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 attitude, subcultural science and political activism". Its main office is located at Museumsquartier/Vienna (at 'Q21').

The group's members are: Johannes Grenzfurthner, Evelyn Fürlinger, Harald Homolka-List, Anika Kronberger, Franz Ablinger, Frank Apunkt Schneider, Daniel Fabry, Günther Friesinger and Roland Gratzer.

The group is known for working with different media and entertainment formats, although many projects are performative and have a strong focus on a critical and educational narrative. Johannes Grenzfurthner calls this "looking for the best weapon of mass distribution of an idea". Monochrom is openly left-wing and tries to encourage public debate, sometimes using subversive affirmation or ''over-affirmation'' as a tactic. The group popularized the concept of "context hacking".

On the occasion of Monochrom's 20th birthday in 2013, several Austrian high-profile media outlets paid tribute to the group's pioneering contributions within the field of contemporary art and discourse.

History and philosophy

In the early 1990s, Johannes Grenzfurthner was an active member of several BBS message boards. He used his online connections to create a zine or alternative magazine that dealt with art, technology and subversive cultures, and was influenced by US magazines like '' Mondo 2000''. Grenzfurthner's motivations were to react to the emerging conservatism in cyber-cultures of the early 1990s and to combine his political background in the Austrian punk and antifa movement with discussion of new technologies and the cultures they create.Marc Da Costa,
Interview with Johannes Grenzfurthner of monochrom, Part 3
", Furtherfield. Franz Ablinger joined Grenzfurthner and they became the publication's core team.
The first issue was released in 1993. Over the years the publication featured many interviews and essays, for example by Bruce Sterling, HR Giger, Richard Kadrey, Arthur Kroker, Negativland, Kathy Acker, Michael Marrak, DJ Spooky, Geert Lovink, Lars Gustafsson, Tony Serra, Friedrich Kittler, Jörg Buttgereit, Eric Drexler, Terry Pratchett, Jack Sargeant and Bob Black, in its specific experimental layout style.

In 1995 the group decided to cover new artistic practices and started experimenting with different media: performances, computer games, robots, puppet theater, musical, short films, pranks, conferences, online activism.

In 1995 we decided that we didn't want to constrain ourselves to just one media format (the "fanzine"). We knew that we wanted to create statements, create viral information. So a quest for the best "Weapon of Mass Distribution" started, a search for the best transportation mode for a certain politics of philosophical ideas. This was the Cambrian Explosion of monochrom. We wanted to experiment, try stuff, find new forms of telling our stories. But, to be clear, it was (and still is) not about keeping the pace, of staying up-to-date, or (even worse) staying "fresh". The emergence of new media (and therefore artistic) formats is certainly interesting. But etching information into copper plates is just as exciting. We think that the perpetual return of 'the new', to cite Walter Benjamin, is nothing to write home about - except perhaps for the slave-drivers in the fashion industry. We've never been interested in the new just in itself, but in the accidental occurrence. In the moment where things don't tally, where productive confusion arises.

All the other core team members joined between 1995 and 2006.

Grenzfurthner is the group's artistic director. He defines Monochrom's artistic and activist approach as 'Context hacking' or 'Urban Hacking'.

The group monochrom refers to its working method as "Context Hacking," thus referencing the hacker culture, which propagates a creative and emancipatory approach to the technologies of the digital age, and in this way turns against the continuation into the digital age of centuries-old technological enslavement perpetrated through knowledge and hierarchies of experts. ... Context hacking transfers the hackers' objectives and methods to the network of social relationships in which artistic production occurs, and upon which it is dependent. ... One of context hackers' central ambitions is to bring the factions of counterculture, which have veered off along widely diverging trajectories, back together again.

Community and network

From its very foundation, the group defined itself as a ''movement'', ''culture'' (referring to Iain M. Banks's sci-fi series) and "open field of experimentation". Monochrom supported and supports various artists, activists, researchers and communities with an online publishing platform, a print publishing service (''edition mono''), and organizes in-person meetings, screenings, radio shows, debate circles, conferences, online platforms. It is fundamental for the group's core members to combine artistic and educational endeavors with community work (cf. social practice).

