[00:00.250 --> 00:02.550] Johannes Grenzfurthner. [00:02.870 --> 00:03.870] Let's hear it. [00:08.620 --> 00:09.220] Hello! [00:10.080 --> 00:13.120] I am Johannes Grenzfurthner. [00:13.400 --> 00:14.720] I am from Austria. [00:15.300 --> 00:18.900] And excuse my voice, I have some laryngitis today. [00:19.780 --> 00:24.120] But I am here to give this talk called We Will All Become Stars. [00:25.860 --> 00:27.500] And... I'm sorry, what? [00:27.600 --> 00:27.720] No. [00:28.040 --> 00:28.580] I'm sorry. [00:30.580 --> 00:33.760] I'm... No, I don't know what... Are you just going to keep on... [00:34.300 --> 00:35.300] Will you please sit down? [00:35.400 --> 00:36.200] I have a talk to give. [00:38.740 --> 00:39.500] Okay, fine. [00:40.760 --> 00:41.680] I'm not Johannes. [00:42.620 --> 00:45.740] And I would have got away with it too if it weren't for you darned hackers. [00:46.320 --> 00:49.280] But I am some other guy. [00:49.800 --> 00:55.640] And Johannes has asked me to give this talk because he is the character in my story. [00:55.640 --> 01:00.240] And that's what he suggests all of you should become, is... [01:00.240 --> 01:02.880] Characters in other people's stories. [01:03.240 --> 01:06.640] That's, in a way, the highest achievement of an artist because... [01:07.220 --> 01:08.420] Why is that important? [01:08.780 --> 01:09.560] Full screen. [01:09.880 --> 01:10.560] One moment. [01:13.060 --> 01:14.240] Why is that important? [01:14.420 --> 01:15.020] Because... [01:15.020 --> 01:15.620] Yes! [01:15.860 --> 01:17.220] Because we're all going to die. [01:17.440 --> 01:18.260] And soon. [01:18.640 --> 01:21.960] And even if you think 50 years is a long time, it's not. [01:21.960 --> 01:27.020] Even if you think you'll live a while, the stories you create can outlive you. [01:27.780 --> 01:28.960] And why else? [01:29.200 --> 01:30.820] Because stories are powerful. [01:30.980 --> 01:32.840] They're more powerful than you or I. [01:33.140 --> 01:43.300] And if you put just a little thought into how you create your stories, what stories you spread, you can shape the world in more powerful ways. [01:43.300 --> 01:47.360] Now, Johannes is a character. [01:47.940 --> 01:51.520] He does what he likes to call context hacking. [01:52.060 --> 01:59.980] And this means doing performances for people who don't expect it, for people who didn't come to see art. [02:00.560 --> 02:03.580] It means dressing up as characters sometimes. [02:05.120 --> 02:10.020] A good rule of thumb is that anything you put a frame around instantly becomes art. [02:11.000 --> 02:12.060] And, uh... [02:13.180 --> 02:17.640] This is from a performance he does called Soviet Unterzorgersdorf. [02:17.900 --> 02:27.860] We took a road trip across America dressed as Soviets and went to all of the touristic military outpost museums and pretended to be stealing military secrets. [02:28.160 --> 02:29.720] We made a short film about it. [02:30.000 --> 02:32.120] Lost most of the footage, but that's another story. [02:32.120 --> 02:32.160] Lost most of the way. [02:34.740 --> 02:38.840] Now, this all gets into the idea of memes. [02:39.300 --> 02:44.100] And I mean it in the Richard Dawkins sense, not the shitposting sense. [02:45.400 --> 03:05.940] But Richard Dawkins, a man who is frequently, almost always, correct, and often not right, He coined this term with the idea that an idea can be thought of as a virus. [03:07.660 --> 03:13.240] It's coming out at the same time as early computer viruses were just becoming a thing. [03:13.420 --> 03:14.920] Worms, as they were called. [03:14.920 --> 03:25.580] And you can think of an idea as a payload that spreads surrounded by a delivery method, an infection vector. [03:26.020 --> 03:38.800] For instance, the Bible is quoted as a meme often, and you think about the payload of you need to behave in certain ways and modify your lifestyle. [03:38.800 --> 03:41.260] You think of the infection vector. [03:41.540 --> 03:45.820] You will go out and evangelize and spread the gospel. [03:48.060 --> 03:52.180] Memes and ideas can also have immunity and resistance. [03:52.300 --> 03:57.200] Like a virus can adapt to become immune to new drugs. [03:57.460 --> 03:59.380] An idea can have immunity built in. [03:59.500 --> 04:07.480] For instance, in the Bible, there's hell and the devil and anything that would lead you astray from the teachings of the Bible. [04:07.480 --> 04:12.480] Well, you are immune from believing it because that's just the devil trying to trick you. [04:12.800 --> 04:15.880] Now, memes versus stories. [04:16.240 --> 04:23.480] I would say if a meme is like a thought is a virus, then stories are like protozoa. [04:24.200 --> 04:26.680] They're like more complicated beings. [04:26.680 --> 04:28.220] They have more parts. [04:28.420 --> 04:32.640] And as such, they're more prone to mutation. [04:33.460 --> 04:36.020] They're more prone to change and adapt. [04:36.020 --> 04:40.760] They're a bit more fragile than just a pure, simple virus and thought idea. [04:42.540 --> 04:45.020] And we'll see a couple examples of that. [04:45.020 --> 04:47.740] Now, this was from yesterday. [04:48.080 --> 04:50.140] Trump presentation subtitle. [04:53.160 --> 05:03.360] As