Eva e Franco Mattes • My Little Big Data
Curated by
Martina Angelotti and Stefano Raimondi
27.09.2019 - 10.11.2019
Opening: 26.09.2019, h 18.30
Careof and The Blank present My Little Big Data, a solo show which brings artists Eva and Franco Mattes (also known as 0100101110101101.org) back to Italy after ten years in New York City.
The installation is a reflection on the indissoluble link between public and private life, privacy, and the invisible traces that we unconsciously leave on the web each time we connect.
The video essay My Little Big Data is screened at the center of the exhibition. It was made in collaboration with data analyst Vladan Joler, whom the artists willingly provided with all their emails from the past 13 years (over 70,000 personal emails sent and received between 2007 and 2017) and various months of browsing history.
The video gathers and analyzes this huge collection of information which reveals often personal details from the artists’ private life, such as their political or food preferences, their work routine, the places they visited, or the houses they lived in.
In the very same way, our own data is constantly being analyzed, extracted, classified, and sold by social media, government agencies, bank institutions, and smartphone apps, with the purpose of influencing our behaviors to generate profits and political consent.
In addition to the video, Personal Photographs, a large installation made of a network of cable trays, unravels throughout Careof’s exhibition space. Here, these usually invisible industrial structures are openly and visibly present. Hanging from the ceiling, sometimes as low as the public’s waist, they hinder the visitors’ movements. Their interaction with existing structures mirrors the assimilation of the Internet into everyday life.
The cables transmit a constant flow of dozens of private pictures shot by the artists, hidden from view. The invisible but always present images participate in the definition of what Byung-Chul Han calls “the digital surveillance society, which has access to the collective unconscious” (In the Swarm, The MIT Press, 2017).
The project is accompanied by a catalog published by The Blank Editions, with contributions of Martina Angelotti, Cory Arcangel, Vladan Joler, Omar Kholeif, and Stefano Raimondi.
BIOGRAPHY
Eva and Franco Mattes (Brescia 1976, live and work in New York City) have been collaborating as a duo, also known as 0100101110101101.org, since 1995. They are considered major figures of net art. Their works originate from a strong ability to understand and use new media. For over 20 years, they have been creating works which answer and dissect our hyperconnected life, exposing, often with dark humor, its deepest ethical and political implications. Their work has been shown at SFMoMA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; 20th Biennale of Sydney; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Performa, New York; MoMA PS1, New York; New Museum, New York; Manifesta, Frankfurt; and Biennale di Venezia. They have been awarded the Creative Capital Award and Jerome Commission by the Walker Art Center.
Partner
My Little Big Data is a project promoted by The Blank Contemporary Art, winner of the third edition of Italian Council (2018), a contest created by the Direzione Generale Arte e Architettura contemporanee e Periferie urbane (DGAAP) of the Ministry of Culture, to promote Italian contemporary art in the world. With the support of Fotomuseum Winterthur and Athens Biennale, and in collaboration with GAMeC – Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo; Italian Cultural Institute, Barcelona; Goldsmiths University, London; New School University, New York.