Today, The Washington Post features a wonderful piece of art criticism. Written by Blake Gopnik, the article was occasioned by the unveiling – at Postmasters Gallery in New York – of Eva and Franco Mattes‘ first artwork ever, Stolen Pieces (1995 – 1997): «a piece of contemporary art that consists of fragments stolen from priceless major modern works», Gopnik writes. The reason I’m pointing to the article (and not to the work) is because the work is not online yet, and because the review is really able to bring you into the piece and its complexity.

If you want to know more, please read Fabio Cavallucci‘s gorgeous essay on Stolen Pieces in the Mattes’ recently published catalogue. The essay is available as a pdf download on Postmasters’ website.

Eva and Franco Mattes, No Fun, 2010. Video documentation of a suicide performance on Chatroulette. Soon at Postmasters Gallery, New York.

Domenico Quaranta, “Reality is Overrated. When Media Go Beyond Simulation”, in Artpulse Magazine, Issue 3, March – May 2010.

The Cartoonist Manifesto: Performance Art for the Fin de Millennium.

For the past three or four years, there have been a number of artists, interveners, performers, (or whatever you want to call them), who are performing in virtual worlds. Second Life, World of Warcraft, Active Worlds, OpenSim – all these places are merely meaningless names that stand for the fact that there is a portion of the world that is embracing a “New Flesh” of pixels and nothingness. There are communities of “bodies without organs” writhing in a Tron-like fog of shapes and colors in imaginary spaces. But still, here we are – revisiting performance art, Happenings, interventions and the like, dragging the shadows of Dada, the Surrealists, Fluxus, the Situationists, Abramovic, Anderson, Barney, Burden, Export, Gilbert and George, Wiebel, and all the rest into the Virtual on our backs. It is again, like the seminal scene of Tron, where the hacker Flynn’s flesh is ripped apart by the laser of virtualization and pulled into the computer world, upgraded with new, luminous bodies.

But wait! Wasn’t performance art supposed to be the last bastion of authenticity in art? Wasn’t the viscera supposed to be the final resting place of immediacy and affect? This is probably the truth. But with the coming of the 21st Century, it’s obvious that humanity has become cynical about its own flesh; the body has become desensitized to its own suffering; simulations truly have supplanted the physical, whether in the form of games, virtual worlds, or CNN. As Marina Abramovic herself has said, the shift from the body to the avatar reduces performance to the gesture of the Cartoon, and she wished she had thought of it first… And rightly so! That is exactly what we are; As Nitsch, Weibel, Export et al were Actionists, perhaps we are “Lack of” Actionists, or Cartoonists!

We are:

Cartoons for those who hate cartoons.

Performance art for a post-embodied era.

Visceral art after the discard of the body.

Endurance for the mouse-enabled.

What exactly is this, then? It is Bugs Bunny shooting Daffy Duck, reenacting Burden’s “Shoot”, Betty Boop submitting herself to Yoko Ono’s “Cut Piece”, or Olive Oyl standing fiercely with the Red Star cut into her belly as in Abramovic’ “Lips of Thomas”. It is Mickey Mouse holding the skull of Yorick, pondering his existential state. It is the cat and mouse, Itchy and Scratchy, eviscerating one another, whacking each other with mallets, holding you accountable for your gaze. It is the culmination of a society that has become exhausted with itself, with its own cruelty, with its own desensitization; an ironic stance armed with the arrow of its own cynicism, bow taut, aimed at its own heart.

This is the point of Cartoon Performance, though. Is this to say that the virtual gesture is abject of meaning, of affect? No. As children cry when playing with dolls, boo the amoral Punchinello at puppet shows, laugh at Donald Duck’s fits of rage, we identify with the avatar; the reality of the simulated body. While we know that regardless of how many times Daffy gets shot in the arm, there is still the residual connection to the blood and sinew that creates the momentary flinch before the pull of the trigger before the flash of the barrel and the crack of bone. There is still the question of whether to face the nude Eva or Franco Mattes avatar when passing through the door, the urge to run when the fourteen Gaziras rush at you with the giant wooden mallets, or the vertigo of virtual Ciccciolina atop the simulated Empire State Building in the grasp of the digital Kong. The immediacy of the flesh is gone; but the feeling still remains.

We are Cartoons, and we bleed, scream, fuck, laugh and sing.

Or at least we remind you what that was like.

Patrick Lichty, 2010

Signatories:

Patrick Lichty

Gazira Babeli

Bibbe Hansen

Scott Kildall

Eva and Franco Mattes

Second Front

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

[Press Images (zip folder, 72 MB)]

[More infos]

Once again, ARCOmadrid is opening up its own particular “black box” to provide room for renowned international artists using new media in their works. The use of new technologies and digital tools in art creation is no longer viewed as anything strange or exceptional, and in fact a large number of artists have already added it to their everyday practise without further ado. This new addition of electronics to art is reflected in the eight spaces at EXPANDED BOX, in a programme coordinated by the Italian critic and curator Domenico Quaranta, a specialist in digital and net art.

“The idea that new technologies, new media, new ways of addressing vital questions, as well as how cultures have contextualised these technological changes, is constantly modifying not only the way in which we live, but also the way in which we make art and even the very notion of art itself”, the curator explains. The evolution has been so fast and digital media have irrupted into our lives with such force that they are transforming absolutely all fields of culture.

This means a true revolution in terms of cultural production, with a rise of techniques such as photography, film and animation. “Some artists have embraced new media enthusiastically, while others are being forced to reconsider the way in which they work with conventional media like painting and sculpture; and yet others have done both things” and, as Quaranta says, “art has changed beyond all recognition”.

