2020 - Pandemic Times
After following the development of art and culture in the context of the Internet since 1993 I am still fascinated: there seems to be no end to the sometimes surprising transformations in art and art criticism in this ever expanding field. The boundaries between media art and contemporary art, if they ever existed, are dissolving ever faster.
3D video still from Stephanie Syjuco's Spectral City (Trip down market street) (2018)
What to say about this year... It often seems like we are all just leaves drifting in the wind with no certainty where we will land. 2020 will either go into history as the lockdown year, or as the year the lockdowns began. The covid19 pandemic has turned the world upside down. So many of us have been affected badly. I find it hard to talk about work or the developments within art in this situation, yet still so much happened and continues to develop, especially it seems in the context of 'online culture'. Though art institutions have been slow to recognize the possibilities (and pittfalls) of the new networks, luckily many artists, critics and curators were not and they could easily switch off and online spaces. I feel honored to have been part of some of the events they produced. It made the pandemic and the lockdown somewhat easier to bear. Net artist Olia Lialina asked me to write a text for her exhibition HOSTED at Arebyte gallery in London. Dutch art magazine Metropolis M commissioned me to write a semi-review of INFORMATION, the legendary exhibition at the MoMA in 1970. In June I led a conversation (struggling with the Zoom interface) entitled Critical Coding with the artist-researchers Nancy Mauro-Flude and Winnie Soon for LIMA Online. Upstream Gallery in Amsterdam asked me to be the curator of their last online exhibition in September. This became Appearances, a poetic show I am quite proud of, with the artists Addie Wagenknecht, Annie Abrahams & Daniel Pinheiro, Amy Alexander, Claudia Del & Jaume Clotet, Evelina Domnitch & Dimitry Gelfand, Knowbotiq Research, Nancy Mauro-Flude, PolakVanBekkum, Stephanie Syjuco, Valentina Gal, and Winnie Soon. Also in September I joined Planet Art for GOGBOT in Enschede again, where I curated and moderated a small symposium. In between all this, and in between lockdowns, I managed to travel to Berlin this summer to see the lovely exhibition Eintritt in ein Lebewesen, curated by Tilman Baumgärtel. I want to thank all the people involved here for lifting my spirits in this tough year.
The year 2020
After following the development of art and culture in the context of the Internet since 1993 I am still fascinated: there seems to be no end to the sometimes surprising transformations in art and art criticism in this ever expanding field. The boundaries between media art and contemporary art, if they ever existed, are dissolving.
JODI - ICTI.me (2020) (Screenshot), part of We-Link, Ten Easy Pieces
Summer 2019
After following the development of art and culture in the context of the Internet since 1993 I am still fascinated: there seems to be no end to the sometimes surprising transformations in art and art criticism in this ever expanding field. The boundaries between media art and contemporary art, if they ever existed, are dissolving. Let's enjoy this moment together.
Early photo of the Open Space artist initiative in Victoria, Canada, an important hub in the history of telecommunication art.
Though I have not updated this site in a while I have still been busy. First and foremost the research project around the late Robert Adrian's The World in 24 Hours is culminating in a panel presentation and exhibition at this year's Ars Electronica Festival. On Thursday September 5th in the afternoon there will be a special focus conference on the deep history of media art, with special attention for networked projects. I will be interviewing the legendary Bill Bartlett, organizer of Interplay, the first online conference for artists in 1979, live on stage. Bill Bartlett worked from the artist initiative Open Space in Victoria, Canada. Materials from the Open Space archive relevant to The World in 24 Hours will be presented in Ars Electronica's 40 Years Lounge, an exhibition dedicated to especially networked art in light of the Ars Electronica Festival's 40 years anniversary. I am thrilled this is all coming together and thank the Stimuleringsfonds voor Creatieve Industrie for having made my research possible! Other things I have been working on have come to their conclusion. The Dutch Digital Art Canon, for which I was an advisor, for example was launched in March this year during the annual Transformation Digital Art symposium at LIMA in Amsterdam. Unfortunately I could not be there because I was in New York giving a presentation in light of Rhizome's Net Art Anthology project. My presentation resulted in The World in 24 Hours becoming part of the Net Art Anthology. The text I wrote for the impressive Net Art Anthology catalog/book also refers to Adrian's seminal work. You can order this packed book from the Rhizome website. Besides also writing I have also given a lecture in V2_'s media art for beginners course, where I discovered a new hunger to learn about all things media art and net art related. Students came from across the country! It was great to see such enthusiasm, and I thank Alex Falk and Arie Altena from V2_ for organizing this, and artist Jan Robert Leegte for his great artist presentation during the event.
Fall 2018
After following the development of art and culture in the context of the Internet since 1993 I am still fascinated: there seems to be no end to the sometimes surprising transformations in art and art criticism in this ever expanding field. The boundaries between media art and contemporary art, if they ever existed, are dissolving. Let's enjoy this moment together.
The hall of the ORF studio in Linz, a design by architect Gustav Peichl in 1972, where the original The World in 24 Hours by Robert Adrian took place. The first Ars Electronica festivals also took place in this building, namely in one of its live TV studios.
Fall 2017
After following the development of art and culture in the context of the Internet since 1993 I am still fascinated: there seems to be no end to the sometimes surprising transformations in art and art criticism in this ever expanding field. The boundaries between media art and contemporary art, if they ever existed, are dissolving. Let's enjoy this moment together.
Ars Electronica, Linz, performance shot of The World in 24 Hours (1982) by Robert Adrian X et al.
2017 has brought some new perspectives and more developments in the recognition of science and technology as major influences in art and culture. There is a growing interest in the history of art, science and technology on the one hand, while the interest for art involving new technologies keeps gaining momentum on the other. My work as advisor for Rhizome's Net Art Anthology has made me re-visit some works from the past. Getting Automatic Rain, a small work by JODI from 1995, restored brought some challenges around migration and emulation of software to the light. A much bigger challenge however was (and is) reviving one of the earliest network performances ever. Since the beginning of this year I am doing research into a possible re-enactment of The World in 24 Hours by Robert Adrian X. It is a vast research project involving interviews with all participants of the 12 nodes in the network from 1982 and an investigation of possible re-enactment strategies, involving a new generation of artists and various alternative network practices. For the latter I have given a presentation at the Dutch hackercamp SHA2017 and I am preparing a revised version of this presentation for Radical Networks in New York this October. I received the necessary and most welcome funding from the Stimuleringsfonds voor Creatieve Industrie. The project will continue well into 2018, as we may or may not realize a re-enactment at Ars Electronica next year. Given the huge difference in technological and cultural context between 1982 and 2018 this is not a given. Expect some writing from me about this topic the coming months. Besides this fascinating work I am also still acting as advisor, juror and moderator at various events. I compiled the symposium for GOGBOT 2017 and proved it is possible to find amazing female speakers for tech events. Professor Dynamics Amina Helmi from the university of Groningen, detector engineer Liz George from ESA and artist Daniela de Paulis gave interesting presentations, next to philosopher, 'denker des vaderlands', René ten Bos. More recently I moderated the Feedback symposium at West in The Hague, about media theorist Marshall McLuhan, together with artist and curator Baruch Gottlieb. I also recently started as an advisor for a wonderful new project by LIMA with the working title Dutch Digital Art Canon. More big news for next year will come up soon.