Nike scores own goal
PRESS RELEASE BY PUBLIC NETBASE
Nike scores own goal
Preliminary Court Decision in Favor of International Art Project
The international sportswear company Nike is trying to get the
installation "Nike Ground -- Rethinking space", created by the renowned
artists group 0100101110101101.ORG, banned by court. Meanwhile the
Commercial Court of Vienna has taken a first crucial decision.
Quite apart from the fact that this is an attempt to ban a work of art,
the Commercial Court has rejected Nike's plea for a provisional
injunction on formal grounds. The decision was based on the fact that
the law suit against Public Netbase was filed by Nike International.
This company has its principal office not in Austria, but in the USA and
therefore would have been required to pay a deposit covering the cost of
litigation in case of a ruling in favor of Public Netbase.
Public Netbase's attorney, Mag. Michael Pilz, who consistently
underlined the artistic nature of the installation, pointed out the
formal defect in his response to the plaint. "This is a major step ahead
for the project", declared Konrad Becker, director of Public Netbase.
The law suit with Nike will now enter its next round. Moreover, the
installation remained on Karlsplatz until its official takedown on 28
October. "The Court's decision motivates us to protect the freedom of
art against the ruthlessness of corporations with even more
determination in the future", Becker concluded.
According to 0100101110101101.ORG spokesman Ted Pikul "Nike is a perfect
subject for a work of art. The Swoosh is probably the most viewable
brand on earth, more than any political or religious symbol. Now these
giants are loosing control over their own brands, which in the hands of
pop culture are turning into boomerangs".
CONTACTS:
Public Netbase
http://www.t0.or.at
office@t0.or.at
0100101110101101.ORG:
HTTP://0100101110101101.ORG
Nikeground@0100101110101101.ORG
NIKEGROUND:
http://www.nikeground.com
info@nikeground.com
Why doesn't Nike want to play with me?
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Why doesn't Nike want to play with me?
Nike starts legal action against the European art group
0100101110101101.ORG and cultural Internet platform Public Netbase.
In mid September this group started a surreal art project called Nike
Ground (http://www.nikeground.com), a performance built around a fake
guerrilla marketing campaign: Nike was supposedly buying streets and
squares in major world capitals, in order to rename them and insert
giant monuments of their famous logo. A hi-tech container was installed
in Vienna, supposedly the first city to host a "Nike Square", as part of
the action.
On October 10th, 0100101110101101.ORG publicly claimed to be behind this
"hyper-real theatrical performance". The project questions the issues of
private appropriation of public space, the side effects of bombarding
marketing strategies and the artistic freedom to manipulate symbols of
everyday life.
On October 14th, Nike released a 30 pages injunction requesting the
immediate removal of any reference to copyrighted material, and that any
activity related to Nike cease immediately. Failure to comply with this
request would mean that Nike will claim 78,000 Euro for damages.
"Where is the Nike spirit? -- responds Franco, spokesman of
0100101110101101.ORG -- I expected to deal with sporting people, not a
bunch of boring lawyers!".
"Many artists have dealt with commercial products in the past, before
Nike even existed -- comments Eva, also from 0100101110101101.ORG --
think of Andy Warhol's Campbell Soup, for example. Contemporary art does
not have a well defined role within this society. On the contrary, it is
a field where one can make statements that are not possible in any other
context. Art has always used powerful images from the society of its
time as its subject. Nike invades our lives with products and ads but
then forbid us to use them creatively".
According to independent curator and writer Timothy Druckery, "the work
of 0100101110101101.ORG provokes questions about how corporate identity
cannot endorse itself as a proxy public sphere or as an entity immune
from the implications of its actions".
Curiously enough, the building of the "Viennese Secession", built by
Joseph Olbrich in 1898, faces the fake Nike Infobox in Karslplatz. In
huge gold letters over the entrance are the words: "To every time its
art. To every art its freedom".