With over a decade under its belt already, the EXPANDED BOX programme has been instrumental in this process and, in this upcoming edition, it will take another step further in order to showcase an art that is looking beyond the creative world, “an art that is growing on Internet, that is made in research centres and laboratories and that has the potential to change our current accepted idea of art”, the curator tells us. The public will find a programme that “will try to make collectors and art lovers lose their fear of these changes”, while at once demonstrating that “in the information society, works of art have as much to say as always”.

The reconstruction of art

To give us a rounded perspective, Domenico Quaranta has selected eight projects “capable of clearing showing the diverse facets of this strange diamond we currently know as ‘New Media Art’” or, in any case, those that the curator considered the most interesting “in terms of cultural urgency”, within a field “whose leadership and reputation has seen an exponential growth over recent years”.

This is the case of the Italian collective comprising Eva & Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG. In the space of the FABIO PARIS ART GALLERY, they are presenting a complete cycle of their “Synthetic Performances”, in which they reconstruct legendary performances from the history of art through avatars from virtual worlds like Second Life.

Particularly representative of latest trends in this genre is JODI, a duo of artists and one of the hottest names in Net Art since its inception. They will be showing their work in the space of the Berlin gallery GENTILI APRI. At ARCOmadrid this collective from Holland are presenting one of their latest and most subversive works, which revolves around amateur technology and participative media, rewriting folklore in a particular anthropology through the net.

Also from Berlin, the ART CLAIMS IMPULSE gallery is representing the German collective comprising Julius Von Bismarck & Benjamin Maus. The public will have a chance to catch their latest creation, “Perpetual Storytelling Apparatus”, a machine that translates the words from a text into drawings on continuous paper. Like a 21st century “exquisite corpse”, the result reveals a re-contextualization of ideas and fragments, opening the way to a new narrative, creating fascinating stories and intriguing visual metaphors.

Tradition and innovation

Domenico Quaranta’s selection also includes various projects combining new technology with more conventional media or which use these technologies towards classical ends. The latter is the case of the wonderful installation by the Bulgarian artist Mariana Vassileva, presented by the German DNA GALLERY. The artist, concerned with issues cutting across violence, gender, family and social hierarchies, uses the human being in her work as a source of energy and light, exploring themes of human desires like communication, interpersonal relations, personal introspection and solitude.

The Latvian gallery ALMA GALLERY is exhibiting photonic paintings created by the multimedia artist Gints Gabrāns using a laser ray and then registering them on photographic paper. From a profound concern for aesthetics, this artist’s works are a clear instance of how conventional media can be reinterpreted and adapted to new technologies and languages.

On a similar tack, we find the work by the young artist Jakub Nepraš presented by the Portuguese gallery ARTHOBLER. This Czech artist brings three of his video projects together in one single installation. Through the use of assemblage and the layering of individual sequences, the artist creates movement along various axes, generating dynamic and pictorial rhythms in a temporal loop.

The public can also see an evocative work by the UK collective Boredomresearch, comprising Vicky Isley and Paul Smith, who use new media to portray and recreate artificial life. The new series of informatic objects by this duo who work with software art to fuse aesthetics and biology is on view at the space of [DAM] BERLIN.

Finally, the Mexican artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is also making a contribution to this summary overview of e-art and new technologies applied to creation. The London gallery HAUNCH OF VENISON is showing one of his latest installations, Reaction Diffusion, which consists of a series of computer-controlled light boxes showing animated images from some of the world’s frontier regions with the greatest migratory traffic and the greatest economic inequality. The social dynamics are, in this case, the object study and reflection for this artist, who uses new media to speak of pressing problems of the moment.

The “black box” at ARCOmadrid_2010 is, as such, “an attempt to rethink more traditional media –photography, video, performance and even painting and sculpture – through the optic of the digital era and to facilitate a mutual dialogue”, and as Domenico Quaranta claims, one of the founding mandates of his selection for EXPANDED BOX.

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Un año más, ARCOmadrid_ 2010 abre su particular ‘caja negra’ para acoger las obras de artistas de prestigio internacional que utilizan para sus obras las técnicas más innovadoras. El uso de las nuevas tecnologías y las herramientas digitales para la creación artística ya no constituye algo raro o excepcional, sino que un gran número de creadores ya lo han incorporado con naturalidad a su práctica cotidiana. Esta incorporación decidida de la electrónica al arte podrá constatarse a través de los ocho espacios que compondrán el programa EXPANDED BOX, coordinado por el crítico y comisario italiano Domenico Quaranta, especialista en arte digital y en red.
“La idea de que las nuevas tecnologías, los nuevos medios de comunicación, las nuevas formas de acercarse a las cuestiones vitales, así como las culturas que han contextualizado estos cambios tecnológicos, están modificando constantemente no sólo el modo en que vivimos, sino también la forma en la que hacemos arte e incluso la propia noción de arte en sí”, afirma el comisario de la muestra. La evolución ha sido tan vertiginosa y los medios digitales han irrumpido en nuestras vidas con tal fuerza que están transformando todos los ámbitos de la cultura.
Este hecho constituye una auténtica revolución en términos de producción cultural, con el auge de técnicas como la fotografía, el cine y la animación. “Algunos artistas han abrazado de forma entusiasta los nuevos medios, mientras que otros se ven obligados a reconsiderar la forma en la que trabajaban con los antiguos medios como la pintura o la escultura; y otros han hecho ambas cosas”, tal y como explica Quaranta, “el arte ha cambiado de forma espectacular”.
En sus más de diez años de trayectoria, el programa EXPANDED BOX ha contribuido a este proceso y, en la próxima edición, dará un paso adelante más para mostrar un arte que mira más allá del mundo creativo, “un arte que crece en Internet, que se produce en los centros de investigación y laboratorios y que tiene potencial para cambiar nuestra idea actual del arte”, destaca el comisario de la muestra. El público encontrará, así, un programa que “intentará hacer perder el miedo a los coleccionistas y amantes del arte ante este cambio de perspectiva”, al tiempo que demostrará que “en la sociedad de la información, las obras de arte tienen tanta fuerza como siempre”.

