"Why Doesn't Nike Want To Play with Me?"

0100101110101101.ORG

Nike starts legal action against the European art group
0100101110101101.ORG and cultural Internet platform Public Netbase.

In mid September this group started a surreal art project called Nike
Ground (www.nikeground.com), a performance built around a fake
guerrilla marketing campaign: Nike was supposedly buying streets and
squares in major world capitals, in order to rename them and insert
giant monuments of their famous logo. A hi-tech container was installed
in Vienna, supposedly the first city to host a "Nike Square", as part of
the action.On October 10th, 0100101110101101.ORG publicly claimed to be behind this
"hyper-real theatrical performance". The project questions the issues of
private appropriation of public space, the side effects of bombarding
marketing strategies and the artistic freedom to manipulate symbols of
everyday life.

On October 14th, Nike released a 30 pages injunction requesting the
immediate removal of any reference to copyrighted material, and that any
activity related to Nike cease immediately. Failure to comply with this
request would mean that Nike will claim 78,000 Euro for damages.

"Where is the Nike spirit? -- responds Franco, spokesman of
0100101110101101.ORG -- I expected to deal with sporting people, not a
bunch of boring lawyers!".

"Many artists have dealt with commercial products in the past, before
Nike even existed -- comments Eva, also from 0100101110101101.ORG --
think of Andy Warhol's Campbell Soup, for example. Contemporary art does
not have a well defined role within this society. On the contrary, it is
a field where one can make statements that are not possible in any other
context. Art has always used powerful images from the society of its
time as its subject. Nike invades our lives with products and ads but
then forbid us to use them creatively".

According to independent curator and writer Timothy Druckery, "the work
of 0100101110101101.ORG provokes questions about how corporate identity
cannot endorse itself as a proxy public sphere or as an entity immune
from the implications of its actions".

Curiously enough, the building of the "Viennese Secession", built by
Joseph Olbrich in 1898, faces the fake Nike Infobox in Karslplatz. In
huge gold letters over the entrance are the words: "To every time its
art. To every art its freedom".

CONTACTS:

0100101110101101.ORG:

Nikeground@0100101110101101.ORG

NIKEGROUND:

www.nikeground.com

info@nikeground.com