Previously at the ICA - Events

Eva and Franco Mattes Dark Content (2015), exhibition view, Essex Flowers, New York. Photo: Kyle Knodell

Technology Now: Eva and Franco Mattes

19 Jul 2016

Pioneering net artists Eva and Franco Mattes are in conversation with artist Jesse Darling and curator Ben Vickers.

An artist duo originally from Italy, working in New York, Eva and Franco Mattes' medium is a combination of Internet, video and performance. Their work explores the ethical and moral issues arising when people interact remotely, especially through social media, creating situations where it is difficult to distinguish reality from a simulation. Of their work, writer Randall Packer has written: "Eva and Franco Mattes, enfant terribles of Net Art and now godparents of the digital natives (they set the stage for the erosion of privacy long before the emergence of social media), have been exposing all aspects of the digital life – the embarrassing, the narcissistic, the fearless, the gross, the voyeuristic, the insipid, the heartless, and the just plain stupid – revealing the underbelly of our hyper-connected lives."

Technology Now: Eva and Franco Mattes

Their new exhibition Abuse Standards Violations is currently on show at Carroll / Fletcher, London (until 27 August 2016). Comprising a new series of video installations, in this exhibition the New York-based duo address the largely anonymous labour force of content moderators that has emerged with the rise of social media.

Solo exhibition venues include Carroll/Fletcher, London; Essex Flowers, New York; Postmasters, New York; Site, Sheffield; PNCA, Portland; Plugin, Basel. Group exhibition highlights include Biennale of Sydney (2016); Whitechapel, London (2016); Minneapolis Institute of Arts (2013); Site Santa Fe (2012); Sundance Film Festival (2012); PS1, New York (2009); Performa, New York (2009, 2007); National Art Museum of China, Beijing (2008); The New Museum, New York (2005) and Manifesta 4, Frankfurt (2002). In 2001 they were among the youngest artists ever included in the Venice Biennale.

The Mattes have received grants from the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Roskilde; ICC, Tokyo, and were awarded the New York Prize 2006 from the Italian Academy at Columbia University. In 2016, they were recipients of the Creative Capital Award. They are faculty members at the MFA Fine Arts Department and the MFA Photography, Video and Related Media Department of the School of Visual Arts, New York.

Learn more about projects by the Mattes

Jesse Darling is an artist living and working. Their practice is concerned with what it means to be a sentient body operating within the structures of life today, but what that means is both politically charged and culturally determined, and JD is interested in those relative values and in the narratives that determine them. Recent solo exhibitions include The Great Near at Arcadia_Missa, London (2016), and Not Long Now, LimaZulu, London (2014). JD has published texts with Rhizome.com, The New Inquiry, DiS Magazine, Art PapersYou Are Here: Art After the Internet (Cornerhouse Press, 2014), Mass Effect: Art and the Internet in the Twenty-First Century (MIT Press, 2015) and Best British Poetry 2015 (Salt Press). 

Ben Vickers is a curator, writer, network analyst, technologist and luddite. He is currently Curator of Digital at the Serpentine Galleries, Co-Director of LIMAZULU Project Space, Co-Curator of the Berlin-based festival Transmediale 2016 and facilitator for the open-source development of unMonastery, a new civically minded social space prototyped in Matera, Italy during 2014.

When

E.g., 29-07-2021
E.g., 29-07-2021