[spectre] UBERMORGEN.COM: SUPERENHANCED

[Domenico Quaranta]

UBERMORGEN.COM
Superenhanced


OPENING & PERFORMANCE: Saturday, January 17, 2009 at 6.00 PM

 From January 17 to March 7, 2009
3.00 – 7.00 PM, closed on Sunday


Fabio Paris Art Gallery is proud to announce the second solo  
exhibition by the Austrian artist duo UBERMORGEN.COM, presenting the  
world preview of the project “Superenhanced”, which is dedicated to  
the pressing issue of torture. Though torture is banned almost  
everywhere, it has re-emerged under a new set of names with the  
neutral, tidy, functional language of marketing and branding.

Kidnapping is now called “extraordinary rendition”, and torture is  
“enhanced interrogation”: “an efficient way to extract valuable  
information from unwilling detainees” that uses so-called “soft”  
techniques such as the Attention Grab (the interrogator forcefully  
grabs the prisoner’s shirt front and shakes them) and the Attention  
Slap (an open-handed slap to the face); the Belly Slap (a hard open- 
handed slap to the abdomen, able to cause pain, but not internal  
injury); this then continues into “harsh techniques” like then Long  
Time Standing, with prisoners forced to stand, handcuffed, for more  
than 40 hours; the Cold Cell, where the prisoner is left to stand  
naked in a cell kept near 10 degrees Celsius; Waterboarding, a  
controlled form of drowning, and Sleep Deprivation, where they are not  
allowed to sleep for several days. These are mostly psychological  
techniques, which do not leave marks on the detainee’s body, and have  
been used for years (since the Reagan administration) in America’s  
Supermax prisons (but also in places like Kandahar, Bagram Airbase and  
Guantanamo Bay) to prepare ‘unlawful enemy combatants’ (including  
numerous children) for interrogation. The final set of methods used by  
authorities are the classic extremely brutal ones: Hanging prisoners  
by their wrists for days, beating prisoners, breaking bones,  
amputation of limbs, starving prisoners and killing prisoners.

UBERMORGEN.COM gets to grips with this sinister subject matter, but  
rather than condemning a human rights outrage that is there for all to  
see, appears to be more interested, on one hand, in exploring the  
hypocrisies of the language that renders it acceptable, and on the  
other the moral position of the spectator when exposed to ambiguous  
questions and disturbing images. The point of departure is the  
Superenhanced Generator, a web project (displayed in installation  
form) that contains a smart interrogation engine, basically capable of  
comprehending the spectator’s responses, and that generates a fake  
legal document (a foriginal), modelled on rendition orders and  
interrogation protocols.
The installation is accompanied by a series of photographic prints and  
a video which adopt the ascetic aesthetic of maximum security prisons  
representing child prisoners undergoing intimidation and torture: the  
photos are staged poses of a reality that no-one wants to believe in –  
a reality that is conveyed to the public eye as a form “collateral  
damage” in a “necessary” fight against terror. The images are nicely  
lit and professionally produced, but they are profoundly unsettling  
due to the truths that lie beneath their patina of glamour.

On the evening of the opening, the installation will be accompanied by  
a performance.

UBERMORGEN.COM (lizvlx & Hans Bernhard, www.ubermorgen.com) is an  
artist duo based in Vienna, Austria. Behind UBERMORGEN.COM we can find  
one of the most unmatchable identities – controversial and iconoclast  
– of the contemporary European techno-fine-art avant-garde. Their open  
circuit of conceptual art, drawing, software art, pixelpainting,  
computer installations, net.art, sculpture and digital activism (media  
hacking) transforms their brand into a hybrid Gesamtkunstwerk.

In February 2009, FPEditions (www.fpeditions.com) will publish the  
monograph UBERMORGEN.COM (edited by Domenico Quaranta, with  
contributions by Inke Arns and Jodi.org).

fabioparisartgallery
via Alessandro Monti 13 - 25121 Brescia - tel. 030 3756139 - Skype:  
fabioparisbs
www.fabioparisartgallery.com




---

Domenico Quaranta

mob. +39 340 2392478
email. qrndnc at yahoo.it
home. vicolo San Giorgio 18 - 25122 brescia (BS)
web. http://www.domenicoquaranta.net/

"Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid. Human beings are  
incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant. Together they are powerful  
beyond imagination." Albert Einstein