La reconstrucción del arte

Para configurar esta perspectiva, Domenico Quaranta ha seleccionado ocho proyectos “capaces de mostrar claramente las diversas facetas de ese extraño diamante que actualmente conocemos como ‘New Media Art’” o, en cualquier caso, aquellos que el comisario ha considerado más interesantes “en términos de urgencia cultural”, dentro de un ámbito “cuyo liderazgo y reputación tendrán un crecimiento exponencial en los últimos años”.
Es el caso del colectivo italiano formado por Eva & Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG. En esta ocasión, de la mano de FABIO PARIS ART GALLERY, presentarán un ciclo completo de sus “Synthetic Performances”, que reconstruyen performances legendarias de la historia del arte a través de avatares de mundos virtuales como Second Life.
Especialmente representativo de las últimas tendencias en este género, es el dúo de artistas JODI, una de las estrellas desde los orígenes del Net Art, mostrará su obra en el espacio de la galería berlinesa GENTILI APRI. Este colectivo holandés presentará en ARCOmadrid uno de sus últimos y subversivos trabajos, que giran en torno a la tecnología amateur y a los medios participativos, para reelaborar el folklore en una particular antropología a través de la red.
También desde Berlín, la galería ART CLAIMS IMPULSE, representará al colectivo alemán formado por Julius Von Bismarck & Benjamin Maus. El público podrá acercarse a su última creación artística, “Perpetual Storytelling Apparatus”, una máquina que traduce las palabras de un texto en dibujos que se van trazando sobre papel continuo. Como un ‘cadáver exquisito’ del siglo XXI, el resultado revela una re-contextualización de las ideas y fragmentos, abriendo camino a una nueva narrativa, creando historias fascinantes e intrigantes metáforas visuales.

Tradición e innovación

La selección de Domenico Quaranta también incluye varios proyectos que combinan las nuevas tecnologías con medios más tradicionales o que utilizan dichas tecnologías para propósitos clásicos. Este último es el caso de la fascinante instalación de la artista búlgara Mariana Vassileva, que será presentada por la sala alemana DNA GALLERY. La artista, desde una preocupación por temas como la violencia, el género, la familia y las jerarquías sociales, utiliza en sus obras al ser humano como fuente de energía y de luz. Deseos humanos como la comunicación, las relaciones interpersonales, la introspección personal y la soledad forman parte de la temática de su obra.
Por su parte, la galería letona ALMA GALLERY mostrará las pinturas fotónicas que el artista multimedia Gints Gabrāns genera con un rayo láser para registrarlas posteriormente en papel fotográfico. Desde una profunda preocupación por la estética, las obras de este artista son una clara muestra de cómo pueden reinterpretarse los medios tradicionales para adaptarlos a las nuevas tecnologías y lenguajes.
En esta misma línea podría enmarcarse el trabajo del joven artista Jakub Nepraš que será presentado por la sala portuguesa ARTHOBLER GALLERY. Este creador checo, que en sus obras el vídeo, integrará en una única instalación tres de sus proyectos. Mediante el ensamblaje y la superposición de secuencias individuales, el artista genera movimiento a lo largo de diversos ejes, creando ritmos dinámicos y pictóricos en un loop temporal.
El público también podrá acercarse al sugerente trabajo del colectivo británico Boredomresearch –integrado por Vicky Isley y Paul Smith–, que utiliza los nuevos medios para retratar y recrear vida artificial. El espacio de [DAM] BERLIN, acogerá la nueva serie de objetos informáticos de este dúo que trabaja el software art para fundir estética y biología.
Por ultimo, el artista mexicano Rafael Lozano-Hemmer también realizará su aportación a este recorrido por el arte electrónico y las nuevas tecnologías aplicadas a la creación. La sala londinense HAUNCH OF VENISON mostrará en la feria una de sus últimas instalaciones. La obra titulada “Reaction Diffusion” consiste en una serie de cajas de luz controladas a través de ordenador, en las que se muestran imágenes animadas de algunas de las regiones fronterizas del mundo con un mayor tráfico migratorio y una mayor desigualdad económica. Las dinámicas sociales son, en este caso, el objeto de estudio y reflexión del artista, que utiliza los medios más actuales para hablar de los problemas que son de mayor actualidad.
La ‘caja negra’ de ARCOmadrid_2010 constituirá, por tanto, “un intento de repensar los medios más tradicionales –la fotografía, el vídeo, la performance e incluso la pintura y la escultura– a través de la era digita y facilitar su diálogo”, según apunta Domenico Quaranta como uno de los objetivos fundamentales de su selección para EXPANDED BOX.

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

Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG – I’m Not Here

EXHIBITION OPENING – Saturday 3 October, 6 pm – midnight

3 October – 15 November 2009

Fabio Paris Art Gallery

Spazio Contemporanea,  Corsetto Sant’Agata 22 – Brescia

The opening of the exhibition will also see the presentation of the first monograph on the artists, published by Charta, and including, among others, contributions by Domenico Quaranta, Fabio Cavallucci, RoseLee Goldberg, Bruce Sterling, Wu Ming and Maurizio Cattelan.

