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<div><img src="cid:f062408b6d9fabcb79d3e@[172.20.10.2].1.0">Eva &
Franco Mattes,<i> BEFNOED</i>, 2014-. Two videos, two screens,
custom steel frame, various cables.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>With humour and irreverence,<b> Eva & Franco Mattes</b>
dissect, test, and redefine the boundaries of art and the Internet.
Since the mid-1990s, the artistic duo has probed and engaged with the
way contemporary societies have shaped the networked world and,
perhaps more importantly, how it has shaped us (people and social
relations). Further, their work contains the aliveness of the Web:
masses of anonymous online users copy and edit online images, texts,
and videos, and then channel them back into the Internet in what could
be called a new Web folklore; such aliveness of both practices and
content fuels the artists' work and lends it a critical proximity to
the materials and subject matter they explore.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Eva & Franco Mattes's work is overtly political, engaging
with issues like content moderation, practices such as "life
sharing," and our feelings and reactions as we watch and share.<br>
</div>
<div>This exhibition includes works that engage with Internet content
such as<i> Ceiling Cat</i> (2016), a sculpture based on the popular
LOLcat meme of a cat peeking through a hole in a ceiling. The meme is
usually accompanied by a caption: "Ceiling cat is watching you..."
In the artists' words,<i> Ceiling Cat</i> is like the Internet
itself: "cute and scary at the same time"-a tension at stake in
this and other works in the exhibition. More scary than funny,
perhaps, is<i> Dark Content</i> (2015) a work based on more than a
hundred interviews the artists conducted with anonymous Internet
content moderators. Based on real testimony,<i> Dark Content</i>
consists of a series of video installations in which
computer-generated avatars recount the often-dramatic stories of
Internet content moderators.<br>
</div>
<div><i>Personal Photographs</i> (2019) renders concrete what we often
assume to be immaterial: data. In this case, the information, which
passes quite literally from the second to the third floor of the Phi
Foundation, is all the photographs the artists took in January 2012.
In this work, Eva & Franco Mattes continue their "life sharing"
tradition-except that audiences do not encounter any of the artists'
239 images. What they do encounter, instead, is an array of modular
units of cable trays and wires, which snake and meander throughout the
exhibit.<br>
</div>
<div>The exhibition also features two works that examine feelings and
reactions relating to what we do online.<i> My Generation</i> (2010)
consists of a series of webcam videos of videogame players
experiencing crises and violent outbursts as they play. The video
plays on an old computer, which itself appears to have been smashed up
by some frustrated young gamer.<i> Emily's Video</i> (2012) presents
20 minutes of viewers' reactions to a video that we cannot see but
which seems as though it must be quite shocking. To create the piece,
the artists posted an online call soliciting volunteers to watch a
horrible video, which the artists had found on the Dark Net. A woman
named Emily then visited the participants in their homes and showed
each of them the mysterious video while recording their reactions with
a webcam.<br>
</div>
<div>Also inspired by a LOLcat meme is<i> What Has Been Seen</i>
(2017), wherein a taxidermied cat sits atop a microwave that contains
an erased hard drive. The work asks: can data really be deleted? From
our hard drives? From our memories? The axiomatic adage "what has
been seen, cannot be unseen," which appears frequently on the
Internet, commonly relates to viewers' reactions to disturbing
content and, more precisely, to a mental image that a user cannot
efface after having witnessed a startling or shocking video or
photograph. The title<i> What Has Been Seen</i> traces a link between
this work and others in the exhibition in which seeing, being seen,
and reacting to what one sees comprises a constant negotiation. The
works of Eva & Franco Mattes presented here invite us into this
negotiation and occasion us to reflect on and respond to our
contemporary networked condition.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><b>Eva & Franco Mattes</b> (b. 1976, Italy) live and work in
New York. Their work has been shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art,
Chicago; the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; the 20th Biennale of Sydney;
Whitechapel Gallery, London; Performa, New York; MoMA PS1, New York;
the New Museum, New York; Manifesta, Frankfurt; and the Venice
Biennale. Their work<i> Ceiling Cat</i> was recently acquired for the
collection of SFMOMA, San Francisco.</div>
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