I was watching Mitch's talk, the news started to break about the assassination attempt. [05:03.640 --> 05:10.120] And in this post-truth world we live in, it can be very hard to find out accurate information. [05:10.120 --> 05:14.260] And unfortunately, at first, I did not find out accurate information. [05:14.280 --> 05:23.740] I was on my little stupid phone with my stupid thumbs trying to find out what stupid thing had happened to that stupid man in that other part of the world. [05:23.740 --> 05:34.320] And the first thing I came across was something that seemed to be legitimate to me from a good source that said, there was no gun. [05:34.500 --> 05:36.360] There was just someone shouting gun. [05:36.700 --> 05:45.280] And this fake news is being spread by Don Jr. And it's just being used as a media spectacle. [05:45.280 --> 05:51.140] Well, for about 30 seconds or so, that was on mainstream media. [05:51.320 --> 05:53.660] And I may have been one of five people who saw it. [05:53.920 --> 05:58.880] But as soon as the talk was over and I stood up in the room and said, Hey, hey, it's fake news. [05:58.960 --> 05:59.360] Don't worry. [05:59.640 --> 06:02.380] It's just being spread by Don Jr. It's bullshit. [06:04.920 --> 06:11.560] And then a few minutes later, I was very embarrassed by falling for that shit. [06:13.880 --> 06:29.160] But as you see in a post-truth world, in a world where there's so many conflicting stories that we're flooded with, you can... the reality is sometimes shaped by the stories we choose to spread. [06:30.380 --> 06:34.200] We think that things happen and then we tell stories about it. [06:35.060 --> 06:37.100] But I invite you to flip that. [06:37.260 --> 06:37.720] Invert it. [06:38.320 --> 06:44.480] In a lot of ways, our reality is the stories we choose to repeat. [06:44.660 --> 06:47.540] Think of all the things that happen and no one ever mentions it again. [06:48.800 --> 06:53.220] The stories that we keep are the ones that we spread, the ones we keep spreading, the ones we keep telling. [06:54.220 --> 07:02.200] And with a little bit of thought and intentionality, we can craft our stories to shape our reality in the ways that we desire. [07:02.200 --> 07:04.100] I'll talk more about that. [07:06.720 --> 07:14.060] One example of story cultures are many of the indigenous cultures around the world who have oral history traditions. [07:14.440 --> 07:21.760] Their entire conception of self, their entire culture and story is based on oral traditions passed on. [07:21.760 --> 07:26.680] And I was going to have an image here, but we'll do without. [07:28.400 --> 07:31.860] The point is that modern DNA is starting to catch up. [07:32.020 --> 07:36.120] We're starting to prove the truth of some of these origin stories. [07:36.120 --> 07:44.720] For instance, that the Aboriginal people of Australia are the oldest civilization in the world, dating back at least 10,000 years. [07:46.020 --> 07:56.360] Western scientists are starting to discover what they have been telling us all along, that they have an oral tradition documenting their history going back that far. [07:56.620 --> 08:00.900] And the DNA is only now just corroborating it. [08:01.800 --> 08:04.240] So, pay attention to which stories you spread. [08:06.640 --> 08:08.360] Now, how do I know Johannes? [08:08.720 --> 08:10.180] This is why I'm up here right now. [08:10.420 --> 08:19.400] I started working with him as an artist in residence back in 2007, and he found me because I was doing zombie flash mobs. [08:20.460 --> 08:29.040] Now, this is the first time I've ever stood in front of a crowd and admitted or talked about starting the zombie thing. [08:31.000 --> 08:32.780] And here's a photo of it. [08:33.080 --> 08:35.000] This is two layers of indirection. [08:35.220 --> 08:40.980] On one side, you see a couple of zombies in the Apple store. [08:42.300 --> 08:47.700] On the other side, you see someone taking a photo of the zombies in the Apple store. [08:50.580 --> 08:58.340] And there is a third one, which is the picture, which I have left out because I couldn't find it. [08:59.740 --> 09:06.840] Point being, okay, the zombie flash mobs were an idea of sort of a meme, if you will. [09:06.980 --> 09:13.740] They were a simple idea, seeing if we could get the idea to spread in a physical way throughout an audience. [09:14.080 --> 09:18.120] It wasn't a traditional flash mob where you show up and do a thing. [09:18.120 --> 09:25.140] The main point of it was that you show up in regular clothes and the crowd will intercept you and convert you into a zombie. [09:25.280 --> 09:28.240] The mass of zombies will grow as it goes along. [09:28.580 --> 09:35.080] So it could start with five people and end up with several thousand wandering through city streets. [09:35.940 --> 09:45.480] In order to create this meme in a sustainable way that wouldn't be complete mayhem, I seeded it with a couple of rules. [09:45.720 --> 09:51.700] For one, if you want to participate, you would show up wearing a piece of duct tape visible on yourself. [09:52.060 --> 09:56.800] So that the zombie mob would know you're a participant, they can ruin your clothes, they can spill blood on you. [09:58.420 --> 