Some collaborations have been rather short-lived (for example the publication of a 1993 fringe science paper by Jakob Segal, projects with the Billboard Liberation Front and Ubermorgen or the administration of Dorkbot Vienna), some have been going for many years and decades (for example with Michael Marrak, Cory Doctorow, Jon Lebkowsky, Fritz Ostermayer, V. Vale, eSeL, Scott Beale/ Laughing Squid, Machine Project, Emmanuel Goldstein, Jason Scott, Jonathan Mann, Jasmin Hagendorfer and the ''Porn Film Festival Vienna''), Michael Zeltner, Anouk Wipprecht, VSL Lindabrunn).

Monochrom supports initiatives like the ''Radius Festival'', ''Play:Vienna'', the ''Buckminster Fuller Institute Austria'', ''RE/Search'', the ''Semantic Web Company'' and the Vienna hackerspace '' Metalab''. For a couple of years, Monochrom ran the DIY project "Hackbus" in cooperation with David "Daddy D" Dempsey (of FM4)

Since 2007, Monochrom is the European correspondent for Boing Boing Video.

Art residency

Monochrom offers a collaborative art residency in Vienna. Since 2003 the group has invited and created projects with artists, researchers, and activists like Suhrkamp's Johannes Ullmaier, pop theorist Stefan Tiron, performance artist Angela Dorrer, DIY blogger (and later: entrepreneur) Bre Pettis, photographer and activist Audrey Penven, digital artist Eddie Codel, sex work activist Maggie Mayhem, glitch artist Phil Stearns, illustrator Josh Ellingson, DIY artist Ryan Finnigan, digital artist Jane Tingley, digital rights activist Jacob Appelbaum, sex tech expert Kyle Machulis, hacker Nick Farr, filmmakers Sophia Cacciola and Michael J. Epstein, writer Jack Sargeant, and others.
All former resident artists are considered ''ambassadors''.

Johannes Grenzfurthner sees Monochrom as a community and social incubator of critical and subversive thinkers. An example is Bre Pettis of MakerBot Industries, who got inspired to create 3d printers during his art residency with Monochrom in 2007. Pettis wanted to create a robot that could print shot glasses for Monochrom's cocktail-robot event Roboexotica and did research about the RepRap project at Metalab. Shot glasses remained a theme throughout the history of MakerBot.

Main projects (in chronological order)

