Black Maiden (black maiden)

Founded in 1995 and run out of Germany under Avenger's editorial direction, Black Maiden is one of the rare ANSi groups that consciously cultivated a dark, art-historical aesthetic over a multi-year arc. Pack series ran as a "compendium", books, not packs, through 1996, '97, '98, '99, with bmbook22 emerging as late as 2001. The 1999 final compendium closed the books model: "as of today we will close the chapter of 'the black maiden compendium'. there won't be any more 'books'." But Black Maiden didn't dissolve. By 2000 it had pivoted to web exhibitions, bi-monthly summaries, and a kind of dormant infrastructure mode. Avenger led with the 2000 roster: Avenger, Potzkoten (ex-Poldi), Deviate, Gomorrha, Junk, Kyp, Leo, Lord Chaos, Mother, Osel, Pandur, Shine, Shiva, Smoke, Spear, Toot, Zippy; already moving toward what would become Hieroglyphics later that year. Evoke 99 saw Pandur take 1st place in the ANSi compo; Black Maiden organized Evoke 99 in Langerwehe, Germany. The aesthetic was the legacy. Where most groups chased speed or roster size, Black Maiden insisted on a posture. "textmode art belongs to textmode and not to hirez-polished-webfuck," as Avenger put it in bmbook21 — and stuck with it across half a decade. By the time Avenger's energy redirected to Hieroglyphics, Black Maiden had already proved its point about consistency.

first/last release: 1994/12 - 2001/03
years active: 1994 (1), 1995 (4), 1996 (7), 1997 (4), 1998 (3), 1999 (2), 2000 (1), 2001 (1)
(sub)packs released: 23
smallest/largest pack: bm-pack2/bmbook14
lifetime artworks: 841
lifetime lines: 52 284

average # of lines per artwork: 83
average # of artworks per pack: 38
longest serving member(s): black maiden (1995/07-2001/03)
most productive member: avenger (212)
extensions: NFO (14), ASC (69), B4 (1), ANS (495), GIF (41), JPG (72), ARJ (3), EXE (6), DIZ (3), ZIP (4), TXT (18), BRT (1), DOC (2), PCX (10), BIN (3), NOW (1), MOD (2), COM (2), INI (1), SIT (2), MEM (5), LBM (3), HTML (1), LIT (1)

links: www