10:05.900] Rule number two, zombies would try really hard not to get blood and ruin private property and personal things. [10:06.300 --> 10:14.800] I'm trying to make a sustainable meme of an event that can be shocking from the outside, but I don't want to be... [10:14.800 --> 10:21.420] In order to be sustainable in a way, you have to follow certain rules and certain societal agreements and not be a total asshole. [10:22.000 --> 10:28.180] Rule three was that zombies will leave private property reasonably soon after being asked. [10:28.640 --> 10:30.160] Now, this is the Apple Store. [10:30.520 --> 10:39.600] We ended up there because of a disgruntled employee who was in our midst, who asked us, Hey, can you go fuck with my work, please? [10:39.600 --> 10:40.440] So we did. [10:41.780 --> 10:43.720] And as I recall... [10:43.720 --> 10:49.520] No, I have no recollection in Reagan speak of anyone asking me to leave the Apple Store. [10:49.520 --> 10:51.100] And so we hung out for a while. [10:51.440 --> 10:52.400] It was a good old time. [10:52.700 --> 10:54.960] And then we came back every year after that. [10:58.360 --> 10:58.840] Now... [11:01.080 --> 11:05.240] From this, I saw the effectiveness of a meme in the physical world. [11:05.240 --> 11:13.300] It was a bit of a model of how news stories can spread, for instance, with simple building blocks and rules that everyone agrees to engage in. [11:14.800 --> 11:19.020] But this begs the question, who is your performance for? [11:19.320 --> 11:38.660] I think a mistake that a lot of these other flash mobs would make, a lot of the events that followed this, they didn't plan for the user experience so much as to make it a good time for the people in the mob, for the people doing the guerrilla art. [11:41.920 --> 11:50.620] When you're designing your story, you should think of who is going to hear it, what beliefs they already have, what experience do you want them to have? [11:50.820 --> 11:52.980] I call it empathetic experience design. [11:53.460 --> 12:00.500] In the case of the zombies, shuffling around in the streets in costume was not the main appeal for me. [12:00.500 --> 12:07.660] I wanted to create a spectacle for average people walking around minding their own damn business. [12:08.040 --> 12:15.120] I wanted to disrupt their day a little bit, shock them out of complicity, show them something a little surprising. [12:15.120 --> 12:22.020] And so, I think that as a performer, every single thing you do in front of an audience is part of your act. [12:22.020 --> 12:34.380] If you're a musician, and you go up and you're tuning your guitars for a half hour and noodling around and starting and stopping songs, nothing makes me angrier than a fucking tune-up. [12:35.280 --> 12:37.720] So there are parts you should not do in front of your audience. [12:38.780 --> 12:52.940] And when you design an activist action, a protest, when you design a media event, or a stupid flash mob, you should be thinking of it from the point of view of a random observer on the street. [12:52.940 --> 12:56.380] And you should take care to add extra things for them to watch. [12:56.460 --> 13:10.960] In this case, what they got to see was somebody standing on a street corner in plating clothes, who looked a lot like them, suddenly gets swarmed by a big zombie crowd and attacks and converted and rise up and do the whole zombie thing. [13:11.120 --> 13:13.020] So that was the spectacle of that one. [13:15.180 --> 13:17.140] Now the beautiful thing about stories... [13:17.140 --> 13:19.480] We're going to talk about merkins for a moment. [13:20.700 --> 13:24.600] The beautiful thing is that they can have an influence on people, right? [13:24.640 --> 13:28.420] That's why we do all of this shit, is to have an influence on people. [13:28.420 --> 13:35.780] And if we're smart about it, we're making it an influence in a positive way, at least a way that we plan for. [13:38.320 --> 13:39.920] So here's another story. [13:41.000 --> 13:46.400] I was doing a piece of art where I was a tailor shop for merkins. [13:46.660 --> 13:47.760] Do you know what merkins are? [13:48.940 --> 13:50.300] I don't know why I ask. [13:50.420 --> 13:51.380] I'm going to explain it anyway. [13:51.380 --> 13:56.140] So a merkin is like a wig for your pubic hair. [13:56.320 --> 14:00.480] It's like a fake hair wig that you could tie around yourself. [14:00.680 --> 14:07.300] It has origins in Victorian times when prostitutes would shave their hair because of crab lice. [14:07.680 --> 14:10.360] And so they would replace it with a fake one. [14:10.540 --> 14:14.160] Now, this performance, I won't get into it too much. [14:15.600 --> 14:18.800] But I was handing out merkins and tying them on to people. [14:18.980 --> 14:29.340] And many years later, last year, in fact, because the Merkin event happened in about 2006, which we all know was eight years ago. [14:32.340 --> 14:38.020] Just last year, I was in Chicago doing another immersive interactive character thing. [14:38.020 --> 14:47.720] I was just a small actor in a larger event where they had rented out the museum there on the side of the Maritime Park. [14:47.860 --> 14:50.600] It was a big production, hundreds, thousands