* ''Mackerel Fiddlers'' (1996-)
** A radical anti-representation/anti-recording music movement that partially refers to Hakim Bey's Temporary Autonomous Zone. To quote the manifesto: "We set value on developing a form of viral resistance by systematic infiltration of symphonic orchestras. A New Year's Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (1984) could have been transformed by at least one Mackerel Fiddler and Austria's image would have been ruined worldwide. ... These days, self-production and 'embarrassment sells' have become the golden rules of media, be it radio, TV, or telegraph. Thus it is not only legitimate to be ashamed of ones activity as a Mackerel Fiddler, it is also thankworthy. Failure is beautiful! Disgrace is sunshine!"
* ''Schubumkehr'' (1995–1996)
** A manifesto propagating 'internet demarketing' and deals with negative aspects of early net culture. Paz Sastre reprinted and contextualized the manifesto in this 2021 publication "Manifiestos sobre el arte y la red 1990-1999", published by ''Exit Media''.
* ''Der Exot'' (1997–2012)
** A telerobot remotely controlled via a web interface/chat forum. The robot was supported and operated by a big community. The robot's basic structure was built out of remodeled Lego bricks and equipped with a Fisheye lens camera. The project was the first telerobot/tele-community projects of its kind. It was presented at art festivals and technology presentations.
** Monochrom relaunched the project in 2011, calling it a "resurrection", and specifying the social aspect of the project: "A mobile robot with a mounted camera that can be controlled via web interface. But that's tricky. If too many people try to control the robot at the same time it is counter-productive. ... Der Exot is the anti-crowd source robot. The users have to discuss and cooperate via a chat interface to communicate where they want to go, what corners they want to explore, what to crush." The project was presented at the 'Robotville' Exhibition of the Science Museum London.
* '' Wir kaufen Seelen'' (''We Buy Souls'') (1998)
** A "spirituo-capitalist" booth where project members tried to buy the souls of passers-by for US$5 per soul. A total of fifteen were purchased and registered. These souls are still being offered for sale to third parties with a power of disposal.
* '' Roboexotica'' (1999-)
** An annual festival where scientists, researchers, computer geeks and artists from all over the world build cocktail robots and discuss technological innovation, futurology and science fiction. ''Roboexotica'' is also an ironic attempt to criticize techno-triumphalism and to dissect technological hypes. 2002 Monochrom teamed up with Shifz in the organization of the events. ''Roboexotica'' has been featured on Slashdot, Wired News, Reuters, ''New York Times'' and blogs like Boing Boing and New Scientist.
* ''Minus 24x'' (2001)
** Monochrom's pro-failure/pro-error/pro-inability manifesto, hailing the "Luddites of inability". Quote: "Turning an object against the use inscribed in it (as sociolect of the world of things) means probing its possibilities. ... The information age is an age of permanently getting stuck. Greater and greater speed is demanded. New software, new hardware, new structures, new cultural techniques. Lifelong learning? Yes. But the company can't fire the secretary every six months, just because she can't cope with the new version of Excel. They can count their keystrokes, measure their productivity ... but! They will never be able to sanction their inability! Because that is imminent."
* ''Scrotum gegen votum'' (''Scrotum for a vote'') (2000-)
** "A form of political commentary for "about fifty percent of the population". Masculine individuals (whether in sex or gender) are seated nude in a special chair attached to a flatbed scanner. The scans then may or may not be sent to various politicians. The project won the NEBAPOMIC 2000 (Network-based Political Minimalism Counteraction Award) in the category of small country with political tendencies towards the conservative right.
* '' Soviet Unterzoegersdorf'' (1999-)
** In 2005 Monochrom presented the first part of a computer game trilogy: "Soviet Unterzoegersdorf - The Adventure Game" (using AGS). To Monochrom it was clear that the adventure game, an almost extinct form of computer game, would provide the perfect media platform to communicate the idea of "Soviet Unterzoegersdorf". Edge chose the game as their 'internet game of the month' of November 2005.
** In 2011 Monochrom and Austrian production company Golden Girls Filmproduktion announced that they are working on the feature film Sierra Zulu. The movie will be dealing with Soviet Unterzoegersdorf. In 2012 Monochrom presented the 16-minute short film "Earthmoving". It is a prequel to the feature film Sierra Zulu and features actors Jeff Ricketts, Martin Auer, Lynsey Thurgar, Adrienne Ferguson and Alexander Fennon.
** In March 2009 Monochrom presented 'Soviet Unterzoegersdorf: Sector II'. The game features special guest appearances of Cory Doctorow, Bruce Sterling, Jello Biafra, Jason Scott, Bre Pettis and MC Frontalot.
** The fake history of the "last existing appanage republic of the USSR", Soviet Unterzoegersdorf. Created to discuss topics such as the theoretical problems of historiography, the concept of the " socialist utopia" and the political struggles of postwar Europe. The theoretical concept was transformed into an improvisational theatre/performance/LARP that lasted two days.
* '' Georg Paul Thomann'' (2002–2005)
