DOMENICO QUARANTA

Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG, Pseudo-Futurist Video Game Improvisation Extravaganza, 2009. Synthetic Performance (extract). More performances’ documentation on Eva and Franco Mattes’ Youtube account.

Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG, Bagless Canister Cyclonic Vacuum, 2009. Outdoor billboard, 238 x 504 cm, Biennial of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Vaticano.org

“Jesus, strength and wisdom of God, awaken in us the love of the Holy Scriptures,

where resounds the Father’s voice, that illuminates and blares up, that feeds and comforts.”

Pope John Paul II, Prayer for the preparation of the Grand Jubilee 2000

When the collective 0100101110101101.ORG burst onto the scene between 1999 and 2000, it was like a firework exploding in the intricate mesh of the net, or as if a dozen snipers had suddenly started firing at the same target from different positions. It was difficult to establish their identity, but one thing for sure was that behind that codename there was a team, a fast-acting, extremely talented team. Their statements and interviews always featured different names. They inhabited the web like a natural element. It was evident that they had been in training for a long time, before firing the first shot. They knew what to aim for and they always hit their target. They bombarded mailing lists and got the media in a flap, like the Gauls among the Capitoline geese. They began with a series of thefts, and claimed responsibility for two colossal hoaxes, one attacking the art system, the other the Vatican. Their links with Luther Blissett, their accents and the geographic location of the Darko Maver project placed them in Italy, in Bologna to be precise, but their roots were as mobile as their cultural references, which ranged from the American pranksters to the Balcanic avantgarde Neue Slowenische Kunst. In time the aura of mystery gradually lifted, not least thanks to the total transparency of later works, Life_Sharing (2000 – 2003) and Vopos (2002). Then they themselves decided to clear up the identity question once and for all, or rather, flesh out two of their many fictitious identities, presenting themselves as Eva and Franco Mattes.

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A SEASON IN HELL. Cluster meets Kenneth Aronson, conceptual strategist and founder of Hell.com
Domenico Quaranta

Published in “Cluster. On Innovation”, n. 4 (Biotech), pp. 26 – 29. © Cluster 2004

The case Hell.com explodes in 1999. The media start speaking about a strange website, as black as the Ace of Spades and without any visible contents. The Wanderer must digit his e-mail address: if he’s lucky and if the waiting list isn’t too long, some day after he’ll be invited to enter. Hell. According to the legend, the Founder registered a domain in August 1995. For a few months hell was empty, a black hole on the web. The Founder then rounds up a community of friends, artist friends, who decorate the domain with artwork that they want to keep “private” far from indiscreet eyes. The residents. Hell becomes a “private parallel web”, “an anti-web that sold and promoted nothing and was not accessible to the public”. However an address such as this couldn’t go unnoticed for long. The waiting list grew unbelievably long, creating serious organization problems for the Founder. He was surrounded by Business tycoons who dreamt of the Big Portal, with “Abandon your hope, you who enter“ written on the threshold. Then the unexpected happened: the Thieves arrive, they descend into Hell and copy the contents, republishing them on their website. The Thieves are in actual fact Guerrillas who are fighting for web freedom, the sharing of art and life. “Their” Hell.com is a free parallel web, accessible to everybody”. The war opposes two different life concepts and the wounds are still open.
Today Hell is still there, but it’s not talk anymore. Cluster sought out the Founder, to ask him what he thinks of it all now.

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