seeking to incite select individuals from the public at large, perhaps you

September 11, 2009 10:53 AM

Under the rainbow: an introduction to the off-kilter world of Mark Jenkins.

Since Tapemen in 2005 (previously on Metafilter) he's progressed to more realistic individuals embedded in strange and stressful situations.

posted by Potomac Avenue (17 comments total)

Some good, some apparently intended to make people even more wary of getting involved and helping people. Classy.
posted by DU at 11:03 AM on September 11, 2009

I actually have a tapemen dog and a tapemen fire hydrant I bought at a Katrina fundraiser a few years back.
posted by pjdoland at 11:09 AM on September 11, 2009

I'm gonna have to Meta-call you.
posted by Dumsnill at 11:20 AM on September 11, 2009

So it's all about man's inhumanity to man and shit.
posted by tula at 11:22 AM on September 11, 2009 [1 favorite]

The fake homeless / suicide stunts remind me of pranks described by Monte Cazaza in the Re-Search book Pranks!. He would put tape loops of a crying baby in a doll that he threw in a dumpster, or a tape loop of a mumbling schizophrenic in a dummy of a homeless lady with a hat out for change, which he came and emptied at the end of the day. He also said that he had a hi-fi record of a car crash, which he would blast out his window in the middle of the night, and watch all his neighbors come look out their windows trying to see the car crash.
posted by idiopath at 11:25 AM on September 11, 2009 [2 favorites]

I got a laugh out of a few of them; but none of it's really original. It seems more like a bunch of gags committed by friends who find them the funniest thing ever. Idiopath points out a more illuminating and original set of 'pranks,' done when, about 30 years ago?
posted by Dee Xtrovert at 11:28 AM on September 11, 2009

idiopath: "The fake homeless / suicide stunts remind me of pranks described by Monte Cazaza in the Re-Search book Pranks!."

After The Next Whole Earth Catalog, no single book broadened my mental horizons more than the RE/Search issue on J.G. Ballard that I bought in a Telegraph Avenue bookshop my freshman year.

1984, it was...

The grass has grown thick on the grave of my youth. - Solzhenitsyn

When Pranks! came out two years later, Monte Cazazza's routines struck my youthfully romantic self as crude but sincere art gestures. Today he just seems like an asshole.

Now all of you get off my lawn.
posted by Joe Beese at 12:26 PM on September 11, 2009

I discovered the books in the reverse order and nearly a decade later, but they were similarly important (and I am retrospectively amazed and thankful that some book vendor in a town as small as the one I lived in hid away RE/Search books in a discreet corner of the store).
posted by idiopath at 12:51 PM on September 11, 2009

No Chevy Chase? No Carrie Fisher in her undies? No rambunctious little people creating havoc in a stodgy hotel?

This, sir, is no Under The Rainbow. Good day.
posted by davelog at 1:45 PM on September 11, 2009 [2 favorites]

Thank you, davelog, I was going to mention that underrated oddball of a movie myself. Cork(y) Hubbard was IMO one of the first veryveryshort actors to transcend height. And growing up watching Billy Barty hosting kids' shows, it was a delight seeing him play a Nazi villain.
posted by wendell at 2:04 PM on September 11, 2009

Going through the final link, there are some excellent installations there. Some of them I did not know were from this same guy. I locked up an excersize bike for a few months on 4th avenue in Olympia, WA (this is the main route through downtown and the street with all the bars on it) partially inspired by the walker with the u-lock which I had seen somewhere.

An installation that could be mistaken for homelessness means something much different in Sweden than it does in the US. People actually checked to see if his manikins were OK, that would not happen here, at least not in any city of a reasonable size, by anyone but a police officer looking to eliminate a nuisance. And then there is the parking meter lollipop, which is so beautiful and so simple and so delightful, that I am disappointed in myself for not thinking of it first.
posted by idiopath at 2:29 PM on September 11, 2009

Can I just say I'm gazing fondly at my copy of "Pranks" right now. How's this for strange bedfellows, ca. 1987:
Mark Pauline
Henry Rollins
Don "Ed" Hardy
Tim Leary
et al
(Also Jeffrey Vallance, who you should friend on Facebook.)

WTF, time? Where'd you go?
posted by turducken at 3:18 PM on September 11, 2009

I am in love with the walker kryptonite-locked to the lamppost. It's the tennis balls on the legs.
posted by Mike D at 3:44 PM on September 11, 2009

The guy sitting cross-legged in the hoodie with no face is down-right eerie. Some of them sit on the border of being both scary and funny. I like it.
posted by doctor_negative at 4:47 PM on September 11, 2009

An installation that could be mistaken for homelessness means something much different in Sweden than it does in the US. People actually checked to see if his manikins were OK, that would not happen here, at least not in any city of a reasonable size,

Don't be so sure...in the videos of DC many Americans end up messing with the mannikens to see if they're real. Maybe not to see if he's ok though, we're just trying to get a laugh, but I'd hardly say Sweden has an edge on the US when it comes to interacting with strangers.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 9:08 AM on September 14, 2009

Once again I am wrong, thanks for the link.
posted by idiopath at 10:03 AM on September 14, 2009

Fantastic. I love the red carpet into the gutter. Says SO much!
posted by livinginmonrovia at 4:34 PM on September 14, 2009