Eva & Franco Mattes

WORKS
EXHIBITIONS
ABOUT
SHOP

United We Stand (2005)

united billboard

 

United We Stand is the title of a non-existent, European Hollywood-style blockbuster: “A brilliant mix of espionage and sci-fi political stereotypes in which Europe, not the USA, saves the world from impending doom”. We wrote the story, together with Wu Ming, published a website, designed the poster and put it up in cities around the world, although the movie never existed.

 

 

united installation berlin wall

 

 

 

united installation berlin mitte franco

 

 

 

united installation vienna

 

 

 

united installation bologna mercato

 

 

 

united installation bologna irnerio

 

 

 

united installation berlin reichstag

 

 

 

united installation barcelona rambla

 

 

 

united installation bangalore

 

 

 

united installation brussels parliament

 

 

 

united installation newyork bleecker

 

 

 

Eva & Franco Mattes, United We Stand

 

 

 

united installation vienna snow

Posters in Berlin, Brussels, Barcelona, New York, Bangalore, Vienna, Bologna and Annemasse.

 

 

united magazines

Advertisements placed anonymously in various magazines.

 

 

united postcards

Postcards in video store

 

 

united banner

Banners placed in various websites

 

 

united installation berlin police

Eva stopped by German Police for posting

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eva & Franco Mattes, United We Stand

Installed at Postmasters Gallery, New York

 

 

«The images in the poster and trailer, with barely disguised but heroicized references to the current war in Iraq, can be taken as typical examples of Hollywood-style propaganda-as-history. But the layers of deception go deeper. The film itself, echoing President Bush’s triumphal “Top Gun” turn, exists only as advertising. It is a fiction built on fantasy. But thanks to an extensive poster campaign, the nonexistent film may lodge in our consciousness all the same» Holland Cotter, The New York Times