Two invited experts, Christiane Paul (Pt.I) and Michael Connor (Pt.II), will shed their light on the work and reflect on the past, present and future of making, presenting and curating work online.

Rafaël Rozendaal

Rafaël Rozendaal (1980) is a Dutch-Brazilian artist who currently lives in New York. His artistic practice comprises websites, installations, prints and writing and is as innovative as it is rooted in art history. His work takes shape through a range of transformations – from movement into abstraction, from virtual into physical space, and from website to print – with all of them informing each other. Open access to his websites is of great importance to him. Collectors and collections must, once purchased, keep the work online and publicly accessible. The way in which Rozendaal uses the internet in its work goes beyond the browser. The internet is his canvas, but he also brings the aesthetics of the internet to the physical and poetic space in the form of carpets, haikus and installations.

Christiane Paul

Christiane Paul is Chief Curator / Director of the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center and Professor in the School of Media Studies at The New School, as well as Adjunct Curator of Digital Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Paul is the recipient of the Thoma Foundation's 2016 Arts Writing Award in Digital Art. At the Whitney Museum she curated multiple exhibitions and is responsible for artport, the museum’s portal to Internet art. Other curatorial work includes The Question of Intelligence (Kellen Gallery, The New School, NYC, 2020). Little Sister (is watching you, too) (Pratt Manhattan Gallery, NYC, 2015); and What Lies Beneath (Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, 2015).

Cultural Matter: Rafaël Rozendaal

Rafaël Rozendaal is an artist who works with the materiality of the Internet. Many of his artworks are at home on the web, and deal with the context that this specific environment offers. Since 2000, Rozendaal has created dozens of generative websites, characterized by an abstract and colorful visual language. This online edition of Cultural Matter 2019-20, will present a selection of ten websites by Rozendaal that gives a broad overview of his online practice and demonstrates his interest in art history, geometric abstraction and animation. With shapes that are reminiscent of Kazimir Malevich's early abstract experiments and animations that bring to mind Suprematist compositions in motion, some of the websites seem indebted to the early experiments with abstraction of the Russian avant-garde. A number of websites reflect the tension between the manifestation of digital and physical reality, or contain a pronounced degree of suppressed emotion: a work like deepsadness.com seems to be about endlessness and loss.

Cultural Matter

Cultural Matter is a series of exhibitions and events that provide a platform for the international discussion of digital art and highlights the enduring expressive power of digital artworks: works in which art and technology and the past and the future come together in a way that is as logical as it is groundbreaking.

Also part of this series: JODI, Jonas Lund, Martine Neddam, Thomson & Graighead, Amalia Ulman

Curated by: Sanneke Huisman and Jan Robert Leegte.

Exhibition

May 6 - June 27, 2020

24/7 ONLINE

Design by Lisa Arkhangelskaya

This programme is supported by the AFK (Amsterdam Fund for the Arts) and Stichting Niemeijer Fonds.

The history of fake identities is tightly interwoven with the rise of the internet - the free and open space where you could be anyone you wanted to be. What role did - and do - artists play in this? How do they develop and manifest characters online? Early net artist Martine Neddam has been creating online fake personas that work with public feedback since 1996, far before the establishment of social media. Mouchette, David Still, Xiao Qian are all characters that she created anonymously. This edition of Cultural Matter 2019-20, the audience will get to know the online curator Madja Edelstein-Gomez. The work of Neddam and Edelstein-Gomez will act as a starting point for further reflection on online identity and user feedback - and will be placed in an art historical and socio-political context.

Madja Edelstein-Gomez

Madja Edelstein-Gomez (1960, Montevideo, Uruguay) is an independent curator who has curated several large thematic exhibitions (Bangalore, Buenos Aires, Prague, Tbilisi, Toronto). Edelstein-Gomez currently lives in Kuala Lumpur and Paris. She is also an activist working with several NGOs. Edelstein-Gomez created a manifesto and a group exhibition that revolves around the Recombinant, a concept where artificial intelligence and artists meet. Madja Edelstein-Gomez is the collaborative creation of Martine Neddam, Emmanuel Guez and Zombectro.

