Advance registrations are now closed. Walk-up tickets will be available at the Moores Opera House tonight beginning at 6:30pm. Please join us!

Presented by the University of Houston Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts, the Mitchell Artist Lecture is a landmark public program that annually features major figures in the world of artistic collaboration. The 2017 speakers are artists, political activists, and pranksters, Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, known together as The Yes Men.

The Yes Men have gained international notoriety for impersonating big businesses on international TV and conferences around the world for nearly two decades. They describe what they do as "Identity Correction." Unlike Identity Theft, which criminals practice with dishonest intent, Identity Correction is the art of impersonating a powerful criminal to publicly humiliate them for conspiring against the public good. By impersonating leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else, The Yes Men publicly humiliate them and expose their criminal practices. They've made three award-winning feature films about their actions.

Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno are co-founders of The Yes Men. Bichlbaum got his start as an activist when, as a computer programmer, he inserted a swarm of kissing boys in a shoot-em-up video game (SimCopter) just before it shipped to store shelves; he found himself fired, momentarily famous, and hugely amused. Since then he's worked for Exxon, Dow, the WTO, Halliburton, Monsanto, and many other companies without their approval. Bichlbaum once flew down the Nile in a two-seater airplane, bringing a live goat to a remote Sudanese village as a hostess gift for a homecoming party. Bonanno is the other half of The Yes Men. When he’s not making mischief, Bonanno is a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.

Join us for a lecture from The Yes Men on their experience and practice at the intersection of art and activism.

ADMISSION: Free, RSVP required
PARKING: Parking available in UH Lot 16B

About the Mitchell Artist Lecture

Presented by the University of Houston Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts, the annual Mitchell Artist Lecture features individuals emblematic of artistic collaboration and innovation. Each fall, a leading artist discusses the power and potential of interdisciplinary collaboration to a combined audience of university community and the greater public. Past lecturers include Laurie Anderson, Tania Bruguera, Bill T. Jones, and Jason and Alicia Hall Moran.

In the media

Watch The Yes Men's solution to California's drought

Watch the Yes Men Impersonate Shell, Make 'Last Iceberg' Snow Cones

Watch The Yes Men "punk'd" the U.S. Chamber of Commerce