The “Yes Men” are two activists who primarily aim to raise awareness about what they consider problematic social issues. In attempt to fix the problem at hand, they will show the truth by exposing a lie, a practice they like to call “identity correction.” In the Yes Men Documentary, Mike and Andy begin by building a George W. Bush mock website, a successful attempt at “identity correction” as it gained a breadth of attention in the media. As their next project, they create a parody of the WTO’s website. Many of the visitors don’t notice that the site is fake, and send speaking invitations intended for the real WTO. The Yes Men play along with the gimmick and eventually find themselves speaking on behalf of the WTO in numerous interviews, conferences and TV talk shows. With the intention and expectation of raising a few eyebrows and “inevitably” exposing their true identity, they are quickly disappointed as the experts don’t seem to notice the joke and actually agree with every shocking idea the duo devised. In fact, it wasn’t until the men gave a lecture at a local university (which happened to be on recycling food via septic systems for third world countries) that anyone noticed their talk went from strange, to offensive, to appalling ... at last, success.
Similar to The Yes Men is Steve Lambert, an American artist who works with issues of advertising and the use of public space. He is a founder of the Anti-Advertising Agency, an artist-run initiative which critiques advertising through artistic interventions, similar to “identity correction” of the media, Lambert works to reveal the true identity of advertising campaigns. He has also collaborated with The Yes Men (along with 30 writers, 50 advisors and close to 1000 volunteer distributors) to create a New York Times Spoof on ending the Iraq War. Check out his other works at http://visitsteve.com/bio/.
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