Eva Mattes (as 0100101110101101.org) — Darko Maver

1998

Artists: Eva Mattes (as 0100101110101101.org), Franco Mattes (as 0100101110101101.org) · Year: 1998 · Medium: Conceptual net-art hoax — fictional artist with fabricated biography and body of work · Substrate: Web pages, press distribution, photographs of plasticine sculptures passed off as violent artworks · Place: Bologna, Italy · Institution: Operating as 0100101110101101.org collective In 1998, the Italian artists Eva and Franco Mattes — operating as the collective 0100101110101101.org — invented a fictional Serbian artist named Darko Maver. They produced a biography: Maver had been born in 1961, was a political artist persecuted by the Serbian government, made violent sculptural work in response to the Yugoslav wars. They produced photographs of his alleged artworks — bloody plasticine sculptures of mutilated bodies — and distributed them to art journalists. Within months, Maver's work had been covered in multiple European art magazines and included in a group exhibition at the 48th Venice Biennale. In 1999, the Mattes revealed the hoax. Maver did not exist. The photographed sculptures were plasticine miniatures the Mattes had made themselves. The biographies were fiction. The political urgency the art world had attached to Maver's work had been attached to nothing. The piece is one of the most rigorous interventions in the history of net art. What the Mattes made visible was the art world's specific 1990s appetite for work from conflict zones — how readily critics and curators would accept fabricated provenance if the political framing was sufficiently resonant. The hoax was not mean-spirited; it was a diagnosis. The Mattes have continued to work as 0100101110101101.org for the following quarter-century. Their 2001 Biennale.py (a functional computer virus released at the Venice Biennale) and their ongoing Life Sharing (broadcasting their private digital lives continuously from 2000 to 2003) have extended their net-art practice into more participatory territories. Both are based in New York. Lore The Mattes met in Bologna in the mid-1990s. Their collective name, 0100101110101101, is a binary number; their Venice Biennale participation under that name was one of the first instances of an artist-collective-as-code in an institutional exhibition. Their subsequent work has included stealing and replicating other artists' domain names and websites, negotiating with corporate trademark lawyers as part of the artistic work. Sources • 0100101110101101.org archive • Rhizome — Darko Maver documentation • Quaranta, Domenico — 0100101110101101.org monograph