An example protesting California Proposition 8.

Protest art is a broad term that refers to creative works that concern or are produced by activists and social movements. There are also contemporary and historical works and currents of thought that can be characterized in this way.

Social movements produce such works as the signs, banners, posters, and other printed materials used to convey a particular cause or message. Often, such art is used as part of demonstrations or acts of civil disobedience. These works tend to be ephemeral, characterized by their portability and disposability, and are frequently not authored or owned by any one person. The various peace symbols, and the raised fist are two examples that highlight the democratic ownership of these signs.

Protest art also includes (but is not limited to) performance, site-specific installations, graffiti and street art, and crosses the boundaries of art genres, media, and disciplines. While some protest art is associated with trained and professional artists, an extensive knowledge of art is not required to take part in protest art. Protest artists frequently bypass the art-world institutions and commercial gallery system in an attempt to reach a wider audience. Furthermore, protest art is not limited to one region or country, but is rather a method that is used around the world. For example, Publixtheatre Caravan is an international theatre troupe that creates critical performances in everyday spaces around the world.

There are many politically charged pieces of fine art - such as Picasso's Guernica, some of Norman Carlberg's Vietnam war-era work, or Susan Crile's images of torture at Abu Ghraib.

History[link]

It is difficult to establish a history for protest art because many variations of it can be found throughout history. While many cases of protest art can be found during the early 1900s, like Picasso's Guernica in 1937, the last thirty years^[when?] has experienced a large increase in the number of artists adopting protest art as a style to relay a message to the public.

Protest art against SOPA

As awareness of social justices around the world became more common among the public, an increase in protest art can be seen. Some of the most critically effective artworks of the recent period^[when?] were staged outside the gallery, away from the museum and in that sense, protest art has found a different relationship to the public.

Activist art[link]

Activist art represents and includes aesthetic, sociopolitical, and technological developments that have attempted to challenge and complicate the traditional boundaries and hierarchies of culture as represented by those in power. Like protest art, activist art practice emerged partly out of a call for art to be connected to a wider audience, and to open up spaces where the marginalized and disenfranchised can be seen and heard.

Activist art incorporates the use of public space to address socio-political issues and to encourage community and public participation as a means of bringing about social change. It aims to effect social change by engaging in active processes of representation that work to foster participation in dialogue, raise consciousness, and empower individuals and communities. The need to ensure the continued impact of a work by sustaining the public participation process it initiated is also a challenge for many activist artists. It often requires the artist to establish relationships within the communities where projects take place.

If social movements are understood as “repeated public displays” of alternative political and cultural values,^[1] then activist art is significant in articulating such alternative views. Activist art is also important to the dimension of culture and an understanding of its importance alongside political, economical, and social forces in movements and acts of social change. One should be wary of conflating activist art with political art, as doing so obscures critical differences in methodology, strategy, and activist goals.

Historical basis in art and politics[link]

Activist art cites its origins from a particular artistic and political climate. In the art world, performance art of the late 1960s to the 70s worked to broaden aesthetic boundaries within visual arts and traditional theatre, blurring the rigidly construed distinction between the two. The transient, interdisciplinary, and hybrid nature of performance art allowed for audience engagement. The openness and immediacy of the medium invited public participation, and the nature of the artistic medium was a hub for media attention.

Emerging forms of feminism and feminist art of the time was particularly influential to activist art. The idea that “the personal is the political”, that is, the notion that personal revelation through art can be a political tool,^[2] guided much activist art in its study of the public dimensions to private experience. The strategies deployed by feminist artists parallel those by artists working in activist art. Such strategies often involved “collaboration, dialogue, a constant questioning of aesthetic and social assumptions, and a new respect for audience” and are used to articulate and negotiate issues of self-representation, empowerment, and community identity.