of dollars. [14:50.860 --> 14:57.360] And afterwards, I was standing around with one of the producers, the main funder and director. [14:57.360 --> 15:05.580] And he started talking about this event about 15, 20, 15 years ago. [15:07.440 --> 15:11.980] An event called the All Worlds Fair, where the mercantile made its appearance. [15:12.260 --> 15:30.900] And he was talking about how this was the inspiration for him to get into immersive theater, how it all started with attending this immersive theater event, having his mind blown, trying how to replicate it, raising the money, hiring the actors, coming back together. [15:32.840 --> 15:35.860] And yes, yes, he has one of my merkins. [15:36.520 --> 15:39.720] He keeps his merkin in his sock drawer. [15:43.960 --> 15:48.240] And, you know, the plural of anecdote is not truth. [15:49.240 --> 15:51.420] The plural of anecdote is a story. [15:51.420 --> 15:53.180] And that's what you're going to get from me here. [15:55.140 --> 15:59.260] I have a couple more stories to talk about intentionally, left blank. [16:03.960 --> 16:07.080] That was going to be a good story, I'm sure, but we'll have to move along. [16:10.000 --> 16:12.240] Here is the story of another art piece. [16:12.560 --> 16:17.720] It involves buttholes and an opera singer. [16:18.560 --> 16:21.040] Now, for this piece of art... [16:22.000 --> 16:23.800] Thank you for taking pictures, yes. [16:24.500 --> 16:25.720] The documentation is important. [16:25.920 --> 16:32.320] In fact, thanks for reminding me, documentation is often the most important part of your performance or art project. [16:33.000 --> 16:36.880] I did work in environmental activism for a long time. [16:37.080 --> 16:47.500] It was a lot of media focus, a lot of media analysis, and a lot of designing protests, and designing activist events, and designing news articles. [16:47.800 --> 16:49.280] We would often... [16:50.120 --> 17:01.400] It may sound cynical, but a lot of the time, we're designing events more for the people who see it on the news than for the people who are witnessing us drop a banner off of a building or something. [17:01.400 --> 17:15.720] If you're blocking traffic by doing a more direct action, maybe you're chaining yourself across the interstate, like in the recent BLM protests, or maybe you're scaling the Golden Gate Bridge to make a statement. [17:16.220 --> 17:21.040] Usually, your impact is more the people who will see it afterward on the news. [17:21.040 --> 17:40.880] And so, it becomes important to think about optics, about how you're going to design a newsworthy image that tells your story, because you're telling a true story, you're not lying, but you're arranging, you're putting it in a frame, as we all know is what makes it art. [17:41.180 --> 17:44.140] Now, buttholes, back to buttholes. [17:45.900 --> 17:46.940] Where's my water? [17:48.580 --> 17:52.240] Well, for this particular piece of art, it took place in a hotel. [17:53.480 --> 18:00.340] And the main conceit of our project is that we were doing portraits of people's buttholes from the audience. [18:01.960 --> 18:17.260] There was a whole shtick involved, there were costumes and accents, I won't go into it, but as an audience member, we could pull you aside, we'd clean you up, we would decorate your butthole, and then we would literally hold up a small frame around it, because that makes it art, and snap a Polaroid and hand it to you. [18:21.720 --> 18:35.360] And it was all going very well, and well, as well as expected, and people were enjoying it, and I saw crowds of people standing around with their Polaroids, comparing their glamorous buttholes, and that just warmed my heart, because it's a great icebreaker. [18:36.040 --> 18:38.540] And we were forming connections, you know. [18:39.620 --> 18:44.380] But there was one person who was watching from afar, a bit aloof. [18:44.840 --> 18:49.080] And like everybody else at the event, he wasn't wearing a crazy costume. [18:49.080 --> 19:10.840] He was all in black, kind of stocky with a beard, Italian-American-looking guy, and he was just observing for a while, and then he approached us a little sheepishly, and again, we're in outrageous costumes with outrageous accents doing our thing, and he asked if he could have his butthole portrait [19:10.840 --> 19:11.280] taken. [19:12.080 --> 19:20.860] So, of course, of course, it's glamorous, and everyone is doing it, and it's what the elites and the most fancy people are doing. [19:21.060 --> 19:23.480] So, we went through that process with him. [19:23.960 --> 19:25.320] Nothing special to tell there. [19:25.420 --> 19:31.620] But afterward, he let us know that, in fact, he was the hotel manager. [19:33.120 --> 20:01.160] He was managing the hotel that we had rented for this event, and his family owned the Italian Mafia or whatever, I'm just assuming, and he was watching us to see that we were doing this respectfully in a way, that we were really what we said, that it was a performance and not exploitive in some way. [20:02.780 --> 20:08.320] And then he offered to sing us an opera aria, because he's an opera singer. [20:08.440 --> 20:16.100] He said, you know, I'm just managing this hotel because my family