CONTACTS:
0100101110101101.ORG:
HTTP://0100101110101101.ORG
Nikeground@0100101110101101.ORG
NIKEGROUND:
http://www.nikeground.com
info@nikeground.com
Nike buys streets and squares
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Nike buys streets and squares
Guerrilla marketing or collective hallucination?
Picture this: a hi-tech container right in the middle of Karlsplatz, one
of Vienna's historic squares. It's the Nike Infobox: a slick,
demountable, walk-in container, two semi-transparent floors, dynamic
shapes and a red plastic cover. On the outer windows a curious sign
attracts the attention of passersby: "This square will soon be called
Nikeplatz. Come inside to find out more". Over the last month, the plan
to change the square's name has also been advertised on a website:
http://www.nikeground.com, while thousands of brochures were distributed
all over the city.
Inside the Infobox a charming couple of Nike-dressed twins welcomes
curious citizens, and explains to them the revolutionary Nike Ground
campaign: "Nike is introducing its legendary brand into squares,
streets, parks and boulevards: Nikesquare, Nikestreet, Piazzanike,
Plazanike or Nikestrasse will appear in major world capitals over the
coming years!".
A 3D project displayed in the Infobox gives information about a giant
sculpture to be placed in the Karlsplatsz ? or Nikesplatz ? from next
year. It is a giant sculpture of Nike's famous logo, a "Swoosh", a 36
meter long by 18 meter high monument supposedly made from "special steel
covered with a revolutionary red resin made from recycled sneaker
soles".
Not surprisingly, many Viennese are puzzled and concerned at seeing a
historic square sold by the City to a multinational without prior
consultation. Thus, immediately after the container is assembled and
open to the public, handwritten letters and emails begin to jam the
inboxes of local and national Austrian newspapers. After a short
inquiry, the press uncover that both Nike and the City of Vienna deny
any responsibility for Nike Ground. While Nike issues a press release
alleging trademark infringement, the City reassures the public by saying
that "following World War II street names cannot be modified, unless
they look very similar to others".
This almost unbelievable trick is the work of the organization known as
0100101110101101.ORG, and this time it is played on a whole city. Eva
Mattes, their spokeswoman, explains: "For this work, we wanted to use
the entire city as a stage for a huge urban performance, a sort of
theatre show for an unaware audience/cast. We wanted to produce a
collective hallucination capable of altering people's perception of the
city in this total, immersive way". Thus 0100101110101101.ORG continues
its history of works meant to be told instead of being seen; works which
pose the problem of an art which is mythopoetic.
The whole performance has been realized in cooperation with Public
Netbase, the Vienna netculture institution. Konrad Becker, director of
Public Netbase, explains: "It is our duty to directly intervene into
urban and media space, to bring up the issues of symbolic domination in
public space by private interests. We see Nike Ground as a statement for
the artistic freedom to manipulate the symbols of everyday life".
Naturally, not all of the reactions were so enthusiastic. Amongst the
letters published in newspapers, one Viennese commented: "It is a
scandal that while in the US Nike had to pay 1.5 million dollars for
misleading the consumer with false advertising, in Vienna we decide to
build a monument to a corporation which is still making a large use of
sweatshops". Another one added: "The Viennese schnitzel might not be as
fancy but it is surely tastier than their meaningless plastic swoosh".
To assuage people's anger, or simply inform citizens of Nike Ground
activities around the world, an infoline has even been set up:
0664-1235555, where a female voice kindly accepts all questions and
criticism.
The authors of this surreal performance promise that the Infobox will
stay in place for another month. Now that the fake has been revealed,
many people wonder whether Nike will try to put an end to the
performance. "Why should they? - asks Mattes surprised - we produced the
first Nike no-budget advertisement!".
Nike Ground is the latest surreal action by the organization known as
0100101110101101.ORG, a band of media artists who use non conventional
communication tactics to obtain the largest visibility with the minimal
effort. Past works include staging a hoax involving a completely made-up
artist, ripping off the Holy See and spreading a computer virus as a
work of art.
