_ THE WORD _
DILLON KING, EDITOR
Pseudo. Fake. Ersatz. Hoax. Fraud. Counterfeit. Forgery. We are fascinated with fakery in the myriad of ways that we find it in our lives. We are always asking ourselves if we can believe what we see or hear. Because we can’t. Think: Sometimes the fake is an intentional tool and makes us think. Always the unmasking of the fake makes us think. And that is the purpose of this magazine, to make you think and to make you question. And sometimes to entertain. Look: We live in a time that has so much potential and in a time that tries the ethical and moral boundaries of what is real. Having grown up in the age of entertainment, tv, movies, videos, and video games, we have been primed for unreality but perhaps have retained a healthy skepticism about the inter- section of the real and fake. The fake can entertain and it can inform us — and it is all around us if we look for it. Sometimes it comes in the form of art, and then it delights as well as informs.
_ HERBARIUM _ JOAN FONTCUBERTA
In this series, Fontcuberta “arranged inanimate objects such as electrical cord, plastic, a shaving brush or a rubber hose into what appear to be plants”, thereby creating “pseudoplants”.
SUDO_MEDIA
We are predisposed to believe what we see with our eyes in print and two-dimensions. This issue will show you why a little skepticism, questioning and humor is ess- ential in illuminating that kernel of truth.
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LITERATURE UNMASKED_ Inside Hitlers secret diaries and beyond
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TRUE_OR_FALSE_P.16_
MAILBOX_P.90_
FILM_REVIEW_P.20_
PEOPLE_P.118_
HEADLINES_P.88_
PRODUCTS_P.120_
DOCU TV_ How Discovery Channel fooled us
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YES MEN_ Eco-social activists fool the system
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FALSE NEGATIVES_ Self-proclaimed “terrible italian photographer”
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GREAT GRUDGE HOAX_ Music slang demistified
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INCUBATION_ Put it in social media and watch it grow
DEPARTMENT
TRUE OR FALSE OUR PANELISTS WROTE THREE STORIES ONLY ONE OF WHICH IS TRUE. GUESS WHICH ONE AND STEW IN YOUR OWN SELF SATISFACTION.
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We all like to make a little money on the side. It’s why Hillary Clinton gives speeches or Steve Inskeep dances at Chippendales. This week we read stories of someone moonlighting in an unexpected way.
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TRUE OR FALSE
A FAMOUS RUSSIAN GRECO-ROMAN WRESTLER
01 Russia’s Aleksandr Karelin is known as the greatest GrecoRoman wrestler of the 20th cen- tury. He is 6 feet 3 inches tall and 282 pounds. He went undefeated in international competition for 13 years. And, six years without even giving up a point. He was — he is also a husband and a loving father of three children. So when his daughter Vasalisa (ph) couldn’t find clothes for her skipper doll the greatest Greco-Roman wrestler of the 20th century made them by hand. He started with a bright party dress with matching tights and evening wrap. Vasalisa was delighted. She didn’t even notice the crooking hem laughs Karelin. No, known for his reverse body lift which no one but him had ever even executed in the heavyweight class, Karelin when found he liked the delicate detail work that doll clothes creation required. Plus, the
work went quickly because he was so used to pain he could actually stab himself with a needle two inches deep and not even notice. Soon when he was making a killing on the Etsy online craft site and even tailoring outfits for the doll of the daughters of some of his chief rivals. In 1989, Karelin defeated Russian champion, Igor Rostorosky. (Imitating Russian accent) I thought I would hold a grudge for many more years than I have. But Aleksandr made for my daughter Olga’s curvy Barbie a warm snow pant that does not make her look big. It’s hard to dis- like a guy who can do that even if he did once rip your chest muscle from your rib cage.
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DEPARTMENT
PRESIDENT MADURO OF VENEZUELA DJING A COUPLE HOURS, COUPLE OF DAYS A WEEK BECAUSE IT’S FUN.
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weekly show on 1970s salsa, quote “It’s time for salsa,” he tells his listeners. “Pay attention this is the force of happiness.” Maduro, who has an encyclopedic knowledge of 1970s dance music, spins his favorite tunes and likes to show off his dance moves on a video feed. Seems the president, who won a third term in what critics call a rigged election, is trying to recapture the magic of Hugo Chavez who hosted a popular Sun- day TV show. But Chavez had charisma power and trillions of oil dollars. Maduro has a 25 percent approval rating, no charisma and no trillions. Quote, “this is the orchestra of the Titanic,” wrote one commentator. But Maduro is unfazed quote, “our people surely have the right to have some fun.” So your country is going to hell and your people protesting what to do? The answer for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is to become a radio DJ. Faced with a collapsing economy and food shortages, he thinks the solution is a four hour, twice
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TRUE OR FALSE
STEPHEN HAWKINGS THE GREAT PHYSICIST HIMSELF IS DRIVING AN UBER AROUND CAMBRIDGESHIRE
03 car self-pilots about the countryside. Dr. Hawking says he loves meeting people, seeing the sights. And he even has a few prepared witticisms to entertain his be- wildered passengers. Lines like, look, no hands. And angular momentum is totally a thing so please buckle up. And maybe driving is undignified. But I get a big bang out of it. Hawking does have one complaint though. He says anybody who thinks orbital dynamics are complex has never tried to negotiate a roundabout.
