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UBERMORGEN.COM is a Swiss-Austrian-American artist duo founded in 1995 and consisting of lizvlx and Luzius Bernhard. They live and work in
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
,
Basel
, french: link=no, Bâlois(e), it, Basilese
, neighboring_municipalities= Allschwil (BL), Hégenheim (FR-68), Binningen (BL), Birsfelden (BL), Bottmingen (BL), Huningue (FR-68), Münchenstein (BL), Muttenz (BL), Reinach (BL), Riehen (BS ...
,
S-chanf
S-chanf (; german: Scanfs; it, Scanevo) is a municipality in the Maloja Region in the Swiss canton of Graubünden.
Localities in the municipality of include Susauna, Chapella and Cinuos-chel.
Name
is first mentioned around 1137–1139 as ''Sc ...
near
St. Moritz and in
Cologne
Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...
, where both are professors at the
Academy of Media Arts (KHM).
Work
Their main body of work consists of
internet art/
net.art
net.art refers to a group of artists who have worked in the medium of Internet art since 1994. Some of the early adopters and main members of this movement include Vuk Ćosić, Jodi.org, Alexei Shulgin, Olia Lialina, Heath Bunting, Daniel Gar ...
,
installation
Installation may refer to:
* Installation (computer programs)
* Installation, work of installation art
* Installation, military base
* Installation, into an office, especially a religious (Installation (Christianity) Installation is a Christian li ...
, video art, photography,
software art
Software art is a work of art where the creation of software, or concepts from software, play an important role; for example software applications which were created by artists and which were intended as artworks. As an artistic discipline software ...
, performance and uses the convergence of
digital media to produce and publish
online
In computer technology and telecommunications, online indicates a state of connectivity and offline indicates a disconnected state. In modern terminology, this usually refers to an Internet connection, but (especially when expressed "on line" o ...
and offline.
Their early works were ''media hacking'' projects using low-tech tools to reach very large audiences. During the work on their best known project
Voteauction (2000)
CNN
CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...
.com called them "Maverick Austrian Businessmen". The project resulted in an onslaught of lawsuits issued by Illinois, Texas, Arizona, California, Missouri, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin.
In 2001, they started a collaboration with
Christoph Schlingensief
Christoph Maria Schlingensief (24 October 1960 – 21 August 2010) was a German theatre director, performance artist, and filmmaker. Starting as an independent underground filmmaker, Schlingensief later staged productions for theatres and festivals ...
for the development and staging of a
Hamlet
''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...
project in Zurich: NAZI~LINE, a bigger than life fake neo-Nazi helpline and exit strategy finding agency.
In 2005 they started the EKMRZ Trilogy, a series of conceptual hacks (GWEI –
Google
Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
Will Eat Itself,
Amazon
Amazon most often refers to:
* Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology
* Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin
* Amazon River, in South America
* Amazon (company), an American multinational technolog ...
Noir and The Sound of
eBay
eBay Inc. ( ) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales through its website. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 and became ...
).
Between 2007–2011 their focus went into research-based productions (Superenhanced, WOPPOW, KRAFT Series) and Rock Art productions such as TORTURE CLASSICS and CLICKISTAN (commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art). They started to work extensively with video during this period.
Since 1999 their work has been shown in museums and galleries in Europe,
America, Africa, Australia and Asia and include venues such as
SFMOMA,
Centre Pompidou
The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...
, Konsthall Malmoe, NTT ICC Museum Tokyo, Gwangju Design Biennale,
ZKM Karlsruhe,
MUMOK Vienna,
Ars Electronica Linz, WRO Media Art Biennale
Wroclaw,
MoCA Taipei
The Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei (MoCA Taipei; ) is a museum of contemporary art, located in Datong District, Taipei, Taiwan.
History
The museum building was built during the Japanese rule in 1921 for what later became Jiànchéng Element ...
,
Witte de With Rotterdam,
Lentos Art Museum
The Lentos Art Museum (German: Kunstmuseum Lentos) is a museum of modern art in Linz, Austria, which opened in May 2003 as the successor to the (New Gallery of the City of Linz).