NIKEGROUND:
http://www.nikeground.com
info@nikeground.com
CONTACTS:
HTTP://0100101110101101.ORG
Nikeground@0100101110101101.ORG
life_sharing: 2 years of data nudism
life_sharing is a real time sharing system based on Linux. Since January
2001 0100101110101101.ORG's computer has been turned into a transparent
webserver. Any user has free and unlimited access to all contents:
texts, images, software, private mail; get lost in this huge data maze.
life_sharing is a brand new concept of net architecture turning a
website into a hardcore personal media for complete digital
transparency. "The only place I know where you can wander through
someone else's computer... legally, that is..." (Dedmaus.com). Over the
last 365 days life_sharing generated 3,721,541 visit requests from
100,669 unique visitors. 52,681.21 Megabytes of data have been
downloaded. "life_sharing is abstract pornography" (Hito Steyerl).
Permanent infotainment from the peer to peer generation.
Privacy is stupid.
###
" HTTP://0100101110101101.ORG : A band of Web pirates whose past
projects have included staging a hoax involving a made-up artist,
ripping off the Pope, other net.artists like hell.com, who almost sued
them, and stealing and altering the Web's first net.art gallery
The World in One's Pocket?
The World in One's Pocket?
The Net project "VOPOS" by 0100101110101101.ORG
by Vera Tollmann
In December of last year, the European Union and the European Space
Organisation agreed to set up a European venture as competition for the
American Global Positioning System (GPS) by 2005. The non-military
system "Galileo" is to consist of 30 satellites and cover the entire
globe. [1] The EU argues that this decision is aimed at making it
independent of the GPS - which is still used for military purposes - by
giving it its own surveillance complex. The end users of this
geographical location system are to include customs and the judiciary,
transport and communications authorities, and tourism organisations. On
May 1 the White House in Washington announced that "SA" (Selective
Availability), which caused civilian equipment to give more imprecise
results, would no longer operate. These two decisions show what a
central role satellite systems will play, or already play, in everyday
life, alongside the telecommunications systems of telephone and
internet.
These developments, leading towards an ever more perfect universal
surveillance method, have not gone without comment from activists [2]
and artists. Whereas at the end of the nineties there were mainly
reactions to the - in some cases - extremely extensive installation of
video cameras in public places, [3] a new technological paradigm of
media art is now starting to emerge. Besides Web-based works about the
surveillance of data transfers, [4] the first artists have already begun
working with the GPS, such as the documenta participants tsunamii.net.
This involves a Web-related approach: tsunamii.net looked for
correspondences on the Web to the real places they passed on their
travels. The focus is on an alternative mapping of the internet.
The current project by 0100101110101101.org, which has the awkward name
"VOPOS" - a reference to former East German police as representatives of
a historical surveillance state that shows little more than a "radical
chic aesthetic" -, also functions partly via GPS. Tanio Copechi and
Renato Pasiopani, as the operators of 0100101110101101.org call
themselves, carry a GPS transmitter around with them. It sends the data
it receives to a server via mobile phone, and this data is then
visualised on the web site by means of software. With the aid of a
digital street map of Barcelona, which is where the two Italian artists
claim to be, users can see which street they are in - whether just one
or both of them is an open question. The clock can also be turned back -
this means it is possible to vaguely reconstruct the route taken through
the city by the "surveillees". But "VOPOS" has nothing to do with a
sociological interest in the erratic wanderings of everyday life, as the
situationist approach would suggest; it is a criticism of the potential
of the GPS: who uses the coordinates it provides, and what does the
electronic profile that can be deduced from them reveal?
The two artists do not just illustrate the way the GPS functions within
a larger communications complex; their artist strategy is also expressed
in their refusal to give their identity and provide a level of narrative
that could explain why they visit the places they do (unless someone
knows the city very well and thus has options for interpretation). It is
equally impossible to verify whether they really were at the positions
marked or not. "VOPOS" therefore also remains a game involving reality
and fiction, information and disinformation. For a knowledge of the way
the system could potentially function suffices to enable one to
critically take up the surveillant's perspective. As the second part of
the long-term project "Glasnost", "VOPOS" continues the planned
collection of comprehensive, person-specific data. The first phase -
which still exists on the web site - consisted in the project
"life_sharing". [5] 0100101110101101.org put the local hard disk of
their computer onto the Web, thus making their private e-mails, project
sketches and software publicly available.
