LOOKING FOR A HUSBAND WITH EU PASSPORT, BY TANIA OSTOJIĆ

In August 2000 Tanja Ostojić launched her project Looking for a Husband with EU Passport in which she published an online advertisement with the same title. Over the next few months the artist received numerous offers from men from around the world, and exchanged more than 500 letters with them. One of them was Klemens G. from Germany. Ostojić met him in 2001, as part of a publicly staged performance on the lawn in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade. One month later the two were wed in Belgrade, and then—with the international marriage certificate and other necessary documents in hand—Ostojić applied for a German visa. With her first three-month visa she moved to Düsseldorf, where she registered officially with the authorities and received additional visa extensions over the next three-and-a-half years. In the spring of 2005 her temporary residence permit expired and, instead of receiving a permanent residence permit, Ostojić was only granted an extension for an additional two years. Subsequently, she and Klemens G. divorced, and on July 1 the installation Integration Project Office was launched in the project room of Galerie 35 in Berlin, with a divorce celebration.

With her project Looking for a Husband with EU Passport Ostojić addresses the political injustices, exclusions, and delimitations that still exist in Europe beyond the global digital realm. Ostojić made use of the World Wide Web to shed light on the plight of immigrants and the limitations imposed on lifestyles, through artistic self-exploration.

Tanja Ostojić's website.

06:55 - By Unknown 1

REMOTEWORDS, BY ACHIM MOHNÉ AND UTA KOPP

The long-term project Remotewords disseminates news that can only be viewed from above and from outer space. The roof of the Kumu Art Museum in Tallinn has become the project’s sixteenth station worldwide; it bears a message that cannot be seen from the ground but will be visible and shared around the world through Google Earth and other navigation systems as soon as the satellite images are updated. The artists will create permanent messages in the form of large letters painted on the rooftops. Additional writers, artists, and scholars have been invited to join in developing key messages appropriate to the site and its function. The website of Remotewords embeds the coordinates of each location directly into Google Earth or Google. Photographic and video documentations as well as interviews with the authors and information about the sites deepen the semantic connection between place and message.

Remotewords is about the power and powerlessness of digital observational and communications systems. The project provides a response to the increasing commercialization of the Internet, with messages and news that use Google Earth as an artistic medium. And Google Earth’s suggested promise of real time is unmasked as an illusion, since the messages can only be read in the Internet after the satellite data is updated, and this in turn depends on the relevance of the site within the global network.

Achim Mohné's website.
Uta Kopp's website.

06:48 - By Unknown 0

NIKE GROUND, BY EVA AND FRANCO MATTES

Eva and Franco Mattes, born 1976, are the Brooklyn based artist-provocateurs behind the infamous Web site 0100101110101101.org. Since meeting in Madrid in 1994 they have never separated, living a nomadic life throughout Europe and the United States. Among the pioneers of the Net Art movement, they are renowned for their masterful subversion of public media. Over the last fifteen years, the Mattes’ have manipulated video games, Internet technologies, feature films, and street advertising to reveal truths concealed by contemporary society. Their works create a permanent state of insecurity by blurring borders between reality and fiction, art and offence, intention and action. Their off-the-wall performances—which have involved them in several lawsuits—include stealing dozens of fragments from art masterpieces (Stolen Pieces, 1995), 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).

"We set up a fake Nike advertisement campaign using a website and a huge hi-tech container we installed in a public square in Vienna. The news went out nationwide: “Karlsplatz, one of Vienna’s main squares, is soon to be renamed Nikeplatz, and a huge monument in the shape of Nike’s famous Swoosh logo will be built in Nikeplatz”. The campaign provoked the reactions of Vienna’s citizens, city officials and the Nike group, which started legal action. Against all odds we won against the giant."

