The Retriever - Features

Digital Pranksters ®TMark Show the Art of Corporate Sabotage

Retriever Weekly Editorial Staff

In a room packed to the brim with curious onlookers, the lights went low and a single projection screen crackled awake as two men cued up a video. Appearing finally without their faces hidden or voices garbled, ®TMark agent provocateurs Ray Thomas and Frank Guerrero were on campus to share the fundamentals of their aesthetic pranks with the UMBC community for this year’s Visiting Artist Lecture Series.

®TMark (pronounced "art mark") is an internet-based collective of artists, activists, and the anonymous who have been at the forefront of performing acts of whimsical corporate sabotage since the anti-globalization movement budded in the early nineties. Showcasing their graphic arts prowess, representatives Thomas and Guerrero were at UMBC to present an eleven-minute audio-visual barrage which they called ®TMark’s personal "corporate calling card."

The promotional video served satire on a silver platter, its digitized, lab-coat-clad figures overseeing a production line of hearty packaged products. "As a privately held corporation, ®TMark allows investors to participate in blacklisted or illegal cultural production with minimum risk!," a voice-over cheerily proclaimed.

The tone then shifted dramatically, sepia-drenched footage describing the 1886 United States court ruling in which corporations became considered "persons" under the Fourteenth Amendment. Lending an all-American legitimacy to this tragic occurrence, Abraham Lincoln himself weighed in (albeit posthumously). Quoted circa 1864, Lincoln bemoaned that "…corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow."

Sound-bites from social critics, historians and professors reiterated the history lesson. "Multinational corporations have moved to a level that was never imagined by even the most brazen of the robber barons," asserted one corporate monitor. Many clips mentioned the conundrum of corporations possessing the rights of people without the liabilities of people.

"What if ‘three strikes’ laws applied to corporations?" asked one woman. "Union Carbide was found responsible for the deaths of 10,000 people, but they’re still in business." Author and National Public Radio commentator Andrei Codrescu chimed in. "Corporations can’t be ‘responsible’—they’re just machines of economic enterprise."

With all the corporation-bashing going on, it might seem odd that ®TMark is, essentially, a corporation itself. Hosting a database of unfulfilled sabotage projects on their official website, ®TMark’s "corporate veil" pairs anonymous investors’ capital with the purveyors of clever, subversive, and often expensive workplace mayhem.

This loophole allows corporate subversion to be more effective—and less liable—than your average disgruntled Joe peeing into the boss’s coffee pot. As the video’s narrator boomed; "®TMark turns knee-jerk responses to corporate power into effective actions with lasting results!"

Of course, ®TMark acting as a corporation is, for Guerrero, in the great tradition of "culture-jams" such as Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal—something "less straightforward than parody." This subtle satire Guerrero likened to the shape-shifting character of "indigenous mytho-histories." Thomas took this metaphor further, explaining that he felt ®TMark to be in kinship with the "native tradition of trickster or coyote figures…who call into question systems of power, if only in a brief interception."

As Guerrero and Thomas explained, investors in their collective experience unique benefits: ®TMark provides the same sort of protection to their "cultural investors" as corporations do to shareholders in their stock, and often, the projects that investors fund receive nationwide media coverage.

®TMark’s video prominently displayed news clips of such successes, including one from NBC Nightly News in which children were playing with voice-equipped Barbie and G.I. Joe Dolls. Yet something was wrong with this scenario—suddenly Barbie was growling "Dead men tell no lies!" His button being pressed by a freckled boy, rugged G.I. Joe chirped, "Want to go shopping?"

Yes, another success for the Barbie Liberation Organization, the underground collective which ®TMark connected with investors for their gender-stereotype and voice-box reversing prank. As Guerrero mentioned, ®TMark-supported pranks make naturally great stories—when the corporate target responds, it creates "all the elements of a dramatic narrative; protagonist and antagonist." And of course, the angrier the response, the better the story.

Such was the case with GWBush.com, a parody site ®TMark created during Bush’s 2000 presidential election campaign. The video showed the audience a website nearly indistinguishable from the official besides some heavily veiled satirical text. Guerrero and Thomas laughed as they explained that GWBush.com was brought by Bush campaigners to the Federal Election Commission with an obscure complaint of the site breaking election-funding disclosure laws.

When their complaints went ignored, the Bush camp retaliated "exactly the opposite to the way [they] probably should have," said Thomas. Bush held a press conference rife with curiously vicious retorts, during which the future president proclaimed "there ought to be limits to freedom!"

"Sometimes you feel like it’s the end of satire," said Guerrero in response to an attendee’s question about the disheartening actions of the Bush Administration. Not giving in to despair, though, was what the ®TMark men ultimately urged. "Join groups with specific targets," asserted Guerrero. "Research what you consume," said Thomas.

Or submit an idea! Remember, any idea that meets the "bottom line criterion of ‘attack without physical injury’" will be listed prominently on the ®TMark website.

You, too, can become an ®TMark investor by visiting http://www.rtmark.com/.

Other Features articles for November 19, 2002: