Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG

Eva and Franco Mattes are the artists behind the website 0100101110101101.org. They were born in Italy in 1976. Since meeting in Madrid in 1994 they have never separated, living a nomadic life throughout Europe and the US. Neither of them received art education. Among the pioneers of the Net Art movement, they are renowned for their subversion of public media. They first gained notoriety by snagging the domain name Vaticano.org (1998) in order to undermine the Catholic Church’s official website. They then went on a cloning spree, copying and remixing other artists’ works, like Jodi.org, targeting “closed” websites, such as Hell.com, turning private art into public art.
Over two years, 1995–97, they toured the world’s most important museums and stole dozens of fragments from well-known works by artists such as Duchamp, Kandinsky, Beuys and Rauschenberg. This work has remained a secret for 14 years.
The Mattes have manipulated video games, Internet technologies, feature films and street advertising to reveal truths concealed by contemporary society. They have created media facades believable enough to elicit embarrassing reactions from governments, the public and the art world, and they have orchestrated several unpredictable mass performances, staged outside art spaces and involved unwitting audiences in scenarios that mingle truth and falsehood to the point of being indistinguishable.
They shocked the mainstream art world with the invention of Darko Maver: a reclusive, radical artist who achieved cult status and was featured in the Venice Biennale before turning out to be pure fiction.
Their off-the-wall performances – that have caused them several lawsuits – include affixing fake architectural heritage plaques (An Ordinary Building, 2006), rolling out a media campaign for a non-existent action movie (United We Stand, 2005) and even convincing the people of Vienna that Nike had purchased the city’s historic Karlsplatz and was about to rename it “Nikeplatz” (Nike Ground, 2003).
Their art has been featured at the Venice Biennale (2001), the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2001), Manifesta, Frankfurt (2002) and in various venues worldwide, including the New Museum, New York (2005), Collection Lambert, Avignon (2006) and Performa, New York (2007 and 2009).

Works

• Bagless Canister Cyclonic Vacuum, 2009, outdoor billboard
• Traveling by Telephone, 2008, photos in videogames
• It's always six o'clock, 2008
• Synthetic Performances, 2007, Art Performances inside videogames
• Portraits, 2006, series of portraits on canvas of Second Life's avatar
• An Ordinary Building, 2006, a fake architectural heritage sign
• United We Stand, 2005, advertisement campaign for a non existent movie
• Nike Ground, 2003, a fake Nike advertisement campaign
• Vopos, 2002, one year of satellite self-surveillance
• The K Thing, 2001
• Biennale.py (with Epidemic), 2001, a computer virus as a work of art
• Life Sharing, 2000–2003, the artists' personal computer turned into an open server
• Copies, 1999, copies and remixes of popular Net Art websites
• Hybrids, 1998, online Net Art collages
• Vaticano.org, 1998, one of the first spoof websites
• Darko Maver, 1998, a made-up artist

External links

• 0100101110101101.org Homepage

References

• Eva and Franco Mattes: 0100101110101101.ORG, by Domenico Quaranta, Maurizio Cattelan, RoseLee Goldberg, Bruce Sterling, Wu Ming, Fabio Cavallucci, Joline Blais and Jon Ippolito, Tilman Baumgärtel, Charta, 2009
• New Media: Introduction by Jon Ippolito and Joline Blais, in Innovators Shaping Our Creative Future, Thames & Hudson, 2009
• At the Edge of Art, by Joline Blais and Jon Ippolito, Thames & Hudson, 2005
• New Media Art, Reena Jana and Mark Tribe, Taschen, 2006
• Internet Art, by Rachel Greene, Thames & Hudson, 2004
• Digital Art, by Christiane Paul, Thames & Hudson, 2003-2008