Among the pioneers of the Net Art movement, Eva and Franco Mattes are renowned for their masterful subversion of the media, constantly shifting between real and virtual space. After snagging the website Vaticano.org (1998) they launched a Jubilee dedicated to the free spirit, diverting worshippers to rather more unorthodox views. They convinced the art world of the existence of a fictitious artist, who was even featured in the Venice Biennale (Darko Maver, 1999), then, when they themselves were invited to the Biennale, they used the event to roll out a computer virus (Biennale.py, 2001). They have copied, remixed and redistributed the works of other artists, challenging the notions of uniqueness and ownership of works of art. They staged a fake advertising campaign convincing the inhabitants of Vienna that Nike was about to get its hands on one of the city’s most famous squares (Nike Ground, 2003), and they promoted a non-existent “Eurollywood” blockbuster, revealing the spurious nature of the notion of European unity (United We Stand, 2005).  They have restaged the performances of Marina Abramovic and other artists in a videogame (Synthetic Performances, 2007), transformed the avatars of Second Life into pop stars (Portraits, 2006), forced Mickey Mouse to live out the ultimate head trip (It’s Always Six O’Clock, 2008) and routed out Edward Hopper in a shoot ‘em up videogame (Traveling by Telephone, 2009).
Their art has garnered them various lawsuits, but it has also taken them to events and venues such as the Venice Biennale (2001), the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2001), Manifesta 4 in Frankfurt (2002), the New Museum in New York (2005), Collection Lambert in Avignon (2006) and Performa, New York (2007 and 2009).
“I’m Not Here” highlights the constants that run through their varied and apparently disconnected oeuvre: appropriation (of the works and identities of others); falsification and simulation; orchestrating performances in which the artist is absent, hidden behind an interface; and their desire to use art to infiltrate our collective imagination.

Domenico Quaranta, «La guerra è finita», peccato sia un falso, in L’Unità, November 15, 2008, pp. 36 – 37.

“Gli Stati Uniti sono il luogo dove tutto è possibile”, ha dichiarato Barack Obama nel suo primo discorso da Presidente eletto. La carica di entusiasmo e ottimismo che ha accompagnato l’elezione del neopresidente è stata presa alla lettera da un gruppo di attivisti, che la mattina di mercoledì 12 novembre hanno distribuito gratuitamente per le strade di diverse città americane (New York, ma anche Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia e Washington), secondo l’Associated Press, qualcosa come 1 milione e 200.000 copie del New York Times, grazie all’aiuto di un migliaio di volontari. Il NYT di un mondo parallelo, in cui le promesse elettorali di Obama sono diventate realtà: l’assistenza sanitaria è gratuita, lo stipendio dei manager è stato ridotto, e soprattutto la guerra è finita. La copertina del finto NYT è presto approdata sul sito di quello vero, che si è dovuto scusare: “Ci spiace, ragazzi, il giornale non è gratuito. E la guerra in Iraq non è finita. Non ancora, almeno”. E tuttavia, il quotidiano di New York non se l’è presa a male, come del resto la maggior parte delle persone che hanno ricevuto il falso NYT all’uscita della metropolitana, cascandoci o meno. “Certo che è possibile” – dice un signore anziano in una videointervista pubblicata sul sito-clone (www.nytimes-se.com) che ha accompagnato l’uscita del finto giornale. “Ora abbiamo una occasione reale di avverare queste promesse.” “Se ci credi, è possibile”, incalza una ragazza. “È come un sogno”, commenta un giovane di colore. In effetti, per qualche ora almeno, il finto NYT è stato per l’America un sogno a occhi aperti – o, se vogliamo, la fine di un incubo di fronte a cui ha chiuso gli occhi per troppo tempo. “Merda! Te l’avevo detto che Obama l’avrebbe fatto!”, ha commentato un homeless salendo sulla metro. Spiega Franco Mattes, artista italiano a New York, che ha partecipato alla distribuzione: “è stata un’allucinazione collettiva di proporzioni gigantesche, come se avessimo versato LSD negli acquedotti di New York portando milioni di persone a credere di vivere nel futuro.”

In realtà, il finto NYT, per quanto credibile (14 pagine fitte di articoli scritti sotto pseudonimo da veri giornalisti), conteneva in sé alcuni dettagli che rivelavano la finzione: la data innanzitutto (4 luglio 2009), alcune notizie incredibili (Bush accusato di alto tradimento), riferimenti a decine di organizzazioni progressiste, e soprattutto la maquette che apre il giornale (“Tutte le notizie che vorremmo stampare”, che sostituisce quella del New York Times “Tutte le notizie che vale la pena di stampare”). Un’edizione utopica, dunque, ma anche qualcosa di più. “A questo punto, dobbiamo spingere più che mai” spiega Bertha Suttner, uno degli autori del falso giornale. “Dobbiamo essere sicuri che Obama e gli altri Democratici facciano quello per cui li abbiamo eletti. Dopo otto, o forse ventott’anni di inferno, dobbiamo cominciare a immaginare il paradiso.”

Ma come tutto ciò è stato possibile? Lo stesso 12 novembre, la beffa è stata rivendicata con un comunicato stampa dal collettivo americano The Yes Men, già noto per aver clonato vari siti e per aver “interpretato”, in diverse occasioni pubbliche e sui media, organizzazioni e corporation come il WTO, Halliburton ed ExxonMobil (sulla vicenda è uscito anche, nel 2004, un divertentissimo documentario). Secondo fonti attendibili, gli Yes Men avrebbero collaborato con diverse associazioni di attivisti, in particolare l’Anti Advertising Agency. Alla redazione del sito avrebbe invece partecipato un misterioso collettivo italiano noto come Les Liens Invisibles, che ha creato, qualche mese fa, un servizio di blog che mette a disposizione diversi modelli di siti plagiati (fra cui quello di Repubblica e del NYT, appunto). Del resto, l’iniziativa ha qualcosa di molto italiano: chi non ricorda le false copertine del Male? Le cifre indicate nel comunicato – peraltro riprese dall’Associated Press e da diverse testate, tra cui il NYT e il Washington Post – sembrano piuttosto inverosimili – stampare un milione di copie costa molto di più dei 100.000 dollari dichiarati dagli autori della beffa. Ma non è questo il punto. Il punto è che Obama ci ha dato un sogno, e ora deve trasformarlo in realtà. E che l’America, che ai sogni ci crede, lo tiene d’occhio. “Abbiamo cambiato la realtà, e convinto milioni di persone, anche solo per una giornata, che tutto è cambiato.”

