forum the yes men and nomeda & gediminas urbonas 27 May 2011 The Yes Men, Mike Bonanno on the right The Yes Men, Mike Bonanno on the right SKOR | Stichting Kunst en Openbare Ruimte and the Stedelijk Museum present: Artists in Public @ TS2 Location: Auditorium, Temporary Stedelijk 2 Language: English Entrance fee: Museum admission Reservations: Required One way to engage in discussion is to try and infiltrate the field of your subject, make it look like you or your work is part of that field, and then to play with people’s expectations. The Yes Men visit corporate or governmental conferences posing as experts on some relevant topic, and in their lecture propose an outrageous idea – one that could be serious but crosses the line of decency. Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas do not disguise themselves as anything other than artists. They intervene by developing social structures and organizational forms that have a direct effect on reality. Their work focuses mainly on the transition of their country, Lithuania, from a Soviet republic to a capitalist state and in its approach combines art action, protest, and absurdity. How does this artistic mixing of reality and fiction work? In which kinds of discourses does this practice intervene? And for the artist, where does the real begin and the fictional end, or vice versa? Program: Moderator: Koen Brams (art critic, Belgium) 13.30 - Introduction by Martine van Kampen (curator Stichting Kunst en Openbare Ruimte, Amsterdam) 13.40 - Lecture by Mike Bonanno of The Yes Men 14.20 - Break 14.50 - Lecture by Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas 15.30 - Q&A and discussion 16.15 - End Biographies speakers: Mike Bonanno is part of the activist duo The Yes Men, together with Andy Bichlbaum, and lives and works in New York. The Yes Men primarily aim to raise awareness about what they consider problematic social issues that are often caused by dehumanizing business practices. They have produced two films, The Yes Men and The Yes Men Fix the World. The Yes Men’s famed hoaxes include a collaboratively produced fake New York Times announcing the end of the Iraq War, a phony George W. Bush website celebrating the unsavory details of the then-Presidential candidate, and the false announcement of the World Trade Organization’s dissolution in order to shift focus to helping the poor. Bonanno studied Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego. He is also a co-founder of RTmark and is involved with the Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI). In 2003, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship, granted for a project that used wireless technology to create a new medium with which to view his documentary Grounded. He is an associate professor of media arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. For more information, visitwww.theyesmen.org. Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonasare seduced by the flexibility of a heterogeneous practice and are committed to studying the transformation of Lithuanian society into a capitalist society. They both attended the Art Academy of Vilnius and in the 1990s created the art project Jutempus, which centers on the interfaces between social and artistic practice and investigates the position of contemporary art in post-Soviet society. In 2005, they initiated the Pro-Test Lab, a project abolishing the borders between art, protest, and civil commitment. The project is directed against the privatization mania that began after the radical political change in Lithuania and is hitting public areas, like Cinema Lietuva, occupied in the context of the Pro-Test Lab. Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas feel a particular affinity to Fluxus because of their concern for the community, negation of the aesthetic, and their praxis of playful intervention into public space. Their work has been exhibited at Documenta11 in Kassel, MACBA in Barcelona, and the Ludwig Museum in Budapest. In 2007, they were the Lithuanian Pavilion artists at the 52nd Venice Biennale. For more information, visit www.nugu.it. 0

• Trefwoorden
  Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam [Activiteiten/Lezingen/Muziekuitvoeringen], Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam [Tentoonstellingen], beeld- en/of geluidsdrager, monografie
• Persoonstrefwoord
  The Yes Men, Gediminas Urbonas, Nomeda Urbonas