Martine Neddam

Martine Neddam is an artist, researcher and teaches at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. She uses language as raw material for her art, and many of her works center on the phenomena of speech acts, approaches to communication as well as to language and writing in public space. She has been working with virtual characters since 1996, the first and most famous one being Mouchette, a fictive thirteen-year-old that has meanwhile acquired cult status. Neddam’s virtual personae function as communications tools such that they have already facilitated the exchange between human beings via the medium of the artistic figure, and thereby anticipated the functionality of social media.

Diana McCarty

Independent media producer and feminist media activist Diana McCarty is a founding editor of reboot.fm, the award winning free artists’ radio in Berlin; a co-founder of the radio networks Radia Network (radia.fm) and 24/3 FM Radio Network Berlin; and of the FACES (faces-I) online community for women, among other initiatives. She co-initiated the exhibition Nervous Systems: Quantified Life and the Social Question, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, 2016, Berlin, and actively collaborates with the experimental media project Luta ca caba inda. As a cyberpunk in the 1990s, she was active in independent internet culture with nettime, the MetaForum conference series, and different hacking spaces. Her work revolves around art, gender, politics, radical feminism, technology, and media. McCarty is a BAK Fellow 2019/2020.

Cultural Matter

Cultural Matter is a series of exhibitions and events that provide a platform for the international discussion of digital art and aims to develop new strategies for the presentation and preservation of these artworks.

Also part of the Cultural Matter series: JODI, Jonas Lund, Rafaël Rozendaal, Amalia Ulman, Thomson & Craighead.

Curated by: Sanneke Huisman and Jan Robert Leegte.

The history of fake identities is tightly interwoven with the rise of the internet - the free and open space where you could be anyone you wanted to be. What role did - and do - artists play in this? How do they develop and manifest characters online? Early net artist Martine Neddam has been creating online fake personas that work with public feedback since 1996, far before the establishment of social media. Mouchette, David Still, Xiao Qian are all characters that she created anonymously. This edition of Cultural Matter 2019-20, the audience will get to know the online curator Madja Edelstein-Gomez. The work of Neddam and Edelstein-Gomez will act as a starting point for further reflection on online identity and user feedback - and will be placed in an art historical and socio-political context.

Madja Edelstein-Gomez

Madja Edelstein-Gomez (1960, Montevideo, Uruguay) is an independent curator who has curated several large thematic exhibitions (Bangalore, Buenos Aires, Prague, Tbilisi, Toronto). Edelstein-Gomez currently lives in Kuala Lumpur and Paris. She is also an activist working with several NGOs. Edelstein-Gomez created a manifesto and a group exhibition that revolves around the Recombinant, a concept where artificial intelligence and artists meet. Madja Edelstein-Gomez is the collaborative creation of Martine Neddam, Emmanuel Guez and Zombectro.

Martine Neddam

Martine Neddam is an artist, researcher and teaches at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. She uses language as raw material for her art, and many of her works center on the phenomena of speech acts, approaches to communication as well as to language and writing in public space. She has been working with virtual characters since 1996, the first and most famous one being Mouchette, a fictive thirteen-year-old that has meanwhile acquired cult status. Neddam’s virtual personae function as communications tools such that they have already facilitated the exchange between human beings via the medium of the artistic figure, and thereby anticipated the functionality of social media.

Cultural Matter

Cultural Matter is a series of exhibitions and events that provide a platform for the international discussion of digital art and aims to develop new strategies for the presentation and preservation of these artworks.

Also part of the Cultural Matter series: JODI, Jonas Lund, Rafaël Rozendaal, Amalia Ulman, Thomson & Craighead.

Curated by: Sanneke Huisman and Jan Robert Leegte.

More information:

http://www.li-ma.nl/lima/cm2

Event

Cultural Matter: Martine Neddam in conversation with Elvia Wilk (Pt.I)

Wednesday February 19, 8.00 PM

7,50 / 5 / Free with Cineville

TICKETS

Facebook event

Exhibition

February 19 - April 5, 2020

Every day from 17 - 23

LIMA (in the basement of LAB111)

Arie Biemondstraat 111, Amsterdam

Entrance is free

Design by Pablo Bardinet

This programme is supported by the AFK (Amsterdam Fund for the Arts) and Stichting Niemeijer Fonds.