ANSWER - 02
If you grab an uber in Cambridgeshire, England these days, you might notice a few odd things like the turning of the leaves or the Tweetie University populists and their winter wear. And you might just notice that your uber driver is Dr. Stephen Hawking. It all started as a com- mercial for Uber’s new self- driving car service which is being tested around Cambridge University beginning last month. The ad featured the famously brilliant and famously paralyzed Hawking picking up a fair but during the course of filming the renowned astrophysicist made an important breakthrough discovery. He loved driving an Uber. And so, for the past month the world’s most brilliant mind has been devoting itself to selecting radio stations and serving up chit chat while his
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DEPARTMENT
SOUR GRAPES FILM REVIEW
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“Sour Grapes” investigates an embarrassing scandal that rocked the world of highest-end wine collectors — and left as many as 40,000 “fake” bottles still circulating in their milieu — approaching the stunningly expansive scam as a real-life comic mystery fit for Hercule Poirot, complete with a cast of privileged dupes for whom the average viewer isn’t likely to feel much sympathy. Those already interested in the mechanizations of the wine biz will be fascinated by this doc feature by Jerry Rothwell (“Deep Water,” “How to Change the World”) and Reuben Atlas (“Brothers Hypnotic”), though such rarefied tastes are hardly a prerequisite to appreciate this highly entertaining stranger-than-fiction saga. A Canadian theatrical run launches May 27, and other territories should eventually follow suit. “Bright Lights, Big City” novelist turned wine columnist Jay McInerney says that the auction scene for sought-after vintages began in earnest with the late 1990s advent
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A REAL-LIFE COMIC MYSTERY FIT FOR HERCULE POIROT, COMPLETE WITH A CAST OF PRIVILEGED DUPES THE AVERAGE VIEWER PROBABLY WON’T FEEL MUCH SYMPATHY FOR.
of the dot-com boom, when hordes of nouveaux riches were seeking new avenues for their conspicuous consumption. Not long after the turn of the millennium, their rarefied ranks were joined by one Rudy Kurniawan, an Indonesian of Chinese ethnic roots with impeccable English, impressively deep wine knowledge and an ingratiating manner. His precise background
(notably the source of his evident wealth) was unclear, but he was readily accepted into the exclusive tasting groups of such new BFFs as movie producer Arthur Sarkissian (“Rush Hour”) and film director Jef Levy (“Inside Monkey Zetterland”), both of whom still can’t quite believe their pal was capable of any wrong. Figuring “this young guy” was just a “rich kid looking for something to do,” journalist Corie Brown was nonetheless struck by the huge amounts of money Kurniawan began spending at Christie’s and elsewhere, his high bids “ruining the little club” of older, established collectors. Though the newcomer’s generosity in sharing his booty waylaid some suspicion, Brown and others began to note he’d almost singlehandedly “revolutionized the market” by hiking up prices — rendering them even more valuable for re-sale. Between 2003 and 2006, morethan $35 million in bottles were sold from Kurniawan’s cellar. Meanwhile, a couple prominent figures were making a personal crusade of cracking down on fraudulent wine sales. One was Laurent Ponsot, who was appalled to discover fake wines being sold under the falsified label of his family’s historic vineyards in Bur-gundy. Another was billionaire collector Bill Koch (yes, brother to notorious conservative activists Charles and David), who was equally displeased to realize he’d spent several million acquiring counterfeit bottles. Their private investigations eventually dovetailed with those of FBI agent Jim Wynne, who found himself increasingly zeroing in on the “Gen-X Great Gatsby” figure of Kurniawan…or whatever his real name was/is. The latter, seen in much archival footage here (his tasting bud-
DEPARTMENT _02
dies appeared almost as enamored of videotaping themselves as they were of wine), declined the filmmakers’ interview requests, so he remains something of an enigma. But there’s an undeniable fascination in watching the onion layers of a brilliant disguise gradually peeled back, revealing someone whose motivations remain murky — but whose resourcefulness in playing a shell game with top-tier marks was remarkable. He played his role so convincingly that Levy, for one, still seems to believe it was all just some sad misunderstanding, even after an FBI raid uncovered a large-scale re-bottling and re-labeling operation in the suspect’s California home.
A REAL-LIFE COMIC MYSTERY FIT FOR HERCULE POIROT, COMPLETE WITH A CAST OF PRIVILEGED DUPES THE AVERAGE VIEWER PROBABLY WON’T FEEL MUCH SYMPATHY FOR.