The museum was designed by Zurich-based architectural firm Web ...
Linz,
Biennale of Sydney
The Biennale of Sydney is an international festival of contemporary art, held every two years in Sydney, Australia. It is a large and well-attended contemporary visual arts event in the country. Alongside the Venice and São Paulo biennales and ...
,
ARCO Madrid and the
New Museum
The New Museum of Contemporary Art, founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker, is a museum in New York City at 235 Bowery, on Manhattan's Lower East Side.
History
The museum originally opened in a space in the Graduate Center of the then-named New Sch ...
New York.
They have been represented by Fabio Paris
Brescia
Brescia (, locally ; lmo, link=no, label= Lombard, Brèsa ; lat, Brixia; vec, Bressa) is a city and ''comune'' in the region of Lombardy, Northern Italy. It is situated at the foot of the Alps, a few kilometers from the lakes Garda and Iseo ...
,
AMBerlin and Carroll / Fletcher London.
Injunction generator
The Injunction Generator is an
artistic
Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas.
There is no generally agreed definition of wh ...
software
Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work.
...
module by Ubermorgen which claims to generate on request legal
injunctions and personalized documentation in .rtf/.pdf format to force a website into taking its contents offline.
Carrying on with their principles of "radical corporative marketing strategy" (
media hacking), the artists produced an effective and credible interface which helps creating one's own documented
cease-and-desist
A cease and desist letter is a document sent to an individual or business to stop alleged illegal activity. The phrase "cease and desist" is a legal doublet, made up of two near-synonyms. The letter may warn that, if the recipient does not disc ...
request, which is then automatically sent to the
DNS administrators, to the site's owner and to some journalists to trick them into supporting the "public trial".
The project is published at ''ipnic.org'', an acronym which mimics the official protocols (
Internet Protocol
The Internet Protocol (IP) is the network layer communications protocol in the Internet protocol suite for relaying datagrams across network boundaries. Its routing function enables internetworking, and essentially establishes the Internet.
...
-
Network Information Center
The Network Information Center (NIC), also known as InterNIC from 1993 until 1998, was the organization primarily responsible for Domain Name System (DNS) domain name allocations and X.500 directory services. From its inception in 1972 until Oc ...
), revisited as "Internet Partnership for No Internet Content".
This sarcastic provocation (a "public shutdown service") was conceived after experiencing a similar mishap during the
Voteauction art project, which in 2000 invited American citizens to put up their vote for auction. At the time an email injunction by an American court was sent to the Swiss
internet service provider
An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise privat ...
hosting the site, who immediately took them offline even though emailed documents aren't legally considered official and even though
Switzerland is outside of American jurisdiction.
Life and career
Lizvlx and Luzius Bernhard are an artist duo but also a couple in private life. They are engaged and have two children, Billie-Ada (2003) and Lola Mae (2007).
Lizvlx was born in Linz (AT) and grew up in
Wels
Wels (; Central Bavarian: ''Wös'') is a city in Upper Austria, on the Traun River near Linz. It is the county seat of Wels-Land, and with a population of approximately 60,000, the eighth largest city in Austria.
Geography
Wels is in the ...
, Salzburg and
Elmira (Upstate New York). Luzius Bernhard was born at the Yale University Hospital in
New Haven
New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,023 ...
(USA), grew up in New Haven and
Basel
, french: link=no, Bâlois(e), it, Basilese
, neighboring_municipalities= Allschwil (BL), Hégenheim (FR-68), Binningen (BL), Birsfelden (BL), Bottmingen (BL), Huningue (FR-68), Münchenstein (BL), Muttenz (BL), Reinach (BL), Riehen (BS ...
(CH) and moved to
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
(AT) to study with Prof.
Peter Weibel
Peter Weibel (; born 5 March 1944 in Odessa, USSR) is an internationally known Austrian post-conceptual artist, curator and new media theoretician. He started out in 1964 as a visual poet but soon jumped from the page to the screen within the sen ...
, and later on with Prof.
Lev Manovich
Lev Manovich ( ) is an author of books on digital culture and new media, and professor of Computer Science at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Manovich's current research and teaching focuses on digital humanities, social computin ...