is involved, but really, I always wanted to be an opera singer. [20:16.240 --> 20:24.100] I went to school, and if you don't mind, because your art was such an experience, I'd like to share this song. [20:24.240 --> 20:26.220] And the entire room fell silent. [20:26.220 --> 20:31.060] Everybody listened to this man sing an Italian aria, which... [20:31.060 --> 20:33.180] Let's say it was Vivaldi, I don't know. [20:33.420 --> 20:35.100] But it was beautiful. [20:35.680 --> 20:37.340] And I'll always remember that moment. [20:38.940 --> 20:40.040] And that's the story. [20:41.080 --> 20:44.080] It's not the end of the story, because the event happened the next year. [20:44.240 --> 20:45.920] I came back looking for my friend. [20:46.220 --> 20:49.220] I asked at the front desk, you know the manager, stalking guy? [20:50.340 --> 20:51.720] She said, he's not here anymore. [20:52.360 --> 20:54.340] He went off to join an opera company. [20:54.340 --> 20:55.440] He's an opera singer now. [20:57.040 --> 20:58.100] So, huh. [21:00.020 --> 21:06.420] The plural of anecdote is not truth, but the plural of anecdote is a story, and that's a story. [21:08.130 --> 21:12.780] You can actually affect people with your art sometimes, and you often don't hear about it. [21:13.680 --> 21:17.800] I have no idea how many fucking people have seen my stuff. [21:18.420 --> 21:21.300] I usually don't put my name on it. [21:21.480 --> 21:24.920] I usually don't document it as well as I should, honestly. [21:26.120 --> 21:30.000] But I'm a fan of guerrilla art, encountering people who aren't expecting it. [21:30.300 --> 21:36.060] And as a result, I have no fucking idea what might have come out of it most of the time. [21:36.060 --> 21:37.480] I have some ideas. [21:37.760 --> 21:44.660] I know that zombie mobs popped up all over the country and then all over the world afterward, after that first one. [21:45.220 --> 21:48.200] I know that this man went off to follow his dreams. [21:48.400 --> 21:49.080] That's nice. [21:50.320 --> 21:57.240] But part of the work, part of it is that you may not always know the impact you're having. [21:57.660 --> 21:59.340] That doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. [21:59.620 --> 22:07.540] And that doesn't mean that becoming a part of a story isn't a worthy goal of an artist or an activist. [22:09.140 --> 22:13.640] But it means you have to worry a little bit less about ego and credit. [22:15.140 --> 22:23.680] I think it was Steve Jobs who said you'll be amazed what you can do if you don't care who gets the credit. [22:24.760 --> 22:28.580] Which is ironic because he got credit for a lot of Wozniak's work, really. [22:28.760 --> 22:30.080] He was a bit of a... [22:30.080 --> 22:31.400] But, you know, he said that. [22:34.900 --> 22:40.000] And I think it was the truth is no excuse for a dull story, as said by Gandhi. [22:43.540 --> 22:54.040] And as a context hacker, if I can call myself that, I really do believe that sometimes you can tell a truth that's more true than the real truth. [22:54.360 --> 22:59.060] You can put things into art because art is about exaggeration and hyperbole. [22:59.320 --> 23:03.360] Art is about taking an idea and running it to a logical extreme sometimes. [23:04.000 --> 23:19.000] And you can make art that is not real, that doesn't represent an exact version of reality, but is in some way contains more truth than you could demonstrate just by telling what happened. [23:19.320 --> 23:21.180] That's what a lot of film is about, in my opinion. [23:22.240 --> 23:27.540] I would like to introduce you and give a plug to this person who wrote a book. [23:27.540 --> 23:29.480] I think you should read this book. [23:30.340 --> 23:32.860] It's called Turn Your Life Into Art. [23:33.140 --> 23:42.420] And the subtitle is something like Art Lessons in Psycho Magic from the San Francisco Underground. [23:42.940 --> 23:49.660] Now, the reason I suggest this book is that it deals a lot with creating stories. [23:49.660 --> 24:00.520] A caveat, as he calls himself here, he is an author by trade, a lot of fiction more than documentary like this. [24:00.960 --> 24:08.260] He was also the official philosopher of Burning Man for many years and worked on their blog and publication. [24:09.540 --> 24:16.220] If you ever get a chance to get drunk with him and talk about the 10 principles of Burning Man and how that came to be, it's fascinating. [24:18.640 --> 24:28.280] But in this book, he talks about how to create the potential for magic and transformative experiences and only a little bit of it is about Burning Man. [24:28.460 --> 24:40.700] It's mostly about guerrilla art in the streets and a particular San Francisco culture that existed strongly from the 80s until most people were priced out and COVID happened. [24:44.320 --> 24:47.560] But the idea of manifesting comes into play here. [24:47.980 --> 24:55.840] You create opportunities and you set up your experience to create potential for people to come along and join. [24:56.040 --> 25:05.840] For instance, with the zombie flash mobs, I would make a map of where the mob would be going, but only for the first half. [25:05.840 --> 25:21.960] At some point, the map would end and