todd Gitlin has shown in his classic study “The Whole World Is Watching” the media has a strong tendency to report street demonstrations through a particular format, a frame, which often does not represent the actual political messages inolved. The tactics by tMark bypass that framing of a protest. While their feet are not grounded on the street, their tactic and discourse are grounded. Largely this happens because they are able to engage those who do not think alike, as wittnesses to the political performance. 

The server’s electric cables that run www.rtmark.com and www.theyesmen.org as well as the political subject matter are grounded in the US. But as the politics of the Internet and global powers to be cross national boundaries, so does the relevance of their work. If I would in this story explain some stories of people who are part of the initiatives, those who spend hours coding the website, travel to the conferences as the WTO representatives, go to the supermarkets to buy talking dolls, one could also see that they have several, locally responsible projects that feed into what is seen “on-line and in the news”.

When The Yes Men appear in media the real personalities are hidden. Still they have been granted arts prizes as “artist subjects”. Interestingly, though it is not vocally addressed, “being an artist” can perhaps act as a safety valve for them in as much as the corporate law. As a system of meaning the arts can always act as an ESC button from political accountability. If the legal debate gets rough, a political action can be described as an art project, in which case also the rights for citation are substiantially wider than for corporate use. One leg in the arts also provides money for the subersive acts, which is not likely to happen if one only wears the activist hat.

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Even though in the scope of this text it is not possible to go into depth in an important tangent, I will briefly address the domain of political and border crossing work where media artists work with local groups and develop important but not necessarily so visible work as tMark. The UK based Mongrel is an example of strategic media use with a very strong sense of social production of knowledge from the ground up, via workshops and participatory multimedia authoring. Their work can be seen on the site http://www.mongrelx.org. One of the strongest arguments their work has generated is that software needs to be designed for particular social and cultural circumstances. From other angles, this argument is researched and produced also by the media initative Sarai in New Delhi (http://www.sarai.net). Here the groundedness means situation software (new technologies) in social and cultural settings of use.

A related, but quite different approach to translocal border crossings can be discussed by looking at work by Culture and information center K@2 in Karosta (http://www.karosta.org). Set up in Latvia, within a Russian populated former naval base suburbia in Liepaja, a group of artists works with local kids running a space that does workshops ranging between photography, film and Internet. Their groundedness has to do with their local relationships where they are living, not merely visiting. 

These examples, the stories of which can be read from the web or via google.com, as well as tMark are in a problematic situation regarding their integrity when they “show” in a contemporary art context. In this context, with Lucy Lippard I could think about “The lure of the local” as the lure of the translocal. While sticking to the local or to “your only medium” is a reductionist response, the groundedness that is perhaps most important here is not which audience one addresses, but how articulate one is about the border crossing.

Tapio Mäkelä