[Published in: Domenico Quaranta (ed), Portraits. Book printed on occasion of the exhibition "EVA E FRANCO MATTES (0100101110101101.ORG) LOL", Fabio Paris Art Gallery, Brescia, January 2007. Text released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License. To see the licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/]

Your previous projects attracted attention for their radical nature. Portraits has attracted some criticism due to its apparent banality. What is at the heart of the project?

Out of all our previous works Portraits is obviously the most radical one. The most radical action you can do is to subvert yourself.

What is the meaning of making a portrait of an avatar?

We see Avatars as “self-portraits”. Unlike most portraits, though, they are not based on the way you “are”, but rather on the way you “want to be”. Actually, our works are not portraits, but rather “pictures of self-portraits”.

I mentioned the term banality, a defect claimed as a feature by the only artist you explicitly refer to, Andy Warhol. What is it that links you to Pop Art?

The borrowing of characters and imagery from popular culture, comics for example, is a classic technique of Pop Art that was widely used by the likes of Lichtenstein and Warhol. Video games are part of today’s pop culture. If Warhol were still around I’m sure he would use printers the way we’re doing. After all, it’s ink on canvas – what difference does it make whether it is a machine or a hand putting the ink?

So in what way is your work more than just a reproduction of something done with so much emphasis fifty years ago?

Fifty years ago? Portraits have been around for thousands of years! Art is always about rearranging previous ideas and genres. Culture is plagiarism. It is when somebody is claiming originality that one should start doubting.

In virtual worlds, the extraordinary is the norm. You could have played on the oddities, the weird or trashier aspects, but instead you have focused on beauty. Why is that?

We didn’t choose beauty, it was elected by people creating their own alter-egos. They built their characters matching the Western canon of beauty, when they could be whoever and whatever they wanted. Some people find our portraits “cool” and “sexy”, others find them “creepy” and “tragic”. Not unlike Tamara de Lempicka’s portraits, with their robotic beauty, I guess they’re a bit of both.

Second Life raises issues about identity, but also about social life, architecture and economics. Why did you choose to work with portraits?

In Second Life you are forced not to be yourself, to wear an ultra-modern 3D mask. But masks are not there to hide your real identity, on the contrary they are there to show who you really are, since you can ignore social restrictions. Since we’ve been living fake identities all of our lives, it’s obvious that we are attracted by a world of Avatars.

Like the Internet, a virtual world is a social space which allows community experiments, the adoption of fictitious identities, experiments with the concepts of property and plagiarism. Do you think it would make sense to work on projects like your previous ones?

Generally speaking yes, for us, as we have already done so, no. Our contribution to Net.art in the ‘90s was exactly that, raising topics such as plagiarism, originality, reproducibility, authenticity, identity theft. It doesn’t mean that we should stick to this. It’s way more difficult to change than repeat yourself forever.
And besides, synthetic worlds are radically different from the Internet: if the Internet is Protestant, synthetic worlds are Catholic.

Portraits heralds an interesting turning point in your work. Where do you think it will lead?

The career of an artist is usually about finding a “personal” style and endlessly repeating versions of it. On the contrary, we’ve been trying to avoid creating a recognizable style by any means. There is no continuity in our work, so I can say with absolute certainty that this work will lead us to do something totally different.

One thing I find very interesting is what could be termed the gradual humanization of 0100101110101101.ORG into Eva and Franco Mattes. It would be easy to view this as a concession to the art world, and its need for an artist figure to venerate, but what springs to my mind is the evolution of the digital identity highlighted by Portraits: from a series of numbers to an avatar, from the construction of an identity to the care of a body. What is your view?

Eva and Franco Mattes are as much a construction as 0100101110101101.ORG is, maybe even more.

Why?

We’ve been keeping changing identity for ten years now: we’ve been Luther Blissett, Darko Maver, Renato Posapiani and Tania Copechi, 0100101110101101.ORG. In our works we have embodied the Vatican, Nike, the European Union. Eva and Franco Mattes are the last evolution of our long-standing identity dérive, probably the most complex one. The last identity you pick is always the most complex because it also contains the previous ones.

Freud says that to become adults we need to kill our fathers. Which of your many fathers have you killed off with Portraits?

We’re trying to get rid of Duchamp, and all artists should. He has had too much influence on contemporary art.

[Published in: Domenico Quaranta (ed), Portraits. Book printed on occasion of the exhibition "EVA E FRANCO MATTES (0100101110101101.ORG) LOL", Fabio Paris Art Gallery, Brescia, January 2007. Text released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License. To see the licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/]

“If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person?”
Tyler Durden, Fight Club [1]

At the beginning of 2006 Eva and Franco Mattes made their first incursion into Second Life, an online virtual world created in 2003 by the American company Linden Lab. The duo, known as 0100101110101101.ORG, had just spent a busy year working on the project United We Stand (2005 – 2006), a massive advertising campaign for a non-existent movie: a European-produced war blockbuster in which Europe saves the world from an imminent conflict between China and the United States. With a consummate manipulation of advertising conventions and mass marketing codes Eva and Franco Mattes created a kind of mental short circuit, staking all on a legend that no-one wants to believe in, and communicating it using the codes of another, dominant legend, that of American supremacy.

