Nationality AT/CH/USA | ||
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Education University of Applied Arts Vienna, Vienna University of Economics and Business Known for Installation, Internet Art, Video, Photography, Performance Notable work Voteauction, Nazi~Line, EKMRZ-Trilogy, Generator Tetralogy, CLICKISTAN, Asylabwehramt, Superenhanced, WOPPOW Movement Media Hacking, Conceptual Art Awards ARCO Beep, Ars Electronica, IBM, Swiss Art Award | ||
UBERMORGEN.COM is a Swiss-Austrian-American artist duo founded in 1995 and consisting of lizvlx and Hans Bernhard. They live and work in Vienna, Basel and S-chanf near St. Moritz in the alpine Engadina valley in Switzerland.
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Dnl 10 truth tellers panel with jack werner h bernhard ubermorgen mediengruppe bitnik
Work
Their main body of work consists of internet art/net.art, installation, video art, photography, software art, performance and uses the convergence of digital media to produce and publish online and offline.
Their early works were media hacking projects using low-tech tools to reach very large audiences. During the work on their best known project Voteauction (2000) CNN.com called them "Maverick Austrian Businessmen".
In 2001, they started a collaboration with Christoph Schlingensief for the development and staging of a Hamlet project in Zurich: NAZI~LINE, a bigger than life fake neo-Nazi helpline and exit strategy finding agency.
In 2005 they started the EKMRZ Trilogy, a series of conceptual hacks (GWEI – Google Will Eat Itself, Amazon Noir and The Sound of eBay).
Between 2007–2011 their focus went into research-based productions (Superenhanced, WOPPOW, KRAFT Series) and Rock Art productions such as TORTURE CLASSICS and CLICKISTAN (commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art). They started to work extensively with video during this period.
Since 1999 their work has been shown in museums and galleries in Europe, America, Africa, Australia and Asia and include venues such as SFMOMA, Centre Pompidou, Konsthall Malmoe, NTT ICC Museum Tokyo, Gwangju Design Biennale, ZKM Karlsruhe, MUMOK Vienna, Ars Electronica Linz, WRO Media Art Biennale Wroclaw, MoCA Taipei, Witte de With Rotterdam, Lentos Art Museum Linz, Biennale of Sydney, ARCO Madrid and the New Museum New York.
They are currently represented by Fabio Paris Brescia, [DAM] Berlin and Carroll / Fletcher London.
Life and career
Lizvlx and Hans Bernhard are an artist duo but also a couple in private life. They are engaged and have two children, Billie-Ada (2003) and Lola Mae (2007).
Lizvlx was born in Linz (AT) and grew up in Wels, Salzburg and Elmira (Upstate New York). Hans Bernhard was born at the Yale University Hospital in New Haven (USA), grew up in New Haven and Basel (CH) and moved to Vienna (AT) to study with Prof. Peter Weibel, and later on with Prof. Lev Manovich (UCSD), Prof. Peter Lunenfeld (Art Center College of Design) Pasadena and Prof. Bazon Brock (emeritus) de:Bazon Brock (Wuppertal) and completed his studies in 1999.
Due to his excessive drug abuse and a manic episode in Cape Town 2002, Hans Bernhard was diagnosed bipolar.
Their earliest works were part of the avantgarde Net.art movement (etoy, 1994–1998, 194.152.164.137, 1996) and were exclusively shown online (World Wide Web/WWW). This work became part of the Internet art and Digital art history and is researched at universities (dissertations, thesis) and taught in (Art history).
The collaboration with both their children (Superenhanced & Spielendes Baby – Schlafendes Baby (original title)), the inclusion of Hans's mental illness and the merger of private and public life led some critics and academics to consider UBERMORGEN.COM as a Gesamtkunstwerk.
Important personal and artistic influences were early meetings with Jean Tinguely, Joseph Beuys, Daniel Spoerri and Eberhard W. Kornfeld in the Basel art scene of the 1980s and with Niki de Saint Phalle in St. Moritz, and the long-time relationship (going back to 1916 during the first world war and the purchase of a Giovanni Giacometti painting by the grand-grandfather of Hans Bernhard ) with the Giacometti family (Giovanni Giacometti, Alberto Giacometti) in the nearby mountain valleys Val Bregaglia and Engadin in the canton Grisons in Switzerland.
Network
In the last 15 years UBERMORGEN.COM was part of the global contemporary technology art scene. Some mentionable connections and collaborations from this period: Net.Artists Alexei Shulgin, Heath Bunting, Olia Lialina, Vuk Ćosić and with contemporary artists Aram Bartholl, Paolo Cirio, James Powderly and Evan Roth from Free Art and Technology Lab and Graffiti Research Lab, Franco and Eva Mattes (0100101110101101.org), IRWIN, Franz West, Janez Janša, Johannes Grenzfurthner (monochrom), Carsten Nicolai, Minerva Cuevas, The Yes Men, Zhang Peili, Jodi, Miltos Manetas, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Trevor Paglen, Douglas Rushkoff, Lev Manovich, Olga Goriunova and Nicolas Bourriaud.