UBERMORGEN.COM (lizvlx/Hans
Bernhard)
Lilly controls my Foriginals
For
their first Italian personal exhibition, the Austrian artist duo UBERMORGEN.COM
(lizvlx/Hans Bernhard) is showing a synthesis of their
recent work -- a subtle membrane connecting the digital and the biological: a
mix that UBERMORGEN.COM, an identity that lives and works on the Net,
experienced on their own bodies. One of the best-known exponents of the net.art
scene, UBERMORGEN.COM are the theorists of digital actionism, a radical practice of artistic action which experiments
on the market of attention and takes place in mass media. The
most astonishing result of this kind of practice so far has been Vote-Auction (2000), a web site that, during the American presidential elections 2000, helped people sell their
vote in an auction. The legal prosecution against UBERMORGEN.COM,
and the media hysteria it produced, are an integral part of the whole project.
During this mass-media-performance, UBERMORGEN.COM were
interviewed up to 30 times per day. CNN produced a 30 minutes show on the
project in their legal format Burden of Proof. In this
feature, UBERMORGEN.COM never comment on whether the
project was a real threat to the integrity of the U.S. election or wheter it
was a political satire.
In the
mass media storm, the digital actionist works with her whole body, as well as
part and victim of the network around her. ÒWe are children of the 1980s, We
are the first internet-pop-generation... Hans Bernhard is loaded with 10 years
of internet & tech [digital cocaine], mass media hacking, underground
techno, hardcore [illegal] drugs, rock&roll lifestyle and net.art jet
set...Ó. Hans Bernhard`s neuronal networks are connected to the global network,
and his mental illness Ð the bipolar affective disorder that in March 2002 sent
him to a mental hospital Ð is the network's illness. The video called Psych|OS (2005) sums up that experience, in which those two levels Ð digital and
real, bio & tech, nervous system and operative system Ð merge.
This
nervous system, infected by the hi-tech, needs a treatment, and the hi-tech
society prescribes its remedies, Òbio-chemical 'agents' which control the
internal information flowÓ. Olanzapine, an antipsychotic drug produced by the
pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly as Zyprexa¨, is one of these agents. In the
digital prints Zyprexa ÒLilly 1112Ó and Zyprexa
ÒLilly 4117Ó (2006), UBERMORGE.COM paints the drug
molecular structure, but during this translation process the molecule discovers
to be made by bits. ÒJust pixels on a screen, just ink on paperÓ, like Foriginals (forged originals), the conceptual device UBERMORGEN.COM uses to change
legal documents into legal art.
The
title of the show Ð a declaration of poetics that seems to be a declaration of
love Ð derives from this process. ÒLilly controls my ForiginalsÓ means ÒLilly
controls my artistic workÓ, where Lilly just seems to be a womanÕs name, is in
fact the name of a pharmaceutical company. Lilly ÒcontrolsÓ, inspires as well
as oversees, supervises the contact between my brain and my hard drive.
UBERMORGEN.COMÕs
focus on Òthe pixel as the moleculeÓ and technology as a hidden demon relates
to the technology industries newest gadgets -- RFID (Radio Frequency
Identification) chips are one of the leading technologies of the future: an
identification system that can collect diverse information about the products
it is attached to as well as the person that has made purchase of the product.
From a formal point of view, RFID chips reveal an organic structure,
surprisingly similar to a cellular structure. With the ART FID (2005) series, UBERMORGEN.COM uses the visual impact of a suprematist
painting, and tells us about this mix between biotechnologies and digital
technologies, this neverending overlapping of two contiguous levels that is
shaping our identity.
Domenico
Quaranta
fabioparisartgallery
via
Alessandro Monti 13 - 25121 Brescia - tel. 030 3756139 - skype: fabioparisbs
www.fabioparisartgallery.com
from
february 25 to april 8 2006
OPENING saturday,
february 25, 18.00