What is the artistic added value of this project? To what extent is it
only a preparation for something that can be commercially exploited
later? After the experiences with the "Big Brother" series, a similar
scenario using GPS technology would also be imaginable: one group - the
surveillants - has to hinder another group - the "surveillees" - in
carrying out the game task allotted to them. "VOPOS" operates precisely
at the ambivalent point between affirmative slogans like that of one
mobile phone manufacturer - "Put the world in your pocket" -, and the
non-commercial production of transparency.
Translation: Tim Jones
Notes:
http://0100101110101101.ORG
1 http://europa.eu.int/comm/energy_transport/de/gal_de.html (Galileo
homepage)
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/dz-01.12.01-003 (Report on the
decision in favour of Galileo, 1 December 2001)
2 http://www.bigbrotherawards.at
3 See the Surveillance Camera Players:
http://www.notbored.org/the-scp.html
4 See the Software Carnivore: http://rhizome.org/carnivore
5 See Marina Grzinic: "Das Leben zuruckgewinnen". In: springerin 1/01,
p. 10
###
Anything has been said about this renegade cyber-entity, accused of
being "simple thief", dubbed as "media dandy" and "cultural
terrorists" or, simply, "shit". 0100101110101101.ORG prdouced some of
the most perfect media exploits of the last years, such as the
creation and diffusion, at the opening of the 49th Venice Biennial, of
the computer virus "biennale.py" or the memorable spoof of the
Vatican website: almost identical with that of the Holy See, but with
slight deviations. HTTP://0100101110101101.ORG
Here’s Antibiennale.py
Just received this great email about our work Biennale.py (2001):
“Recently I downloaded and executed Biennale.py in my computer. It infected several Python files of projects I was working on. To revert them to the original state I wrote a sort of antivirus based on the original Biennale.py. It is a rather simple modification of the original script, changing the name and behavior of some of the original functions of the script. I had a lot of fun writing and testing it. I was some kind of ‘Erased de Kooning Drawing’ of one of my favorite software art works.”
If you are curious you can get Anti-Biennale.py here, remember that your computer must be infected!
Insightful review
in this is tomorrow: “‘Brand Innovations for Ubiquitous Authorship’ could never have been a unique exhibition; it was calling out to be stolen.”
Brand Innovations has a tumblr
Brand innovations for Ubiquitous Authorship, the (stolen) group show we just curated at Carroll/Fletcher, now has a tumblr, enjoy!
London: Nuclear Culture on Film
Photo by Tod Seelie
One day of talks and screenings investigating nuclear culture, they’re also projecting the short Let Them Believe, directed by Todd Chandler & Jeff Stark, which tells the story of our project Plan C:
Sunday 28 April 2013, 11am – 5.30pm, at The Arts Catalyst, London
BTW, they tell me the event is sold out, but you can still join the waiting list for cancellations.
Emily’s Video in London
We’re exhibiting our latest work Emily’s Video for the first time in London!
Opening: April 22, 6:30-8:30 pm (through May 11)
Carroll/Fletcher gallery
From Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others: “It seems that the appetite for pictures showing bodies in pain is as keen, almost, as the desire for ones that shows bodies naked. For many centuries, in Christian art, depictions of hell offered both of these elemental satisfactions. [...] There was also the repertoire of hard-to-look-at cruelties from classical antiquity – the pagan myths, even more than the Christian stories, offer something for every taste. No moral charge attaches to the representation of these cruelties. Just the provocation: can you look at this? There is the satisfaction of being able to look at the image without flinching. There is the pleasure of flinching”.
btw, the same night opens the group show we’re curating there, Brand Innovations for Ubiquitous Authorship.
At the movies! With Orson Welles!