Conceptual Art sought to expand aesthetic boundaries in its critique of notions of the art object and the commodity system within which it is circulated as currency. Conceptual artists experimented with unconventional materials and processes of art production. Grounded by strategies rooted in the real world, projects in conceptual art demanded viewer participation and were exhibited outside of the traditional and exclusive space of the art gallery, thus making the work accessible to the public. Similarly, collaborative methods of execution and expertise drawn from outside the art world are often employed in activist art so as to attain its goals for community and public participation. Parallel to the emphasis on ideas that conceptual art endorsed, activist art is process-oriented, seeking to expose embedded power relationships through its process of creation.

In the political sphere, the militancy and identity politics of the period fostered the conditions out of which activist art arose.

Strategy and practice[link]

In practice, activist art may often take the form of temporal interventions, such as performance, media events, exhibitions, and installations. It is also common to employ mainstream media techniques (through the use of billboards, posters, advertising, newspaper inserts…etc.). By making use of these commercial distributive channels of commerce, this technique is particularly effective in conveying messages that reveal and subvert its usual intentions.

The use public participation as a strategy of activating individuals and communities to become a “catalyst for change” is important to activist art. In this context, participation becomes an act of self-expression or self-representation by the entire community. Creative expression empowers individuals by creating a space in which their voices can be heard and in which they can engage in a dialogue with one another, and with the issues in which they have a personal stake.

The Artist and Homeless Collaborative is an example of a project that works with strategies of public participation as a means of individual and community empowerment. It is an affiliation of artists, arts professionals and women, children and teenagers living in NYC shelters, the A & HC believe that their work in a collaborative project of art-making offers the residents a “positive experience of self-motivation and helps them regain what the shelter system and circumstances of lives destroy: a sense of individual identity and confidence in human interaction.”^[3] The process of engaging the community in a dialogue with dominant and public discourses about the issue of homelessness is described in a statement by its founder, Hope Sandrow: “The relevancy of art to a community is exhibited in artworks where the homeless speak directly to the public and in discussion that consider the relationship art has to their lives. The practice of creating art stimulates those living in shelters from a state of malaise to active participation in the artistic process”^[4]

The A & HC came into being at a time when a critique of the makers, sellers, and consumers of art that addressed social concerns became increasingly pronounced. Critics argued that the very works of art whose purpose was to provoke political, social and cultural conversation were confined within the exclusive and privileged space of galleries museums, and private collections. By contrast, the A & HC was an attempt to bridge the gap between art production and social action, thus allowing for the work subjects that were previously excluded and silenced to be heard.

Resistance art[link]

Resistance art has long been a term used to describe those that use art as a way of showing their opposition to powerholders. The term has been used to define art that opposed such powers as the German Nazi party, and the Bolshevik Revolution. The term most recently has been applied to artists opposed to apartheid in South Africa.^[5] Willie Bester is one of South Africa's most well known artists who originally began as a resistance artist. Using materials assembled from garbage, Bester builds up surfaces into relief and then paints the surface with oil paint. His works commented on important black South African figures and aspects important to his community. South African resistance artists do not exclusively deal with race nor do they have to be from the townships. Another artist, Jane Alexander, has dealt with the atrocities of apartheid from a white perspective. Her resistance art deals with the unhealthy society that continues in post-apartheid South Africa.^[6]

See also[link]

• Sandwich board
• Guerrilla Girls
• Object Orange
• Graffiti
• Prof. Abdul Rahim Nagori (Socio-Political Painter)
• Anica Nonveiller
• Paul Klein (art activist)
• Aaron Tobey Richmond Airport 4th Amendment Naked Protest

