[spectre] UBERMORGEN.COM: Lilly controls my Foriginals

[Hans Bernhard]

UBERMORGEN.COM (lizvlx/Hans Bernhard)

Lilly controls my Foriginals



Text by Domenico Quaranta



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. “We 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...” Hans Bernhard`s  
neuronal networks are connected to the global network, and his mental  
illness – the bipolar affective disorder that in March 2002 sent him  
to a mental hospital – is the network's illness. The video called  
Psych|OS (2005)** sums up that experience, in which those two levels  
– digital and real, bio & tech, nervous system and operative system –  
merge.

This nervous system, infected by the hi-tech, needs a treatment, and  
the hi-tech society prescribes its remedies, “bio-chemical 'agents'  
which control the internal information flow”. Olanzapine, an  
antipsychotic drug produced by the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly  
as Zyprexa®, is one of these agents. In the digital prints** Zyprexa  
“Lilly 1112” and Zyprexa “Lilly 4117” (2006), UBERMORGE.COM paints  
the drug molecular structure, but during this translation process the  
molecule discovers to be made by bits. “Just pixels on a screen, just  
ink on paper”, like Foriginals (forged originals), the conceptual  
device UBERMORGEN.COM uses to change legal documents into legal art.

The title of the show – a declaration of poetics that seems to be a  
declaration of love – derives from this process. “Lilly controls my  
Foriginals” means “Lilly controls my artistic work”, where Lilly just  
seems to be a woman’s name, is in fact the name of a pharmaceutical  
company. Lilly “controls”, inspires as well as oversees, supervises  
the contact between my brain and my hard drive.

UBERMORGEN.COM’s focus on “the pixel as the molecule” 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.



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



* http://www.ubermorgen.com
** http://www.ubermorgen.com/CATALOGUE







---
Hans Bernhard
UBERMORGEN.COM / etoy.holding

Skype Hans_Bernhard
Studio +43 1 236 19 85
Mobile +43 650 930 00 61
Email hans at ubermorgen.com

http://www.ubermorgen.com
http://www.gwei.org