monochrom is an international art-technology-philosophy group (founded in 1993). Its offices are located at Museumsquartier/Vienna.

The group's members are: Johannes Grenzfurthner, Evelyn Fürlinger, Harald List, Franz Ablinger, Frank Apunkt Schneider, Daniel Fabry, Günther Friesinger.

The group works with different media and art formats and publishes the German book and magazine series monochrom.

The group's website functions as a collaborative digital art community.

Comments

"Since 1993, the monochrom members have devoted themselves to the grey zones where systems intersect: the art (market), politics, economics, pop, gaiety, vanity, good clean fanaticism, crisis, language, culture, self-content, identity, utopia, mania and despair. The technique underlying monochrom's work is that of being and working in the fields of Pop/avant-garde, theory/reflection, interventionism/politics, gaiety/lust/tragedy, (self-)configuration/mystification. The project monochrom pushes into and beyond these fields is 'networking' events, people, possibilities, material, impetus and identities." (Zdenka Badovinac, Moderna Galerija Ljubljana)

"monochrom plays off the incompatibilities of psychological and virtual codes against each other in a funny, ironic and melodramatic way." (Reinhold Grether , Telepolis)

Project examples

• Exot (1998)

A tele-robot remotely controlled via a web-interface/chat forum. The project was presented at art festivals and technology presentations.

• Soul Sale (1998)

A "spirituo-capitalist" booth where project members tried to buy the souls of passers-by for $5 per soul. A total of fifteen were purchased and registered. These souls are still being offered for sale to third parties with power of disposal. The group sees the project - beyond all philosophical discourses and argumentation seeking to prove the existence of god - in the classical sense of a market driven by supply and demand. The soul is a tradable commodity, a form of virtual capital.

• Roböxotica (1999-)

An annual festival where scientists, researchers, computer geeks and artists from all over the world build cocktail robots and discuss technological innovation, futurology and science fiction. Roböxotica is an ironic attempt to criticize techno-triumphalism and to dissect technological hypes.

• Soviet Unterzoegersdorf (2001-2002)

The fake history of the "last existing appanage republic of the USSR", Soviet Unterzoegersdorf. Created to discuss topics such as the theoretical problems of historiography, the concept of the "socialist utopia" and the political struggles of postwar Europe. The theoretical concept was transformed into an improvisational theatre/performance/LARP that lasted two days.

• Georg Paul Thomann (2002)

monochrom represented the Republic of Austria at the Sao Paulo Art Biennial, Sao Paulo (Brazil) in 2002 by creating the fictional artist Georg P. Thomann. Through the implementation of this ironic mechanism - even the catalogue includes the biography of the non-existent artist - the group solved with pure fiction the philosophical and bureaucratic dilemma usually attached to the system of representation.

• The Absent Quintessence (2002)

Feature films were drastically cut and thereby wrenched out of their genres (hardcore porn, splatter, eastern/kung fu, zombie etc.). These genre films — all of which are characterized by a certain anonymity and a mass-produced look — have been stripped of their "essential" scenes (for example, all sex scenes in the pornography, all fight scenes in the kung fu films). Thus, the material has been reduced to a bare-bones plot that had actually been conceived only as filler, but its aesthetics and stereotypical narrative patterns now make it easy to contextualize. The project tried to analyze these "re-released" shorts and to filter out interesting subtexts.

• Towers of Hanoi (2002)

Members of the group entered a bank and exchanged 50 euros to dollars, then back again to euros - and so on - until the money was gone. Afterwards the group calculated how many times you have to exchange the global amount of cash from euros to dollars until it vanishes completely.

• 452 x 157 cm^2 global durability (2002-)

Milk packages collected in many countries. The standardized format of the TetraPak offers a world-wide frame for creative variation, which becomes visible on the 9.5 by 16.5 cm front of the packaging. According to the group, the relation to pop art not only exists in an aesthetic but also in a social dimension, reminiscent of Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility."

• Blattoptera (2003-)

Artists are invited to design a gallery-space for their tribe of South American cockroaches. Each month a different international artist, or arts group, is invited to design an environment in which the cockroaches are placed, to act as audience for, and as aesthetic judges of the work.

