In collaboration with sociologist Andrea Natella, who initiated the project, artists Eva & Franco Mattes launched the experimental media campaign “Ever Dream This Man?”. The project involved distributing hundreds of flyers across various US cities, including New York, Memphis, Nashville, Austin, New Orleans, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, linking to the website www.thisman.org. The campaign quickly went viral, and the figure of “This Man” began to spread exponentially, becoming a modern myth.
This Man appeared in a wide range of media, including music videos (such as Akatsuki Records’ “Good Nightmare”), K-pop band Dreamcatcher, and SEVENTEEN; podcasts; video games (e.g., the MMORPG “Rift” and “AI: The Somnium Files,” 2019); comic books (e.g., Dylan Dog n.355, 2016, Weekly Shōnen Magazine, 2018); and TV series and films (e.g., South Korean Lucid Dream, 2017; The X-Files episode “Plus One”, 2018; Stories to Stay Awake, 2021; Canadian Stat, 2024). The character also appeared in countless parodies, including Comedy Central sketches. In 2023, This Man was even the inspiration for the film Dream Scenario, starring Nicolas Cage.
The “This Man” project is a striking example of how Eva & Franco Mattes used the internet and mass media to create an entirely fabricated cultural phenomenon. The campaign centered around a mysterious figure whose image was disseminated across multiple platforms, including websites, flyers, and social media, creating a sense of intrigue and ambiguity. This ambiguity allowed the character of This Man to function as a modern myth, not rooted in any traditional narrative or identity but shaped by public interaction and media appropriation.
The viral nature of the campaign demonstrated how media and collective imagination can transform a fictional character into a cultural icon. By strategically distributing the flyers and linking them to a website, the Mattes blurred the line between art, marketing, and urban legend, demonstrating how easily a fabricated narrative can spread and take on a life of its own in the digital age. The project also raised questions about the nature of authorship and ownership in a world where images and narratives can be appropriated, remixed, and redistributed by anyone.
By using a character that existed only in the digital and media spaces, “This Man” explored themes of collective memory, the creation of myths, and the power of mass media in shaping reality. The proliferation of This Man across music videos, TV shows, video games, and other media highlighted how contemporary culture often embraces and amplifies the spread of urban myths and viral phenomena, sometimes without questioning their origins. In doing so, the Mattes questioned the role of the artist in the digital age, suggesting that in a world of endless replication, the boundaries between reality and fiction are increasingly difficult to discern.
