What kind of person would use candles made from people? Witches? Cannibals? Oil executives?
Seemingly, oil execs. Last Thursday, attendees at an oil-industry convention were fooled into thinking that the solution to peak oil is processing people into premium unleaded.
For those of you that have never come across the work of Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, aka the Yes Men, these arch-pranksters have made a reputation exposing the psyche of the corporate world. They call their technique “identity correction”: They pose as representatives of business and government, get invited to big conferences, and then propose schemes that are so obviously insane, oppressive, or just flat-out immoral that no one would take them seriously. They then watch as the business community nods sagely and thinks how they can turn a profit on this – not, as most sane people would do, throw up in their own mouths a little bit.
In this case, the Yes Men pretended to be from ExxonMobil and the National Petroleum Council and got themselves invited to Gas & Oil Exposition, Canada’s biggest oil-industry conference. They were there to promote a “new product” that would revolutionize energy production – Vivoleum, an oil substitute made out of dead people. The photos of the event reveal oil-industry execs blithely burning candles they think are made from the rendered remains of a dead Exxon janitor.
(Please note, no janitors were harmed in the making of this situationist art prank.)
This article appears in June 15 • 2007.