The intricacies of identifying such “fake wines” are absorbingly laid out here, and sometimes comic in themselves, as in instances where a bottle sold at a jaw-dropping premium supposedly contained a vintage that didn’t actually exist in the year its label claimed. But it’s the personalities that give “Sour Grapes” much of its kick. As fine wine consultant Maureen Downey notes, the overwhelmingly male dominated field of highest end collectors (she says at industry events she routinely used to be asked whose girlfriend she was) is fueled by “what Americans call ‘F.U. money’…a kind of money most human beings never experience.” It’s a big world of swagger, camaraderie and one-upmanship whose participants probably think they have more in common with James Bond than Richie Rich. But few viewers are likely to shed a tear for the gullibility of such wealthy connoisseurs, whose enthusiasms sometimes look like simply an elitist form of hoarding. Appropriately, “Sour Grapes” is packaged as a sort of luxury caper narrative, complete with handsome lensing of various enviable locales and a score by Marseille’s Lionel Corsini, aka DJ Oil, that runs a droll gamut from quasi-retro lounge music to the kind of backing that might’ve accompanied a mid-60s Agatha Christie adaptation. All tech contributions are sleekly polished.
WORDS_ DENNIS HARVEY
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MEN _ THE YES MEN OPERATE UNDER THE MISSION STATEMENT THAT LIES CAN EXPOSE TRUTH. THEY CREATE AND MAINTAIN FAKE WEBSITES SIMILAR TO ONES THEY INTEND TO SPOOF, WHICH HAVE LED TO NUMEROUS INTERVIEW, CONFERENCE, AND TV TALK SHOW INVITATIONS.
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A DUO OF ACTIVIST PRANKSTERS AND REVOLUTIONARIES HAVE HIJACKED THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA TO BRING ATTENTION TO VARIOUS CASES OF ECO-SOCIAL IMPORTANCE. 26
YES MEN
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ver the last twenty years, culture-jamming hoaxsters “Mike Bonanno” and “Andy Bichlbaum” (their pseudonyms) aka The Yes Men — a duo of activist pranksters and revolutionaries — have hijacked the mainstream media to bring attention to various cases of eco-social importance. Their list of accolades is long and storied. Formed in the early 1990s, and targeting the insidiousness of corporate malfeasance, Yes Man have punk’d and hoodwinked Haliburton, Dow Chemical, ExxonMobil, McDonalds, The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Shell Oil, HUD, and many, many other corporations and organizations.
Generally their agitprop modus operandi is impersonating entities from these corporations and calling their own press conferences, or scamming themselves onto TV and proclaiming a shocking about face in corporate agenda. At the United Nations Climate Change Conference in 2009, they falsified a statement by Environment Canada promising to cut carbon emissions by 40% below 1990 levels by 2020 (so complex are their schemes, they also released a fake response from the Ugandan delegation, praising the statement to back it up). Of course, the tricksters and their manipulation are always found out. But for the Yes Men, these are still little victories. Their goal isn’t simply sloganeering, it’s sly awareness and a clever, reverse engineering of messages that results in biting satire. The Yes Men have been here before. There’s the titular 2003 film chronicling their shenanigans and 2009’s “The Yes Men Fix the World” which found them upping the ante of their tactical media swindles. But Laura Nix’s documentary, co-directed by the Yes Men themselves (real names Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos), might have been better titled “The Yes Men Are Imploding & Losing Faith.” Because “The Yes Men Are Revolting” attempts to weave in an intimate and wide-ranging narrative, focusing on the fracturing relationship of the duo and the larger challenges activists of every stripe face. It’s a neat, understandable trick, personalizing, humanizing the men through their own struggles, both independent and otherwise. But it doesn’t always work, and ‘Revolting’ isn’t anywhere as mischievous and devilish as the Yes Men pranks.