Cultural Matter: Jan Robert Leegte on the Performing Machine by LIMA

This conversation between Dutch artist duo JODI and art historian Sakrowski was recorded on the 20th of November 2019 at LIMA at the opening event of Cultural Matter:JODI.

Cultural Matter:JODI

Max Payne Cheats Only (2004) is a double projection video consisting of video game ‘cheats’: alterations to the behavior of a video game, often built in by the original programmers to help players who have reached an impasse. JODI compiled cheats from the New York vigilante third person shooter game Max Payne. JODI: ‘We wanted to do something that was non-aesthetically ours. No scary black blobs on jumping white backgrounds, but trying to achieve the impossible - an abstraction within the aesthetic of a game which is already set.’ The work is a selection of 140 hours of game recordings, a process which starts as an endurance performance and ends in a machinima underground art film. In the exhibition and lecture programme Cultural Matter, the work will be presented and discussed.

JODI

JODI is a duo consisting of Joan Heemskerk (1968, NL) and Dirk Paesmans (1965, BE). The two artists, with a background in video and photography, turned their attention to the web in the 1990s, and have created some of the most subversive Internet artworks since. In line with video art pioneers such as Nam June Paik and Steina and Woody Vasulka, they subject their medium to a critical analysis and dismantle its structures. Their work uses the widest possible variety of media and techniques, from installations, software and websites to performances and exhibitions. Their pioneering website wwwwwwwww.jodi.org (1995) is a puzzling experience: a well-choreographed chaos. In a pioneering, medium-specific way, they deconstruct and analyze the languages of new media: from visual aesthetics to interface elements, from code to breaking code. They challenge the relationship between technology and users by subverting our expectations about the functionalities and conventions of the systems that we depend upon every day.

Cultural Matter

Cultural Matter is a series of exhibitions and events that provide a platform for the international discussion on the position and intricacies of digital art. Leading artworks are the starting point for an exhibition and an additional public programme in which local and international experts will analyse the works in an art historical and material context.

Also part of the Cultural Matter series: JODI, Jonas Lund, Martine Neddam, Thomson & Craighead, Amalia Ulman.

Curated by: Sanneke Huisman and Jan Robert Leegte.

Exhibition

November 20, 2019 - January 8, 2020

Every day from 12 - 22

LIMA (in the basement of LAB111)

Arie Biemondstraat 111, Amsterdam

Entrance is free

Can contemporary art - and the production thereof - be optimized and automated? In 2013, the artist Jonas Lund made a solo exhibition based on this simple yet critical and challenging question. The Fear Of Missing Out, held at MAMA, Rotterdam, would become a landmark exhibition in which the algorithm played a leading role, a show that was of great influence on his later work. The works produced for The Fear Of Missing Out were not the direct result of Lund’s labour and ideas, but made by a computer algorithm written by him. By analysing and categorising a wide range of artworks by the most successful contemporary artists, instructions were generated that gave step by step explanations on how to make the most successful works of art. Lund then made the work following these instructions. This critical approach is reminiscent of Institutional Critique, with artists such as Hans Haacke as its leading figures. Lund’s play with the optimisation of the art market also echoes the approach of artists by the likes of Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst.

The first edition of Cultural Matter 2019-20, will revisit the exhibition The Fear Of Missing Out. Lund will create a site specific presentation of several pieces from this exhibition. Cramer Florian (Pt.I) and Gijs van Oenen (Pt.II) will shed their light on the work and its cultural and material implications.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Jonas Lund (1984) creates works that critically reflect on contemporary networked systems and power structures of control within the art world. His artistic practice involves creating systems and setting up parameters that oftentimes require engagement from the viewer. This results in game-like artworks where tasks are executed according to algorithms or a set of rules. Through his works, Lund investigates the latest issues generated by the increasing digitalisation of contemporary society like authorship, participation and authority. At the same time, he questions the mechanisms of the art world; he challenges the production process, authoritative power and art market practices. Lund earned a MA at Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam (2013) and a BFA at Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam (2009).