Second Life, on the other hand, is a legend that works. With more than two million participants to date, it is, in the words of William Gibson, a “consensual hallucination” based on solid foundations, primarily of an economic nature. Unlike other successful virtual worlds, such as the famed World of Warcraft, Second Life is characterized by the almost complete absence of the game metaphor. Its participants, known as residents, are engaged in constructing exactly that, a second life, which means taking care of the appearance of their virtual persona, or avatar, giving it a house, possessions, a social life, making it work and above all buy. Second Life offers a new model of cyberspace; as the Mattes duo note, if the Internet is Protestant (strict, structured, mostly textual and iconoclastic), synthetic worlds are Catholic (icon-loving, lavish and elaborate). And while it is by no means a given that as a product Second Life will stand the test of time, the model of Second Life is set to change our lives on the Internet, and probably life in general.

But there is another aspect of this model that could not but interest the Mattes duo at this time. As a whole, the virtual world created by Linden Lab could be described as an “identity factory”, a concept that has been something of an obsession for the duo since they took part in the Luther Blissett project (1994 – 1999), a collective that has claimed responsibility for a number of works involving manipulations of the mass media [2]. By presenting themselves as 0100101110101101.ORG and circulating legends about their real identities, the Mattes are openly taking a stand against the personality cult surrounding the figure of the artist. Their creation of the tormented artist Darko Maver (1998 – 1999) reveals how much of this personality cult is based on fiction and stereotype. Their hijacking of the Vatican website (1998 – 1999) to manipulate its contents showed how a strong identity can put out any message it wants to without being challenged; by acting in the name of Nike (Nike Ground, 2003 – 2004) they proved that it was possible to appropriate a public identity; and by working with an identity that has been imposed on us (that of citizens of Europe) they publicly exposed its substantial inconsistencies.
It was during the work United We Stand that 0100101110101101.ORG decided to bring to the fore two of the many names they had used up till then to identify their projects, namely Eva and Franco Mattes. Once again these are pseudonyms, but in 2006 these names seemed to be a more appropriate way of representing their public identity than a series of numbers (which is also a domain name). It is as if 0100101110101101.ORG are acknowledging the ongoing process of personalization of our digital identities: in 1998 we were data in a network of information, whereas now we are people inhabiting a virtual universe.

This is where the encounter with synthetic worlds comes in, and Eva and Franco Mattes realized that the most radical way of tackling this evolution of the concept of identity was to work on portraits. The series Portraits was exhibited for the first time in a show staged in Ars Virtua, an exhibition venue inside Second Life [3]. As a tribute to Warhol the show was entitled 13 Most Beautiful Avatars. It opened on November 15 2006, in a gallery space that is the exact reconstruction of the physical space about to host the same portraits 15 days later, on November 30 2006: the Italian Academy at Columbia University in New York. On the upper floor was a huge video screen linked up to the virtual show being staged in Second Life. This game of mirrors between the real and the virtual, first and second lives, is the norm when we are dealing with virtual worlds. But Eva and Franco Mattes have chosen to maintain the sense of ambiguity, without offering any banal solutions. The exhibition space constructed in Ars Virtua is a copy of the physical gallery space, but the virtual event opens two weeks earlier (which means that the real-world show is a reproduction of the virtual one); in Second Life the portraits are of the same substance as their subjects, and adorn the same setting as these subjects inhabit, while at the Italian Academy they are presented in another context, in the overtly physical form of large format prints on canvas. The virtual exhibition was visited by the subjects of the portraits, while the real-world exhibition saw some of their creators put in an unexpected appearance.

Surfaces

“It must be hard to be a model, because you’d want to be like the photograph of you, and you can’t ever look that way. And so you start to copy the photograph.”
Andy Warhol [4]

As we have seen, this hall of mirrors is typical of virtual worlds. Expressions like “in world” and “out of world”, used by residents to refer to Second Life and the outside world respectively, are like a kind of inverted anthropocentrism. The most famous avatars in Second Life, those who have made a name for themselves “in world”, are rarely well known in the real world. After much insistence, Aimee Weber [5], the famed fashion and content designer who Eva and Franco Mattes dedicated a triptych to, came along to the opening of the show at the Italian Academy in New York. The photograph that captures her in front of the portrait of her avatar bears witness to a singular paradox: that of a real person completely outdone by her virtual self-representation. The image prevails over the person, as is always the case in the star system. But on a closer look, there is an element of novelty: what we are calling ‘image’ is in actual fact the immaterial projection of the self within a virtual space, within a world and community that does not exist outside the computer screen. The avatar has taken the upper hand.
In other words Portraits bears witness to the gradual humanization of our digital identities. To get a measure of this it is worth having a closer look at another project by Eva and Franco Mattes, which immortalizes the previous status of the digital identity. The project in question is Life Sharing, commissioned in July 2000 by the Walker Art Center of Minneapolis [6]. Starting from the statement that “a computer, with the passing of time, ends up looking like its owner’s brain” [7], 0100101110101101.ORG decided to enact a gesture of extreme transparency (glasnost), sharing the entire contents of their computer, transforming it into a web server: the ultimate digital self portrait. The critics talked about “abstract pornography” (Hito Steyerl), “open-source living in the digital age” (Steve Dietz), “a complete form of self-exposure” (Tilman Baumgärtel), based on a kind of voyeurism stimulated not by images, but by data and information. Yvonne Volkart noted: “The project… exaggerates the assumption that our life and our identities are based on purely determined and determining accumulations of information”; and Marina Griznic insisted: “The identity of 0100101110101101.ORG is represented, not through the psychology of an individual, but through the formation of a new visual and cultural space, via the recycling of stereotypes.”. A concept that Franco Mattes summed up in a one-liner: “We don’t have emotions; we have a Hewlett-Packard.” [8]
Life_Sharing bears witness to a particular stage in the evolution of our digital identity. Although it was already possible to mediate this identity through a webcam or an avatar in a virtual world or chat system, it did not yet have a face, being composed of different types of data in a constant flow on the Internet. But our faces and bodies reproduced by a webcam are not the face and body of our identity on the Net, merely part of the data comprising it. This was why, according to 0100101110101101.ORG, the best way of representing ourselves on the web was essentially abstract, and involved putting the viewer in touch with the intimacy of data.