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Art under dictatorship by Prof. A. R. Nagori
• Felshin, Nina. But Is It Art? The Spirit of Art as Activism. Seattle: Bay Press Inc., 1995.
• Groundswell Collective. Groundswell | A Journal of Art and Activism: Issue 00. 2010.
• Lacy, Suzanne. Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art. Seattle: Bay Press Inc., 1995.
• Muller, Mary Lee ; Elvehjem Museum of Art. Imagery of dissent : protest art from the 1930s and 1960s : March 4 - April 16, 1989, Elvehjem Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin–Madison (Madison, Wis. : The Museum, ©1989) ISBN 0-932900-20-8 (exhibition devoted to two periods of intensely political protest art: the Spanish Civil War and America's Vietnam War)
• Perry, Gill, and Paul Wood, eds. Themes in Contemporary Art. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.
• Reed, T.V. The art of protest : culture and activism from the civil rights movement to the streets of Seattle. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005.
• Robertson, Jean. "Themes of Contemporary Art - Visual Art after 1980". New York: Oxford University Press, Inc. 2005.
• Wolper, Jean. "Making Art, Reclaiming Lives: The Artist and Homeless Collaborative." But is it Art? The Spirit of Art as Activism. Ed. Nina Felshin. Seattle: Bay Press Inc., 1995.

External links[link]

"Street" protest art[link]

• Hand-held signs are the primary medium in protest art
• Creativity and humor are often evident in street protest art - as with these "TV-headed" activists
• Scene from a piece of political performance art (from digitaljournalist.org)
• Word on the Street
• Plazm magazine: A visual time line of post-World War II anti-war graphics
• Protest Street Art Archive | Groundswell

Political protest in fine art[link]

• Vietnam-era antiwar piece by Norman Carlberg
• Susan Crile artworks based on images of torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq
• Noam Avidan-Sela,The Great Agent of Western Colonialism, Eretz Acheret Magazine

Orlando Zapata Tamayo
Born	(1967-05-15)May 15, 1967 Santiago de Cuba, Cuba
Died	February 23, 2010(2010-02-23) (aged 42) Havana, Cuba
Cause of death	starvation
Nationality	Cuban
Known for	Political Activism

Orlando Zapata Tamayo (May 15, 1967^[1] – February 23, 2010) was a Cuban mason, plumber, and political activist and prisoner^[2] who died after fasting for more than 80 days.^[3] His death received international attention, and was viewed as a significant setback in Cuba's relationship with the U.S. and the EU.

Political affiliation[link]

Zapata was a member of Movimiento Alternativa Republicana (Republican Alternative Movement) and Consejo Nacional de Resistencia Civil (National Civic Resistance Committee).

Imprisonment[link]

Zapata was arrested on December 6, 2002 by agents of the Cuban police on charges of contempt, for which he was imprisoned for over three months. On March 20, 2003, 13 days after he was freed, he was arrested for a second time during a crackdown on dissidents and sent to the Kilo 7 prison in Camagüey. At the time of his arrest, he was participating in a hunger strike organized by the Assembly to Promote a Civil Society, taking place at the home of Marta Beatriz Roque Cabello.^[2] The hunger strike was meant as a petition for the release of several comrades.

He was charged with contempt, public disorder, and disobedience and sentenced to 36 years in prison after several judicial processes.^[4] As a result, Amnesty International recognized him as a prisoner of conscience, "imprisoned solely for having peacefully exercised [his] rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly".^[2][5][6] The socialist Monthly Review, in contrast, expressed skepticism of Amnesty's statement, alleging that Zapata was arrested and convicted several times on charges of fraud, firearm possession, and assault with a machete.^[7]

Hunger strike and death[link]

On either December 2 or 3, 2009, Zapata began a hunger strike^[8] as a protest against the Cuban government for having denied him the choice of wearing white dissident clothes instead of the designated prisoner uniform, as well as denouncing the living conditions of other prisoners. As part of his claim, Zapata was asking for conditions comparable to those that Fidel Castro had while incarcerated after his 1953 attack against the Moncada Barracks.^[9] For their part, the Cuban government stated he refused food because authorities wouldn't put a TV set, a stove and a phone in his cell.^[10]