(UCSD), Prof.
Peter Lunenfeld
Peter Lunenfeld (born 1962, in New York City) is a critic and theorist of digital media, digital humanities, and urban humanities. He is a professor and the Vice Chair of the Design Media Arts department at UCLA, director of the Institute for Te ...
(
Art Center College of Design
Art Center College of Design (stylized as ArtCenter College of Design) is a private art college in Pasadena, California.
History
ArtCenter College of Design was founded in 1930 in downtown Los Angeles as the Art Center School.
In 1935, Fred ...
)
Pasadena
Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commercial district.
...
and Prof. Bazon Brock (emeritus)
:de:Bazon Brock (
Wuppertal
Wuppertal (; "''Wupper Dale''") is, with a population of approximately 355,000, the seventh-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia as well as the 17th-largest city of Germany. It was founded in 1929 by the merger of the cities and tow ...
) and completed his studies in 1999.
Due to his drug abuse and a
manic episode in
Cape Town
Cape Town ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the second largest ...
2002, Luzius Bernhard was diagnosed
bipolar.
Their earliest works were part of the avantgarde
Net.art
net.art refers to a group of artists who have worked in the medium of Internet art since 1994. Some of the early adopters and main members of this movement include Vuk Ćosić, Jodi.org, Alexei Shulgin, Olia Lialina, Heath Bunting, Daniel Gar ...
movement (
etoy, 1994–1998, 194.152.164.137, 1996) and were exclusively shown online (
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet.
Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web ...
/WWW). This work became part of the
Internet art and
Digital art
Digital art refers to any artistic work or practice that uses digital technology as part of the creative or presentation process, or more specifically computational art that uses and engages with digital media.
Since the 1960s, various name ...
history and is researched at universities (
dissertations, thesis) and taught in (
Art history
Art history is the study of aesthetic objects and visual expression in historical and stylistic context. Traditionally, the discipline of art history emphasized painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, ceramics and decorative arts; yet today ...
).
The collaboration with both their children (Superenhanced & Spielendes Baby – Schlafendes Baby (original title)), the inclusion of Luzius's mental illness and the merger of private and public life led some critics and academics to consider UBERMORGEN.COM as a
Gesamtkunstwerk
A ''Gesamtkunstwerk'' (, literally 'total artwork', translated as 'total work of art', 'ideal work of art', 'universal artwork', 'synthesis of the arts', 'comprehensive artwork', or 'all-embracing art form') is a work of art that makes use of al ...
.
Important personal and artistic influences were early meetings with
Jean Tinguely
Jean Tinguely (22 May 1925 – 30 August 1991) was a Swiss sculptor best known for his kinetic art sculptural machines (known officially as Métamatics) that extended the Dada tradition into the later part of the 20th century. Tinguely's art ...
,
Joseph Beuys
Joseph Heinrich Beuys ( , ; 12 May 1921 – 23 January 1986) was a German artist, teacher, performance artist, and art theorist whose work reflected concepts of humanism, sociology, and anthroposophy. He was a founder of a provocative art mov ...
,
Daniel Spoerri
Daniel Spoerri (born 27 March 1930) is a Swiss artist and writer born in Romania. Spoerri is best known for his "snare-pictures," a type of assemblage or object art, in which he captures a group of objects, such as the remains of meals eaten by in ...
and Eberhard W. Kornfeld in the Basel art scene of the 1980s and with
Niki de Saint Phalle
Niki de Saint Phalle (; born Catherine Marie-Agnès Fal de Saint Phalle; 29 October 193021 May 2002) was a French-American sculptor, painter, filmmaker, and author of colorful hand-illustrated books. Widely noted as one of the few female monume ...
in St. Moritz, and the long-time relationship (going back to 1916 during the first world war and the purchase of a
Giovanni Giacometti
Giovanni Ulrico Giacometti (7 March 1868 – 25 June 1933) was a Swiss painter. He was the father of artists Alberto and Diego Giacometti and architect Bruno Giacometti.