Virtual worlds heralded the advent of a new phase. The cloud of raw data has finally solidified into a body and a face. To show our identities we no longer need to expose the kernels of our computers, but just work on the bodies of our avatars, their skin, hair and hairstyles, clothes and accessories. The dedication we put into this alone shows that our public image, our avatar, contains a lot of ourselves. There is nothing under the surface. The striking thing about this new phase in the evolution of our online identities is the fact that all our characteristics (personal details, psychological and sociological attributes) are represented by the avatar, its features and possessions. Data is gathered in a face, and can be offered up in the form of a portrait. Indeed the fact that we can now portray this identity, in the most traditional sense, is the best demonstration of the concreteness now attained by our virtual identities. The simplification of the medium, in this case, is inversely proportionate to the sophistication of the subject.
This reveals the importance – and the radical nature – of something as apparently banal as photographing avatars. By taking these photographs, and then printing them onto large canvases and exhibiting them in an art space, Eva and Franco Mattes are performing two crucial operations. On the one hand they are saying loud and clear that the subjects they have chosen are neither simulacra or characters in a game: they are people, complete, complex identities with defined social roles in a society comprising two million inhabitants, and they are an effective representation of the canons of beauty of that society. On the other hand the duo reiterate this statement by including their pictures in the great tradition of portraiture.

Altering egos

“I is another”
Arthur Rimbaud [9]

This operation is rooted in the profound continuity that exists between the current concept of avatar and the role played by the classic genre of portrait painting throughout history. The Indian word “avatar”, which in Hindu religion indicates any physical incarnation of the divine, came into use in the eighties and nineties to indicate the symbolic projection of the videogame player in the game setting [10]. In other words, a kind of puppet that does everything I tell it to by means of a series of input tools (mouse, keyboard, joystick, gamepad). It is my on-screen alter ego. Often it has nothing to do with me, but is assigned by the game, and merely carries out the conventional actions possible in that particular setting (fighting, shooting, etc). But what happens if we are given the option of customizing that avatar, and my mission becomes that of constructing a second life in the virtual space I have access to? What happens when the videogame becomes a public arena? What happens is that the avatar becomes something more than a puppet following my orders: it becomes the projection of my identity in a public space, the appearance that I wish to have when I emerge from my private space. It becomes the mask I have constructed to interface with the environment (be it real or virtual) that I inhabit. Since its outset, the aim of the portrait genre has been to immortalize this mask, or in other words, to construct avatars. More often than not it was a case of making the subject conform to a certain type (the beggar, the philosopher) or role (the emperor, the courtier). Psychological introspection, which in some contexts assumed great importance, has always been seen as a kind of “extra”, though obviously the best portraits are the ones that reveal something of the person through the avatar, like Baldassarre Castiglione (1514 – 1515) by Raffaello, or Diego Velázquez’s various versions of Felipe IV. Even in the nineteenth century, when the portrait cut loose from its official role and became more of a private genre, the avatar – the cultural construct that a person creates to interface with the world – did not diminish in importance. On the contrary: just consider Monsieur Bertin (1832) by Ingres, the icon of the bourgeois world and attitude, or Van Gogh’s self portraits, which filter his malaise through the (stereotyped) image of the disturbed, down-at-heel artist, in conflict with the real world and himself.

But it was with the advent of pop culture, a star system that set out to become the new Olympus, and a series of media (photography, film and video) capable of capturing its aura, that the avatar became so powerful that in a certain sense it began to live its own life, and to condition the subject it was the image of.
Andy Warhol, the “self-made” artist who thought of himself as a mask, best interpreted the situation. In his Philosophy he wrote: “Photographs usually bring in another half-dimension. Movies bring in another whole dimension. That screen magnetism is something secret… you can’t even tell if someone has it until you actually see them up there on the screen.” [11]. This was how he came up with his “screen tests”, brief videos where he invited his models to be themselves in front of the camera, with the aim of assessing their magnetism. And this was what led to 13 Most Beautiful Women (1964) and 13 Most Beautiful Boys (1964), the works that provided the inspiration for the Mattes’ series of portraits exhibited in New York. In both Warhol’s videos and the Mattes’ prints, beauty is not a facile concession to the aesthetic demands of the viewer; it is the proof that we are dealing with cultural constructs, with the products of an established industry of beauty. In his portraits, Warhol went one further: he started by reproducing well constructed avatars, and studying the factors that make a face into a pop icon (the Marilyns and Jackies of the sixties), then in the seventies and eighties he transformed faces “without an aura” into icons. Warhol got skilful with make-up, both on the face being portrayed and on the reproduction itself: he took a person and gave back an avatar.

In synthetic worlds, this work is carried out assiduously and constantly by the residents themselves. Unlike Warhol, Eva and Franco Mattes do not have to construct avatars; what they have to do is to make them real, get the person to emerge, capture the appeal of an aesthetic that mixes the limits of polygonal graphics with the postcubism of Tamara de Lempicka, and find an angle that enables them to extrapolate the cultural strata that have given rise to a face, breasts, lips.
Talking about United We Stand, Ben Davis interprets the work of Eva and Franco Mattes as the result of “an equivocal fascination with the power of mass cultural codes… when the mass media has penetrated firmly into the everyday” [12] Portraits bears witness to another stage, one in which these media give us the opportunity to construct a second life, a second identity. And we can all do it, manipulating the codes of tradition and subculture, adapting aesthetic and behavioural models imposed by the media to construct another “self”. Pop life 2.0.