During the hunger strike Zapata refused to eat any food other than his mother's, who visited him every three months. According to the U.S.-based opposition group Cuban Democratic Directorate, prison authorities then denied Zapata water, which led to his deteriorated health and ultimately kidney failure.^[8]

Zapata persisted in the hunger strike and was admitted to the Camagüey Hospital at an unspecified date, where he was given fluids intravenously against his will. On February 16, 2010 his condition worsened and he was transferred to Hermanos Ameijeiras Hospital in Havana,^[11] where he ultimately died on February 23, 2010 at approximately 3:30 pm EST.^[3]

It was the first time that an opponent of the Cuban government died during a hunger strike since the 1972 death of Pedro Luis Boitel.^[12]

On March 16, 2010 an open letter condemning the Cuban government for the unjust incarceration of Orlando Zapata Tamayo and asking for the release of other political prisoners was posted in an internet blog. In less than a week the letter had obtained over 30,000 signatures. Among the signatories are prominent intellectuals from both the left and right of the political spectrum.^[13]

Reactions to death[link]

President Raul Castro took the "unprecedented step" of expressing public regret about the death of Zapata.^[10] During his remarks, he said Zapata was treated by top doctors and denied he was tortured.^[10] Cuban state television also aired a report where doctors who treated Zapata, said they tried to get him to eat, with Dr. Maria Ester Hernandez stating:

"We explained to him the consequences of his decision at every turn and how much he was endangering his life with this. But he kept it up."^[10]

Cuban state newspapers, meanwhile, described Zapata as a "common criminal falsely elevated to martyr status."^[10]

The U.S. State Department stated that it was "deeply saddened" by Zapata's death, while the European Union called on Cuba to release its remaining political prisoners. Spain issued a statement remembering Zapata as a "human rights defender", while France expressed "dismay" and stated that its government had been lobbying Cuba on Zapata's behalf.^[14] The incident was seen as a significant setback for the thawing of Spanish-Cuban and U.S.-Cuban relations, with one analyst describing it as "the nail in the coffin of Spain's efforts to improve EU-Cuba ties".^[15]

On 23 February 2012, the Ladies in White met at the former home of deceased leader Laura Pollan to commemorate the second anniversary of Zapata's death. They were protested by a group of government supporters in coordination with security agents, who chanted "Down with the worms!" and "Long Live Raul!"^[16]

See also[link]

• Cuban dissident movement
• Wilmar Villar Mendoza

References[link]

External links[link]

Media related to Orlando Zapata at Wikimedia Commons

Mike Daisey (born 1976) is an American monologist, author, and actor best known for his full-length extemporaneous monologues about Nikola Tesla, L. Ron Hubbard, Steve Jobs and Apple's supply chain in China, the Department of Homeland Security, the history of the New York transit system, 9/11, the inventor of the neutron bomb, Wal-Mart and a variety of other topics. Daisey received international media attention in March 2012 when his fabrications were exposed in his monologue on Apple's supply chain.

Monologues[link]

[edit] Wasting Your Breath

Wasting Your Breath (1997) is a monologue of the Great American Roadtrip, Daisey is crossing the country from Maine to Seattle or bust in a story that jumps back and forth between two autobiographical storylines: a crumbling relationship with a pregnant girlfriend and a cross-country exodus from New England. Originally produced by Open Circle Theater in Seattle in 1997,^[1] Wasting Your Breath was remounted and produced at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in 2004.

