Come wrestle some thumbs in Copenhagen! May 25th 2013 at w00t Copenhagen Play Festival!


Link

"23 WORKS" is a video series documenting the history of the art/tech group monochrom. monochrom has chosen 23 projects, anecdotes and stories out of their 20 years of material and recreated them as dioramas and machines. The group presented these objects at their exhibition "Die waren früher auch mal besser/They used to be better (monochrom 1993-2013)". All 23 videos were shot at MUSA Vienna in spring 2013.


Number 10: "Brandmarker"

Link (monochrom: 23 WORKS)
Link (monochrom)

Yes, indeed. We like the Vine's concept and embrace our new social media overlords - at least for 6 seconds.

Here is the first try.

We call the loop "John Carpenter soundtrack".

Link (Vine)

"23 WORKS" is a video series documenting the history of the art/tech group monochrom. monochrom has chosen 23 projects, anecdotes and stories out of their 20 years of material and recreated them as dioramas and machines. The group presented these objects at their exhibition "Die waren früher auch mal besser/They used to be better (monochrom 1993-2013)". All 23 videos were shot at MUSA Vienna in spring 2013.


Number 9: "A Discussion With A PR Consultant"
With the participation of Karin Frank.

Link (monochrom: 23 WORKS)
Link (monochrom)
Link (Karin Frank)

"23 WORKS" is a video series documenting the history of the art/tech group monochrom. monochrom has chosen 23 projects, anecdotes and stories out of their 20 years of material and recreated them as dioramas and machines. The group presented these objects at their exhibition "Die waren früher auch mal besser/They used to be better (monochrom 1993-2013)". All 23 videos were shot at MUSA Vienna in spring 2013.


Number 8: "The Altogether Horrid Street Ballad Of Paratii"
With the participation of Clemens Kindermann and Roman List.
Featuring: Franz Ablinger (maître de crank) and Heather Kelley (guest karaokette).
Lyrics here.

Link (monochrom: 23 WORKS)
Link (monochrom)
Link (Clemens Kindermann)
Link (Heather Kelley)

"23 WORKS" is a video series documenting the history of the art/tech group monochrom. monochrom has chosen 23 projects, anecdotes and stories out of their 20 years of material and recreated them as dioramas and machines. The group presented these objects at their exhibition "Die waren früher auch mal besser/They used to be better (monochrom 1993-2013)". All 23 videos were shot at MUSA Vienna in spring 2013.


Number 7: "320x200"

Link (monochrom: 23 WORKS)
Link (monochrom)

"23 WORKS" is a video series documenting the history of the art/tech group monochrom. monochrom has chosen 23 projects, anecdotes and stories out of their 20 years of material and recreated them as dioramas and machines. The group presented these objects at their exhibition "Die waren früher auch mal besser/They used to be better (monochrom 1993-2013)". All 23 videos were shot at MUSA Vienna in spring 2013.


Number 6: "The Russians Are Coming!"

Link (monochrom: 23 WORKS)
Link (monochrom)

"23 WORKS" is a video series documenting the history of the art/tech group monochrom. monochrom has chosen 23 projects, anecdotes and stories out of their 20 years of material and recreated them as dioramas and machines. The group presented these objects at their exhibition "Die waren früher auch mal besser/They used to be better (monochrom 1993-2013)". All 23 videos were shot at MUSA Vienna in spring 2013.


Number 5: "Then, The Contrast Changes As Well"

Link (monochrom: 23 WORKS)
Link (monochrom)

"23 WORKS" is a video series documenting the history of the art/tech group monochrom. monochrom has chosen 23 projects, anecdotes and stories out of their 20 years of material and recreated them as dioramas and machines. The group presented these objects at their exhibition "Die waren früher auch mal besser/They used to be better (monochrom 1993-2013)". All 23 videos were shot at MUSA Vienna in spring 2013.


Number 4: "Souls As Virtual Capital"

Link (monochrom: 23 WORKS)
Link (monochrom)

"23 WORKS" is a video series documenting the history of the art/tech group monochrom. monochrom has chosen 23 projects, anecdotes and stories out of their 20 years of material and recreated them as dioramas and machines. The group presented these objects at their exhibition "Die waren früher auch mal besser/They used to be better (monochrom 1993-2013)". All 23 videos were shot at MUSA Vienna in spring 2013.