What would be greater than watching Emily’s Video projected in a real cinema? Seeing it together with Orson Welles’ F for Fake! It’s happening at Nitehawk Cinema in Williamsburg, NY, April 20 & 21. Ours may well be the lowest resolution video ever projected in a proper cinema, the image is going to look super poor…
You can get tickets here, we’ll be there on Sunday, hope to see you!
Brand Innovations for Ubiquitous Authorship
We’re curating an exhibition! Or, better said, we stole the concept of a show that artist Artie Vierkant curated in New York, and we’re re-doing it at Carroll/Fletcher gallery in London. Same title, same concept, slightly different artists.
Brand Innovations for Ubiquitous Authorship
Opening: April 22, 6:30 – 9pm, through May 11, 2013
Carroll/Fletcher, London
For this exhibition each artist was asked to produce an object using an online custom printing or fabrication service. The works were sent directly to the gallery, so neither the artists nor the curators have seen them yet. We expect this backwards approach to be filled with highs, lows, and hopefully more than a few transcendent successes. The result will be a gallery of art, artifact and artifice.
Featuring: Annabelle Arlie, Andreas Banderas, Aram Bartholl, Body by Body, Chris Coy, Christofer Degrér, Nick DeMarco, Constant Dullaart, Andreas Ervik, Matt Goerzen, Aaron Graham, Toby Huddlestone, Parker Ito, Justin Kemp, Brian Khek, Martin Kohout, Bryan Krueger, Lindsay Lawson, Jaakko Pallasvuo, Jon Rafman, Sean Raspet, Rafaël Rozendaal, Borna Sammak, Oliver Sutherland, Daniel Temkin, Brad Troemel, Artie Vierkant, Andrew Norman Wilson.
All info here
The Others
A while ago we discovered by chance a way to enter random people’s computers without their knowledge. Out of curiosity we started collecting their photos. We ended up with 10.000, which we arranged in a slideshow we called The Others.
The final 137 min. long version of the work is now on view in three group exhibitions:
The Public Private, Kellen Gallery at The New School, New York
Version Control, Arnolfini, Bristol, UK
Analogital, UMOCA, Salt Lake City, Utah
Looking for NYC based intern
Hey there, we’re looking for a New York based intern to work on our next project. Someone who’s very familiar with social networks, has basic video editing skills and is ready for some weirdness (highly sensitive persons may not apply).
You’ll work on something like this, and, hopefully, learn something in the process. It should also be fun, but that’s subjective.
We’d meet a few times but most of the work can be done remotely. If you’re interested pls drop us a short email by mid April, about yourself, what you’re good at, your future plans etc. Thanks!
More Real? Catalogue!
I’m reading the More Real? exhibition catalogue right now and love the essay Make-Believe: Parafiction and Plausibility, by Carrie Lambert-Beatty. You can read an older version of the essay on October magazine, though I’d totally recommend the whole More Real? catalogue:
“Fiction or fictiveness has emerged as an important category in recent art. But like a paramedic as opposed to a medical doctor, a parafiction is related to but not quite a member of the category of fiction as established in literary and dramatic art. It remains a bit outside. It does not perform its procedures in the hygienic clinics of literature but has one foot in the field of the real. Unlike historical fiction’s fact-based but imagined worlds, in parafictional real and/or imaginary personages and stories intersect with the world as it is being lived. Post-simulacral, paraficitonal strategies are oriented less toward the disappearance of the real than toward the pragmatics of trust. Simply put, with various degrees of success, for various durations, and for various purposes, these fictions are experienced as fact. They achieve truth status – for some of the people some of the time.”
More Real? Art in the Age of Truthiness
After being at SITE Santa Fe the exhibition More Real? Art in the Age of Truthiness opens tomorrow at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. We’re showing Catt and No Fun, and it’s one of the best shows we’ve ever been part of, all info here
“Over the past century, a period of unprecedented technological change and global social upheaval, once agreed-upon beliefs, or “truths,” have been cast into doubt, changing and shaping our understanding and experience of reality. More Real? Art in the Age of Truthiness features work by 28 of today’s most accomplished and promising international artists, including Ai Weiwei, Vik Muniz and Thomas Demand, who explore our shifting experience of reality.”
