I went and saw performance artist and activist L.M. Bogad speak at the East Bay JCC last Thursday. The talk was called "Radical Ridicule: Creative Tactics in Protest Performance." He spoke about his theories and practice while showing clips of his "performance" actions. Basically, he works on creating performative ways of activist and social protest. Some examples of projects he has been involved with are the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army, which stages all sorts of theatrical/clown-led activities in a protest fashion all over the world; Billionaires for Bush, a group of people who dress up as billionaires and go to conservative rallies; and the Oil Enforcement Agency (OEA, a take on the federal Drug Enforcement Agency), which "raided" the annual auto show in LA for irresponsible uses of oil and gas.
He also works a lot in (fake or satirical) propaganda, and once created an imaginary company called "G.E.E. A.T.E." to use as a vehicle for protesting and calling attention to the duplicitous environmental actions and motivations of the G8 summits. He handed out free ice cream from an ice cream truck and also passed out propaganda and flyers advertising his fake company, which puts a "positive" spin on global warming by making ice cream out of the vanishing polar ice caps -- "Where some see deserts, we see desserts!" I'm not explaining it very well - all the projects he spoke about were impeccably executed, and really combined art and politics in a very real, direct, and engaging, and humorous way. Humor is big with Larry's work, and I was really interested in how he encourages artists and performers to subvert cliche and to counter "expected" results or situations. For example, the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (which has chapters all over the world) takes the "expected" outcome of any given protest situation -- that the police come and have conflict with protestors-- and tries to create a different outcome. What happens, for example, if protestors are in the streets doing the hokey pokey, and if they neither confront nor run away from police who try to stop them? What if they kiss the riot cops instead of rush them? What does that look like and how does that instigate surprise or thought or critical thinking in the media and in onlookers?
I could go on, but suffice to say it was interesting and inspiring. Here is a link to Larry's website, and some short videos of some of his projects, which do a way better job of describing his work than I have: http://lmbogad.com/action.html
-Manjula
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