Biography
He was the fourth in a family of eight children. His father, ...
painting by the grand-grandfather of Luzius Bernhard) with the Giacometti family (Giovanni Giacometti,
Alberto Giacometti) in the nearby mountain valleys
Val Bregaglia
The Val Bregaglia ( lmo, Val Bregaja; german: Bergell, ; rm, ) is an alpine valley of Switzerland and Italy at the base of which runs the river Mera ( lmo, Maira in Switzerland).
Most of the valley falls within the Swiss district of Maloja ...
and
Engadin
The Engadin or Engadine ( rm, ;This is the name in the two Romansh idioms that are spoken in the Engadin, Vallader and Puter, as well as in Sursilvan and Rumantsch Grischun. In Surmiran, the name is ''Nagiadegna'', and in Sutsilvan, it is ...
in the canton
Grisons in Switzerland.
Network
Over the last 15 years UBERMORGEN.COM has been part of the global contemporary technology art scene. Some mentionable connections and collaborations from this period: Net.Artists
Alexei Shulgin
Alexei Shulgin (russian: Алексей Шульгин; born 1963 in Moscow) is a Russian born contemporary artist, musician, and online curator. Working out of Moscow and Helsinki, Shulgin established the Immediate Photography Group in 1988 an ...
,
Heath Bunting
Heath Bunting (born 1966) is a British contemporary artist. Based in Bristol, he is a co-founder of the website ''irational.org'', and was one of the early practitioners in the 1990s of Net.art. Bunting's work is based on creating open and demo ...
,
Olia Lialina,
Vuk Ćosić
Vuk Ćosić ( sr-cyr, Вук Ћосић; born 31 July 1966) is a Slovenian contemporary artist associated with the net.art movement.
Active in politics, literature and art, Ćosić has exhibited, published, and been active since 1994. He is well k ...
and with contemporary artists
Aram Bartholl
Aram Bartholl (born December 27, 1972 in Bremen, Germany) is a Berlin-based conceptual artist known for his examination of the relationship between the digital and physical world. His works often deal with anonymity and privacy. Aram Bartholl is ...
,
Paolo Cirio,
James Powderly
James Powderly (born 1976) is an artist, designer and engineer whose work has focused on creating tools for graffiti artists and political activists, designing robots and augmented reality platforms, and promoting open source culture.
Biography ...
and
Evan Roth from
Free Art and Technology Lab and
Graffiti Research Lab, Franco and Eva Mattes (
0100101110101101.org),
IRWIN Irwin may refer to:
Places
;United States
* Irwin, California
* Irwin, Idaho
* Irwin, Illinois
* Irwin, Iowa
* Irwin, Nebraska
* Irwin, Ohio
* Irwin, Pennsylvania
* Irwin, South Carolina
* Irwin County, Georgia
* Irwin Township, Venango County ...
,
Franz West
Franz West (16 February 1947 – 25 July 2012) was an Austrian artist.
He is best known for his unconventional objects and sculptures, installations and furniture work which often require an involvement of the audience.
Early life and e ...
,
Janez Janša
Ivan Janša (; born 17 September 1958), baptized and best known as Janez Janša (), is a Slovenian politician who served three times as a prime minister of Slovenia, a position he had held from 2004 to 2008, from 2012 to 2013, and from 2020 to 2 ...
,
Johannes Grenzfurthner
Johannes Grenzfurthner (; born 1975 in Vienna) is an Austrian artist, filmmaker, writer, actor, curator, theatre director, performer and lecturer. Grenzfurthner is the founder, conceiver and artistic director of ''monochrom'', an international art ...
(
monochrom
Monochrom (stylised as monochrom) is an international art-technology-philosophy group, publishing house and film production company. It was founded in 1993, and defines itself as "an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop att ...
),
Carsten Nicolai
Carsten Nicolai (18 September 1965), also known as Alva Noto, is a German musician and visual artist. He is a member of the music groups Diamond Version with Olaf Bender (Byetone), Signal with Frank Bretschneider and Olaf Bender, Cyclo with Ry ...
