Winnipeg Free Press

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Activist tricksters the Yes Men pose as executives to give corporations a good pranking ()

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Andy Bichlbaum models the Survivaball, which will keep CEOs alive and well in the event of a global-warming catastrophe. ()

Once upon a time, there were two very smart, subversive pranksters.

One made mischief by inserting images of men kissing into the computer game Simcopter. The other was part of the Barbie Liberation Organization, which switched the voiceboxes of G.I. Joe and Barbie dolls and returned them to retail shelves.

When the two pranksters met, they joined forces, named themselves the Yes Men and took their hoaxes from the realm of play into the arena of big business.

They created fake corporate and political websites that looked so real, they started to get emailed invitations to speak at prestigious events and appear on networks as credible as the BBC.

Deciding to see how far they could carry the ruse, they bought thrift-store suits and started accepting invitations.

In the past decade, the "culture-jamming" activists have managed to fool millions by posing as spokesmen for some of the world's most powerful corporations and organizations, from Dow Chemical and ExxonMobil to the World Trade Organization and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Last year, they were involved in producing more than one million copies of a spoof edition of the New York Times with headlines such as Iraq War Ends.

In their fake but convincing speeches and news releases, the Yes Men make outrageous statements meant to satirize corporate greed, exploitation of workers and destruction of the environment. They use aliases such as Florian Osenberg and Erastus Hamm.

Their speeches are often enhanced with macabre PowerPoint presentations and bizarre costumes like the Management Leisure Suit, a superhero-style suit with an inflatable phallus equipped with a video screen that allows First World managers to monitor their corporations' Third World workers.

Yet more often than not, as shown in the 2003 documentary The Yes Men, their politely passive audiences fail to notice anything unusual.

When their mighty satiric targets realize they've been duped, the imposters get the kind of massive news coverage most activists can only dream of. They have never been charged with any crime.

The New York-based Yes Man who goes by the alias Andy Bichlbaum is coming to the Winnipeg Art Gallery on Tuesday to give a free lecture, illustrated with recent film clips, about the duo's exploits. The event is co-presented by the University of Manitoba department of English, film and theatre, Plug In ICA and the WAG.

Just this month, the 40-year-old Bichlbaum and fellow Yes Man Mike Bonanno (also an alias) won the Panorama audience award at the Berlin Film Festival with a new documentary, The Yes Men Fix the World.

The pair co-directed the film with Kurt Engfehr, editor of Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11.

Both Yes Men hold jobs as professors, Bonanno in media arts and Bichlbaum in design. They have described their stunts, which rely on media attention to be effective, as a form of journalism.

But U of M film studies professor Jonah Corne, who invited Bichlbaum here, regards the Yes Men as boundary-blurring artists.

"They do make films, but they're also performance artists," Corne says. "They manage to make art that is activism, and vice versa, and do it in a very smart and entertaining way."

Because of the new movie, Corne says, the tricksters are currently in a phase of high visibility.

"When they plan their pranks, there's a long incubation period and they have to be sort of underground. When they accumulate enough material to make a film, they step out."

Bichlbaum spoke to the Free Press from his home in New York City.

FP: Your first film shows you guys posing as spokesmen for the World Trade Organization and McDonald's. Speaking to an audience of university students, you propose a scheme to transform human waste from wealthy countries into McDonald's burgers for Third World countries. The students quickly become offended and start to object. Yet your audiences at business conferences don't seem to challenge your proposals. Why is that?

AB: Typically, young people are in the business of thinking in school. Later, it's less lucrative to think. When you're in the business world, thinking is not really rewarded. I think (business audiences) don't rebel because the version of things that we deliver is too close to the real thing.

FP: One of the pranks documented in your new film was pulled in 2007 at a huge oil conference in Calgary. You posed as a spokesman for the National Petroleum Council and your colleague Mike Bonanno as an ExxonMobil representative. You told an audience of hundreds of oil-industry personnel that when their industry causes a global environmental disaster, they will be able to keep fuel flowing by rendering the bodies of the billions of humans who die into a fuel called Vivoleum. Then you handed out Vivoleum candles, ostensibly made from an Exxon janitor who was killed by a toxic spill. At this point, conference organizers caught on and security hustled you off the stage. Did you think, "This time we're in big trouble?"

AB: Yes. We were somewhat afraid, as we always are, being human... The only reason the organizers figured it out is because somebody in the audience recognized me... (The organizers) were assuring us that what we had done was terrible under Canadian law. We thought, "Maybe we're finally getting arrested." The police arrived... and they just laughed. I guess they weren't happy with the oil industry, either. It's kind of ruined the city... They said, "Look, guys, we're obligated to give you these trespassing tickets." They were $300 each. We found a lawyer who wanted to defend us for free. The charges were preposterous, since we had been invited. The court threw out the tickets.

FP: Your actions have inspired ordinary people to pull protest pranks. In fact, you have said that anybody can join the Yes Men. Can you give me an example of a stunt that impressed you?

AB: In Utah -- you can read about it at www.bidder70.org -- this guy went to protest an auction of federal lands to the oil industry... He walked in and he was prepared to start yelling, and maybe get arrested. But somebody said, "Are you here to bid?" He went in and started bidding. He won 12 (land parcels) in a row before (organizers) realized he couldn't possibly be a real bidder and he was bidding way too much. The auction was completely scuttled, and now those lands are saved.

FP: In 2006 at a conference in Florida on catastrophic loss, you impersonated spokesmen from Halliburton, an oilfield services company that has been accused of profiting from war. You modelled the SurvivaBall, a six-foot-wide inflatable orb containing life-sustaining systems, designed to save corporate managers in the event of a disaster caused by climate change. You described the ball as "a gated community for one." What reaction did you get?

AB: We expected people to be a bit appalled... but people were not bothered at all. We thought if (the costumes) look like insects, people will be repulsed and understand the whole idea we're trying to get at, which is that there's something wrong with privileging profit above all other things. Of course, that didn't actually happen.

Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men gives a lecture and Q&A at 7 p.m. on Tuesday at the Muriel Richardson Auditorium, Winnipeg Art Gallery. Admission is free. No advance tickets.

alison.mayes@freepress.mb.ca