Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG

Synthetic Performances at Arco Madrid

Arco Madrid

29 INTERNATIONAL CONTEMPORARY ART FAIR
EXPANDED BOX section, booth EB01
February 17-21, 2010 - MADRID











Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG
Synthetic Performances

2007 – ongoing

Synthetic Performances are online live gaming sessions inside the virtual world of Second Life, performed by Eva and Franco Mattes through their avatars, which were constructed from their bodies and faces. The project started with the reenactment of seminal performance artworks from the Sixties and Seventies such as Marina Abramovic’s Imponderabilia, Vito Acconci’s Seedbed and Gilbert&George’s The Singing Sculpture. The Mattes went on creating their “own” performances, such as I cant find myself either and I know that it's all a state of mind.

People can participate to the live performances connecting to the video-game from all over the world. Sex, pleasure, and violence seem paradoxical in virtual worlds where there is no physical body anymore. «It was such a good idea» said Marina Abramovic, who has supported Eva and Franco Mattes from the start «I’m sort of jealous that it never crossed my mind. It’s very interesting, all this separation between our body and mind. It’s another world, but sometimes it’s more real than the real one».

In Time to Die, the last in this series of works, we are faced with an ongoing live performance set in the popular shoot-‘em-all videogame Counter Strike. Here the performer, played by a customized software, is refusing to accomplish the basic role of the game: kill. As a result the performer is being endlessly brutally killed by other unaware players, who happen to be playing online in that moment.

This series of work has been recently shown at PERFORMA, The Biennial of Performance Art (New York, 2007, 2009), it’s currently on view at PS1, New York, for the exhibition 100 Years of Performance Art, and it has been chosen by Marina Abramovic for the upcoming International Contemporary Art Prize 5x5 organized by the Espai d’Art Contemporani de Castelló, Spain.