Number 3: "Ablinger, The Shit Ain't Working!"
With the participation of Kerstin Halm.

Link (monochrom: 23 WORKS)
Link (monochrom)
Link (Kerstin Halm)

"23 WORKS" is a video series documenting the history of the art/tech group monochrom. monochrom has chosen 23 projects, anecdotes and stories out of their 20 years of material and recreated them as dioramas and machines. The group presented these objects at their exhibition "Die waren früher auch mal besser/They used to be better (monochrom 1993-2013)". All 23 videos were shot at MUSA Vienna in spring 2013.


Number 2: "The EKH Stays!"
With the participation of Ben Lawson.

Link (monochrom: 23 WORKS)
Link (monochrom)
Link (Ben Lawson)

"23 WORKS" is a video series documenting the history of the art/tech group monochrom. monochrom has chosen 23 projects, anecdotes and stories out of their 20 years of material and recreated them as dioramas and machines. The group presented these objects at their exhibition "Die waren früher auch mal besser/They used to be better (monochrom 1993-2013)". All 23 videos were shot at MUSA Vienna in spring 2013.


Number 1: "1989-1995, We Damn You!"
With the participation of Josh Ellingson.

Link (monochrom: 23 WORKS)
Link (monochrom)
Link (Joshua Ellingson)

We have the coffin. We just need you.

The people present will have an opportunity to be buried alive in a coffin for fifteen minutes.


As a framework program there will be lectures about the history of the science of determining death and the medical cultural history of "buried alive". People buried alive not only populate the horror stories of past centuries, but also countless reports in specialized medical literature. The theme of unintentional resurrection by grave robbers also runs through forensic protocols. Even in the 19th century it was said that every tenth person was buried alive. No wonder that the fear of this fate was immense and led - especially in the German-speaking region - to all kinds of precautions to avoid it. Various death test methods were developed, for instance. "Security coffins" with bell pulls and air hoses were patented; mortuaries were built, in which corpses were left for days to natural decay.

At MUSA, Felderstrasse 6-8, 1010 Vienna.
Lecture: April 27, 2013; 2 PM.
Start of premature burials: April 27, 2013; 3 PM.

Want to reserve a slot? Email to office AT monochrom.at
(We will create a lottery in case of overbooking.)

Director Johannes Grenzfurthner will talk about Sierra Zulu and the Kickstarter campaign at Think out Loud! 2 / Crowdfunding in Attnang-Puchheim, Austria.

Johannes Grenzfurthner etwa hat seinen Film Sierra Zulu über Crowdfunding teil-finanziert. Über 50.000 Dollar sammelte er auf diese Weise über die US-Plattform Kickstarter von den Fans ein, eine Summe, die zuvor noch kaum ein heimisches Projekt erreicht hat. Er wird über seine Kampagne berichten und unter anderem auch die Frage beantworten, warum er nicht eine der deutschsprachigen Crowdfunding-Plattformen dafür ausgewählt hat.

April 25, 2013; 6 PM at Technologiezentrum Attnang-Puchheim, Austria.

Link

monochrom's Johannes Grenzfurthner is at PrintScreen Festival in Holon/Israel.
"Jerusalem Post" reports.

Johannes Grenzfurthner is the artistic director of the Austrian monochrom group that combines new media works, performance art and political activism. Recurring topics in Grenzfurthner’s art and writing are contemporary art, activism, performance, humour, philosophy, sex, communism, postmodernism, media theory, cultural studies, popular culture studies, science fiction, and copyright.
He hosts the event "Roboexotica,” in which scientists and artists work together to create robots whose job is to produce or mix alcohol, and “Arse Electronica,” an annual conference held in San Francisco that deals with the effects of technology on the world of sex. John received an award at the Webby Awards, honoring the 13 most prominent sites and network members.

Link

Johannes will give a keynote on Context Hacking and the digital future at Print Screen Festival in Israel on April 17, 2013.

Time Out Tel Aviv interviewed him about monochrom and the future of (digital) cinema.