[edit] I Miss the Cold War

I Miss the Cold War (1998) is about Daisey's visit to post-Communist Warsaw and his father's counseling practice treating post-traumatic stress disorder in war veterans, interwoven with the history of his father's time in Vietnam. It was originally produced by 24/7 Productions in Seattle in June 1998.^[2]

[edit] 21 Dog Years

21 Dog Years (2001)^[3] was Daisey's break.^[4] It began in Seattle's Speakeasy Cafe Backroom in February 2001, where it received the attention of various media outlets, from Entertainment Weekly to South African Public Radio to David Letterman.^{[citation needed]} Daisey then took the show Off-Broadway where it played for six months at the Cherry Lane Theatre before going to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Seattle's Intiman Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Portland Center Stage, and numerous engagements around the world. In 2002, Daisey’s book version of the tale under the same title, and in 2004 the BBC aired his radio adaptation of his monologue on Radio 4.^[5]

[edit] The Ugly American

The Ugly American (2003), a story of theater and its discontents that covers Daisey's life as a student in London torn between two very different worlds, has been produced by Seattle's ACT Theatre,^[6] the 2005 Spoleto Festival, and Berkeley Repertory Theatre^[7] after receiving workshops at Manhattan Theatre Club, Intiman Theatre, and the Cape Cod Theatre Project. In 2005 the BBC aired a radio adaptation of this monologue on Radio Four.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] All Stories Are Fiction

All Stories Are Fiction (2004) began at Seattle's Performance Space 122 where Daisey performed new shows every Monday night for two seasons in 2004 and 2005. For this series Daisey makes no notes of any kind until one hour before the performance, and then creates a show extemporaneously onstage.^[8] Theaters that have produced Stories include PS122,^[8] ACT Theatre, Portland Center Stage, the Maui Cultural Arts Center, and Seattle's Capitol Hill Arts Center. There have been over 40 different monologues produced in the series so far, each performed only one time for a live audience, and no two containing any of the same material or stories.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Monopoly!

Among other things, Monopoly! (2005) deals with the board game, Nikola Tesla, Bill Gates, Wal-Mart, and the author's home town in Maine.^[9] Monopoly! was developed at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, and has been produced at the Ohio Theatre by Les Freres Corbusier, American Repertory Theatre, at the 2006 Spoleto Festival and Seattle's Bumbershoot Festival, the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the Noorderzon Festival in The Netherlands, FirstWorksProv, and many more.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Invincible Summer

Invincible Summer (2005) is about the history of the New York City transit system, loss and democracy in our time.^[10] It has been produced at the Public Theater,^[10] American Repertory Theatre,^[11] Yale Repertory Theatre, ACT Theatre in Seattle, and the 2006 Spoleto Festival.^{[citation needed]}

The April 19th, 2007 performance of Invincible Summer at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was disrupted when over 80 audience members from a public high school in Norco, California, left the production mid-performance, with one audience member walking on stage to pour water over Daisey's hand-written performance notes.^[12] Daisey had this to say:

Last night’s performance of INVINCIBLE SUMMER was disrupted when eighty seven members of a Christian group walked out of the show en masse, and chose to physically attack my work by pouring water on and destroying the original of the show outline. I’m still dealing with all the ramifications, but here’s what it felt like from my end: I am performing the show to a packed house, when suddenly the lights start coming up in the house as a flood of people start walking down the aisles–they looked like a flock of birds who’d been startled, the way they all moved so quickly, and at the same moment…it was shocking, to see them surging down the aisles. The show halted as they fled, and at this moment a member of their group strode up to the table, stood looking down on me and poured water all over the outline, drenching everything in a kind of anti-baptism.^[13][11]"

Daisey later sought out and spoke with representatives of the group, including the member who destroyed his notes.^{[14] [15]}

[edit] Truth

Truth {the heart is a million little pieces above all things} (2006) is a monologue about James Frey, Oprah, lying, and telling the truth. Ran off-Broadway in New York City at Ars Nova Theatre.^[16]

[edit] Great Men of Genius

Great Men of Genius (2006) consists of four interlocking monologues about genius and megalomania in the lives of Bertolt Brecht, P.T. Barnum, Nikola Tesla, and L. Ron Hubbard^[17] which has been produced at Berkeley Repertory Theatre,^[18] Joe's Pub at the Public Theater, Galapagos Art Space in New York City, and the Capitol Hill Arts Center in Seattle.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Tongues Will Wag