• Brandmarker (2003-)

How well do people remember the logos of large corporations that sell consumer goods? An attempt to evaluate the actual power of commercial brands by making people draw famous logos from memory.

• Viennese Factionism: Eigenblunzn (2003)

Members of the group prepared blood sausage out of their own blood and ate it ('auto blood sausage'). The performance was accompanied by political essays about the 'autocannibalistic' tendencies of the global economy. The event also can be interpreted as a critical statement about art, art history and the art market (Viennese Actionism).

• Instant Blitz Copy Fight (2004-)

People from all over the world are asked to take flash pictures of copyright warnings in movie theaters. monochrom collects and exhibits those pictures as a copyleft/Free Culture statement.

• Udo 77 (2004)

A musical about Udo Proksch, a fascinating figure in recent Austrian history. Born to a poor family he rose to become the darling of Austrian high society before landing in jail on a life sentence for sinking a ship and its crew in order to cash in on insurance of nonexistent goods. His perfectly tuned network of sponsors, friends and political functionaries could not hush up the scandal and many of his associates joined him in his fall from grace.

• The Flower Currency (2005)

A project to explore a value exchange system, created and owned by children, to enable artists to collaborate on the creation of interdisciplinary art works.

Publications (incomplete)

• "monochrom" / magazine and yearbook series. Published in 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2004.
• "Stadt der Klage" (Michael Marrak, 1997)
• "Weg der Engel" (Michael Marrak and Agus Chuadar, 1998)
• "Who shot Immanence?" (edited together with Thomas Edlinger and Fritz Ostermayer, 2002)
• "Leutezeichnungen" (edited together with Elffriede, 2003)
• (upcoming) "Quo Vadis Logo!?" (2005)

Exhibitions and festivals (incomplete)

• The Birthday of Capitalism, Kunstverein Baden, Baden bei Wien (2005)
• Update, Künstlerhaus, Vienna / Austria (2005)
• Bildet To-Do-Stapel (12 year retrospective), Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna (2005)
• Moving Patterns Festival, Austrian Cultural Forum, New_York_City / USA (2004)
• Netznetz.net, Festival of Net-Art, Künstlerhaus, Vienna / Austria (2004)
• Grafist, Quo Vadis Logo!?, Mimar Sinan University, Istanbul / Turkey (2004)
• Roböxotica, Festival for Cocktail-Robotics, Vienna / Austria (2002, 2003, 2004)
• Old Habits Die Hard, Sparwasser HQ, Berlin / FRG (2003)
• world-information.org. Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrad / Serbia (2003)
• nicht nicht kommunizieren gilt nicht. Galerie Lothringerstraße 13, Munich / Germany (2003)
• Thanatotronics. Dead Media, Galerie Mini, Duisburg / Germany (2002)
• An attempt, Espai 13 - Psychodrome, Joan Miro Foundation, Barcelona / Spain (2002)
• The Thomann Project. Sao Paulo Art Biennial, Sao Paulo / Brazil (2002)
• Dilettanten. Forum Stadtpark, Graz / Austria - Steiermärkisches Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz / Austria - Steirischer Herbst 2002, Graz / Austria (2002)
• monochrom. kognitive Dissonanzen 10+-2. expanding realities. medien-kunst-festival, Salzburg / Austria - Kulturgelände ARGE Nonntal, Salzburg / Austria (2001)
• monochrom. no more wankelmut. Galerie Stadtpark, Krems / Austria (2001)
• world-information.org. Centre Bruxelles 2000 / Centrum Brussels 2000, België - Cinema NOVA, Brussels / Belgium - Technisches Museum, Vienna / Austria (2000)
• ars in der manege. Ars Electronica 2000. Next Sex, Linz / Austria (2000)
• Seriell Produziertes. Diagonale (Austrian Film Festival), Graz / Austria (2000)
• Junge Szene 98. Vereinigung Bildender Künstler, Wiener Secession, Vienna / Austria (1998)
• Robotronika. Public Netbase t0 Media~Space!, Institut für neue Kulturtechnologien, Vienna / Austria (1998)
• The State. FringeWare, Austin,_TX, USA (1998)

External

• monochrom