“This is the future now,

This is the freedom given to you,

To live the future now,

Now or never!”

Supernaut*

The cold precision and underground aesthetics of the slideshows of the projects “GWEI - Google will eat itself” and “Amazon Noir” bring to mind conspiratorial meetings of sabotage groups, the difference being that they open to the masses. At the exhibition in Johannesburg (GWEI - UBERMORGEN.com feat. Alessandro Ludovic vs. Paolo Cirio), the slides were shown using as many as five overhead projectors. By the way, after a friendly threatening letter to the designers of its unwanted fiscal cancer, Google censored access to all GWEI sites and urls. Hmm… imagine Google writing to you, it is as if you were written to by the Milky Way or the Pacific Ocean. Unexpected indeed.

The UBERMORGEN slides document, explain and evoke concepts, ideas and processes underlying their work. By being, thus, subsequently shown via a romanticized and biased retelling of events, as well as via convincingly designed logos, schematic explanations of the type and course of the sabotage combined with a tinge of instruction, the projects of the future are monumentally historicized. What do UBERMORGEN mark? What is it that we will have to attempt to do with slim chances of success? In addition to its technical superiority, Amazon Noir beat the good Amazon with slogans denying copyright on pixels on computer screens and ripped off the mask of its rival counterpart by successfully drawing it in the show of its own publishing/sales policy. Just like headhunters going after celebrities, UBERMORGEN come and shatter the dignified piece of the super powerful. Content with an honourable defeat and shared glory as a consolation prize, they disappear into the night.

References, scenes and poetics of the noir featured in the slides bear witness to the intensions and the outcome of sticking to the code of voluntary losers – the authors choose the roles of villains in the circumstances for which they cannot be responsible and must cope with. Indeed, UBERMORGEN’s actions highlight the boundaries of sheer necessity, namely, the imperative of defense against the supremacy of the good guys – in this case corporate logic – becoming a natural and in and of itself good state of things. In a situation where there is no choice, UBERMORGEN choose to push the limit of what is considered to be net-art fair-play and juxtapose risk and anxiety of an offence with the obviousness of their intentions and quick distribution of spoils through peer 2 peer networks or the Google to the People company. That is why they can ironically reflect their own position as anti-heroes…

The series of photographs “Chinese Gold” stands apart from the rest of the group’s work. There is no sabotage, no intelligent or explosive solutions. The photographs of these captives of the international trade in cheap labour and images of their virtual products – computer game characters are all in the same blue monochrome…

Domenico Quaranta** believes that this is Bernhard’s way of uniting them, bringing them to the same level. Rather, here his freestyle research on gold farmers finds itself in a potentially very productive dead end. These photos may not be able to upset our consumerist appetite since we are bombarded with such stories and material on the Internet and who cares! But they can pave the way for future actions… On the other hand, by showing scenes shot at Belgrade’s gaming venues, UBERMORGEN.COM creates a series of hallucinogenic game-like sights where, according to Quaranta, gamers do not distinguish between the real and the virtual. For now, we can console ourselves with the authors’ statement that their works are not user-friendly. If we want to agree with Domenico’s interpretations, we have to ask ourselves whether UBERMORGEN are satisfied with the banality of the future now, with building monuments to that banality. I would wait for some more attempts by UBERMORGEN, like the one with losers playing computer games deliberately badly (visit www.youtube.com)... Banality, weakness and dullness… “That'll be the day” is the vision of the UBERMORGEN future.

* Belgrade-based alternative rock band

**http://www.ubermorgen.com/publications/CHINESE_GOLD_QUARANTA_06/UBERMORGEN_eng_chinese_gold.pdf