** Monochrom was chosen to represent the Republic of Austria at the São Paulo Art Biennial, São Paulo (Brazil) in 2002. However, the political climate in Austria (at that time, the center-right People's Party had recently formed a coalition with Jörg Haider's radical-right Austrian Freedom Party) gave the left-wing art group concerns about acting as wholehearted representatives of their nation. Monochrom dealt with the conundrum by creating the persona of Georg P. Thomann, an irascible, controversial (and completely fictitious) artist of longstanding fame and renown. Through the implementation of this ironic mechanism - even the catalogue included the biography of the non-existent artist - the group solved with pure fiction the philosophical and bureaucratic dilemma attached to the system of representation presented to them by the Biennial.
** An interesting story related to the Thomann project took place once the São Paulo Art Biennial was underway. The artist Chien-Chi Chang was invited as the representative of Taiwan, but the country's name was removed by the administration from his cube overnight and replaced by the label, "Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei." As the members of Monochrom discovered, China had threatened to retreat from the Biennial (and create massive diplomatic problems) if the organizers of the Biennial were thought to be challenging the "One-China policy." Chang's open letter remained unanswered. Under the guise of Thomann, Monochrom invited artists from several countries to show their solidarity with Chang by taking the adhesive letters from their countries' name tags and giving them to Chang so that he could remount "Taiwan" outside his room. Monochrom wanted to show that artists do not necessarily have to internalize the fragmentation and isolation imposed by the rat-race of art markets and exhibitions as society-controlling imperatives. Several Asian newspapers reported about the performance. One Taiwanese newspaper headlined: "Austrian artist Georg Paul Thomann saves 'Taiwan'".
** In 2005 Monochrom released press info that "Austrian artist and writer Prof. Georg Paul Thomann died in a tragic accident at the tender age of 60". On 29 July 2005 they staged his funeral in Hall in Tirol. Thomann's gravesite remains in Hall. Georg Paul Thomann's tombstone shows an engraved URL of the Thomann project page.
** Georg Paul Thomann is featured in RE/Search's "Pranks 2" book.
* ''452 x 157 cm^2 global durability'' (2002-)
** Together with Patick Hoenninger. Milk packages are collected in many countries. The standardized format of the Tetra Pak offers a worldwide frame for creative variation, which becomes visible on the 9.5 by 16.5 cm front of the packaging. According to the group, the relation to pop art not only exists in an aesthetic but also in a social dimension, reminiscent of Walter Benjamin's " The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility."
* ''The Absent Quintessence'' (2002)
** Feature films were drastically cut and thereby wrenched out of their genres (hardcore porn, splatter, eastern/kung fu, zombie, etc.). These genre films – all of which are characterized by certain anonymity and a mass-produced look – have been stripped of their "essential" scenes (for example, all sex scenes in pornography, all fight scenes in the kung fu films). Thus, the material has been reduced to a bare-bones plot that had actually been conceived only as filler, but its aesthetics and stereotypical narrative patterns now make it easy to contextualize. The project tried to analyze these "re-released" shorts and to filter out interesting subtexts.
* ''Towers of Hanoi'' (2002)
** Members of the group entered a bank and exchanged 50 euros for dollars, then back again to euros - and so on - until the money was gone. Afterward the group calculated how many times you have to exchange the global amount of cash (20 trillion euros) from euros to dollars until it vanishes completely. It was calculated that if this process was completed a total of 849 times using the global amount of cash, 18 cents would remain.
* ''Blattoptera'' (2003–2005)
** Artists were invited to design a gallery-space for their tribe of South American cockroaches. Each month a different international artist, or arts group, was invited to design an environment in which the cockroaches are placed, to act as audience for, and as aesthetic judges of the work.
* ''Brandmarker'' (2003-)
** How well do people remember the logos of large corporations that sell consumer goods? An attempt to evaluate the actual power of commercial brands by making people draw famous logos from memory.
* '' Eignblunzn'' (2003)
** Members of the group prepared blood sausage out of their own blood and ate it ('auto blood sausage'). The performance was accompanied by political essays about the 'autocannibalistic' tendencies of the global economy. The event also can be interpreted as a critical statement about art, art history, and the art market ( Viennese Actionism).
* ''Instant Blitz Copy Fight'' (2004-)
** People from all over the world are asked to take flash pictures of copyright warnings in movie theaters. Monochrom (in cooperation with Cory Doctorow) collects and exhibits those pictures as a copyleft/Free Culture statement.
* ''The Flower Currency'' (2005)
