Genoa, 2001-07-20, 17:27h

The fork in time is set during the Genoa anti-globalization protests of July 2001, remembered both as a highpoint of the global anti-globalization movement and for the human rights violations committed against demonstrators. At 17:27h on July 20, activist Carlo Giuliani was shot dead at the G8 summit protests. UBERMORGEN treats that second as the one fixed point in an otherwise unstable universe: the singularity around which every alternate timeline pivots.

'Everything has happened, and nothing has happened... The only absolute, the one irrefutable event, is the shooting of Carlo Giuliani. This singularity is the axis around which all alternate realities pivot.'

In the realm of UBERMORGEN, there is no linearity, no simultaneous occurrences, no rankings, no priorities. Timelines aren't separate time axes like in Back to the Future. There are no decisions to be made. All events are both existing and non-existent, converging into a singular, chaotic reality.

Alternative realities and alternate timelines blur into a seamless web where every potential outcome and its negation coexist in a state of perpetual flux. Past, present, and future collapse into a single point, rendering traditional concepts of time and causality obsolete. Each alternate reality branches from the singularity of Carlo's shooting, yet stays forever tethered to it. The website itself becomes a living entity, producing and evolving over time, mirroring the fluid and ever-changing nature of these alternate realities.

Piracy, twice over

UBERMORGEN's practice has long investigated piracy as a form of collaborative, technological resistance. In 2010 the team created Woppow: Somali Pirate Fashion, reframing Somali pirates as folk heroes and offering a counter-perspective to the prevailing global-corporate narrative. The Silver Singularity continues that line: North Korean 'Lazarus' state-sponsored crypto-pirates, Houthi rebels hijacking vessels in the Red Sea, and other present, historical, or invented 'acts of state-sponsored piracy' intersect here with newly resurrected ideals of anti-globalization, hijacking methodologies and geographies to imagine new distributions of resources.

Happy Dystopia → Radical Universalism

The Silver Singularity (2024) is the closing chapter of UBERMORGEN's 'Happy Dystopia' cycle (2020–2024), and the launching platform for the team's next cycle, 'Radical Universalism' (2025–2030). Both are staged inside what UBERMORGEN calls our current Neo-Biedermeier age, an aesthetics of comfort and retreat that collides, agonizingly, with the late-stage-capitalist and historical-sci-fi material the work hijacks. As the artists put it: the past appears evident in front of us, but the future is invisible behind us. Different times pass, yet the places stay.