The Others – Eva and Franco Mattes

“They could easily be my stolen moments, yet I want to see more”.

The Others is a slideshow including around 10,000 photographs, taken from different computers whose users were completely unaware of these being used. The images are projected with songs, as a soundtrack, that were taken from the same devices. From the technical point of view, the pictures are in actual facts not the result of a hacking act, as the artists obtained these thanks to a system error. This clarification, however, does not make the action itself less problematic, nor its topic. In the era of digital revolution, fluctuating from the individual’s wish to participate and share to the obsession towards one’s privacy control, the boundaries between public and private are more subtle and blurry than ever, as well as vulnerable and subject to a constant negotiation. Céline argued that there are only two kinds of human types, the exhibitionist and the voyeuristic one: but maybe, in the present times, there’s a new trend that mixes these two types and brings them forward, requiring more accurate reflections.

Bianca Cavuti

Eva and Franco Mattes, The Others, 2011 (allestimento presso Postmasters Gallery, New York, 2014).

©Eva and Franco Mattes 2011.