Link

As it emerged in the 90s, the concept "communication guerilla" was, not least of all, a response to the exhaustion of traditional leftist activism after the fall of the Berlin wall. The search for new forms of praxis led (at least in some points) to a new, transversal praxis beyond the realm of the "old" activism - even though the point of departure for this search was the experience of a seminal defeat of the left. Today, following the rise and possibly already the incipient downfall of a new global movement, the situation is a different one, and the question arises as to the extent to which this concept from the 90s is still useful. The new activism has become more global, more networked, but most of all, it has developed a new dynamic beyond political and national borders. At the same time, however, this activism still evinces many features of the old polit-activism, not only in the neo-communist party version of the SWP (Socialist Workers Party) and Globalize Resistance. Despite all the rhetoric, activism often still has a stance that is strangely separated from people's everyday life, even that of its own protagonists. The future of this global activism will depend on whether it succeeds in being capable of action at the local level, the level of everyday life, while continuing to develop its transversal, border-crossing character at the same time. The most important border that has to be crossed is the border that constitutes the activist her or himself in a separation from the "rest" of society. We think that the praxis of the communication guerilla can contribute to this kind of border-crossing.

At Art University Linz, Kollegiumgasse 2, 4th floor, Linz, Austria.

April 12, 2013, 11am-5:00.

We are proud being able to release our new book:

CONTEXT HACKING: How to Mess with Art, Media, Law and the Market

Edited by Günther Friesinger, Johannes Grenzfurthner and Frank Apunkt Schneider

The group monochrom refers to its working method as "Context Hacking", thus referencing the hacker culture, which propagates a creative and emancipatory approach to the technologies of the digital age, and in this way turns against the continuation into the digital age of a centuries-old technological enslavement perpetrated through knowledge and hierarchies of experts. Thanks to the electronic mass media of this age, the possibility of democratizing and socializing the means of production seems for the first time to have become realizable (with no need for any other revolution beyond the technical). Context hacking transfers the hackers’ objectives and methods to the network of social relationships in which artistic production occurs, and upon which it is dependent. In a metaphoric sense, these relationships also have a source code. Programs run in them, and our interaction with them is structured by a user interface. When we know how a space, a niche, a scene, a subculture or a media or political practice functions, we can change it and "recode" it, deconstructing its power relationships and emancipating ourselves from its compulsions and packaging guidelines.

edition mono / monochrom (April 2013)
Hardcover, 304 pages
German and English language
EUR 20

On Amazon (European orders) or AbeBooks (US orders)
Link to book page

Release party: April 11, 2013; 7 PM at MUSA (Felderstraße 6-8, 1010 Vienna).
Facebook Event

Friday and Saturday was great! We had our annual monochrom retreat 2013.
Well, it wasn't really a "retreat", because we stayed in Vienna in Johannes' apartment, but it was super-productive.
Wonderful new projects ahead!



Cheers!

Director Johannes Grenzfurthner was captured by Soviet Unterzoegersdorf Military Intelligence, brought to an undisclosed basement without toilet and questioned about Sierra Zulu's production status. So much can be said: SUZ Officer Moloshnikov was not happy...

The interrogation transcript was published in German in the magazine Joe.

Es stinkt nach Urin, Angst, Lügen und Wahrheit. Der Ort: ein karger Verhörraum. Die Protagonisten: Ein Offizier und Johannes Grenzfurthner, der Initiator des Film-Projektes Sierra Zulu. Ein Freigeist, dem seine Vision einer sowjetischen Mikrorepublik bis in die Realität gefolgt ist – Ein Interview der etwas anderen Art.

Text by Hubertus J. Schwarz & Johannes Grenzfurthner. Photographs by Gerulf Dösinger.

Link to PDF version of interview

Johannes Grenzfurthner artist, director, writer, DIY researcher and friend of the show, Joey Kurtzman, are our guests this week on Yoshi Didn’t. Johannes founded Monochrom, an international art and theory group dedicated to subversive art as "weapons of mass distribution." Johannes pulled off one of the most interesting pranks in the art world at the Biennial Conference in Sao Paolo, Brazil by submitting a fictitious artist, G.P. Thomann as a representative of Austria. The prank went undetected by curators and journalists and inadvertently helped save a Taiwanese artist’s representation at the conference when the Chinese government became involved; consequently making headlines news in China! Johannes’ stories cross many intellectual and artistic realms as he discusses post modern liberalism, the future of sex with robots at Arse Elektronika, how, exactly, he pranked a world art conference and what it really means to subvert the subversive.