Tongues Will Wag (2007) is a two-headed tale of love and loss, in which Daisey juxtaposes the tragedy of a young couple undergoing an unwanted pregnancy with the unlikely story of raising a puppy to adulthood.^[19] It has appeared at American Repertory Theatre,^[19] Berkeley Repertory Theatre,^[20] Ars Nova Theatre,^[21] and the Cape Cod Theatre Project.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] How Theater Failed America

In How Theater Failed America (2008), Daisey explores the rise and fall of the American regional theater system, the death of the repertory companies and the declining power of an art form to matter by implicating himself and the American theater as a whole.^[22] This controversial monologue has appeared at the Kirk Douglas Theatre,^[4] Under The Radar festival, the Capitol Hill Arts Center in Seattle, the Public Theater, and the Barrow Street Theatre in New York City.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] If You See Something Say Something

In If You See Something Say Something (2008), Daisey tackles a story at the heart of our world today: the surprising, secret history of the Department of Homeland Security. This is woven together with the untold story of the father of the neutron bomb and a pilgrimage to the Trinity blast site, where atomic fire rewrote history a half a century ago.^[23] It was performed in Santa Fe, Washington DC, Portland, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago before running in the Public Theater's 2008/2009 season in New York City.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Mysteries of the Unexplained

Mysteries of the Unexplained (2009) is a series of one-night-only performances similar to "All Stories are Fiction." Each performance "explores trivial elements of our modern world, in the belief that the things we honestly think about most of the time deserve time in the spotlight."^{[citation needed]} Performances were held at Joe's Pub. The three topics were Facebook,^[24] bacon,^[25] and the boardwalk.^[26]

[edit] The Last Cargo Cult

In The Last Cargo Cult (2009), Daisey tells of a trip to the remote Pacific island of Tanna in which inhabitants are members of a cargo cult based around abandoned World War II bases. Stories of belief and trust from this “cargo cult” are woven against questions about the international financial crisis.^[3]

[edit] The Envoy's Dilemma

The Envoy's Dilemma (2009) is Daisey's rarely performed piece on his 2008 visit to Tajikistan with the United States State Department.^[27] It was performed at the Noordezon Performing Arts Festival Groningen, Yukon Arts Centre and in Banff in September 2009.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Barring the Unforeseen

Barring the Unforeseen (2010) is a piece "about ghost stories and why we tell them." It played the IRT Theatre in downtown New York City the week of Halloween 2010.^[28]

[edit] The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs

The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs (2010) is a one-man theatre show. It debuted at Portland's TBA Festival in September 2010, Berkeley Repertory Theatre in January 2011, and played in Seattle in April–May 2011. It purports to examine globalization by exploring the exploitation of Chinese workers through the lens of "the rise and fall and rise of Apple, industrial design, and the human price we are willing to pay for our technology, woven together in a complex narrative."^[29]

Excerpts from the show were presented as an exposé of conditions at a Foxconn factory in China on the Public Radio International show This American Life in January 2012.^[30] The episode was entitled "Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory" and became the show's most popular episode, with 888,000 downloads and 206,000 streams. WBEZ planned to host a live showing and a Q+A of "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs" in Chicago on April 7, 2012.^[31]

On March 16, 2012, This American Life officially retracted the episode after learning that several events recounted both in the radio story and the monologue were fabrications. Daisey apologized for presenting his work as journalism, saying it is actually theatre, but refused to acknowledge that he had lied -- even in the face of obvious discrepancies. WBEZ cancelled the planned live performance and refunded all ticket purchases.^[31] The same day, This American Life devoted their weekly show (titled "Retraction") to detailing the inconsistencies in "The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs."^[32] The show includes interviews between Rob Schmitz, the reporter who discovered the discrepancies and Daisey's translator in China, Cathy Lee, as well as an interview between host Ira Glass and Daisey.

