01.org
Still image from “No Fun” video (Online Performance) 2010
Artist group (Eva and Franco Mattes) based in Brooklyn, NY. Renowned for their “Masterful sub-versions of public media.”
From a lecture on October 13th, 2010 at MICA
“Everybody is telling me lies.”
(all notes here are abbreviated ideas and quotes that shouldn't be taken literally)
The main issue that these artist that's plagued these artists is their inability to refine their (Eva and Franco’s) craft.
This has led them to “stealing” what other artists have done and primarily re-contextualizing their work.
When they were 17/18, they created catalogues of famous sculptures from artists they respected.
The net.art movement
Eva and Franco then discussed about the net.art movement. This movement (net.art) allowed individuals around the world to take back the power of how artwork should be labelled and exhibited. The artists who were 'rewarded' the most were the ones who ended up using the most basic computer technologies (html websites, basic web development software) and implement these technologies to form a completely unique experience. This movement was also important for reaching outside “the fish bowl” world of artists and art critics.
About their recent work
No Fun (2010)
Which is a video that records the interactions between a random Chatroulette participant and a video of what appears to be a person who had committed suicide by hanging themseves in an apartment.
created an unexpected result. Surprisingly out of 1000 people, only one person called the police. Most were either frozen or passed onto the next partner.
Their recent works have been investigations into the “social” space, an investigation into exhibitionism, which results in no real communication is going on. This is a critique of the net of the past five years (2005-2010). There are now centralized institutions controlling the flow of information instead of nodes connecting to one another. They (the institutions) are grouping together and making the net a mediated experience (e.g. Facebook controlling how people interact with one another and form connections).
For example, in the earlier days of the net, it was impossible to censor any content. But the video they made (No Fun) was censored on Youtube. Although because the net is so vast and easy to access and participate, once in awhile there is a meme created anonymously with no credit or origin point. That is an important aspect of the Internet that they believe should continue.
On the topic of making money from internet based work
“Just adding the video online doesn’t undermine the ability to live-off the work. Putting the work online AND trying to sell it in the real world is very possible.”
Eva and Franco also talked about their re-enactments of the physical performances of the 1960′s-1980′s through the usage of Second Life.
“It was an interesting experiment considering the mediated experience when there is no body; but still focusing on nudity to the physicality of the avatars. We are still working on a projected called “Plan C”.
Personal Notes
They talked about an exhibition several years ago called The Art of the Accident. This exhibition was created after 9/11 and they established all these scenarios to re-live the accident forever. Apparently “they” (FB 1) re-enacted what would happen had the van in Times Square blown up.
(ISBN: 90-5662-090-8)
Importance to myself
01 has been working within the realm of net.art for quite a bit of time and they seem to understand the nature of media on the web. They like to examine the web's impact on the societies that have access to it. They are constantly doing “work” which more often than not seems like social-experiments/tests rather than stand-alone pieces. The exception being their Reenactments piece, where they reenacted famous performance art pieces from artists in the past using second life. Which brings up Marina Abramovic recently as 2010 at MOMA had what were called “re-performances” as part of her retrospective as well. But with 01′s "re-performances", they were subjected to people who are not usually apart of the “art-world”. Marina Abramovic was creating a retrospective for those well aware of her and her work. Instead 01′s audience and participants were users of second life. The same can be said for No Fun and for Freedom.
All of these pieces mentioned I feel are incredibly fringe works because they are in very hostile environments where Art isn’t expected and more often not welcomed. They stress the importance that the web is a viable platform in creating not only complex work, but work that can not be censored. They are by far the most flexible at understanding the social changes of the web and implementing work that confronts the changing world of the web.