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"Keep It Slick: Infiltrating Capitalism with The Yes Men" by Joe Sioufi
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Article by Joe Sioufi - www.JoeSioufi.com - The Yes Men, some of the most important political activists of the last decade, come to DiverseWorks for their first traveling solo exhibition, Keep it Slick: Infiltrating Capitalism. Considered among the most important political artists of the last dozen years, The Yes Men composed by Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno are two guys who just can't take "no" for an answer. They are a group of culture-jamming activists who practice what they call “Identity Correction.”
Their unusual hobby: They love posing as top executives of corporations they hate. Armed with nothing but a traditional suits, the Yes Men lie their way into business conferences and parody their corporate targets in ever more extreme ways, basically doing everything that they can to open up people's eyes and to wake up their audiences to the danger of letting greed run our world.
By posing as spokespersons for prominent organizations and powerful entities, The Yes Men create websites and newspapers, some stage productive interventions and they do appear in conferences and TV shows to highlight how corporations and government organizations often act in dehumanizing ways toward the public. Not caring too much about the person, as if the person is just a number not a real human being.
Keep it Slick: Infiltrating Capitalism with The Yes Men exhibits The Yes Men's practice through five fantastical scenes of elaborate costumes fabricated for their bold interventions, slapstick videos and PowerPoint presentations at business conferences, outrageous posters and props, scripts, sketches, research materials and selected ephemera from their personal collections.
About The Yes Men
Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno are two guys who couldn't hold down a job until they became representatives of Exxon, Halliburton, Dow Chemical, and the U.S. federal goverment. They use humor, truth and lunacy to bring media attention to the crimes of their unwilling employers.
The Yes Men Fix the World, won the audience award at this year's Berlin Film Festival, the Grierson Award for Most Entertaining Documentary, and went on to become a smash box-office sensation.
Through June 5 - 1117 East Freeway. For information, 713-335-3445 or visit www.diverseworks.org - Price: Free.
Joe Sioufi
www.JoeSioufi.com
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