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_ While they’re on the same page ideologically, Igor needs a kind of breather with his family and Jacques finds other comrades to fight the powers that be. When they re- convene months later for a new project in Amsterdam, it’s a disorganized mess and ultimately a failure (and it is a bit shocking to see how tenuously most of their projects are seemingly held together). Granted, it’s not meant to be, as “The Eventually, after much introspection Yes Men Are Revolting” is an examination and soul-searching, the duo are regalvaof commitment and the emotional struggle nized by the Occupy Wall Street movement, of activism: is it making a difference, and a crusade driven by frustration, anger and if not, why are we doing it? Are they still a desire for change. In Occupy they find relevant, do they matter, and can they bring much-needed fuel for their pranksterist about actual change? These are the form of activism. And yet, the narrative of questions that the film raises in what turns the doc still somehow feels slight. It doesn’t out to be a kind of rousing and well-meanhelp that the little animated segments that ing ode to activism, but the ride is uneven. pepper the documentary in order to explain ‘Revolting’ opens up with The U.S. some of our environmental problems — Chamber of Commerce — not an actual climate change, for one — are a little glib, agency of the government, and in reality trivializing and cloying. The style of these a pro-corporate lobbying group — suing bits is meant to represent the Yes Men’s the duo for their fraud of the organization naughty touch, but it just tends to underreversing their position on climate control. mine the message in this context. And Obviously, in this line of work, the Yes for the Yes Men, things fall into place Men have had countless lawsuits threattoo conveniently at the end of the film. ened against them, but the Chamber of Existential struggles are overcome quickly, Com-merce actually wants to go to court epiphanies about how to move forward and a lobbying group with millions of arrive just in time, and that Chamber of dollars at their disposal could potentially Commerce lawsuit that breeds serious squash the Yes Men like a bug. unease at the beginning? A quick coda The lawsuit is the first of several nearing the credits casually just says, “oh fissures captured in the film that shows that thing, yeah, they dropped the lawsuit.” them losing faith and becoming weary This quick, concluding wrap-up of solutions about their hoaxes now as they are in their to the duo’s problems feels contrived and 40s with families and responsibilities. After ultimately disappointing after what is often a few failed or disappointing pranks, Igor a poignant look at the spiritual struggle of eventually moves his family abroad while being an activist. Jacques, who has lost several boyfriends to Now, unless you’re one of those that his commitment to the Yes Men, remains in believe the narrow narrative agenda pushed New York City. This separation estranges by Fox News (and sadly, more and more them not just physically, but spiritually. often CNN) is communicating
WHILE THEY’RE ON THE SAME PAGE IDEOLOGICALLY, IGOR NEEDS A KIND OF BREATHER WITH HIS FAMILY AND JACQUES FINDS OTHER COMRADES TO FIGHT THE POWERS THAT BE.
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non-reductive, non-alarmist ideas, it’s rather unquestionable that the Yes Men are putting themselves on the front lines and doing the lord’s work. They’ve sacrificed real careers, family, relationships and more to raise awareness for issues they believe it. And so Laura Nix’s doc personal examination of the duo is a smart approach. But the narrative pacing and balance of the doc is always a little clunky, and the intimate analysis tends to cancel out the far-reaching projects and messages the duo are trying to bring to light. Don’t get it too twisted, “The Yes Men Are Revolting” is an entertaining and interesting examination of the anxieties that make us question who we are and if we’re making a difference. But on the whole, this
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Seattle. As their two feature films document, the Yes Men made a name for themselves in activist circles and beyond by infiltrating stodgy corporate conferences to introduce modest proposals. They solemnly announced the WTO’s decision to priva- tize democracy once and for all. They intro- duced Halliburton’s Survivaball — an in- flatable pod designed for the oil executive seeking personal refuge from the ravages of global warming. The Yes Men are masters of a certain kind of corporate aesthetic. Their purview is not the slick imagery of advertising and branding, but a drearier vision of hotel conference centers, ill-fitting suits and minor film is not nearly as imperative as the vital activism these guys have dedicated expense account-funded affability. Their their lives to. Still, at the very least I would work hammers home the point that beneath the slick veneer of capitalist media culture, urge you to see it, if only to familiarize those who hold the real levers of power yourself with their noble efforts. basically look like shit. There is justice in the world of the Though firmly identifying as activists, Yes Men. A spokesman for Dow Chemical accepted responsibility for the 1984 Bhopal their new website is a clearinghouse for mobilizing opposition to stop and frisk, disaster live on the BBC, the New York climate change and the Keystone pipeline, Times announced that the Iraq war ended in November 2008, and the New York Post the Yes Men often find themselves in a space that overlaps with the art world. A editorial board finally responded to the dissertation is waiting to be written on how reality of climate change with the screamtheir tactics sit in a genealogy of raucous ing headline: “We’re Screwed.” street theater, social practice art and Of course, none of this really happened. The Yes Men are imposters extraor- Situationist hijinks. A.i.A. caught up with Andy Bichlbaum dinaire who create a parallel media following a conference organized by New universe by posing as corporate functionaries, or by aping mastheads and distributing York’s Art in General at the New School’s Vera List Center. The Yes Men had just whatever news they see fit to print. It may be wishful thinking, but rendered in a bold participated in a panel with artists Robert typeface or broadcast around the world on Sember and Tercerunquinto. satellite television, the world of the Yes Men appears attainable. And perhaps it is. Jacques Servin, aka Andy Bichlbaum, and Igor Vamos, aka Michael Bonanno, formed the Yes Men following the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in
A DISSERTATION IS WAITING TO BE WRITTEN ON HOW THEIR TACTICS SIT IN A GENEALOGY OF RAUCOUS STREET THEATER, SOCIAL PRACTICE ART AND SITUATIONIST HIJINKS.
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A DREARIER VISION OF HOTEL CONFERENCE CENTERS, YOU SAID ON THE PANEL DISCUSSION THAT YOU AREN’T INTERESTED IN THE WORD “ART” OR CALLING YOURSELF AN ARTIST, BUT YOU ARE INTERESTED IN AESTHETICS COULD YOU TALK ABOUT THAT DISTINCTION?