there would be, well, at the final years, there would be thousands, literally thousands of participants dressed up as zombies with no idea where to go in the middle of the financial district. [25:24.060 --> 25:28.640] And so, for me, this is the beautiful moment where new leaders step forward. [25:29.000 --> 25:36.960] People I didn't know, who didn't know me, and by the way, I never make it clear that I'm anyway involved in these events when I'm there. [25:37.860 --> 25:40.020] I prefer to lead from the middle, if you will. [25:42.160 --> 25:46.380] New people took lead of this mob and took it in a few different directions. [25:46.380 --> 25:51.960] It splintered off and became whatever those people wanted to do with it. [25:51.960 --> 25:55.180] They took it to places I wouldn't have taken it sometimes. [25:55.220 --> 25:56.260] But you know what? [25:56.420 --> 25:57.380] I'm fine with that. [25:57.540 --> 26:07.860] Because sometimes the practice of performance art and guerrilla art is about activating new people. [26:08.020 --> 26:15.560] It's about inviting new people to become guerrilla artists and at least step out of their comfort zone. [26:18.460 --> 26:23.400] These events can be about showing people how to be just a little transgressive. [26:23.600 --> 26:26.720] And maybe it's the first time they've ever jaywalked. [26:27.160 --> 26:30.140] Maybe it's the first time they've ever parked illegally. [26:30.140 --> 26:30.740] I don't know. [26:30.880 --> 26:36.620] But I tried to create these opportunities where, okay, you're now rampaging through an Apple store. [26:36.960 --> 26:37.860] How about that? [26:38.520 --> 26:39.700] Wasn't so bad, was it? [26:39.880 --> 26:40.960] Oh, maybe you want more of it. [26:41.100 --> 26:42.940] Well, there's ways to get involved. [26:42.940 --> 26:52.840] And some of those ways lead to more culturally weighty work like political activism, for instance. [26:54.640 --> 27:07.940] For me, the most interesting part of these events, the most interesting part of the zombie mobs was always the edges where the mob is interfacing with the public. [27:09.380 --> 27:11.740] And that's why when it got too big, I killed it. [27:11.960 --> 27:19.640] Because at the point that there were too many zombies, you're in the middle of it and you see nothing but zombies as far as you can look. [27:20.560 --> 27:24.180] There's no longer interesting interactions happening so much for me. [27:25.000 --> 27:27.440] At least I didn't get to see the reaction. [27:28.260 --> 27:31.000] And same thing with other events like SantaCon. [27:31.280 --> 27:36.720] And I think if you can keep them small and move fast, it's a little bit more interesting. [27:36.860 --> 27:39.080] Now, what's my next slide? [27:41.540 --> 27:42.340] Oh, yeah. [27:44.740 --> 27:45.980] So I'll talk about that. [27:46.120 --> 27:48.720] And yeah, I would love to ask someday. [27:49.700 --> 27:52.580] I was in Vienna at the same time as Cory Doctorow. [27:52.760 --> 27:53.160] Hi there. [27:56.810 --> 28:06.890] And so Johannes was talking about how one of the biggest aims of an artist should be to become a character in someone's story. [28:07.470 --> 28:15.050] And I was in Vienna with Cory at the same time that he was working on the book. [28:15.050 --> 28:16.130] What was it? [28:16.210 --> 28:16.950] Big Brother, I think. [28:17.330 --> 28:17.750] Little Brother. [28:18.050 --> 28:18.230] Thanks. [28:18.370 --> 28:18.770] Yes, yes. [28:18.990 --> 28:19.570] Little Brother. [28:22.230 --> 28:24.990] And my mother had died in the middle, so I was a bit depressed. [28:24.990 --> 28:26.870] And that involved a lot of long walks. [28:27.390 --> 28:37.910] And I got to talk to Cory about the zombie mob work that we were doing in San Francisco and the kind of the point of it, the philosophy behind it. [28:39.170 --> 28:47.870] And later on, there was a vampire mob in Cory's book that shared a lot in common with the vampire mobs. [28:48.030 --> 28:57.810] And I always wonder if I somehow became a character in that story, which is kind of the... [28:57.810 --> 28:59.170] Now that Cory's here, I'm a little... [28:59.170 --> 29:00.730] Hey, was there anything to that? [29:04.370 --> 29:04.930] Super. [29:05.390 --> 29:05.850] Super. [29:06.130 --> 29:07.110] Hey, look at that. [29:07.290 --> 29:08.470] Sometimes you do get answers. [29:11.150 --> 29:11.850] Um... [29:11.850 --> 29:14.090] No, enough about that one. [29:15.470 --> 29:16.170] Um... [29:16.170 --> 29:17.670] The zombies are dead now. [29:17.910 --> 29:19.310] There are new things happening. [29:19.970 --> 29:21.650] And I'll repeat again. [29:22.210 --> 29:24.830] The plural of truth is not antidote. [29:25.190 --> 29:28.690] The plural of true... of antidote is... [29:28.690 --> 29:29.230] Stories. [29:29.850 --> 29:31.550] I have some more slides here. [29:32.230 --> 29:35.680] Uh, since Johannes wanted to talk about, uh... [29:35.680 --> 29:40.980] Uh, the activist and cultural hacking side of, uh... [29:40.980 --> 29:41.920] Of performance art. [29:42.540 --> 29:42.860] I'm... [29:42.860 --> 29:44.420] I have to mention the Yes Men. [29:44.580 --> 29:45.340] This was, what? [29:45.920 --> 29:46.840] 2006, maybe? [29:47.800 --> 29:47.980] 7? [29:48.280 --> 29:48.880] Um... [29:48.880 --> 29:51.240] This was a prank pulled by a group called the Yes Men. [29:52.140 --> 29:58.420] Where they spent a lot of money and effort putting out fake New York Times and distributing them. [29:59.860 --> 30:08.420] And in their fake New York Times, they put their most optimistic version of the future. [30:09.280 --> 30:13.580] Now this is a beautiful kind of art activism to me. [30:13.580 --> 30:19.400] Because before you can create a reality, you have to create a story. [30:19.760 --> 30:28.100] Before you can go the direction you want, you have to do some inner work and figure out what fucking direction you want to go. [30:28.440 --> 30:34.460] Which is, uh, something people often neglect to do when they're forming these events. [30:34.460 --> 30:39.720] So, if you're going to, uh... [30:40.460 --> 30:43.260] Well, if you're going to craft a story, um... [30:43.260 --> 30:44.760] These people do it very professionally. [30:46.660 --> 30:47.460] They, uh... [30:47.460 --> 30:50.300] Got on all of the late night talk articles. [30:50.420 --> 30:51.340] Anybody remember that? [30:53.440 --> 30:54.320] Am I that old? [30:54.480 --> 30:55.740] Nobody remembers the Yes Men? [30:56.000 --> 30:57.080] Jesus fucking Christ. [30:57.280 --> 30:57.420] Yeah? [30:57.680 --> 30:58.240] Okay, great, great. [31:00.960 --> 31:01.600] Um... [31:01.600 --> 31:03.040] And yeah, so... [31:03.040 --> 31:05.340] We're talking about empathetic design here. [31:05.560 --> 31:05.940] Uh... [31:05.940 --> 31:07.840] There's a different talk I can give about that. [31:09.260 --> 31:09.900] Um... [31:09.900 --> 31:16.560] About how to approach people who aren't expecting an art experience, and haven't consented to it, importantly. [31:17.500 --> 31:23.840] And how to fuck with them in a way that's respectful. [31:24.400 --> 31:26.600] In a way that they will appreciate later. [31:27.800 --> 31:28.800] When, uh... [31:28.800 --> 31:29.600] When I'm designing... [31:30.520 --> 31:30.820] Uh... [31:31.120 --> 31:32.840] An event, whether it's, uh... [31:32.840 --> 31:33.320] Uh... [31:33.320 --> 31:38.060] Flash mob, like the one I've been talking endlessly about, or whether I'm talking about, uh... [31:38.060 --> 31:39.520] Protests, or... [31:39.520 --> 31:39.960] Uh... [31:39.960 --> 31:41.780] Even just a stupid, uh... [31:41.780 --> 31:42.840] Performance theater thing. [31:45.670 --> 31:46.270] Uh... [31:46.270 --> 31:47.050] You want to... [31:47.050 --> 31:47.230] Okay. [31:48.290 --> 31:48.890] Uh... [31:48.890 --> 31:49.710] I was saying something there. [31:51.130 --> 31:51.730] Uh... [31:51.730 --> 31:51.990] Yes. [31:52.330 --> 31:53.250] Empathetic design. [31:55.890 --> 31:56.190] Um... [31:56.490 --> 31:57.130] Um... [31:57.950 --> 32:00.170] You want to think about where you want to go. [32:00.750 --> 32:01.950] As you're designing it. [32:02.490 --> 32:02.850] Um... [32:02.850 --> 32:03.930] And you want to... [32:03.930 --> 32:05.790] Be able to fuck with people a little bit. [32:06.010 --> 32:08.050] In a way that they will appreciate after the fact. [32:08.270 --> 32:08.430] Okay. [32:08.570 --> 32:09.310] That's what I was saying. [32:09.710 --> 32:11.090] That's my rubric. [32:11.490 --> 32:12.150] For design. [32:12.510 --> 32:12.910] And for... [32:12.910 --> 32:13.530] For consent. [32:13.910 --> 32:15.010] With public theater. [32:15.310 --> 32:15.790] With... [32:15.790 --> 32:16.170] Uh... [32:16.170 --> 32:17.030] Immersive art. [32:17.230 --> 32:18.630] Or guerrilla theater. [32:19.530 --> 32:23.290] I don't necessarily want people to enjoy it when it's happening to them. [32:23.490 --> 32:26.030] I might make people uncomfortable with it sometimes. [32:26.830 --> 32:31.810] And I can't always get explicit consent for everything that's about to happen to them. [32:32.250 --> 32:32.810] But... [32:33.410 --> 32:39.170] I want to design it in mind that they will be glad they had the experience after the fact. [32:39.610 --> 32:40.490] Looking back at it. [32:41.570 --> 32:45.450] There are also some techniques you can use to kind of gauge consent while it's happening. [32:45.670 --> 32:46.310] You don't ever... [32:46.310 --> 32:47.250] Like... [32:47.250 --> 32:49.990] Physically restrain somebody and make them... [32:49.990 --> 32:50.310] Uh... [32:50.310 --> 32:51.870] Watch your stupid art video. [32:52.810 --> 32:55.570] You at least give them a couple of chances to escape first. [32:58.330 --> 32:58.890] Um... [32:59.570 --> 33:00.130] So... [33:00.130 --> 33:00.710] Uh... [33:00.710 --> 33:01.670] How are we on time? [33:02.110 --> 33:02.670] Anyone? [33:03.950 --> 33:04.830] Fifteen minutes. [33:05.110 --> 33:05.550] All right. [33:05.890 --> 33:06.450] Well... [33:06.450 --> 33:07.390] Five minutes. [33:07.570 --> 33:08.110] Holy cow. [33:08.670 --> 33:09.150] Uh... [33:09.150 --> 33:09.930] I'll skip... [33:10.490 --> 33:10.970] Uh... [33:10.970 --> 33:11.630] You might... [33:12.250 --> 33:13.870] Is that still under warranty, sir? [33:14.110 --> 33:14.590] Your watch? [33:15.090 --> 33:15.610] Okay. [33:16.250 --> 33:16.390] Okay. [33:17.210 --> 33:17.730] Well... [33:17.730 --> 