Operation Best Buy
So if you are familiar with the RejectEffect here in detroit you might want to take a look at this. Be sure to scroll down and watch the video of the team dressed in blue shirts as they infiltrate a Best Buy store in ny.
"Improv Everywhere is a group of agents (pranksters) based in NYC who organize missions (happenings) in public space. Their intent is to bring excitement to otherwise unexciting locales and give strangers a story they can tell for the rest of their lives.
One of the group's latest missions took place in a Best Buy store and was carried out by more than 80 agents.
The group met at Best Buy, all wearing blue polo shirts almost identical to the store's uniform where after they entered the store and began circulating."
They did not claim to work at the store, however when a customer mistook them for an employee, they did their best to help out...
One of the group's latest missions took place in a Best Buy store and was carried out by more than 80 agents.
The group met at Best Buy, all wearing blue polo shirts almost identical to the store's uniform where after they entered the store and began circulating."
They did not claim to work at the store, however when a customer mistook them for an employee, they did their best to help out...
posted by art blogs are fun at 1:44 PM
7 Comments:
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Please no more spam MICHIGAN AND DETROIT!!!!
"Their intent is to bring excitement to otherwise unexciting locales..."
I was just told about Rev. Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping Based in NYC, he enters Walmart, Starbucks, Victoria Secret (all those neighborhood and global eaters) with his 'choir' in plainclothes. Once inside they strip down to their 'Christian' attire and begin preaching and singing. Review and bio here by Jill Lane:
"...From his beginnings as a sidewalk preacher protesting the corporate redevelopment of Times Square in New York City to his trenchant anti-war, anti-empire actions today, Reverend Billy (pseudonym of artist-activist Bill Talen) has taken his theatrical activism to a range of sites which he calls "contested spaces": those urban sites that have been recently commodified, commercialized, gentrified or placed under state or police surveillance. In this vein, he has staged numerous "Shopping Interventions" in which he, along with prime collaborator Savitri D and the artists in "the Stop Shopping Choir," often perform in transnational corporate spaces themselves -- from the Disney Store to Starbucks -- in an effort to intervene in the seamless corporate architecture and choreography of shopping, or to "re-narrate" them with alternate forms of sociality and with the memories of the lives they displace." Jill Lane
Now, to enter these 'unexciting locales' is a vote for their existence. To 'bring excitement' is like funding the bomb. If you bring your art in at least fund IT with a message. Or, take your performance to the homeless and jobless.
Thanks AG for reminding me of the Rev. Billy performances. Keep up the good work. SH
This is great work!
SH and AC should take their cloister rhetoric outside the detroit bubble. Or two block bubble. You don't have to go to far to be in the hot zone where usefull outward intervention can occur...
Totally made my morning. The possibilities with this idea are endlessly amusing.
I heard an NPR bit about some of their other "missions", such as the "best gig ever" where they took an unknown band, got their playlist off of their website, memorized the lyrics, and attended their empty NYC show as hard-core fans. The band was confused, elated, and then pissed. They also did a really interesting 'time loop' mission also where they recreated a series of innocuous things at a starbucks (one patron sneezes, another guy enters to meet his girlfrield, etc) over and over again. The other patrons started catching on by about the 6th loop. There was also a naked subway 'mission', too. You have to love the idea of Improv Everywhere...
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