Eva & Franco Mattes

Since the early 1990s, Eva & Franco Mattes have been exploring the internet as both a medium and a playground, creating works that can only exist online. As pioneers of the net.art movement, they have consistently pushed the boundaries of digital expression.

Blurring the line between truth and fiction, their work lays bare the full spectrum of online existence—the embarrassing, the narcissistic, the fearless, the grotesque, the voyeuristic, the insipid, the heartless, and the downright absurd—unveiling the raw, unfiltered reality of our hyperconnected world.

During RHIZOMA 2025, Eva & Franco Mattes showcased their video installation The Bots. This internationally praised installation consists of seven video sculptures based on interviews with Facebook content moderators, individuals bound by secrecy, forbidden from speaking to the press or anyone beyond their workplace. Journalist Adrian Chen conducted these interviews, offering a rare glimpse into the hidden labour behind our digital landscapes.

Everything posted on social media is monitored, but behind the algorithms are real people sitting in offices, deciding what stays online and what gets removed. These moderators sift through an endless stream of content, from harmless images to the most disturbing and violent material. Day after day, they are exposed to the darkest corners of the internet, expected to process it all with detachment. As silent witnesses to an often grim reality, they navigate a timeline far removed from their own.

For The Bots, actors reenacted these interviews at home, filming themselves with smartphones. The videos are displayed on custom office desks identical to those found in Facebook’s Berlin moderation centre, where the interviewees once worked. To evade censorship, the footage takes on the guise of fake makeup tutorials – discussions of violence, extremism and censorship are layered between beauty tips. Like makeup covering imperfections, content moderation ‘polishes’ the internet, concealing its most unsettling realities.

RHIZOMA 2025 presented three of the seven episodes from The Bots: Greek Market (featuring Bobbi Salvör Menuez), Arab Market (featuring Jake Levy), and Spanish Market (featuring Bramble Trionfo).

For RHIZOMA, Eva & Franco Mattes also created the edition Deep Fried Cursed Cat.

The Bots (2020)
Customized OKA desk, 55” monitor, video, various cables
Greek Market, 8’ 12’’ (loop)
Arab Market, 7’16’’ (loop)
Spanish Market, 8’40” (loop)
each desk size approx. 200 x 100 x 100 cm