BTW, about truthiness…
Talk at the New School
We’re giving a short talk about our new work The Others at the New School tomorrow March 13, 6:00 – 7:30 pm with Luke DuBois, as part of the show Public Private curated by Christiane Paul.
More info here. Hope you can make it!
Emily’s Video
Emily’s Video compiles the reactions of random volunteers who replied to the call we posted here to watch “the worst video ever”. The original video has been destroyed, only these second hand experiences are proof of its existence.
You can see some excerpts of Emily’s Video here
Camping in the Art World
Camping in the Art World is a compelling essay on our work recently written by Melissa Gronlund, for a publication called Anonymous, untitled, dimensions variable, you can now read the essay here
The Influencers 2012 videos now online
Should have sent this one way back, here are the videos of the last edition of The Influencers, the festival we co-curate in Barcelona: Evan Roth, JR, Jill Magid, Voina, Constant Dullaart, Biotic Baking Brigade, Reverend Billy & The Church of Stop Shopping
…bonus track: here‘s the action Reverend Billy and Savitri D carried out for the festival, if you were there, THANKS! If you were not, then don’t miss the next Influencers!
Blog friend: time for action!
We’re working on a secret project and we need you.
1: You must live in New York (sorry non-NYkers)
2: Emily will come to your apartment bringing a mysterious video
3: She will film you watching the video. You can be alone or with friends
4: Emily may contact you again
NOTE: Emily’s Video is extremely graphic and extremely violent. EXTREMELY. We don’t recommend it to anybody.
This said, if you want to do this email Emily <XXXXX@XXXXX.XXX> or txt her XXX XXX XXXX
Thanks.
Extremely.
Let Them Believe
A while ago we made a rather adventurous trip to one of the most polluted places on planet earth: Chernobyl, in Ukraine. The whole project – a collaboration with artists Ryan C Doyle, Todd Chandler, Tod Seelie, Jeff Stark and Steve Valdez – was probably inspired by Tarkovsky’s movie Stalker, and resulted in a big public installation in Manchester, UK, assembled with scrap metal scavenged from the Zone.
At last, here is a short film by Todd Chandler and Jeff Stark about what happened in those intense days: Let Them Believe.
ANONYMO UNTITLE DIMENSIO
Along with the exhibition we just opened in London they published a small book: “ANONYMO UNTITLE DIMENSIO” (?!). It looks like a wrongly designed programming manual, featuring a great essay by Melissa Gronlund, “Eva and Franco Mattes: Camping in the Art World”, and all our recent works. It’s for sale for the unmatchable price of 5 GBP (yes, FIVE QUIDS) and you can get it here
Exhibition Title Change
Our current show at Carroll/Fletcher gallery in London was first titled Anonymous, untitled, dimensions variable, than became Building stories, than Blink and you miss it and so on. The title changes every day, and if you’re interested in the process of naming (or want to suggest titles) you can follow the daily change here: exhibitiontitlechange.tumblr.com
The photo above shows how the title change appears in the gallery space. Eventually it will take over the whole wall…
Anonymous, untitled, dimensions variable – opening
Anonymous, untitled, dimensions variable. Exhibition opening at Carroll / Fletcher gallery, London. Video by Kerri Meehan
Anonymous, untitled, dimensions variable
Carroll / Fletcher Gallery, London
April 13 – May 18
Opening: April 12, 6:30-8:30, see you there!
Hey! We’re about to open our fist solo show in London with some recent works: videogame performances, a simulated webcam suicide, a couple of fake sculptures attributed to revered artists and a potentially toxic hacked arcade game. Most of them are shown in Europe for the first time, including Stolen Pieces, dozens of stolen fragments of precious artworks. We’ll also preview the second part of The Others, a slideshow video of 10.000 images appropriated from random personal computers.
Some pics and press release here
The Influencers are coming
Yeah! Time has come for The Influencers 2012, a tiny, very intense festival we curate every year with our friend Bani in Barcelona, Spain. “Abandon all certainties and join us for a weekend with the authors of visionary projects that cross over the arts, experimental forms of activism and personal explorations into collective imagination.”
