The official word is in: Gazira Babeli (perhaps the very first performance artist in Second Life) has joined Second Front as its 8th active member and as a formal replacement for >Loveless Finsbury who has since disappeared in recent days! Second Front is overjoyed with this new development as Gazira is a remarkable asset to our group's collective aim of achieving nothing short of pure excellence with regards to the conceptual and technical quality of our performances.

7UP is a series of 12 micro-performances set in the virtual world of Second Life and captured on video. In actual fact, as often happens in performance art, the video is freed from its subordinate role of mere "documentation" and becomes the real object of the artists' observations. This sits perfectly with the nature of performance art in virtual worlds, which are perceived by those who operate in them as settings for real action, and by those who merely passively observe them as a flow of moving images on a screen. The minimal nature of the action, combined with the repetition generated by the loop, makes these works into little animated paintings. It is no coincidence that the artists explicitly refer to Renaissance portals decorated with panels that tell a story. The story told by 7UP is that of two projected identities (avatars) that seem to have acquired independence: the absurd, boring and slightly vacuous life of two demigods who, when their wirepullers are away, get together to try and find a way - an entirely inhuman (or rather superhuman) way - of passing the time. They sit immobile in a cell, under a clock that measures time standing still, or retreat to a tiny desert island, where they go endlessly round the same palm tree. Or they become statues in a crypt full of Mickey Mouse skulls, or live out the American dream of life on the road, until they run up against the papier-mâché and polygon scenery... (Domenico Quaranta)