Art as a category is not important to what we do. If we actually talk about what we do to a larger public we never refer to ourselves as artists. There’s no political utility to that. People in America, especially, dismiss art. There’s no reason to call ourselves artists other than to encourage young artists to eschew the art gallery system. And for fundraising — there’s funding we can get if we call ourselves artists. The panel got me thinking about Gran Fury. They were artists, but in their work for ACT UP they absolutely cut themselves off from the art world. Their work was aesthetically powerful and extremely well crafted, they were great artists, but they were doing it deliberately for a political purpose and deliberately away from the art world. They didn’t want to denature the political intent of their work. THERE IS A STRONG AESTHETIC COMPONENT TO WHAT YOU DO, A VERY PARTICULAR KIND OF CORPORATE CONFERENCE AESTHETIC. WAS THAT SOMETHING YOU HAD TO WORK AT?
It’s easy to blend into some stupid, schlocky, random corporate conference. The PowerPoints are bad. The hotel or whatever has potted plants in the wrong places. The suits are not especially nice. People behave in awkward ways with excessive friendliness. And when the Yes Men mimic that and broadcast it, instantly everyone can get it: you’re making fun of that corporate world. It helps to remind you that the whole corporate world is ridiculous. Laughing at it can be powerful. 02 32
WHEN WAS THE FIRST TIME YOU WERE ABLE TO PASS AS A CORPORATE FUNCTIONARY?
Well, the very first time was, I was invited to a conference in Holland as myself, and I was doing a project called RTMark, before the Yes Men. A guy from Greenpeace was there and a guy from Shell was supposed to show up. It was supposed to be kind of a debate: The Greenpeace guy was an expert on the Shell issue but the Shell guy didn’t show up. So I just impersonated him—with the knowledge of the conference organizers. I just started laying into the environmentalists in his voice. And people believed it. It went on for 10-15 minutes before the audience figured it out. The first time [Igor and I] did it as the Yes Men was in early 2000; we had set up a fake WTO website. The real WTO reacted to our fake website with a press release denouncing it; no one noticed the press release, so we publicized it. Journalists found it funny that the WTO was reacting to our website instead of the 30,000 people who were headed to Seattle. Websites picked it up, search engines started picking it up, and so we started getting a lot of email intended for the real World Trade Organization. We got an invitation to a conference in Salzburg, Austria — a law conference that lawyers pay to attend and pay to speak at as a professional development thing. They had a panel on international something or other. They wanted the WTO to come and they ended up on our site. So we went. And I gave this talk as a WTO representative — taking it all the way — to describe how we have to privatize democracy. I used diagrams to show
FEATURE YES MEN 01
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how we could do that by allowing corporations to bid on votes directly — to pay citizens to vote directly for candidates they wanted rather than go through campaign finance mechanisms. HOW DO YOU JUDGE THE SUCCESS OF A PROJECT?
Press, basically. That’s been our main thing, how much press it gets. How much people laugh at it influences how much press it gets, so that’s why it’s important for these things to be funny. SO YOU’RE ALSO USING THE CORPORATE MEDIA?
We’re working with the devil, what are you going to do? We choose our battles. Our gambit is that the mainstream media is utterly corrupt, but that there are individual journalists within that machine who want to do the right thing. And so we are essentially collab- orating with journalists to give them a way to communicate things that they wouldn’t normally be able to communicate. Recently we helped an activist group do a parody of the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk program — their press release said the cops were collaborating with McDonald’s to reward citizens who were frisked multiple times, like frequent flyers. ABC’s news anchor, understanding that it was all fake, did a very funny little news piece about it. The anchor was clearly sympathetic to the cause but he needed the material and we gave it to him.
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THAT’S BEEN OUR MAIN THING, HOW MUCH PRESS IT GETS. HOW MUCH PEOPLE LAUGH AT IT INFLUENCES HOW MUCH PRESS IT GETS, SO THAT’S WHY IT’S IMPORTANT FOR THESE THINGS TO BE FUNNY.
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OUR GAMBIT IS THAT THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA IS UTTERLY CORRUPT, BUT THAT THERE ARE INDIVIDUAL JOURNALISTS WITHIN THAT MACHINE WHO WANT TO DO THE RIGHT THING. AND SO WE ARE ESSENTIALLY COLLABORATING WITH JOURNALISTS TO GIVE THEM A WAY TO COMMUNICATE THINGS THAT THEY WOULDN’T NORMALLY BE ABLE TO COMMUNICATE.
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YOUR NEW WEBSITE IS ALL ABOUT ORGANIZING COLLECTIVE ACTION. IT MAY SOUND OBVIOUS, BUT I WONDER IF YOU COULD TALK ABOUT WHAT DISTINGUISHES COLLECTIVE, POLITICALLY MOTIVATED ORGANIZATIONS FROM CORPORATE ENTITIES?
