tba 08

This is an excerpt from a paper that i would like to share as it fits for this class as well:

In contrast to the dreary piece “The Beautiful Struggle” by Lemon Anderson Mike Daisey is the more pleasant and approachable response to the monologuists of the TBA festival. In his piece “Monopoly” he talks about the origins of the board game that Hasboro presents on the box, and the true story of how one person stole the idea from the quakers; the original concept behind the board game was to discourage corporate takeover. Ironically enough the corporation took the game, changed the meaning and purpose, and used it as a corporate tool to make millions of dollars. As a separate sub story, he ties in the story of Edison and Tesla where each would compete against each other in terms of DC power versus AC power. In this monologue the overlying theme is propaganda and how it effects our lives.
Similarly, his other monologue, “If You See Something Say Something” he takes on topics like the atom bomb and the world trade center bombing. The most effective part of the work was when he talked about Los Alamos and the museum dedicated to weapons. He talked about a video where the Americans were bombing the Japanese and the music was in a positive light. The only time the music stopped was when the potentially a million american soldiers would die if they didn’t drop the bomb, and there was no mention of Japanese civilian casualties. This is direct control of public opinion through government propaganda.
What makes his Daisey’s art stand above the rest is taking hugely discomforting topics like paranoia, cooperate takeover, and government propaganda, and he makes it hilarious. Mike Daisey understands the concept that comedy and laughter plays on audience discomfort and he exploits this with a pin-point accuracy.
To describe the work of Khris Soden is difficult. He takes a group on a tour of the town Tilburg in the town of Portland Oregon. There is a supplementary book that was “optional but not needed to experience the tour.” The walk was about two miles and consisted of Soden pointing out the features of another town out of context to the actual setting on the other side of the world. I was confused as to what I was supposed to feel as we walked the streets of Portland. I started to feel a sense of boredom and a little ripped off. The “tourists” hear about a beautiful place with much culture and history, and what we are presented with visually is the Portland cityscape. The boredom presented me with an irony, I asked myself, “why am I bored?” Then I realized that we had past two McDonalds and four Starbucks. The conclusion I came to was this was present the tourists with an outside look at their own town to show a dynamic contrast in a rich culture, and one of a corporate nature.