,
Minerva Cuevas,
The Yes Men
The Yes Men are a culture jamming activist duo and network of supporters created by Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos. Through various actions, the Yes Men primarily aim to raise awareness about problematic social and political issues. To date, t ...
,
Zhang Peili
Zhang Peili (; born 1941) is a Chinese geologist and the wife of former Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.
Biography
Zhang was formerly the vice-president of the Chinese Jewelry Association, and president and CEO of Beijing Diamond Jewelries Co., a co ...
,
Jodi
Jodi is a feminine given name which may refer to:
People
* Jodi Albert (born 1983), English actress
* Jodi Anasta (born 1985), Australian actress and model
* Jodi Anderson (born 1957), American heptathlete
* Jodi Appelbaum-Steinbauer (born 1956) ...
,
Miltos Manetas,
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer,
Trevor Paglen
Trevor Paglen (born 1974) is an American artist, geographer, and author whose work tackles mass surveillance and data collection.
In 2016, Paglen won the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize and he has also won The Cultural Award from the ...
,
Douglas Rushkoff
Douglas Mark Rushkoff (born February 18, 1961) is an American media theorist, writer, columnist, lecturer, graphic novelist, and documentarian. He is best known for his association with the early cyberpunk culture and his advocacy of open sourc ...
,
Lev Manovich
Lev Manovich ( ) is an author of books on digital culture and new media, and professor of Computer Science at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Manovich's current research and teaching focuses on digital humanities, social computin ...
, Olga Goriunova and
Nicolas Bourriaud
Nicolas Bourriaud (born 1965) is a curator and art critic, who has curated a great number of exhibitions and biennials all over the world.
With Jérôme Sans, Bourriaud cofounded the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, where he served as codirector from ...
.
Publications
* Domenico Quaranta (ed), UBERMORGEN.COM, FPEditions,
Brescia
Brescia (, locally ; lmo, link=no, label= Lombard, Brèsa ; lat, Brixia; vec, Bressa) is a city and ''comune'' in the region of Lombardy, Northern Italy. It is situated at the foot of the Alps, a few kilometers from the lakes Garda and Iseo ...
2009 ()
* Alessandro Ludovico (ed), UBERMORGEN.COM – MEDIA HACKING VS. CONCEPTUAL ART, Christoph Merian Verlag,
Basel
, french: link=no, Bâlois(e), it, Basilese
, neighboring_municipalities= Allschwil (BL), Hégenheim (FR-68), Binningen (BL), Birsfelden (BL), Bottmingen (BL), Huningue (FR-68), Münchenstein (BL), Muttenz (BL), Reinach (BL), Riehen (BS ...
2009 ()
* Coded Cultures – New Creative Practices out of Diversity", Series: Edition Angewandte, Russegger, Georg; Tarasiewicz, Matthias; Wlodkowski, Michal (Eds.), SpringerWienNewYork Publisher, 1st Edition., 2011, 384 p. 50 illus, Softcover, , p. 334–355, "From Somebody's Desire to Everyone's Responsibility", Yukiko Shikata/UBERMORGEN.COM,
* This is a magazine, Pink Laser Beam, Compendium #6
"Pink Laser Beam" Paper, Plastic, Glue, Thread, Metal-foil, Edition of 666, 2009, "Amazon Noir project"
Awards
* Swiss Art Award 2011,
Oldest and most prestigious Award for Swiss Artists, exhibition and award ceremony during ART Basel TORTURE CLASSIC
* ARCO Beep Award 2009, EKMRZ-Trilogy
* IBM AWARD FOR NEW MEDIA/Stuttgarter Filmwinter, 2007, Amazon Noir
* Ars Electronica 2005, Award of Distinction for Vote-Auction
* Ars Electronica, Honorary Mentions for Injunction Generator (2003) and GWEI – Google Will Eat Itself (2005)
* Ars Electronica 1996, Golden Nica for etoy/digital hijack (Luzius Bernhard)
References and notes
{{reflist
External links
UBERMORGEN.COM
Injunction Generator
Swiss contemporary artists
Internet activists
Art duos
Hacker culture
Austrian contemporary artists
Central European art groups