Well, there’s obviously overlap. It depends on what kind of collective organization you’re talking about. If you’re talking about an NGO, like a Greenpeace, structurally they’re very similar to a corporation: there are hierarchies, decision-making structures. There’s a diffusion of responsibility. There are lots of flaws to that model and a lot of failings that have been written about extensively, although there are a lot of great people working in those groups, too. The most effective thing that changes history is not so much an NGO. Greenpeace doing a few actions is going to help, but not nearly enough. Sometimes we can diffuse our responsibility too much. “Oh, okay, I’ll give some money to Greenpeace or whatever and they’ll do the fight for me.” It does help, but really what we need is several orders of magnitude more than that. Collective action, mass action, revolutionary action. We need to stop these fuckers — the actually evil people who are trying to fuck our planet. The way that happens is by moving away from the model of corp- orations, of NGOs. It involves swarms of people doing stuff, getting active. Maybe the best recent example is ACT UP. There was an NGO world that existed before them that was addressing the AIDS issue. Then ACT UP came along and said, “Fuck it, let’s get radical and let’s get enraged.” And they took to the street and did work with the gay population and transformed feelings of grief, suffering and shame into rage. It produced this massively rageful movement that got shit done. It was incredibly sophisticated, too. It wasn’t just people on the streets taking over CDC offices, smashing up pharma companies. It was also people working on the other side, within those struc- tures. There was no NGO for that.
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That was not a corporate model. That was a bunch of people being badass. Their meetings were horizontal. It was a completely different way of doing things, and that’s the kind of action we need around climate change. BUT IMPERSONATING A CORPORATE FUNCTIONARY IS PRETTY COOL AND DETACHED. AND HUMOR CAN ALSO DEFLECT THE SENSIBILITY YOU’RE DESCRIBING.
No, what we’re doing can’t substitute for the core rage. What we do is a little part of a movement. What we do is help spread information in the interest of a future when people are taking mass action in a direct way. People have to know stuff. And we also do stuff that could be called
cheerleading. We go out there and show the corporate world in all its flaws and stupidity. It’s flimsy and easy to make fun of. That can also be a way of communicating, “You know what? We can take this down. We can dismantle this.” DO YOU INTERACT AT ALL WITH SOCIAL PRACTICE ARTISTS? DOES THAT TERM MEAN ANYTHING TO YOU?
Not really. It seems to me a little bit like a patch. It’s great to do stuff to help the communities, but it’s a little bit like diverting the resources of the art world to people who need the money. Sure, great, there’s a trickle of money from the wealthiest of the wealthy that goes to this art thing
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that’s about entertaining what Robert Sember just now called petite bourgeoisie. And then you can divert maybe a little trickle of that trickle into a community that needs it, and that’s called social practice art, I guess. Or maybe there’s more to it, but I think what we need is transformation, starting from social practices that exist already. There are social practices. As Robert said, we have them already! We don’t need artists to give them to anyone. We have to think: how can that be transformational? What can we do to help that be transformational? But I’m not sure the Yes Men are a good example of that example, either. DO YOU SEE ANY MOVEMENT IN THE ART WORLD, OR CAN YOU IMAGINE AN ART THAT WOULD HELP THIS?
There’s lots of art, I just don’t know that it’s in the art world so much. The Interference Archive in Brooklyn collects ephemeral art from protests. There was an effusion of creativity at Occupy Wall Street. A lot of artists were involved in Occupy. Paul Chan. 16 Beaver’s space was a big part of it. It was all very clear in its message, very interesting and sometimes very funny. The 1 percent meme could be seen as art. A LOT OF ARTISTS BECAME INVOLVED IN OCCUPY WALL STREET VERY QUICKLY. IT’S ALMOST LIKE ALL OF THESE ART WORLD NETWORKS THAT HAD FORMED AT OPENINGS AND DISCUSSIONS SUDDENLY SNAPPED INTO ACTION AND BECAME RADICALIZED.
That’s interesting. And it had nothing to do with the art world anymore, it was just those networks being used for another purpose. Networks can radically shift, like when Occupy turned around and mobilized for Sandy. As my student Lucy Parks has noted, the time people spend bonding is key—if you know you share certain values with someone, even if they surface and emerge in discussions of art and aesthetics, suddenly your shared commitments can be refocused. That’s really powerful.
