A Fake is a Fake
Web 2.0 was sold to us as a force for democracy. We were told we’d overcome the corporate giants and become the media - or at least wrangle them in.
While the watered-down fantasies that came with the rise of web 2.0 are being dissolved, a bitter consciousness remains: that communication itself, after all, is an illusion. That information, however probable it may seem, is still a fiction and that a fake, in the end, is only a fake. Anyway.
Fake is a Fake is an aggressive use of détournement by Les Liens Invisibles. They modeled several WordPress themes on websites of some of the most powerful global organizations and licensed them under the GPL. We’ve spoken truth to power for ages, and Les Liens Invisibles offers th chance to “speak with the voice of Power.”
Usurping these corporate identities not only empowers the end user, but calls into question the entire notion of communication. Les Liens Invisibles hold that:
all forms of representation, all forms of narration of the Real are based on overblown mechanisms of falsity and illusion. From the languages of art to mass communication, a representation is always only a representation, a means, a fake, nothing more.
When power tells the truth and claims it to be Natural, it needs to be denounced.
Among the fakes are modified versions of The Financial Times, The White House, Le Figaro, La Repubblica, the German Federal Chancellor website, l’Osservatore Romano (the official Vatican newspaper), the Elysee, and the WTO. Some recreations are done in homage to fakes previously executed by related groups, like 0100101110101101.org and the Yesmen. You can view the themes here.
Sign up for an account, and get faking! Or, create your own fake and collaborate in this effort.
http://www.shirky.com/herecomeseverybody/2008/04/looking-for-the-mouse.html