** A project to explore a value exchange system, created and owned by children, to enable artists to collaborate on the creation of interdisciplinary artworks.
* ''Udo 77'' (2004)
** A musical about Udo Proksch, a criminal figure in recent Austrian history. Born to a poor family he rose to become the darling of Austrian high society before landing in jail on a life sentence for sinking a ship and its crew in order to cash in on insurance of nonexistent goods. His perfectly tuned network of sponsors, friends, and political functionaries could not hush up the scandal and many of his associates joined him in his fall from grace.
* ''1 Baud'' (2005)
** Monochrom held workshops in San Francisco to teach people semaphore communication techniques (' International Code of Signals'). After a few days set aside for study and practice, they started a citywide performance to send messages through town at a speed of 1 baud. ("1 Baud" was part of the "Experience The Experience" tour.)
* '' Brick Of Coke '' (2005)
** Monochrom created a 'Brick Of Coke': they put twenty gallons of Coca-Cola into a pot and boiled it down for a week until the residue left behind could be molded into a brick. The performance and talk dealt with the sugar industry and other multinational corporation policies and Coca-Cola as a symbol of corporate power. ("Brick Of Coke" was part of the "Experience The Experience" tour.)
* ''Buried Alive''/''Six Feet Under Club'' (2005-)
** In 2010 Monochrom created the "Six Feet Under Club". Couples could volunteer to be buried together in a casket beneath the ground to perform sexual acts. In a press release they explained that the space they occupy is "extremely private and intimate". The coffin "is a reminder of the social norm of exclusive pair bonding 'till death do us part'." However, this intimate scene was corrupted by the presence of a night vision webcam which projects the scene on to an outside wall. The scenario kept the intimacy of a sexual moment intact while moving the private act into public space. Monochrom's performance can be seen as an absurd parody of pornographic cinema or an examination of the high value placed on sexual privacy. "Six Feet Under Club" performances took place in San Francisco in 2010 and Vienna in 2013 and 2014.
** People in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Vancouver and Toronto had the opportunity to be buried alive in a real coffin for fifteen minutes. As a framework program Monochrom members held lectures about the history of the science of determining death and the medical cultural history of "buried alive". ("Buried Alive" was launched as part of the "Experience The Experience" tour in 2005, but was extended beyond the tour and became a permanent coffin installation at VSL Lindabrunn in Lower Austria in 2013.
* ''Catapulting Wireless Devices'' (2005)
** The catapult is one of the oldest machines in the history of technology. Monochrom created an ironic statement about progress. The group build a small medieval trebuchet and used a couple of issues of the techno-utopist magazine Wired as a counterweight to catapult wireless devices (e.g. cell phones or PDAs) at the greatest possible distance. ("Catapulting Wireless Devices" was part of the "Experience The Experience" tour.)
* ''Farewell to Overhead'' (2005)
** The group created a melancholic electro pop song about the "dead medium" overhead projector and adolescence/socialisation.
* ''Growing Money'' (2005)
** To quote Monochrom's press statement: "Money is frozen desire. Thus it governs the world. Money is used for all forms of trade, from daily shopping at the supermarket to trafficking in human beings and drugs. In the course of all these transactions, our money wears out quickly, especially the smaller banknotes that are changing hands constantly. ... Money is dirty, and thus it is a living entity. This is something we take literally: money is an ideal environment for microscopic organisms and bacteria. We want to make your money grow. In a potent nutrient fluid under heat lamps we want to get as much life as we can out of your dollar bills." ("Growing Money" was part of the "Experience The Experience" tour.)
* ''Illegal Space Race'' (2005)
** Monochrom placed the planets true to scale (sun, 4 meters in diameter at Machine Gallery, Alvarado Street, near Echo Park) throughout the Los Angeles cityscape. Then they conducted an 'illegal space car race' through the solar system. ("Illegal Space Race" was part of the "Experience The Experience" tour.)
* ''Magnetism Party'' (2005)
** In form of a staged college party, Monochrom deleted all the electromagnetic storage media that they could find with a couple of heavy-duty neodymium magnets. Monochrom stated that the Magnetism Party was an attempt to actively come to terms with one aspect of the information society that is almost completely ignored by our epistemological machinery: forgetting. The slogan was "Delete is just another word for nothing left to lose". ("Magnetism Party" was part of the "Experience The Experience" tour.)
* ''Arad-II'' (2005):
** The members of Monochrom staged a fake (public theatre performance) about a deadly virus outbreak at 'Art Basel Miami Beach', one of the biggest art fairs in North America. Monochrom dealt with the networking/business aspect of the art market, the post-September 11, 2001 attacks hysteria about biological warfare, and the media coverage about Avian influenza