RTMark (stylized as ®™ark) is an

anti-consumerist Anti-consumerism is a sociopolitical ideology. It has been described as "''intentionally'' and ''meaningfully'' excluding or cutting goods from one's consumption routine or reusing once-acquired goods with the goal of avoiding consumption". The ...

activist collective, whose stated aim is to subvert the "Corporate Shield" that "protects" American corporations. The name is derived from "Registered

Trademark A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a form of intellectual property that consists of a word, phrase, symbol, design, or a combination that identifies a Good (economics and accounting), product or Service (economics), service f ...

". RTMark is itself a registered corporation which brings together activists who plan projects with donors who fund them. It thus operates outside the laws governing human individuals, and benefits from the much looser laws governing corporations. RTMark claimed as its first prank the " Barbie Liberation Organization", in which the voiceboxes of talking

Barbie Barbie is a fashion doll created by American businesswoman Ruth Handler, manufactured by American toy and entertainment company Mattel and introduced on March 9, 1959. The toy was based on the German Bild Lilli doll, Bild Lilli doll which Hand ...

and

G.I. Joe ''G.I. Joe'' is an American media franchise and a line of action figures owned and produced by the toy company Hasbro. The initial product offering represented four of the branches of the U.S. armed forces with the Action Soldier ( U.S. Army), A ...

toys were swapped, and the toys then returned to the store (1993). The first prank documentable as being truly RTMark-sponsored was the

SimCopter ''SimCopter'' is a 1996 flight simulator video game developed by Maxis. It puts the player into a 3D city. Like '' Streets of SimCity'', ''SimCopter'' lets the player import ''SimCity 2000'' maps into the game. It is also the first game to use t ...

"hack" (1996), carried out by founding member

Jacques Servin Jacques Servin (also known by the pseudonym Andy Bichlbaum; born 1963) is an American media artist and activist. He is one of the leading members of The Yes Men, a culture jamming activist group. Their exploits in "identity correction" are docum ...

Other RTMark stunts were ''gwbush.com'' (a faked campaign Website for

George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician and businessman who was the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Bush family and the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he i ...

). They were also involved in the toywar and they brokered a deal so James Baumgartner, the original inventor of '' voteauction'' could sell the raw project to UBERMORGEN in

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

. The group's website was part of the

Whitney Biennial The Whitney Biennial is a biennial exhibition of contemporary American art organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. The event began as an annual exhibition in 1932; the first biennial was held in 1973. It is considered ...

in 2000.

References

External links

RTMark
website mirrored at the

Rhizome In botany and dendrology, a rhizome ( ) is a modified subterranean plant stem that sends out roots and Shoot (botany), shoots from its Node (botany), nodes. Rhizomes are also called creeping rootstalks or just rootstalks. Rhizomes develop from ...

Archive An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials, in any medium, or the physical facility in which they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organ ...

Barbie Liberation Organization

®™ark
at th
Video Data Bank

G W Bush campaign parody website
American artist groups and collectives Anti-consumerist groups Anti-corporate activism {{business-org-stub

See also

References

External links