Guerilla tactics

Darko Maver was a Yugoslav artist imprisoned for "anti-patriotic" activities and who subsequently died in 1999 while incarcerated.

His original artwork was destroyed by the censures, but replicas were shown in retrospective exhibitions in Slovenia and Italy.

Maver's work became a focus for much praise and celebratory articles in European art journals. Then, it was revealed that Maver had never existed.

It was an elaborate con fostered by a group calling themselves 0100101110101101.org.

It was sickening stunt that rested upon real human rights issues and pushed the boundaries of decency. In their defence, 0100101110101101.org declared it to be a ruse on the art world.

To gain access to the corridors of power, it was only essential to dupe a few critics and journalists and, what's more, not to do so through any worthy art - far from it, any old tripe will do - but through the character and history of the artist presented.

Hailing from Bologna in Italy, 0100101110101101.org claim no relationship with the infamous Luther Blissett Project who were also based there.

Although, like them, they are an unknown number of anonymous individuals who prefer to speak through a collective identity.

They specialise in using contemporary media methods and, in particular, the internet, to pursue a subversive agenda.

Their first successful cyber-guerilla action was on the Catholic church.

In December 1998, dozens of internet "commandos" organised to steal the contents of the official website of the Holy See and then proceeded to upload it to vatican.org, as opposed to the official domain name vatican.va.

It was almost an exact copy, except for inclusions of text calling for the legalisation of drugs, free love and pro-abortion comments.

Visitors were also given the opportunity to listen to Italian teenage pop band 883 as well as asking for absolution directly from the Holy See via email.

Amazingly, it took a whole year before the Vatican realised that a subversive doppelganger site existed.

In a public statement, 0100101110101101.org said: "We have stolen the most precious thing in the economy of information - audience. In one year of the Silent Coup, we stole from the Vatican State 200,000 visitors and 50,000 hours of audience.

"The more they rely on media, the more they are vulnerable."

In 2001, together with programming collective epidemiC, they created the "friendly computer virus biennale.py that contained a hidden message within its code.

The stunt was funded by money from the International Art Biennale of Venice, where it was publicly released. It was an art festival that was sponsored, among others, by Microsoft.

The virus code was also printed on 1,500 T-shirts, theoretically leaving the wearers liable for legal action as they, too, were spreading the virus.

A while later in 2003, they switched their attention to Vienna in Austria and challenged the creeping privatisation of public areas.

Pretending to be the Nike corporation, they propagated the plan to buy Karlsplatz, one of Vienna's main squares, in order to rename it Nikeplatz.

This was, they claimed, part of a commercial plan to be replicated in all European cities.

Assembling a believable information shop - the Nike Infobox - they announced their wish to erect a 36 metre-long statue of the famous Nike swoosh logo in the centre of the square.

It was an elaborate hoax, complete with thousands of colour brochures delivered free to local residents and an information hotline.

Incensed local residents contacted the local press in their hundreds.

Nike Austria was unimpressed and released a press statement which stated: "These actions have gone beyond a joke. This is not just a prank, it's a breach of our copyright and therefore Nike will take legal action against the instigators of this phoney campaign."

The provocateurs responded cheekily. "Where is the Nike spirit? We expected to deal with sporting people, not a bunch of boring lawyers."

An integral part of the 0100101110101101.org approach to the Nikeplatz project was a beautifully crafted website, nikeground.com.

A completely credible construction, written in marketing jargon, it aimed to fool visitors through its professional appeal.

In the US, the Yes Men have been parodying corporate websites for a number of years.

As well as successfully mimicking George W Bush and the World Trade Organisation, their biggest publicity stunt was announcing to the world, in December 2004, that Dow Chemical would fully compensate the 120,000 victims of the 1984 Bhopal disaster.

Dow has always shirked from fully accepting responsibility for the destruction wrought by its Indian operation and would now, apparently, donate $12bn to help those injured and to clean up the still contaminated site.

Seduced by the Yes Men's phoney DowEthics.com website, the BBC broke the news first, then, before Dow could retract the false story two hours later, it spread around the world, causing $2bn to be wiped off their share value on the German stock exchange.

In a bid to increase website cloning among others, the Yes Men now have software, called Reamweaver, which "cultural jammers" can download for free from their website.

One reason for such activism is the media revolution that has taken place over last 10 years.

Although the bastions of the professional media industry haven't been completely over-run, the foundations have certainly been shaken.

Stunts such as perpetrated by 0100101110101101.org prove that it is possible, with relative ease, to mimic corporations and fool the press in the process.

But, through attacking the power structures and highlighting corporate irresponsibility, comes the danger of activists showing equal irresponsibility in their methods.

How far can one go in duping the public in the name of a good cause? Did the angry residents of Vienna mind being wound-up when they found the joke was really on Nike?

Is it ethically sound to create a fictional story of an artist being incarcerated and dying in prison when many real artists are imprisoned in different parts of the world?

Did the victims of the Bhopal disaster laugh when the compensation ruse of the Yes Men revealed itself as an attack on the intransigence of Dow Chemical?

Social change is a hard slog and guerilla art tactics are no substitute for this, but they add colour and playfulness to a mostly serious struggle and, compared to imperialism in Iraq, at least nobody dies as a consequence of these actions.

MICHAEL K