HNI Rotterdam/Li-Ma Amsterdam, March 21-22, 2024
Transformation Digital Art 2024 is LI-MA’s eighth annual international symposium on the preservation of digital art. This year it takes place over two days, at two different locations: on Thursday 21 March the symposium will be hosted by Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam and on Friday 22 March it will take place at LI-MA, Amsterdam (LAB111).
Transformation Digital Art 2024 aims to show and discuss strategies for taking care of digital art for and by artists and institutions, archivists, curators, conservators and scholars. The focus of this year’s edition is on Legacies. It celebrates the legacy of renowned media artists who over the years have influenced the creative discourse by questioning conventions within and beyond their disciplines, and it brings them in critical dialogue with a younger generation.
Fundamental to much of the focus on Legacies is the issue of care, which Jacqueline Milner (La Trobe University, Melbourne) unpacks in terms of feminist care ethics, political theory and ethics in her opening lecture. The closing panel addresses care as a community and new platforms for knowledge sharing, including Isabelle Maund and Ugo Pecoraio, Florian van Zandwijk, and Constant Dullaart. Another two sessions explore how to sustain care for two iconic large media installations: The Senster (1968–70) by Edward Ihnatowicz and Ideophone I (1970) by Dick Raaijmakers. Elsewhere, panels discuss presentation and preservation strategies for net artworks: Dragan Espenschied on emulation in exhibiting Olia Lialina’s work, Claudia Roeck and Mauricio van der Maesen de Sombreff on JODI’s wwwwwwwww.jodi.org (1995) and Jan Robert Leegte’s Scrollbar Composition (2000), and Martina Haidvogel on the participatory web-based artwork Learning To Love You More (LTLYM) (2002-09) by Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July. Elsewhere, Philippe Bettinelli (Centre Pompidou) addresses the unique challenges faced by museums acquiring NFTs. Other participants and topics can be found in the full programme: https://vs.li-ma.nl/tda2024.
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Day 1 — Thursday March 21st at Het Nieuwe Instituut Rotterdam
Jacqueline Milner (professor of visual arts, Latrobe University Melbourne Australia) – Care Ethics and Art
Janilda Bartolomeu (artist) – Thoughts on the Life and Death of My Legacy
Anna Olszewska (professor, AGH Kraków) – Re:Senster: Reactivation of the Edward Ihnatowicz Cybernetic Sculpture
Sanneke Huisman (curator, LI-MA) and Klaas Kuitenbrouwer (researcher, Nieuwe Instituut) – REBOOT: Pioneering Digital Art
The Legacy of Ideophone I. With Kees Tazelaar (the Institute of Sonology at the Royal Conservatoire, The Hague), Bram Vreven (artist) and Suzanne Visser (Kunstmuseum Den Haag).
To Emulate or Not?, or How to Present and Preserve Net Art. With Dragan Espenschied (preservation director, Rhizome) on using emulation to present Olia Lialina’s work, Claudia Roeck (time-based media art conservator, LI-MA, HEK) and Mauricio van der Maesen de Sombreff (digital artist / freelance engineer, LI-MA) on JODI’s wwwwwwwww.jodi.org (1995) and Jan Robert Leegte’s Scrollbar Composition (2000), and Martina Haidvogl (media conservator, lecturer, HKB) on the participatory web-based artwork Learning To Love You More (LTLYM) (2002-09) by Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July
How to Keep the Digital Art Canon Alive: Where to Go From Here?
Tours of REBOOT. Pioneering Digital Art exhibition.
Day 2 – Friday 22 March at LI-MA, Amsterdam
Cornelia Sollfrank (artist & researcher, Zurich University of the Arts) and Lozana Rossenova (digital designer and researcher) – Hacking Memory Institutions: Old Boys Network Archive as a Prototype
Ulrike Hanstein (researcher & lecturer at Hochschule für Musik und Theater Leipzig) – Caring for the Unique and the Vernacular: VALIE EXPORT’s Archive
Rosa Menkman (artist) & Karen Archey (curator, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam) – Conversation on Conservation: A Vernacular of File Formats
Re-Presentation and (Performing) the Archive. Moderated by Annet Dekker (curator & researcher, University of Amsterdam), with Gabriella Giannachi (professor, University of Exeter) on works by Marina Abramović, Lynn Hershman Leeson, and Blast Theory; Anik Fournier (archivist and researcher, If I Can’t Dance…), David Gauthier (artist and theorist) and artist Martine Neddam on the legacy of Neddam’s Mouchette.org (1996-ongoing); and Adam Lockhart (lecturer, DJCAD, University of Dundee) on Charlie Hooker and Eduardo Paolozzi
Preserving Interactive LaserDiscs: An Introduction to RF Digitisation. With time-based media conservators Morgane Stricot, Matthieu Vlaminck (both at ZKM) and Ralph Michel
New Platforms for Art, Knowledge Exchange and Community Building. Moderated by Geert Lovink (researcher & lecturer, Institute of Network Cultures).
–With Philippe Bettinelli (new media curator, Centre Pompidou) – From the Blockchain to the Museum: A Case Study in Acquiring, Exhibiting and Preserving NFTs.
–New Technologies, New Friends? With Isabelle Maund (education, mediation & communication, HEK) and Ugo Pecoraio (head of communications, HEK) on Friends of HEK; Constant Dullaart (artist & professor, AdBK Nuremberg) on Common Garden; and Florian van Zandwijk (researcher & designer) on LI-MA: Living Media Art.