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Philospher Gijs van Oenen is associate professor in practical philosophy at Erasmus School of Philosophy. Van Oenen studied Political Science at the University of Amsterdam and received his PhD from the University of Amsterdam with a dissertation on legal philosophy. His research focuses on political theory, rule of law, 'gedogen' (forebearance), multiculturalism, architecture, art and public space and interpassivity. In 2018 van Oenen wrote the influential article about algorithm as the salvation of our democracy for NRC Handelsblad, which is also part of his book ‘Overspannen democratie: Hoge verwachtingen, paradoxale gevolgen’.

ABOUT CULTURAL MATTER

Cultural Matter is a series of exhibitions and events that provide a platform for the international discussion of digital art and aims to develop new strategies for the presentation and preservation of these artworks.

Participating artists: Jodi, Jonas Lund, Martine Neddam, Thomson & Graighead, Amalia Ulman

Curated by: Sanneke Huisman and Jan Robert Leegte

EXHIBITION

September 18 - October 30, 2019

Every day from 12 - 23

LIMA (in the basement of LAB111)

Entrance is free

Can contemporary art - and the production thereof - be optimized and automated? In 2013, the artist Jonas Lund made a solo exhibition based on this simple yet critical and challenging question. The Fear Of Missing Out, held at MAMA, Rotterdam, would become a landmark exhibition in which the algorithm played a leading role, a show that was of great influence on his later work. The works produced for The Fear Of Missing Out were not the direct result of Lund’s labour and ideas, but made by a computer algorithm written by him. By analysing and categorising a wide range of artworks by the most successful contemporary artists, instructions were generated that gave step by step explanations on how to make the most successful works of art. Lund then made the work following these instructions. This critical approach is reminiscent of Institutional Critique, with artists such as Hans Haacke as its leading figures. Lund’s play with the optimisation of the art market also echoes the approach of artists by the likes of Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst.

The first edition of Cultural Matter 2019-20, revisits the exhibition The Fear Of Missing Out. Lund created a site specific presentation at LIMA of several pieces from this exhibition. During the opening event Florian Cramer and Jonas Lund went into conversation about his exhibition, post internet art, algorithms, the art world and his work.

ABOUT JONAS LUND

Jonas Lund (1984) creates works that critically reflect on contemporary networked systems and power structures of control within the art world. His artistic practice involves creating systems and setting up parameters that oftentimes require engagement from the viewer. This results in game-like artworks where tasks are executed according to algorithms or a set of rules. Through his works, Lund investigates the latest issues generated by the increasing digitalisation of contemporary society like authorship, participation and authority. At the same time, he questions the mechanisms of the art world; he challenges the production process, authoritative power and art market practices. Lund earned a MA at Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam (2013) and a BFA at Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam (2009).

ABOUT FLORIAN CRAMER

Florian Cramer is a lecturer, researcher, writer and theorist. He works as a practice-oriented research professor in 21st century visual culture at Willem de Kooning Academy and Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam. Cramer is specialized in autonomous practices, focusing on DIY artist-run initiatives and self-organisation as contemporary art. Florian Cramer studied literature and art history at FU Berlin, Universität Konstanz and University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He received an MA in comparative literature, art history and modern German philology from Freie Universität Berlin and holds a PhD in comparative literature.

ABOUT CULTURAL MATTER

Cultural Matter is a series of exhibitions and events that provide a platform for the international discussion of digital art and aims to develop new strategies for the presentation and preservation of these artworks.

Participating artists: Jodi, Jonas Lund, Martine Neddam, Thomson & Graighead, Amalia Ulman

Curated by: Sanneke Huisman and Jan Robert Leegte

EXHIBITION

September 18 - October 30, 2019

Every day from 12 - 23

LIMA (in the basement of LAB111)

Entrance is free

Graphic design by Bin Koh & Andrea Belosi

This programme is supported by the Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst and Stichting Niemeijer Fonds