This year’s guests will be Evan Roth, JR, Jill Magid, Voina, Constant Dullaart, Biotic Baking Brigade and Reverend Billy. See you there!
The Influencers, February 9-10-11 2012
CCCB, Barcelona, and various locations around the city
Real time updates here
Attribution Art?
What happened is ARTPULSE magazine asked art critic Domenico Quaranta to interview us. He thought it would have been interesting to interview some of the victims of our thefts instead, coming to an interesting conclusion: this is not Appropriation Art, this is Attribution Art!
He spoke with, among others, Jodi, Maurizio Cattelan, Nike’s CEO, Dieter Roth, Edward Kienholz and the Holy See. Or did he? Well, if you read it till the end you’ll find out.
Going Sundance!
We’ll be at Sundance Film Festival the whole week for the New Frontier exhibition. The show opens in two venues, The Yard in Park City and UMOCA in Salt Lake City on Friday 20th, and we have works in both places.
ah we’re also part of the Is This Thing On? panel on Sunday 22nd, if you happen to be at Sundance please drop by!
Justice Is Not Available
If you were living in Dusseldorf, Germany, you may have noticed some rather hermetic posters around the city with the Pentagon website saying:
The requested resource, (/justice), is not available.
like the ones you can see here. They were put up for a project called TransPrivacy, where Net Art and Street Art meet.
You can also see our piece directly on the Pentagon website:
Peer Pressure intro
Just wrote a short intro for Brad Troemel’s book Peer Pressure. It’s the first time we do it so we are very excited. Brad is one of our favorite art writers and the book is totally worth reading!
Get it here
A web of flies
This summer White Flag Projects in Saint Louis held an interesting exhibition called Another Kind of Vapor. Taking inspiration from Dieter Roth’s work the show presented artists who use non-traditional and decaying materials, such as Paul McCarthy, Ed Ruscha and Dieter Roth himself.
Roth’s piece in the show was a glass jar containing flies collected by the artist from his legendary work Staple Cheese (A Race), 1970. This work has disappeared long ago, thrown away in the desert by the gallery owner, nothing else remains beside this 40-year-old jar full of dead flies.
Unfortunately Dieter Roth never made this work, it’s a fake. We invented it one evening in a bar with our friend Corazon Del Sol, and put it together the next day. We bought all the stuff on the internet: an old glass jar, a vintage cork and lots of flies (yes, you can buy flies online), and sent the work to the unaware curators.
The piece has been shown for over a month, and nobody questioned its authenticity or worthiness. The image of the jar with flies started circulating on the Internet and it’s also mentioned in Roth’s biography in Wikipedia.
Maybe one day the jar would have been included in other Dieter Roth shows, and, who knows, even sold for a lot of money.
Sometimes we tend to prefer facts we wish to be true, rather than facts we know to be true. Maybe the little jar fulfilled our desire that the Dieter Roth legendary work wasn’t completely lost. Believing is seeing.
More info here
and the exhibition is here
Collect the WWWorld
Our piece My Generation (a collage of amateur clips of kids freaking out when their computers break down) is in a great exhibition called Collect the WWWorld, curated by Domenico Quaranta at Link Center in Italy. The exhibition features some of our favorite artists and comes with an impressive research work, that you can check here.
Catalogue is worth reading, and it’s free!
Please speak softly!
Hit an Internet-cafe, rent all computers they have and run a show on them for one night: It’s the SPEED SHOW exhibition format. The show is public and takes place during normal opening hours of the Internet cafe. All visitors are welcome to join the opening, enjoy the art (and to check their email.)
We’re showing the video of our performance Freedom at tomorrow night speed show in Berlin:
Please speak softly!
curated by Aram Bartholl
Opening September 16, 7-9pm, Berlin, all info here
Let Them Believe premiere
Photo by Tod Seelie
If you’re in New York this Saturday July 16th Let The Believe premieres at Rooftop Films festival. It’s a short movie on Plan C, directed by Todd Chandler and Jeff Stark. Shot on location in Chernobyl and Manchester, it follows Ryan C. Doyle, Steve Valdez, Eva and I plotting to steal a carnival ride from the radioactive zone.