33:18.110] Uh... [33:18.110 --> 33:18.350] Five minutes. [33:18.590 --> 33:18.950] Um... [33:18.950 --> 33:21.270] As you know, Johannes, who was, uh... [33:22.030 --> 33:22.550] The... [33:22.550 --> 33:23.010] Uh... [33:23.010 --> 33:23.730] Idea... [33:23.730 --> 33:25.270] Person of this talk... [33:25.270 --> 33:26.870] Is sick with laryngitis. [33:27.150 --> 33:28.570] I wrote this very quickly. [33:28.930 --> 33:29.710] And, uh... [33:30.710 --> 33:32.710] For that reason, I'm going to, uh... [33:33.030 --> 33:34.730] Jump right to the end... [33:34.730 --> 33:37.010] Where I talk about the stories you create. [33:37.810 --> 33:38.330] Now... [33:38.330 --> 33:39.910] Let me tell you one story. [33:40.750 --> 33:41.230] Okay? [33:41.510 --> 33:42.170] We're fucked. [33:42.610 --> 33:44.370] Did you see the news yesterday? [33:44.370 --> 33:45.290] We are fucked. [33:45.470 --> 33:46.930] And there's nothing we can do about it. [33:47.050 --> 33:49.990] We have two geriatric candidates for the presidency. [33:50.390 --> 33:52.230] Doesn't fucking matter who we vote for. [33:52.290 --> 33:53.090] It's going to be awful. [33:55.710 --> 33:57.950] Not only that, we can't organize effectively. [33:58.210 --> 34:00.870] Because they tap every fucking communication we have. [34:01.110 --> 34:03.050] They can see everything that we write. [34:03.330 --> 34:04.530] They know who we talk to. [34:04.530 --> 34:05.890] They know what porn we watch. [34:07.510 --> 34:10.690] We're going to be descending into a fucking utopian hellscape. [34:11.470 --> 34:14.130] Doesn't matter what the fuck you do about it. [34:15.290 --> 34:15.830] Fuck. [34:19.160 --> 34:20.360] How's that for a story? [34:24.670 --> 34:26.370] It's a bit disempowering, right? [34:28.250 --> 34:29.690] What the fuck do you do with that? [34:29.970 --> 34:30.770] It may be true. [34:30.930 --> 34:31.550] It doesn't matter. [34:33.070 --> 34:36.910] Because as Gandhi tells us, the truth is no excuse for a dull story. [34:39.070 --> 34:40.870] So it may be true that we're totally fucked. [34:41.130 --> 34:41.970] It may be true. [34:42.130 --> 34:45.030] But what if instead we say... [34:45.030 --> 34:45.790] Wow. [34:47.650 --> 34:50.090] We are more interconnected than at any time in history. [34:52.150 --> 34:55.630] We have technologies our ancestors couldn't even fucking dream of. [34:55.770 --> 34:57.210] And we know how to use them. [34:57.510 --> 34:58.970] And look at the people in this room. [34:59.110 --> 35:04.270] This is sort of the creme de la creme of people who know how to fuck around with technology and find out. [35:05.990 --> 35:07.190] We can organize. [35:07.470 --> 35:09.850] We don't need their Internet to organize. [35:10.350 --> 35:19.870] We did years of fucking organizing the unions, the rednecks, all of fucking street protests. [35:20.050 --> 35:22.030] All that happened before the Internet. [35:22.210 --> 35:23.010] And we can go back there. [35:23.130 --> 35:24.490] We can just talk to each other. [35:25.490 --> 35:27.430] We can just show up in the streets. [35:28.310 --> 35:29.710] We can build new tools. [35:29.950 --> 35:34.550] We can build systems that are so much better than the old ones, let the old ones become irrelevant. [35:38.150 --> 35:40.110] And we're the only ones who can do it. [35:41.010 --> 35:43.410] So, why don't we start? [35:46.210 --> 35:47.250] More empowering? [35:49.290 --> 35:50.370] More empowering? [35:51.030 --> 35:55.190] Sometimes the stories you tell shapes reality, not the other way around. [35:56.810 --> 36:06.850] And so, I would urge you, when you have a chance, shape your stories. [36:07.330 --> 36:09.550] Spread the stories that you want to become reality. [36:11.030 --> 36:16.850] Tell them in a way, frame it in a way that makes it powerful, that makes it spread. [36:18.210 --> 36:23.770] Next time you're on a bus with a friend, just in public, anywhere, start talking to them about something. [36:23.870 --> 36:24.610] Make it a performance. [36:24.950 --> 36:28.930] Have a pre-planned conversation talking about politics for people to overhear. [36:29.630 --> 36:31.070] Maybe create a whole little drama. [36:31.990 --> 36:37.990] Act out a whole little drama involving race or sex or something. [36:38.270 --> 36:39.190] Let it play out. [36:39.310 --> 36:40.390] Let everyone around see it. [36:40.390 --> 36:41.690] They don't have to know it's theater. [36:42.230 --> 36:48.370] That's one way you can spread your stories, create stories, become stories in other people's lives. [36:52.010 --> 37:01.440] So, I'm going to end by leading us in a small prayer from the 1976 Film Network. [37:01.780 --> 37:03.040] And it goes like this. [37:03.860 --> 37:05.840] This is a prayer for empowerment. [37:06.160 --> 37:07.080] It goes like this. [37:07.800 --> 37:11.920] I am mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore. [37:13.060 --> 37:14.040] Please join me. [37:15.220 --> 37:17.060] I am mad as hell! [37:17.060 --> 37:19.780] I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore. [37:21.000 --> 37:24.580] I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore. [37:30.820 --> 37:31.780] There's your story. [37:32.340 --> 37:32.820] Thanks.