06:39 - By Unknown 0

REPETITIONR, BY LES LIENS INVISIBLES

Created by the imaginary art group Les Liens Invisibles – already known for others internet spoofs like Subvertr.com, A Fake is A Fake and Seppukoo.com – Repetitionr.com is the ultimate social petition platform that grants the success of every campaign proposed, offering the most advanced internet technologies to make participatory democracy a truely user-centered experience. Just a click and Repetitionr will fill your petitions with millions of self-generated fake signatures indistinguishable from the real ones.

1. Create your petition: just write down your petition title and statement.
2. Choose the number of signatures you want (from 1,000 to 1,000,000) and from which countries they should come. Don’t be afraid, exaggerate the potential.
3. During the following days, Repetitionr’s automatic services will feed your petition with the signatures.
4. Meanwhile, promote your campaign through other media (TV, online / offline newspaper . . . ).
5. Within the next thirty days your campaign will reach its goal.

 This will be the moment to announce to the world that thousands and thousands of people can’t be wrong!

With its simple instructions for generating online petitions, the Net project Repetitionr by the artist group Les Liens Invisibles makes the Internet user or exhibition visitor want to get involved. In their version of “One-Click-Democracy,” political engagement no longer depends on physical action on the street. The days of demonstrations may be over—today, all it takes is a mouse-click from the comfort of one’s sofa at home. Thanks to Repetitionr software, you can gather as many signatures as you need—1,000 or 1,000,000—in no time at all. For this software program, it’s a cinch.

Using humor, the program demonstrates how easily data can be generated and manipulated today. Les Liens Invisibles questions, with a wink, the capacity of new communication media to generate critical reflection and social change. With its participatory potential, the “hands-on Net” or Web 2.0—a new nickname for the Internet, which enables direct user involvement through blogs or other social online platforms and networks—promises more democracy and participation in political developments than ever before. Just when democratic processes are increasingly perceived as ineffective, the artist group carries the hope for more democracy through the Internet to its ironic extreme, ad absurdum. Through the intentional, automatic manipulation of petitions, they warn of the dangers that can come with the superficial and careless treatment of data available through the Internet.

http://www.repetitionr.com

Les Liens Invisibles website.

06:20 - By Unknown 0

SECURITY FIRST, BY MARC LEE

A long storage rack like one finds in an electronic appliances store displays all the products with which one can become part of the world of global surveillance; especially cameras, both real and dummies, visible as a deterrent or camouflaged as smoke detection devices or wall clocks. This hardware can also be used to upgrade one's private sphere so that one lives under the protection of electronic eyes. The following advertising announcement is heard via headphones:
«This is important: Make a clear choice to record and be recorded. Make a change. It’s your own individual right. We are the new generation. It’s a challenge, be virtually everywhere, create communities, network and exchange. Don’t escape and don’t occupy spaces, let them be open and free. And when you publish or talk to an algorithm, never be anonymous. Crime will fall rapidly. Our life will be better. Your choice is our choice.» An alternative to this vision are the shots from live webcams in real-time seen on the monitor. These images present a different truth: unsecured security cameras installed in private contexts upload unencrypted images to the Internet. Users can access these images via websites, but as the websites are not even password-protected, anyone can access the images. The private sphere may be safer, but at the price that it is less private. Text: Sebastian Althoff.

Marc Lee's website.

06:08 - By Unknown 0

REFUGEE REPUBLIC, BY INGO GÜNTHER

Ingo Günther was born in 1957. He lives and works in New York. His early sculptural works with video led him to news media projects, where he played a crucial role in the evaluation, interpretation, and publication of satellite data taken from crises zones. Since 1989 Günther uses illuminated globes as a medium for his artistic and journalistic interests. His project Refugee Republic of 1995 was also the first site dealing with refugees on the internet.

Refugee Republic is a concept based on the ever increasing number of refugees, displaced persons and migrants. Refugee Republic is attempting to address the problem associated with this condition. Refugee Republic maintains that refugees are essentially unrealized capital and that their involuntary fate of an international avantgarde can be turned into productive assets.
Refugee Republic proposes a supranational and supraterritorial refugee state that might become a model for the rest of the world.

Refugee Republic website.

Ingo Günther's website.

22:16 - By Unknown 0