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MBCBFTWonline since 199621.01.2016 - 20.03.2016

Olia Lialina My Boyfriend Came Back From the War 1996, Website

http://www.teleportacia.org/war

My Boyfriend Came Back From the War by Olia Lialina is an early example of net art from the 1990s. It tells the story of a couple that attempts to talk about the war after the man returns from it – a story of love and alienation. Kept strictly black and white, the work unfolds its visual and linguistic poetry through the use of split-screen frames, which link to a cinematic structure while incorporating a web browser’s possibilities. Since it was made, this early example of net art has served as a source of inspiration for other artists, who continue to interpret it anew, both visually and structurally, and pursue its still-moving narrative in a variety of media.

Armin Medosch, Michael Schuberthan, Joachim SchlesingerMy Boyfriend Came

Back From the War1996, Website Copyhttp://www.heise.de/tp/kunst/war/war1.htm

The first variation on My Boyfriend Came Back From the War was made in the same year as the original, 1996, when the online magazine ’Telepolis’ copied the original in its so-called ’web space’ and made it available via the new Internet address. Olia Lialina, who also founded her own online gallery, ’Art.Teleportacia’, emphasizes that, although the HTML files of a net artwork can be copied, the original URL of a work, which simultaneously serves as its certificate of authenticity, cannot. In other words, since the Internet address is an integral part of the work, the transmission to Telepolis made the work a de facto copy, even if it is identical in functionality.

Vadim Epstein (eps)Немой парень вернулся с войны / Nemoy Paren’ Vernulsia

sVojni1998, Website Remixhttp://myboyfriendcamebackfromth.ewar.ru/warwara/

In stark contrast to the original, this early adaptation makes an almost cheerful impression, which can be ascribed above all to its colorful photographs and white background. Here the text fragments of the original work have been replaced by images and graphics of sign language. They refer ironically to the title of the work, which can be read in two ways, as either ’a mute guy’ or ’not my boyfriend’ who has come back from the war. At one point, a scene from Olia Lialina’s original appears in Epstein’s work through a click and then disappears again.

JODI MB 2001Wolfenstein 3D Game

Modificationhttp://sod.jodi.org/ewar/mb.sit

In the early 2000s, the Dutch net-art collective JODI focused on the aesthetics of computer games and produced several modifications of the genre-defining ego-shooter game ’Castle Wolfenstein 3D’. While in ’Wolfenstein’ the player fights against Nazis, in JODI’s SOD version he loses his way in abstract geometric surfaces. In 2001, the artists developed another version from elements of MBCBFTW; this version allows one to move spatially through the world of Olia Lialina and even to shoot at it.

Masha Boriskina My Boyfriend Came Back From the War2000, Paper, Gouache

The Russian artist and set designer Masha Boriskina finds the motifs for her paintings on the web. Along with ’Rhizome.org’ or ’etoys.com’, Olia Lialina’s My Boyfriend Came Back From the War appears in gouache form. Boriskina captures specific moments within constantly changing websites, thus concentrating on the design and aesthetics of the sites and their interaction with the frequently ignored browser.

Auriea Harvey & Michaël Samyn Her Boyfriend Came Back From The War

2000Interactive Flash Animation, recitalhttp://entropy8zuper.org/olia/herboyfriendcamebackfromthewar.swf

This version by the artist duo Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn translates Olia Lialina’s work into an interactive Flash animation. The version at hand features captivating dynamism, movement and newly added music and voice recordings. At the time the work was created, Flash seemed poised to replace all previous web formats and logs. Harvey and Samyn’s work thus refers directly to the constantly mutating web and shows the impact that technological developments can have on the artistic aesthetics of web-based works.

Ignacio NietoMi pololo volvió de Antuco /My Boyfriend Came

Back From the War2005, Website adaptionhttp://myboyfriendcamebackfromth.ewar.ru/antuco

The Chilean artist and curator Ignacio Nieto’s version of MBCBFTW makes reference to a tragedy that occurred in Chile in 2005 when young soldiers were negligently sent by their superiors into an exercise along the side of the Antuco volcano, where 44 of them froze to death in a snowstorm. In his adaptation, Nieto translates the original text of Lialina’s work into Spanish, showing its universality and its relevance to current political contexts.

