Eva and Franco Mattes

Born in Italy. 

They were known for being hackers of discontinued websites and remaking other artist's work. They thought that people used websites wrongly, so the Mattes did something different where, "the beholder becomes an artist and the artist becomes a beholder," and they created their website is 0100101110101101.ORG 

A lot of their work was evolved around plagiarism. They believed that anyone who claims are work is original should rethink that, because everything in our culture today is plagiarized.  


These two first gained their fame by making the website vaticano.org to undermine the Catholic church. I went to the website, and I don't understand how it undermines the Catholic church, but maybe they switch the website. 

My Generation

A video on the computer screen was playing videos of people who have lost control in anger while playing video games, and the video game ends with a calm very young child playing a shooting game. Maybe the Mattes are trying to say that video games are making our youth worse and irritable. And the kid standing in the photo is experiencing all of this at an age too young.

From 1995-1997, the couple went other the world touring famous museums. They stole dozens of pieces from well-known works by Duchamp, Kandinsky, Beuys, and Rauschenberg. 

Portraits 

They use secondlife. They knew that avatars are supposed to be self-portaits, but  when people make avatars, they make them look like how they wished they looked like and not how they really look like. They also stated that in secondlife, we live fake lives, lives we wish we had so that's why we are so attracted to the virtual world. we are forced not to be ourselves, but it still doesn't hide our true identity. 

Murder

They created a fake Serbian artist named Luther Blissett. This artist created two gruesome and realistic models murder scenes. Their message was while artists are making shocking artwork absorbed by the market, real violence is being perpetrated and ignored by our media.

Colorless, Odorless, and Tasteless

They recreated an arcade game machine so it kills the people playing it. They made a car racing game with an engine in the back that spews out carbon monoxide. The player controls how much gas comes out of the machine. I think the meaning of this is that video games are killing us slowly by filling our minds with junk. Just like how the gas can be controlled, we can control how much junk we absorb. 

No Fun

Eva and Franco used a chat room to show a fake suicide scene. Hundreds of people watched as Franco hanged for hours. Some were scared, some laughed, some took pictures with their phones, and only one person actually called the police. The video was deleted by Youtube. Their purpose was to show artwork outside the traditional art spaces. 

Watch!!! Video below.

Notable moments at 2:40 and 3:55

http://vimeo.com/11467722

This couple somewhat impressed me. From what I read, the only thing I like so far is their arcade game machine and the fake suicide video because they made great points. The other projects that I read from were either messages were obvious or just didn't impact/interest me too much. They have had so many projects though. If you want more info about this couple- go to 0100101110101101.ORG