Like tears in rain

And so we come to the event that provides the occasion for this essay: the exhibition “LOL” at the Fabio Paris Art Gallery in Brescia. LOL is such a widely-used acronym that its precise origins are not known. It is used by online communities to express humour and amusement (standing for “Laugh Out Loud” or “Lots Of Laughs”) or as a sign-off (short for “Lots Of Love”). Like the street, virtual communities are seed-beds for new expressions and slang, which a variety of different subcultures contribute to. By using this linguistic ready-made as a title for their show, Eva and Franco Mattes apparently intend to draw attention to the various cultural codes that contribute to the lives and mysteries of their avatars, and that bubble away under the apparent surface glamour. Nothing new there: the culture clash between high-brow and popular culture, kitsch and good taste was played out and resolved in the sixties. What’s new is that now there are other forces at work: the contraposition between physical reality and a virtual sphere that is increasingly concrete and real, bursting with impulses, feelings and increasingly profound desires; and the evolution of tools originally designed for communication purposes, but which have now become the means for creating new planes of reality and identity. This is where the tragedy of these portraits lies, the profound malaise that is concealed behind their sophisticated make-up: like the replicant in Blade Runner, they are alive, yet they are, and will always be, artificial products destined to disappear, avatars. Like him, “they’ve seen things us people wouldn’t believe”. And “all those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.” [13]

NOTES

[1] Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, 1996.
[2] http://www.LutherBlissett.net/
[3] http://www.arsvirtua.com. The show, curated by Marisa Olson, was presented by the New Museum of Contemporary Art in collaboration with Rhizome.org.
[4] Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again), 1975.
[5] Cfr. http://www.aimeeweber.com/
[6] Cfr. http://collections.walkerart.org/
[7] In 0100101110101101.ORG, “Life Sharing concept”, November 2001. Online at http://0100101110101101.org/home/life_sharing/concept.html
[8] For all of these quotes, see http://0100101110101101.org/home/life_sharing/index.html
[9] Arthur Rimbaud, “Lettre du Voyant (à Paul Demeny)”, 15 May 1871.
[10] According to Wikipedia, the term was first used in this sense in Ultima IV (1985), and was made popular by the writer Neal Stephenson in the novel Snowcrash (1992), where it indicates the virtual simulation of the human body in the Metaverse. See http://en.wikipedia.org/
[11] In The Philosophy of Andy Warhol. (From A to B and Back Again), 1975.
[12] Ben Davis, “Pop Life”, in Artnet, 16 December 2005, online at http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/reviews/davis/davis12-16-05.asp
[13] Ridley Scott, Blade Runner, 1982.

EVA E FRANCO MATTES (0100101110101101.ORG): LOL

Show curated and catalogue edited by Domenico Quaranta

DATES: January 20 – March 3, 2007
OPENING: Saturday, January 20, 6 pm
LOCATION: fabioparisartgallery
Via Alessandro Monti, 13 – 25121 Brescia – Italy
www.fabioparisartgallery.com

For over a year Eva and Franco Mattes lived in the virtual world of Second Life, exploring its terrain and interacting with its peculiar inhabitants. The result of this videogame flânerie is a series of portraits characterized by the bright colors, artificial lighting, polygonal shapes and surreal perspectives typical of virtual worlds. Overall, the series draws on the technological developments which allow the creation of alternate identities within simulated worlds.

Pictures from the exhibition (on Picasa)

LOL (2007)

Project page on Eva & Franco Mattes’ website

Catalogue texts:

- Life and Its Double

- “The most radical action you can do is to subvert yourself”. Interview with Eva and Franco Mattes (a.k.a. 0100101110101101.ORG)

Published in: Domenico Quaranta (ed), Portraits. Book printed on occasion of the exhibition “EVA E FRANCO MATTES (0100101110101101.ORG) LOL”, Fabio Paris Art Gallery, Brescia, January 2007. Text released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License. To see the licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/]

EVA E FRANCO MATTES (0100101110101101.ORG) – LOL

Show curated and catalogue edited by Domenico Quaranta

From January 20 to March 3, 2007
OPENING: Saturday 20 January, 6 pm

On occasion of their second solo exhibition at Fabio Paris Art Gallery, and for the first time in Italy, Eva and Franco Mattes (a.k.a 0100101110101101.ORG) are to exhibit the project for which they have been awarded the Premio New York 2006.

For over a year Eva and Franco Mattes lived in the virtual world of Second Life, exploring its terrain and interacting with its peculiar inhabitants. The result of this videogame flânerie is a series of portraits characterized by the bright colors, artificial lighting, polygonal shapes and surreal perspectives typical of virtual worlds. Overall, the series draws on the technological developments which allow the creation of alternate identities within simulated worlds.

LOL carries on the work that began with “13 Most Beautiful Avatars”, an exhibition project that involved the physical space of the Italian Academy in New York and the virtual space of Ars Virtua Gallery (curated by Rhizome.org), and is set to continue in February with the Mattes’ second solo exhibition at Postmasters Gallery in New York.

LOL features five portraits and a triptych, all dedicated to female avatars. The title of the show is an expression much used by the online community to express amusement or jollity (“Laugh Out Loud” or “Lots Of Laughs”) or as a closing greeting (“Lots Of Love”). The fact that the Mattes duo refuse to explain the meaning of this ready-made of web communications leaves it open for interpretation: an artificial language for artificial life forms? A touch of sarcasm towards attempts to interpret a work that should be assessed primarily from the aesthetic point of view? Or rather the revelation that behind the display of apparent high spirits virtual worlds conceal a profound sense of anxiety, an underlying tragedy that at times emerges from these dazzlingly beautiful faces?

On occasion of the exhibition the gallery is to publish the book Portraits, which explores all the stages of this work.

fabioparisartgallery
Via Alessandro Monti, 13
25121 Brescia – Italy
tel. +39 030 3756139
www.fabioparisartgallery.com