Freya Birren (Jennifer Walshe)M.B.C.B.F.T.W. (Redux, At Rest)

2012, Video, Post-It video performancehttp://vimeo.com/44923030

The US occupation of Iraq from 2003 to 2011 forms the backdrop to this work. Using the medium of Post-It notes, a woman describes the situation after her partner’s return from the Iraq War. The artist says of the significance of the original work as an inspiration for her interpretation: "MBCBFTW is the piece of net art I’ve had the strongest compositional and emotional response to. For me, the work is a silent musical composition – with each click the windows subdivide in clean fractions, the same way that in music a whole note is broken down into a half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth etc. There are slower rhythms happening in the larger windows, while the smaller windows are active and changing; the relationship is similar to that of bass line and melody."

Mark WirblichMy Boyfriend Came Back From the War2005

T-Shirts, E-Commercehttp://www.spreadshirt.net/shop.php?op=article&ac=details&article_id=985320

In 2005, the designer Mark Wirblich created two t-shirts based on MBCBFTW. The inscription with its expanded version of the title (“… and all i got was this stupid t-shirt”) alludes to the marketing of artistic works and thus addresses the transformation and commercialization of the once-utopian Internet.

Abe Linkoln MY BOYFRIEND CAME BACK FROM THE WAR2004,

Bloghttp://myboyfriendcamebackfromthewar.blogspot.ch

In 2004, Abe Linkoln (alias Rick Silva) transformed text and images of the original work in a blog format. The individual frames became posts, to which there were and are numerous reactions. These have been collected ever since the blog was published, allowing new, curious relationships to arise: between the original text and spam messages, between past and present news topics, between commerce and personal connections.

Guthrie Lonergan Burgers (My Burger Came Back From The War)

2012, Web Application http://theageofmammals.com/burgers/

After the formal and structural similarities of this work to MBCBFTW had been noted and discussed online, Olia Lialina and Guthrie Lonergan decided to add Burgers to the list of MBCBFTW reference projects under the new title My Burger Came Back From the War. Along with the elements it shares with the original, this work elucidates shifts in the Internet and in how a young generation of artists interacts with its new possibilities.

Dragan Espenschied My Boyfriend Came Back From the War 3D2000,

VRML, VRhttp://a-blast.org/~drx/net/mbcbftw/war.wrl

My Boyfriend Came Back From the War 3D transforms the original work into three dimensions. With the help of Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML), which was developed in the 1990s to present interactive 3D graphics on the Internet, the two-dimensionality of the original is stressed, rather than attempting to achieve a spatial and realistic effect. Within a classic virtual-reality installation, the ideology of three-dimensional ’cyberspace’ and its craving for illustration and representation is called into question.

Inbal Shirin AnlenMy Place or Yours2015Website adaption

http://myplaceoryours.net

The most recent adaptation of MBCBFTW returns to a very strong orientation toward the original work – both in the design of its handwritten HTML source codes and in its formal structure. The Israeli artist constructs the story of a relationship through many details rendered in images and texts, using the question “my place or yours?” to imbue the work with sexual connotations. Two different scenarios unfold, both of them shaped by the hopelessness of a romantic relationship.

Anna RussettMy boyfriend live-tweeted the war2014

Website adaption, embeded tweetshttp://annarussett.com/myboyfriendcameback/

Anna Russett translates the original text of “MBCBFTW” into the language of today’s social networks. She collects Twitter messages whose contents correspond to the respective frames of Olia Lialina’s original work and inserts them into a newly designed frame website. The project mixes Internet communication forms and formats from two different decades, switching between dialogues and numerous overlapping monologues.

Russian artist Olia Lialina‘s „My Boyfriend Came Back From The War“ (MBCBFTW) is a key work of 1990s artistic practice on the web, marking its 20th anniversary in 2016. It has a pioneering character, as an interactive narrative and a work of net art. MBCBFTW presents two people who are trying to talk to each other about a war, after the fact.

„My Boyfriend Came Back From the War“ is a unique case and a fascinating example of a work that has inspired artists for 20 years; they cite it time and again, they focus on it or reinterpret it through remixing. Lialina has collected these works in her private archive under the title Last Real Net Art Museum. So far she has gathered 27 versions, 13 of which she has chosen for the HeK exhibition.

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Olia Lialina, My Boyfriend Came Back From The War. online since 1996 (MBCBFTW), Netscape, 1996,

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HeK (House of Electronic Arts Basel) is supported by: