How the media interpreted (they got it wrong), editorialized (they condescended) and criticized (they attacked) these performances inspired me to actually use the media more directly, to make my point.

What do we believe? Why do we believe it?

Other times you can use a calendar to predict the kinds of stories the media is looking for.

I predict a revolution in media delivery.

Most important to any fake story is a plausible, realistic edge with a satirical twist that is topical.

Most reporters who come to me get their stories directly from press releases. Very few do what one would consider to be their professional duty.

Any deviation is looked upon as a perversion, is feared, and is usually a target of hatred and prejudice.

Technology and consciousness are evolutionary and co-dependant. Change is inevitable. Where it leads will always be a great curiosity.

The media’s job is to question a premise.

I learned more complex ways to manipulate the manipulators, to bring attention to issues about which I felt passionate.

As a news story, I’m just a subject, not a person. My early performances were provocative, so I was stereotypically portrayed as a counter-cultural figure by the mainstream media.

Any journalist worth his or her salt wouldn’t trust me.

I mean, who did they think they were dealing with?

In 1969 I hung a Fifty Foot Brassiere on the US Treasury Building to poke fun at leering Wall Street workers and placed grotesque Statues of Liberty in Astor Place in the East Village as...

After years of people sitting on their butts in front one screen or another, looking at or reading about other people’s lives and events, a multi-national corporation connected to a global political party manipulates everyone...

I wanted to use the Internet because while fact and fiction are so easily manipulated and blurred, it has also become an ubiquitous and supposedly reliable source for information.

The media became not just a vehicle to get attention about an event, but a medium in itself, to be shaped and molded and instilled with my social-political agenda.

I didn’t want or need anyone’s permission.

I was primarily a painter, although I was classically trained in a wide spectrum of mediums.

So the fact that the media all jump on a story in a similar fashion is not surprising. The opposite, when a voice cuts through to say something different or original, is surprising.

I realized early on that the business of art was the antithesis to the creative process and I decided to circumvent the traditional art market.

To be successful, this project had to appear completely real.

But my favorite work is always my next piece.

So I began doing confrontational, iconoclastic performances, bringing my artwork into the public arena, like the Easter Sunday Crucifixion in 1966, which started when I dragged a 200-pound ten-foot-tall sculpture depicting a decayed figure on...

Sensationalism gets them every time.

The media is not just the message. The media is a massage. We’re constantly being stroked, manipulated, adjusted, realigned, and maneuvered.

But I’m as susceptible as anyone else. At the same time, I’m highly skeptical.

They, the government/church/corporation, give out a daily news pill. Everything you want or need to know, you ingest and digest. As a result, you buy the products, share the beliefs, and vote the right way.

I look at past work as completed, although I’m pleased that each of the pieces seems to have a life of its own and that the issues are still relevant.

When something seemingly adverse happens, I use it as an opportunity. Controversies help to distract reporters from questioning the original premise.

I’ve always been a fine artist.

I was young and audacious. So I created a way to express my concerns outside of the establishment.

My challenge as a satirical artist is how to present ideas to people to enable them to question and reexamine their beliefs.

In 1968 I organized the Hippie Bus Tour to Queens as a satirical cultural exchange tour and I attempted to burn down a Vietnamese Village Nativity I erected in Central Park to protest the war...

When I create a false reality, I always try to create a plausible structure to help convince people.

Celebrations of anniversaries of disasters, such as nuclear power plant meltdowns or political assassinations, provide opportunities, as do holidays.

My hope is that my work provokes people to look at things in a new way.

My art became very public.

I created hoaxes. I confronted and challenged the majority opinion. I attacked, humiliated, and criticized the voice of the corporate mainstream media.

We’re pulling something together that you definitely don’t want to miss. Be there.

In 1966, I built a crucifix and dragged it down the street on four consecutive Easters to protest man’s inhumanity to man and to comment on the hypocrisy of the church.

The issues of my performances vary, but most of the questions buried in the work remain the same.

We function in a pack mentality. This is our tribe. And this is how we are exploited – sold a bill of goods and a household of products.

I want people to be amused or amazed but fooled.

Satire and believability are irresistible to the news media.

It is the fool who thinks he cannot be fooled.

It would make life much easier if I could have total faith and not question everything all the time, but I can’t do it and I won’t do it.

But I learned first-hand how the news media operates by watching how they interpreted, changed, and misrepresented my intentions.

King of the world wouldn’t be enough. I’d have to be god of the universe (the Wizard of Oz would suffice).

There were many social issues that offended me and provoked a burning passion in me to speak out. Civil rights, the war in Vietnam, culture intolerance, the environment, abuses of power… I came of age...