Milan Kohout  Milan Kohout (born 1955 in Plzeň, Czechoslovakia) is a Czech–American performance artist, writer, and university lecturer. He was a signatory of the Charter 77 human rights declaration against the communist government of Czechoslovakia. Kohout studied electrical engineering at the College of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Plzen (now the University of West Bohemia). He was active in the Czech underground, as part of a movement known as the Second Culture. As a result of his political activities, he was forced to work in blue-collar occupations, such as several years working as a coal stoker at the Ethnographic Museum in Prague. In 1986 he was exiled from Czechoslovakia by the secret police, and spent two years in the Traiskirchen refugee camp in Austria. He was granted political asylum in the United States, and moved to Boston, gaining a diploma from Tufts School of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1993. He has taught performance art as political action at Tufts School and at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and video production at the New England Institute of Art. During his years in Boston he created was engaged in experimental performance art, focused mainly on politics, human rights, and criticism of religious organizations and ideologies. Between 1992 and 2003 he worked as a camera operator, video technician, and producer for news and public affairs cable TV channel C-SPAN. He has written a series of interviews for the Czech magazine "Xantypa" with subjects such as Noam Chomsky and Kurt Vonnegut Jr.. Since 1994 he has been a member of the Mobius art group. He has participated in several international festivals and art programs (including festivals in China, Croatia, Poland, Taiwan, Cuba, Thailand, Israel, Canada, Mexico, and the United States). He has also lectured at the University of West Bohemia in Plzen. Kohout's art criticises the US economy, religion, the media, the politics of oil, racism and social prejudice. His works include a performance art piece critical of the segregation wall in Usti nad Labem, Czech Republic, where in 1999, as a protest against the segregation of Czech Roma, he cut the flag of the Czech Republic in half, and was subsequently accused of defaming the state symbol. In 2007 he was arrested in Boston after his performance "Nooses on Sale", which was critical of the conduct of US banks during the sub-prime mortgage crisis. The performance involved Kohout selling nooses outside a branch of the Bank of America, and after the bank reported him to the police, he was prosecuted for peddling goods without a licence.