From "l'Unità", 14 February 2000
"We've disclosed the tricks of the critics"The 0100101110101101.ORG's tell here how they "interfere" in their "weird" projects.
by Antonio CaroniaQ.: Which is the difference between your works and "traditional" art?
A.: 0100101110101101.ORG tries to "show the mechanism". Instead of producing a physical object (a drawing, a sculpture or a video, it doesn't matter) 0100101110101101.ORG organises information and deconstructs processes in order to subvert, from the inside, the system of production, distribution and fruition of art - beating it at its own game. Duchamp, through his ready-mades, showed how, in our cultural system, containers are much more important than contents: when an urinal is exhibited in a museum, it immediately becomes an art work, even if it's still exactly the same object that in all the rest of the world people uses every day. 0100101110101101.ORG only brought this concept to the extreme limit, transforming even something inexistent into art: since Darko Maver exists as a media creature (articles, exhibitions, posters etc.) he do exist tout court.
Q.: But he exists only in media fiction, he's somehow "virtual"
A.: The media universe is becoming more and more independent from reality. The fiction of TV, even strongly distorted, depends in any case from reality. In the modern media system, in particular with the development of the Internet, this condition is going to disappear: virtual existence is less and less binded to the real one. If 0100101110101101.ORG hadn't claimed the prank, Darko Maver would still go on existing, setting many people buzzing through exhibitions, documentaries, catalogues and so on.
Q.: What have you tried to prove through this action?
A.: 0100101110101101.ORG has tried to show the mechanisms which hold contemporary art, to make clear that critics and curators are able to create an artist, apart from the value of his works; this phenomena is currently accepted or taken for granted and people undervalues its impact. In Darko Maver case 0100101110101101.ORG has simply bypassed intermediaries, succeeding in bringing more attention on process than on art works. Darko Maver, in his declared inexistence, is paradoxically more authentic than hundreds of presumed artists. Art is a sort of alchemy that, instead of changing metal in precious stone, transform shit into gold (Piero Manzoni sold his excrement at the same price of gold). Potentially everything can be art, the point is only to know the rules of the game, and its tricks as well.
Q.: So, was it a provocation against art, carried out from inside of the system itself?
A.: Not an operation against certain institutions or reviews - "Flesh Out" magazine co-operated since the beginning, to give an example - It was rather a pure demonstration. Art works, even the most radical ones, end up strengthening the status quo because they strengthen the aptitude of people to swallow passively strict rules and visual and behavioural stereotypes. It's only disassembling these mechanisms that it's possible to both understand and refuse them; we do not need more "art objects", but works able to make people more conscious.
Q.: How do you think your activity could awake the audience critical mind?
A.: A way can be, for example, to insinuate doubts: Darko Maver has been completely constructed on nothing, therefore in a similar way also all the other artists could be the same. Secondly, removing the aura of myth surrounding the artist as creative genius, isolated from the world and inspired by a muse, fatal ideas that have been dragging on since Romanticism.
Q.: And do you fell you succeeded in your intentions?
A.: From zero to the Venice Biennale in one year, neither Peggy Guggenheim would have been able to do better. One more thing, 0100101110101101.ORG dedicates this operation to Piero Cannata, the greatest and most undervalued contemporary artist who carries on his incredible work, in spite of the world hostility.