Exhibition

Keep It Slick: Infiltrating Capitalism with The Yes Men

Duration

November 14, 2008 - February 15, 2009

Curator

Astria Suparak

Artists

The Yes Men

Organizers

Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University, Feldman Gallery at Pacific Northwest College of Art

Reaching countless people through websites, newspapers, and television broadcasts, the sometimes anonymous Yes Men are among the most visible and effective artist-activists of our time. Over the past dozen years they have fearlessly taken on the world’s biggest corporations and bureaucracies through a process they call “Identity Correction.” Masquerading as official representatives at business conferences and on the news, they have helped keep critical issues in the international spotlight. “Unlike Identity Theft, which criminals practice with dishonest intent,” The Yes Men clarify, “Identity Correction is the art of impersonating a powerful criminal to publicly humiliate them for conspiring against the public good.”

New York Times Special Edition, July 4, 2009

Infiltrating the elite realm of the influential and the moneyed, cloaked in the sheerest layer of authority—thrift-store suits, quick-print business cards, forged press releases—these social activators urge us to question where ethics belong in our capitalist-driven society. In their elaborate hoaxes and improvised pranks, The Yes Men provide fleeting glimpses of a more humane world: Dow Chemical assumes full responsibility for the worst industrial accident in history at Bhopal, The New York Times reports on the end of the Iraq war and legislation capping C.E.O. salaries, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development reopens public housing in New Orleans and forces Exxon and Shell to restore the region’s wetlands, and the World Trade Organization disbands in order to improve the lot of the poor. Alternately, The Yes Men extrapolate extreme conclusions to the free market’s greed and disdain: McDonald’s recycles its hamburgers for Third World consumption, Exxon converts climate-change victims into fuel, Dow calculates the acceptable ratio of death to profit, and the W.T.O. unsheathes its Management Leisure Suit to remotely control sweatshop workers.

Conference Scene, Keep It Slick exhibition, Chicago, IL

This survey represents the first-ever solo exhibition of The Yes Men. Here you can walk into a re-creation of their past exploits in the Conference area, witness a comically apocalyptic future, and pay respects to a janitor who generously donated his body to satisfy our insatiable energy needs. In the Executive Board Room, you may browse through The Yes Men’s personal office items and orate along to their absurd PowerPoint presentations.

In all of their exploits, The Yes Men hold a mirror up to faceless, corporate power. They do this not only to mock its acute disconnect with the real needs of people, but also to rouse to action the individuals who uphold this structure—that is, all of us. They push the limits of taste, forcing us to define our ethical boundaries and reaffirm our agency, a vitally important task in an era of eroding civil rights and marketing campaigns that obfuscate what democracy means.

In the tradition of the Situationists, through lurid satire reminiscent of Jonathan Swift and Mark Twain, strategies of tactical media like those of the Critical Art Ensemble, institutional critique à la the Guerilla Girls, Hans Haacke, and Ant Farm, or public performances akin to those of Abbie Hoffman, Adrian Piper, and the Reverend Billy, The Yes Men seek to incite change.

Above all, they urge us to do something better.

- Astria Suparak, Curator

Apocalypse Scene, Keep It Slick exhibition

The Yes Men have gained international notoriety for impersonating World Trade Organization spokesmen on international TV and at business conferences around the world. They describe what they do as Identity Correction. Unlike Identity Theft, which criminals practice with dishonest intent, Identity Correction is the art of impersonating a powerful criminal to publicly humiliate them for conspiring against the public good. Their targets have included big bad bureaucracies like the World Trade Organization, nasty world leaders such as George Bush, ugly right-wing think tanks like The Heritage Foundation, and heartless corporations such as Dow Chemical.

Memorial To A Fallen Exxon Janitor, detail, Keep It Slick exhibition, Chicago, IL

TOUR SCHEDULE

Sept. 4 – Oct. 26, 2008
Feldman Gallery at Pacific Northwest College of Art, in conjunction with PICA’s Time Based Art Festival 2008, Portland, OR

Nov. 14, 2008 – Feb. 15, 2009
Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA

Sept. 23 - Oct. 25, 2009
Abandon Normal Devices: Festival of New Cinema and Digital Culture, with Art & Design Academy, Liverpool John Moores University and FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology), Liverpool, UK

Apr. 30 - June 5, 2010
DiverseWorks Artspace, Houston, TX

Sept. 7 - Oct. 23, 2010
Glass Curtain Gallery, Columbia College, Chicago, IL

McDonald's McGhetto, Keep It Slick exhibition, Chicago, IL