WORDS_ WILLIAM SMITH
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WHAT WE’RE DOING CAN’T SUBSTITUTE FOR THE CORE RAGE. WHAT WE DO IS A LITTLE PART OF A MOVEMENT. WHAT WE DO IS HELP SPREAD INFORMATION IN THE INTEREST OF A FUTURE WHEN PEOPLE ARE TAKING MASS ACTION IN A DIRECT WAY. PEOPLE _ HAVE TO KNOW STUFF. 41
FALS EGATIVES
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HE'S A PHOTOJOURNALIST WHO FAKES MIRACLES, A TERRIBLE PHOTOGRAPHER WHO'S WON ONE OF THE PROFESSION'S TOP PRIZES, A 'BULLSHITTER' WHO LOVES THE TRUTH
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IVAN ISTOCHNIKOV
FALSE NEGATIVES
oфициальный портрет иванкочников | OFFICIAL PORTRAIT OF IVANKTOCHNIKOV
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cоюз космонавтов | SOYUZ II COSMONAUTS
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FALSE NEGATIVES
cоюз космонавтов | SOYUZ II COSMONAUTS
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cоюз космонавтов | SOYUZ II COSMONAUTS
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FALSE NEGATIVES
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oт одиссея корабля cоюз | FROM THE ODYSSEY OF THE SOYUZ II
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FALSE NEGATIVES
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FALSE NEGATIVES
pоссийский космонавт источков и его собака, потерянные в космосе RUSSIAN COSMONAUT ISTOCHNIKOV AND HIS DOG, KLOKA LOST IN SPACE
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IT WAS A METAPHOR FOR POWER
I CHOSE PHOTOGRAPHY BECAUSE
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NO METEORITE, NO COSMONAUT, NO CONSPIRACY AND HAPPILY NO DEAD DOG DRIFTING IN SPACE LIKE A CANINE GEORGE CLOONEY
I
n 1968, during a routine space walk, the Russian cosmonaut Ivan Istochnikov and his dog went missing. When Soyuz 3 was dispatched to find them, its crew found only a vodka bottle containing a note, floating outside the empty, meteorite-damaged ship. Nothing was heard about Istochnikov for nearly three decades: it was as though the Soviet authorities had airbrushed their cosmonaut from history. Then, in 1997, Catalan photographer Joan Fontcuberta investigated Istochnikov’s disappearance, exhibited documentary evidence about his life and published a book called Sputnik – the Odyssey of the Soyuz II, which included photographs of the Istochinikov family, meteorite fragments and the dented spacecraft. Others took up the story. Why, asked Spanish journalist Iker Jiménez on his TV show Cuarto Milenio in 2006, was Istochnikov deleted from history? Had he annoyed the Soviet government? What Jiménez didn’t realise is that “Ivan Istochnikov” is a Russian translation of “Joan Fontcuberta” (both surnames mean hidden fountain). What’s more, if he’d looked closer at the Istochnikov family photos he would have noticed that the Russian cosmonaut was really a Catalan photographer. The whole thing was a hoax, elaborately documented by an artist (“I prefer to think of myself as an activist,” Fontcuberta corrects me when we meet) to expose the construction of reality masked by the putatively neutral nature of documentary photography. There was no meteorite, no cosmonaut, no conspiracy, and — happily — no dead dog drifting eternally in space like a canine George Clooney.
Why would you devise such an elaborate hoax, I ask Fontcuberta in a hotel bar, ahead of his first major UK show, at London’s Science Museum and then Bradford’s National Media Museum? “My model is Jorge Luis Borges [the Argentine writer behind many literary hoaxes]. The idea is to challenge disciplines that claim authority to represent the real — botany, topology, any scientific discourse, the media, even religion.I chose photography because it was a metaphor of power. When I started in the early 70s, photography was a charismatic medium providing evidence.” But some don’t like this challenge to authority, still less being teased by an artist who deploys the reality-subverting techniques of Catalan artistic predecessors (Joan Fontcuberta cites Dalí and Miró). A Russian ambassador apparently threatened a diplomatic complaint because Fontcuberta had insulted “the glorious Russian past”. Fontcuberta and I giggle over this story, but then I wonder. Perhaps there was no credulous journalist called Iker Jiménez, no stereotypically angry Russian ambassador. Maybe these characters were invented as part of a more elaborate hoax that Fontcuberta inserted into his Wikipedia page and online interviews to make a monkey of the Guardian’s interviewer. I glance sidelong at the genial 59-year-old as he takes a swig of beer: I wouldn’t put it past him. 55
FATHER FONTANA CENTAURUS NEANDERTALENSIS
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FALSE NEGATIVES
SQUATINA SQUATINA
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HARRY TROUT
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| LAKE CLIFFORD
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ALOPEX STULTUS
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60
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PEROSOMUS
| PROFESSOR AMEIZERHAUFEN’S LABORATORY
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62
ENERGY NEEDED TO BE SKEPTICAL
WE ARE RELUCTANT TO EXPEND THE