Screening details here
Lies Inc. in the UK
Please join us for a fear and loathing week in Sheffield, UK. On June 9th our first solo show in the UK opens at Site Gallery. The exhibition is called “Lies Inc.” and includes recent online performances such as No Fun (an intervention into an online video chatroom), Freedom (where we enter a multi-user online war game and beg not to be shot), Catt (an online meme turned into an art prank) and many surprises…
After the opening we’ll all go experiment the mysteries of nuclear energy in an abandoned factory with Plan C’s amusement ride, developed out of an undercover research trip to Chernobyl and the beta-preview of “Let Them Believe”, the short film Todd Chandler and Jeff Stark shot during the trip.
On June 8th we’ll be in conversation with some of our favorite artists & companions: legendary performer Bill Drummond, pranksters IOCOSE and Paolo Cirio, net artist Rafael Rozendaal and Plan C co-conspirator Ryan Doyle.
Details here
God Save the Queen!
Italian Pavilion?
YES, we refused the invitation to participate in the Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, due to its ludicrous organization.
Colorless, odorless and tasteless – San Francisco
Last week we locked ourselves up in a huge warehouse in Oakland, CA, together with machine artists Steve Valdez and Ryan C. Doyle. We’re working on a new thing: a videogame that kills people (?!?!?). We’re fit an old Pole Position arcade game with a car engine. It spews carbon monoxide into the room when in operation, letting the players control how much of the potentially toxic gas fills the air. If you want to know the outcome of this experiment please come by tonight, we’ve an exhibition opening at Cain Schulte Gallery in San Francisco, with several recent works and this new one. Don’t forget to bring your quarters.
Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG
Colorless, odorless and tasteless
February 25 – April 2 2011
Opening Friday 25, 5:30-7:30pm
Cain Schulte Gallery251 Post Street, Suite 210, San Francisco
More info on the show here
The Influencers
There’s a small kind-of-cult festival that we organize together with our friend Bani every year in Barcelona, it’s called The Influencers. It’s a gathering of artists, impostors, conceptual hackers, deviant geographers and crazy characters, those people you can get inspiration from.
The next festival is taking place April 14-15-16, 2011
And the videos of last year are here
James Acord, alchemist for the nuclear age
Sadly, visionary nuclear sculptor James Acord just left this planet. One of the few, if not the only one, of his filmed appearances was last year at The Influencers festival, you can see the video here.
His mind-blowing theories kept us awake for nights. Our recent project Plan C was in fact cooked up in Barcelona with Ryan Doyle after meeting James.
“The base man who desired only for wealth would always fail. The higher adepts, the true alchemists, knew that what they were really transforming was themselves” James Acord
Post about the fake Cattelan on Rhizome
Just posted a brief text on Rhizome about the fake Cattelan sculpture, telling how the whole thing started (from an online meme) and where it’s at.
You can read it here
New sculpture by Cattelan turns out to be an Art prank
We wanted to make a work about Internet’s overflowing creativity vs. high art fixation with originality. We found a cat meme collage circulating online, and we ended up making this fake sculpture by art-star Maurizio Cattelan with it. It’s a small yellow taxidermy bird perched atop a birdcage that imprisons an angry-looking taxidermy cat.
The piece has been exhibited at Inman Gallery Annex, in Houston, TX, for a month now as a work by Cattelan, and will be there through January 15, 2011. We thought, let’s wear the mask of a famous artist and see what happens: Will people realize it immediately? Will they say ‘this is his worst work ever?’ Or will they love it?
The reception by the art world has been enthusiastic so far. Who knows what’s going to happen when they find out it’s a prank.
You can see some photos here
and read the press release here
My Generation video now online
My Generation is a video collage of kids freaking out while playing videogames. It runs on an old broken computer (that still works).
You can see the video here
