Pranks! (RE/Search, 11) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1889307459 ISBN 13: 9781889307459

Publisher: Re/Search Publications, 2026

Synopsis

Over forty interviews and essays with leading cultural icons who have unique ways of critiquing "the system" with humor and ingenuity.

Dazzling deceptions and provocative put-ons from some of the most outrageous artists and personalities. Spontaneous, improvised craziness from the Underground in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and points in between. From artists, Bruce Conner and Mark Pauline to radical organizer/writer, Abbie Hoffman, to performance artists Karen Finley and Harry Kipper (and the list goes on) — the interviewees each have a quirky and distinctive way of commenting on life. Here are an exhaustive number of anecdotes and philosophies, heavily illustrated with photographs and clippings from their travails.

A prank is a trick, a mischievous act, and a ludicrous act. Although not regarded as poetic or artistic acts, pranks constitute an art form and genre. In Pranks!, classic pranksters such as Monte Cazazza, Jello Biafra, Joe Coleman, Henry Rollins, John Waters and Henry Rollins challenge the sovereign authority of words, images and behavioral convention.

About this title

About the Authors

V. Vale is a documentarian who champions underground art-world figures. He has worked with subjects such as J.G. Ballard, W.S. Burroughs, and Mark Pauline, as well as early punk rockers, tattoo artists, Incredibly Strange musicians and filmmakers, and many other non-commercial, on-the-edge artists. Vale has contributed to countless literary undertakings, films, and events, and has published over 40 books with RE/Search and Search & Destroy, his imprints.  Vale has documented underground culture and the characters that inhabit it for almost 50 years.

John Waters is an American filmmaker, writer, actor, visual artist, prankster, comedian, and cultural icon. He first became famous in the 1970s for his transgressive and audacious cult films, including Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, and Multiple Maniacs. These films were banned in some countries. Beat Generation author William S. Burroughs dubbed Waters the "Pope of Trash".

Karen Finley is an American performance artist, musician, poet, and educator.  Her performance art, recordings, and books are used as forms of activism. Her work frequently uses nudity and profanity. Finley incorporates depictions of sexuality, abuse, and disenfranchisement in her work. The case, National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley (1998), argued in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, was decided against Finley and the other artists. She is a professor at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.

From the Back Cover

Dazzling deceptions and provocative put-ons from some of the 
most outrageous artists and personalities living today.
Spontaneous, improvised craziness from the Underground in
New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and points in between.
This book opens up a whole new territory of fun and pleasure.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Bruce Conner 

VALE: Weren’t you the one who persuaded cult leader Mel Lyman into declaring himself a World Saviour? That’s sort of a prank.

BRUCE CONNOR: Oh, to be God? I didn’t persuade him, really. Around 1963 he was insinuating himself into Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert’s and the rest of our pseudo-communal society in Newton, Massachusetts. All I told him one day (in the midst of a psychedelic experience) was: “It’s no problem reaching God—if somebody says, ‘Ohmigod,’ you say, ‘Yes?’” So he just started saying “Yes” from that point on, as far as I can tell. I would suggest his book, Autobiography of a World Saviour, as an essay on a prank.

Bruce Conner

... and then what happens is, once you get in one of the books, you start getting letters like, “Congratulations! You’re selected to be one of the biographies in Who’s Who West of the Mississippi” (or Who’s Who in Northern California, etc.). They get you to put your biography in, then they sell you the damn book for $35 or $40—that’s their whole industry! Because the libraries only buy the major Who’s Who’s…It’s just like a Vanity Press. Somebody told me they visited an Admiral once and in his library he had something like sixty of these different Who’s Who’s—they’d all asked him for his biography, and he’d bought every single one of them! So I started getting all this junk in them in the mail. Plus, every year I got a letter saying, “Please update your biography. Review this material, and tell us [whatever].” I did it once, but the next time it came I was fed up and didn’t reply. The following year they sent me another, so I sent it back marked “Deceased.”

Who’s Who in American Art just dropped me entirely and never put me back in. (They probably had their feelings hurt—if I died on them once they weren’t going to let me do it again. The other one was Who’s Who, and they sent me a form for Who Was Who. I filled out the form, and was listed as “deceased” (and despite what everyone says, it doesn’t help your sales to be a “dead” artist!). Then, several years ago, my name was recommended again and I sent the information in—I think it’s because I was considered a filmmaker. So now I’m listed as a living filmmaker in Who’s Who, but in Who Was Who I’m a dead artist!

Frank Discussion 

V: You mean make the crime fit the punishment—

FD: Yes! You’re already being punished day after day with the forty-hour-spanking week. Pulling a prank gives you superiority over your work situation; you assert a certain sovereignty: “I am more important than this. If I’m going to be another cog in the works, I’d rather be a spanner—a wrench.” People usually feel they’re stuck in a job, and not a helluva lot can be done. But it’s possible to pull pranks and not get caught. Up until the time I got sick of a job and wanted to get fired, I could do things and nobody had a clue who was responsible. I just quietly watched the repercussions.

V: Pranks spring from a kind of watchfulness, an alertness based on a whole attitude—

FD: Pranks cultivate a very bad attitude. In the first place, you can’t walk into a job feeling you’re less important than the job anymore. And you always know you have this little weapon in reserve, so if you have to submit to some humiliation, you can exact your revenge. Plus, pranks give you a critical mind, because you have to analyze your situation to determine just what you can do. And this analysis puts your mind in its best light, because pranks are poetry as poetry should be, and the least you get is a good laugh. And you always know there’s something you can do.

Abbie Hoffman

... when I was out of town [laughs] for seven years. I met philosophers in France, because you get to travel a lot when you’re a fugitive, and they said, “You came up with the idea that revolution could be fun. No one in history had thought of that, and only an American could have been so goddamned silly.” And I knew exactly what they were talking about, because you have to render unto Ceasar’s Palace that which is Caesar’s Palace in order to make your points in this country.

When I go for the emperor, I try to pull his pants down. I don’t have to kill a guy, because once I do that he’s gone. In high school I was in a fraternity that did evil pranks like hazing—

Edition details

• Publisher: Re/Search Publications
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1889307459
• ISBN 13: 9781889307459
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 260
• Editor: Vale V.