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To visit the Fontcuberta exhibition at the Science Museum requires the rewar- ding expenditure of much critical energy. Once you have exposed the hoax to your own satisfaction, another question opens up: why should you trust the bona fides of anything you see, even if it comes with the imprimatur of a respectable museum? In another of his projects, Fauna, for instance, Fontcuberta and a collaborator with the suspicious-sounding name Pere Formiguera claimed to have rediscovered Fontcuberta has made a career out the long-lost archives of German zoologist of such hoaxes. In 2000, for instance, he Dr Peter Ameisenhaufen, who disappeared installed mermaid fossils in rocks at the mysteriously in 1955. Before his disappearRéserve Géologique de Haute-Provence in ance, Ameisenhaufen had catalogued a big southern France. He created an allied number of unusual animals, including exhibition about the fossils, complete with “Ceropithecus icarocornu”, a male monkey photographic documentary evidence about with wings and a unicorn-like horn, and a Father Jean Fontana who had discovered “Solenoglypha polipodida”, which resembles “Hydropithecus” (water-monkey) fossils. a snake but with 12 feet. “I present the In the photos, the French priest looked, as whole story in a detailed museological dis- you might have guessed, more than a little play, which means I have vitrines, stuffed like Fontcuberta. animals, bird-song recordings, x-rays, Soon after this artistic intervention, photographs, field sketches – everything Sirens, became public, Fontcuberta received you expect from a natural-history display.” angry letters from schoolteachers. “They But, I ask, steeling myself for disapsaid it’s very difficult to teach our kids how pointment, are there really no flying evolution works when you’re amending the monkeys? “Of course not,” says Joan. We fossil record.” But, Fontcuberta maintains, rely on museums not to Photoshop wings his hoax had a serious point. “To me, and horns on monkeys and pass them off Sirens is a tool that teaches us to explain as interesting mutations. But if they did, evolution. They saw my work as a danger, Fontcuberta contends, such is their auth- probably because they are intellectually ority that we might suspend our critical lazy, but if they were intellectually engaged faculties and beleive what we see. they could push their students to underIndeed, when Fauna was shown at the stand how we construct models to underBarcelona Museum of Natural Science in stand reality.” 1989, 30% of university-educated visitors With Sirens and his other works in the aged 20 to 30 believed some of the imaginew show, Fontcuberta hopes to do more nary animals Fontcuberta devised could than submit visitors to practical jokes. “My have existed. work — I wouldn’t want to be pretentious — is pedagogic. It’s a pedagogy of doubt, protecting us from the disease of manipulation. We want to believe. Believing is more comfortable because unbelieving implies effort, confrontation. We passively receive a lot of information from TV, the media and the internet because we are reluctant to expend the energy needed to be skeptical.” 63
THE MIRACLE OF BALANCE
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| MUNKKHI JHANI
MUNKKHI JHANI
FALSE NEGATIVES
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THE MIRACLE OF LEVITATION
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| KARELIA
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MIRACLE OF CRYOFLORATION
| KARELIA
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Elsewhere in Stranger than Fiction, visitors will see Constellations (1993), purportedly photographs of magnificent starry skies but in reality photograms made using the dust from a car windscreen, and Orogenesis, a series of landscapes brought to life by Fontcuberta feeding misinformation into cartographical software normally used by geographers and the military. Karelia: Miracles and Co documents Fontcuberta’s trip he undertook, posing as a monk, to expose the truth of a Finnish monastery where it is said that monks learn to perform miracles. Truly you will believe, having seen the evidence, that a monk (looking uncannily like a certain Catalan photographer) can walk on water. “I’m a terrible photographer,” Fontcuberta says. Why? By way of answer he shows me his hand — there is a finger missing. “A homemade bomb blew up in my hand, so I’m very slow in using a camera.” So what, I say: Django Reinhardt lost a couple of his fingers but that didn’t stop him being a great guitarist. Perhaps it helped. “I tried to work as a documentary photographer but I was a bullshitter. So I thought I should work on the other side.” (For a “terrible” photographer, he is a successful one: last year he won the Hasselblad International Award in Photography, whose previous recipients include Ansel Adams and Henri Cartier-Bresson.) One reason that questioning authority became part of Fontcuberta’s vocation is Spain’s fascist ruler, General Franco. “I lived for 20 years under the Francoist regime, so like all my generation I suffered from the lack of transparency and the doctoring of documents to reconstruct history.”
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WORDS_ STUART JEFFRIES
Fontcuberta has a degree in communications and previously worked in advertising. As well as making his art, he now teaches all over the world. “I’m an heir of Marshall McLuhan [the Canadian media theorist who counseled that the medium is the message] and of all those 1960s countercultural movements — situationism, conceptual art. Mix them all in a cocktail and that’s me.” Some photographers wouldn’t deign to sip this heady cocktail. “That’s right. For them photography is neutral. But really, as Walter Benjamin recognised, it’s a medium impregnated with all the ideological values of the 19th century — the industrial revolution, liberalism, colonialism, positivism, realism. When you push the button of a camera all that is compressed. As a photographer, you must be aware of that heritage. “You see,” says Fontcuberta just before we finish our drinks, “reality doesn’t exist before our experience. Photography is one of the tools that helps us construct reality. It is not an innocent medium.”
HAVING SEEN THE EVIDENCE
TRULY YOU WILL BELIEVE
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A
ERRIBLE
M
JOAN FONTCUBERTA
PHOT GRAPHER
FOR A “TERRIBLE”
PHOTOGRAPHER, HE IS A
SUCCESSFUL ONE: LAST YEAR HE WON THE HASSELBLAD
INTERNATIONAL AWARD IN PHOTOGRAPHY