IS IT FACT OR FICTION?
Hans Artist is fine with me, it makes things less complicated. I studied visual media art at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna Austria with Professor Peter Weibel, Aesthetics in Wuppertal (Germany) with Bazon Brock, Art History at Art Center College of Design Pasadena (USA) with Peter Lunenfeld and Digital Culture with Lev Manovich at UCSD (USA). The becoming of an artist was rather simple, it was all about useability. Although in the beginning – with etoy – we did not really consider our work as art but rather as radical self-experiments, social and technological experiments – but after eliminating all other fields (such as sports, politics, etc…) there was nothing left but art. Today i consider this process to be freestyle research. Conceptual art is crossed with experimental research and massmedia stunts – but the products (sites, digital images, sculptures, emails, logfiles, paintings, drawings, etc.) are positioned in the art context. During project-phases we play different roles and use a series of aliases, sometimes we even swap aliases with other entities (for example the andreas bichlbauer/andy bichlbaum character of the Yesmen is such a shared character-set). With such identity changes, we position ourselves as doctors, businesspeople, retired military personell or teenagers.
lizvlx Ohh, dwelling on my background. Well, yes, I pretty much always wanted to be an artist (besides wanting to be an archeologist or physicist), but I found the art schools to be a bit boring, to be honest, so I quit art school (I did painting and tapistry) and went on to study commercial sciences and market research, which was absolutely interesting. I continued working in the arts on the side until the web started to really develop in the early 90ies, and then I shifted my focus onto coding, pixeldrawing, digital manipulation etc. My focus was always on being userunfriendly, and I am actually quite happy working together with Hans, because with him I can work very freely and I don’t feel stuck in any bad compromise (which often the case when working together). It is great, I can work and do not need to really talk about it, and Hans can talk without being controlled by me, we don’t need to agree with one another in order to work together.
- What motivated [V]ote-Auction?
- lizvlx Getting started was easy – had we not gotten engaged, then the project would have been terminated by the early intervention of New York jurisdiction. The moment we got into working with it, it got a natural flow, Hans working dayshifts in Vienna and Sofia and me working all night in Berlin. Much motivation came from my personal disrespect for the numerous legal systems of this world – not because they are unfair or something, but because of the bureaucrazy, the anti-communication and the all time favors for the party with more power and money. But I grew up with all that, as my dad is a lawyer, so I cannot be scared by being sent legal paper anyway, it is just ink on paper and lots of emotions put into some kind of very beautiful legal poetry.
Hans The project was brought to us by an american student, James Baumgartner. He invented Vote-Auction version 0.9. Due to massive legal pressure (New York City Election Committe, FBI) he sold it to us for a undisclosed sum. Our motivation was to run it as a global communication experiment and to radically push the boundaries of massmedia hacking, legal art and [F]originals as far as humanly possible – under the constant strain of legal (13 District Attorneys, Federal Attorney Janet Reno, FBI, CIA, NSA) and social pressure (Family, Friends, Community, Lawyers).
- Did you expect the echo in the mass media and in courts to be as wide as it has been?
- Hans No. Although we felt from the beginning that there was a good potential within the project, but initially it was running parallel to our business activites and other projects. But soon it took over and consumed our whole time and energy. For four months we were mainly dealing with the media (up to 30 interviews per day, Radio, TV, Online, Print), with lawyers, with district attorneys, with the community and with the users. We had crash courses in international law and our lawyers had crash courses in internet technology. The only ones standing in the rain were the district attorneys, federal attorney Janet Reno and the FBI. They spent millions of dollars investigating the case without ever having the slightest idea what it was all about. In a 27 min. primetime feature on CNN, lawyers and politicians tried to determine whether this was an art project or a actual business by pervert eastern European business-people (our project slogan: Vote-Auction – bringing capitalism and democracy closer together).
lizvlx Ha, that’s funny – because I did expect it. Well, not all of it, but to me it was pretty clear that it would just have to rise high. First of all, because from the beginning on, one felt that the media people wanted to feature it as much as possible, and second, because American institutions and people like to sue other people more than, for instance, in Europe. And these 2 powers, jurisdiction and the media clusterfeeding one another, so all I had to do was listen carefully to the content of the questions posed and use allthe information so given to me and mirror it back into the media and public again. It was such a real-time job, very charming and fulfilling – I am also very grateful for all the information sent to me by the numerous Vote-Auction users.
- Nazi-line, vote auction, Ars Electronica Jury Hack… You’re not afraid to get enemies? What drives such boldness?
- Hans We are looking for niches to start our experiments. These niches bring us maximum benefit for our basic research and development. We are not opportunistic, money-driven or success-driven, our central motivation is to gain as much information as possible as fast as possible as chaotic as possible and to redistribute this information via digital channels. For this we are willing to put our careers, our money and our time at risk.
- What motivates and justifies the amalgamation of fact and fiction that characterizes many of your works?
- Hans net.art, Totalart, Junk Pop, Digital Cocaine, Children of the 1980s. Hans Bernhard radicalizes the relation between fact and fiction by beeing mentally ill. He can not separate collective hallucination (reality) from individual hallucination (fiction), but from time to time he has a vision of the whole thing. Using psychotropic drugs (see hansbernhardblog ) and having kids, being an artist and a citizen, this situation has to be staged into a Gesamtkunstwerk. Thanks to the new platforms and databases (www, digital archives, mailinglists, logfiles, etc.) Hans was able to invent and create new forms of representation and to vertically infiltrate others with his research and identities. Such a self-experiment is his way to end speculations about retro-visions of the future and to position himself as a ex-neo-futurist. He understands himself in the tradition of the great italian artist Guglielmo Achille Cavellini and his strategy of self-historicization.
UBERMORGEN.COM's work is unique not because of what we do but because how, when and where we do it. The Computer and The Network create our art and combine every aspect of it.
UBERMORGEN.COM is metaphysically influenced by Lawrence Weiner and practically enhanced by ever reinventing Madonna, Jean Tinguely, the Nouveaux Réalistes and by the hardcore Viennese Actionists. Today we mesh and route aggressive tactical behaviour with conservative fine art in a practical and theoretical compound.
- I get the feeling that your actions provide you with a lot of fun. Am I wrong?
- Hans There is only one answer: 42.
lizvlx Well, i personally prefer the term “lust” to “fun”. That means, yes, i am lust-driven. I try to get a kick out of the work i do, and if some actions we get ourselves into produce amusement, then i do surely not regard the grin on my face as one out of “fun” but rather something that rises from the joy of fulfillment, an element of lust. (The term “lust” is originally German and in german, the words “lustig” (fun(ny)) and “lust” (lust, eagerness, willingness) are all the same. I do not like the english term “fun” because it focuses only on a superficial element of entertainment).
- Any Austrian artist(s) whose work should get more attention from the public?
- lizvlx Judith Fegerl, Kasper Kovitz.
Hans Susanne Schuda, Grischinka Teufl, Lia (she gets lots of attention, but she is one of my all time favs), Monochrom.