Link (to podcast)

Hasonló nyitottsággal fordul a városvezetés is a mqvészet és a fiatalok felé. A MUSA névre keresztelt múzeum a város által vezetett kulturális osztály kortárs mqvészeti gyqjteményét jelöli. A polgármesteri hivatal szoros szomszédságában helyet kapott intézmény többek között egy ingyenesen látogatható múzeumból áll. Ennek a fQ kiállítótere most a monochrom elnevezésq nemzetközi mqvészeti, elméleti és barkácskollektíva 20 éves bécsi fennállásának állít emléket. A Die waren früher auch mal besser cím ironikus kapcsolatot teremt a múlt és a jelen között, a kiállítás ugyanis régi munkákból már nem válogat, csak azt a pillanatot mutatja meg, ahova generációkkal késQbb a hasonló elveket valló mqvészet szemlélete jutott. Így nem nagy meglepetés, hogy 90%-ban objektek, installációk kaptak helyet a térben.

Link

Article by Hanna Lutz, referring to our book "Urban Hacking"...

The “end of public space” is proclaimed often. Urban researchers complain about increasing and omnipresent surveillance methods in as well as extensive privatization of public areas. The discussion about the decline in public space also focuses on the ubiquity of advertising messages in urban space and the so called “architecture of control” that subtly instructs urban residents’ behavior. Entering the aforementioned key words on google it brings up hundreds of books, papers, essays, articles, lectures, panel discussions etc. about the incorrect, contorted or ruined form of public space. Walking around several European or North American cities with a vigilant eye though, you can find a lot of interventions that face these tendencies creatively with direct actions: billboards turned to plant-holders, self-made zebra crossings and bike lanes, parking lots converted into picnic areas, … In this and future posts I want to give an overview about these direct actions, so called “Urban Hacks”, as a reaction to the loss of public space and show their value in terms of protecting its ideal forms.
[...]
A couple of months ago, Valentin gave a very nice introduction to Pop-Up-Urbanism and showed several examples of how residents install temporary add-ons in the city in order to reactivate distressed or vacant space and also to fulfill their needs within their urban environment. Urban Hacking goes a bit further than that and is a direct reaction to developments in the city Urban Hackers see as threatening public space. Following the book "Urban Hacking. Cultural Jamming Strategies in the Risky Spaces of Modernity", I choose the term Urban Hacking for those kind of (re)actions, but expand its definition.

Link

Johannes is in SFO an we'll have an interpervy monochrom drink-up!

When, where?

Wednesday, March 6; 9:00 PM @ Orbit Room Cafe, 1900 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94102

Join us for some discoursive intoxication!

FB Event

Once in the tenth-century Danish king of England, Canute, was told by his advisers that he was so powerful he could stop the waves if he wanted to do so. To prove them wrong, he went to the beach and commanded the waves to stop. As he predicted they didn't.

This Red Tape session seeks to reflect ways of facing the 'system' (political, economical, social, etc.) created by advanced capitalist society, which we have become so used to. Is it possible to subvert this system? Or should we allow this system to run its course, whilst we explore new possibilities, working in parallel on alternative systems? How can we help people to understand that we don't have always to comply with these systems? Are there ways of changing? How can we find alternatives? And, once more, we ask can one person make the difference?

With Bill Balaskas, Ha-Joon Chang, Johannes Grenzfurthner (monochrom). 26th February, 2013; 6pm. Performance Art Lab; Stevens Building, Royal College of Art London.

Link

Just received our copy of A Guidebook of Alternative Nows in the mail.
We contributed a piece about Soviet Unterzoegersdorf and Sierra Zulu.

A Guidebook of Alternative Nows is a collaboratively created book.
A Guidebook of Alternative Nows is a collaboratively created book.
34 visionary creative thinkers and makers contributed to this book which illuminates ways of devising more socially, economically, and ecologically just versions of now.

The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest Press, 2012
Concept: Amber Hickey
Editor: Amber Hickey
Graphic Design: Angelina Köpplin
Cover Art: Mary Tremonte
Paperback book with two alternative covers, 266 pages, Color,
17 x 24 centimeters (6.7 x 9.45 inches)

Link

Beware!


Link (for download version)

Here's how to hack the urban context with campfires, sausages, beer, and an elderly Austrian gentleman who speaks LOL.


Link (for download version)