[edit] All the Hours in the Day

Daisey presented his 24-hour monologue All the Hours in the Day (2011) at Portland's TBA Festival in September 2011.^[33] Emphasizing themes of loss, transformation, and the desire for authenticity, Daisey weaves together stories from his life with fictional, Jungian elements. His wife, a dead high school friend, Warren Zevon, Philip K. Dick, David Bowie, and The Walt Disney Company all feature prominently.

Play[link]

Daisey's first play The Moon Is a Dead World premiered at the Annex Theatre in Seattle, Washington on October 17, 2008.^[34] It was previous developed at Soho Rep as a part of their 2008-2009 Writer/Director Lab Readings in a workshop directed by Maria Goyanes.^[35]

Book[link]

Daisey's book 21 Dog Years comically describes his experience working for Amazon.com during the dot-com boom.^[36]

Film[link]

Layover, Daisey's first film, was screened in Cannes.^[37]

Reception[link]

Jason Zinoman said about Daisey's work in the New York Times: "The master storyteller...one of the finest solo performers of his generation. What distinguishes him from most solo performers is how elegantly he blends personal stories, historical digressions and philosophical ruminations. He has the curiosity of a highly literate dilettante and a preoccupation with alternative histories, secrets large and small, and the fuzzy line where truth and fiction blur. Mr. Daisey’s greatest subject is himself."^[38] Louise Kennedy described his monologues in the Boston Globe as "Sharp-witted, passionately delivered talk about matters both small and huge, at once utterly individual and achingly universal."^[39]

Personal life[link]

Daisey is married to his director and collaborator, Jean-Michele Gregory; they reside in New York City.^[38]

This American Life Controversy[link]

In January of 2012, portions of Daisey's monologue "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs", about conditions at the Chinese company Foxconn which makes most products for Apple Computers, were aired on the radio program This American Life. ^[40] The episode, titled "Mr Daisey and the Apple Factory" quickly became the most downloaded episode in the show's history.^[41] Two months later, This American Life officially retracted the episode, having discovered that some of the claims made by Daisey had apparently been fabricated.^[42] A follow up episode, entitled "Retraction", stood by the veracity of the claims Daisey had made about working conditions at Foxconn, but claimed that Daisey had made up, exaggerated, or misrepresented many of the details of his own experiences visiting China. Among other things, Daisey was accused of exaggerating the number of plants he visited and people he talked to, of falsely claiming that the plant guards had guns, of exaggerating the number of under-aged workers he talked to, and of inventing the story of worker with a crippled hand using an iPad for the first time. This American Life also accused Daisey of purposefully misleading them by trying to prevent them from contacting the translator he used in order to fact check his story. In an interview with host Ira Glass, Daisey admitted to giving the producers of This American Life a false name for the translator and also admitted that he lied about her contact information being changed.^[43]

Publications by Daisey[link]

• Mike Daisey. 21 Dog Years.
  • 21 Dog Years: Doing Time @ Amazon.com. Free Press, 2002. ISBN 0-7432-2580-5.
  • 21 Dog Years: Doing Time @ Amazon.com. London: Fourth Estate, 2002. ISBN 1841157651.
  • 21 Dog Years: A Cube Dweller's Tale. Free Press, 2003. ISBN 0-7432-3815-X.
  • 21 ge gou nian: zai Yamaxun da gong de ri zi (21个狗年: 在亚马逊打工的日子). Beijing: Zhong xin chu ban she, 2002. ISBN 7-80073-534-6. (Chinese)
• Mike Daisey. Rough Magic. Theatre Communications Group, 2011. ISBN 1-55936-374-6.
• Brendan Koerner (2006). The Best of Technology Writing 2006. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-472-03195-3. 

References[link]

Mike Daisey, Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2004.

External links[link]

	Biography portal
	Theatre portal

• Mike Daisey's website
• Mike Daisey at the Internet Movie Database
• C-SPAN Q&A interview with Daisey, April 24, 2011