The Yes Men

Steve Lambert writes for BOMB :

The Yes Men are America's foremost impostors. Since the mid-'90s the duo has bluffed their way into corporate conferences and television interviews in the guise of top-level executives. Waltzing though security in thrift–store suits, they restitute the injustices and corruption of corporate and governmental power elites. After they're escorted out, the future they've forecast is injected into the evening news.

Their work as unauthorized spokespeople has found Yes Man Andy Bichlbaum declaring on BBC television—as a Dow Chemical representative—that the chemical manufacturer would dedicate $12 billion in reparations to victims of the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India. In 2006, they arrived in New Orleans as HUD representatives to announce that 5,000 units of affordable public housing slated for demolition would be maintained.

Absurdist mischief-makers or utopian visionaries? A little of both; the Yes Men select their targets because they propagate economic imbalance—or worse—deprive citizens of a voice with corporate smokescreens. Their slant toward collective utopia has dovetailed into and influenced my own art. For the past five years we've been working on parallel paths: turning real situations into temporary utopias. When we found ourselves at the Eyebeam Art and Technology Center together in 2007, it didn't take long to hatch a plan. Between February and November of 2008, Bichlbaum and I coordinated the New York Times Special Edition. In November, our mock version of the Times was distributed around the country, announcing the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a maximum wage, a new national public transit system, and 14 more pages of good news. I spoke to Bichlbaum and fellow Yes Man Mike Bonanno as they were preparing for the premiere of their second film, The Yes Men Fix the World, at Sundance.

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