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