My Little Big Data is the solo exhibition that marks the return to Italy of artists Eva and Franco Mattes – also known as 0100101110101101.org – after ten years based in New York.
The installation, created with the contribution of the Italian Council, is a reflection on the insoluble link between public and private life, the concept of privacy and the invisible traces we unintentionally leave on the web every time we connect.
The video essay My Little Big Data is shown at the centre of the exhibition. This was made in collaboration with data analyst Vladan Joler who, with the consent of the artists, received all their emails exchanged over the last 13 years (over 70,000 personal emails sent and received between 2007 and 2017) and several months of browsing history.
The video collects and analyses this enormous wealth of information revealing often intimate details of the two artists’ private lives, such as political or culinary preferences, work routines, places visited and homes they have lived in. In the same way that social media, government agencies, banks and smartphone applications constantly review, extract, organise and sell all our data with the aim of influencing our behaviour, generating profit and political consensus.
In addition to the video, Personal Photographs, a large installation consisting of a cable tray network, unfolds throughout the entire space of the Careof exhibition. These usually invisible industrial infrastructures are visibly present here. Suspended from the ceiling, the cables descend to waist level, limiting visitors’ movements. Interacting with existing structures, they mirror the assimilation of the Internet into everyday life. Hidden from the human eye, dozens of private photos taken by the artists constantly circulate inside the cables. Invisible, yet constantly present images thus contribute to the formulation of what Byung-Chul Han defines as “the digital surveillance society, which has access to the collective unconscious.”*
My Little Big Data is a project promoted by The Blank Contemporary Art, winner of the third edition of the Italian Council competition (2018), created by the Directorate General for Contemporary Art and Architecture and Urban Suburbs (DGAAP) of the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities to promote Italian contemporary art in the world. The exhibition is supported by Fotomuseum Winterthur and the Athens Biennale, with the collaboration of GAMeC – Modern and Contemporary Art Gallery of Bergamo, the Italian Cultural Institute of Barcelona, Goldsmiths University in London and the New School University in New York.
Eva and Franco Mattes, both born in Brescia in 1976 currently living and working in New York, are a duo also known as 0100101110101101.org, that has been collaborating since 1995. They are considered among the leading representatives of Net Art. Their works emerge from their exceptional ability to understand and use new media. For over 20 years they have constantly produced artworks which explore and respond to our hyperconnected life styles while exposing, often with black humour, the most profound ethical and political implications. Their work has been exhibited at SFMoMA, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, the 20th Biennale of Sydney, the Whitechapel Gallery in London, Performa in New York, MoMA PS1 in New York, the New Museum in New York, Manifesta in Frankfurt and the Venice Biennale. They are recipients of the Creative Capital Award and the Walker Art Center’s Jerome Commission.
Eva e Franco Mattes. My Little Big Data, a cura di Martina Angelotti e Stefano Raimondi, 27.09.2019 al 10.11.2019
Opening 26.09.2019 – ore 18.30
images: (cover 1-3-4) Eva e Franco Mattes, «Personal Photographs», 2019, installations, dimensioni variabili, exhibition view Team Gallery, photo by Jeff McLane (2) Eva e Franco Mattes, «What Has Been Seen», 2017, gatto imbalsamato, forno a microonde, hard drive cancellato, 54 x 44 x 68 cm (5) Eva e Franco Mattes, New York, 2019, Photo by Laurel Golio
