Modern Painters

KRISTINE LARSENEVA AND FRANCO MATTESTRENDS // SNEAK PEEKS // NEWSMAKERS // PORTFOLIOPARTNERS IN ART and life since they met atage 18 in 1994, Italian artists Eva and FrancoMattes have by turns a playful and criticalrelationship to cultural institutions and massmedia, particularly the Internet. Their morethan 20-year career—during which they havestolen fragments of notable artworks,“remixed” websites, and convinced the citizensof Vienna that the city’s Karlsplatz wouldbe renamed and rededicated to the sportswearcompany Nike—also charts the evolution ofthe Internet into a corporatized entity. TheÀUVWWKUHHHSLVRGHVRIWKHLUYLGHRVHULHV ́'DUNContent” premiered at Essex Flowers inNew York last fall; another four will show,alongside two adjacent bodies of work, in an``````exhibition opening at Carroll/Fletcher inLondon on June 10. The duo spoke to ModernPainters senior editor Thea Ballard aboutthe Internet, dark and otherwise.``````THEA BALLARD: Tell me about the origin ofyour series “Dark Content.”FRANCO MATTES: It started when a videoof ours got removed from YouTube and wesent an e-mail asking for an explanation. As itturned out, it’s not software that does thisremoval. Most people think that certain contentJHWVUHPRYHGDXWRPDWLFDOO\DIWHULW·VÁDJJHGby users enough times, but it’s not like that.We did a little bit of research, and that’s howwe discovered the shady world of content``````moderators: The process is actually performedE\UHDOSHRSOH7KHVH ́KXPDQÀOWHUVμDUHSDLGto watch all the images and videos that getÁDJJHGE\HQRXJKYLHZHUVDQGWKH\GHFLGHwhether or not this material should stay or beremoved. There are a lot of content moderators,but it’s also, for many reasons, an invisiblelabor force. One, they themselves want toremain anonymous because it’s pretty horriblework to do. They spend their days in front ofa monitor watching videos of torture, killing,beheadings, pedophilia, rapes, cat killing.They follow guidelines given by their companies,but the companies themselves are anonymous,so even the moderators don’t know who they’reworking for—one of them told me, “I’m pretty``````NEWSMAKEREva and FrancoMattes in Brooklyn,2016.BLOUINARTINFO.COM JUNE/JULY 2016MODERN PAINTERS 29