UNFOLD 2020 / 2021

About UNFOLD

LIMA is researching new methods for the documentation, transmission and preservation of media art, digital art and performances. UNFOLD is a research project and a collaborative, international research network that together will be examining re-interpretation as emerging practice for the preservation of media artworks.

UNFOLD is LIMA's reinterpretation program, focusing on translations of new media artworks and practices to a new era, new technology, new context and to a new audience.  

Reinterpretation is a core concept in music, dance and theater. Every re-performance is a translation into a new, often contemporary, context. Re-performing a work based on documentation, a script, memory or score is an essential part of artistic practice. For complex works in the field of media art and digital art, this is not common, but just as urgent. Reinterpretation of media art can contribute to the preservation and better understanding of the work. Since 2016, LIMA has put reinterpretation on the map as an artistic and conservation strategy. In the interdisciplinary and international UNFOLD project contextualizing, documenting, analyzing, understanding, embodiment and transferring digital culture are central. Relevant questions are: What is the core and production method of a work? Which techniques are used in which context? How do we translate this artistic legacy, practice and knowledge to the next generation? How do reflect and learn from different interdisciplinary practises?

UNFOLD: Nan Hoover 2021

On Wednesday, May 19, 2021, artists, experts, writers, programmers shed their light on the oeuvre of the media art pioneer Nan Hoover (1931 - 2008). The reinterpretation festival was the third edition of LIMA's reinterpretation programme and gave many possible answers to the question of what the work of Nan Hoover is, or can be, today. The events took place live over the course of one day and remained online for one week. The central question is: What does it take to keep a media artwork in constant flux, continuously appropriated by artists and makers of all sorts? 

Online festival

The rich program of the day was planned to be offered both online and at LAB111 in hybrid form. In panel discussions, live streams, Zoom sessions, performances, sound installations and video works, countless possibilities of art transfer were discussed, explored and performed. With the restrictions set by the coronavirus in place, we hosted the event online offering visitors a different experience that proved in essence the same: rediscovering, seeing and experiencing Nan Hoover's groundbreaking work. 

More than ten contemporary artists were invited to perform and present Hoover’s work in a new, unconventional way and experiment with hybrid forms. The programme included a text-based sound installation by Sandra Sterle: a reply to a voice message from Nan Hoover that she received 25 years ago, a walking performance and a multimedia installation by Vera Sofia Mota, in which the artist explores the notions of time and movement and a lecture by Davor Sanvincenti about Hoover's notations studies on transposing and expanding the visible forms into a new visual language as well as a text based reinterpretation by theatermaker Judith de Joode of the work of Nan Hoover. The festival also provided a space for reflections on Hoover's oeuvre and its activation. Like other years, students from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy (DOGtime) took part in this edition of UNFOLD. The participating students Alla Amma, Britt Geerdink, Mieke de Roo & Emily Bernstein, Giulia Capineri, Cassandra Dinah de Giorgi, Nicolas Dagieu, Noël S. Keulen, Martijn Janssen, Marjolijn Houdijk were supervised by teacher Willem van Weelden. Gaby Wijers and Fransien van der Putt reflected on the students' first results in a workshop.

Presentations on UNFOLD: Nan Hoover:

  • The students made a publication in which they reflect on the work of Nan Hoover, their own work and the process of reinterpretation. 

In the sections on the right you will find detailed information on the various events which were part of UNFOLD: Nan Hoover.

Walking – Method by Vera Sofia Mota


Movement Dissolves: Composition with Red and Shadow by Vera Sofia Mota


This event is supported by the Mondriaan Fonds, Nan Hoover Foundation and AFK. Artwork by Bin Koh.

UNFOLD: Dan Graham 2020


UNFOLD Audience/Performer/Mirror 15 January 2020. Documentation of Emie Zile’s performance Audience/Performer/Lens

In 2020 LIMA presented the next steps of this emerging project with a new edition of UNFOLD, focusing on reinterpretation of Dan Graham’s iconic work Audience/Performer/Mirror, 1977, De Appel, Amsterdam. LIMA invited Keren Cytter, Jan Robert Leegte (and Miron Galić), Emile Zile and students of the Rietveld Academie to present their versions live. Reinterpretations by Adad Hannah, Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard, and Judith Hopf were exhibited together with testimonials from the (De Appel) archive. Together the works showed the possibilities of reinterpretation and gave an artistic anthology, and criticism, of the work. Gabriella Giannachi (researcher & professor of Performance and New Media at the University of Exeter), Annet Dekker (curator & researcher, assistant Professor of Media Studies University of Amsterdam) and Willem van Weelden (curator & researcher, tutor media theory Gerrit Rietveld Academie), reflected upon reinterpretation as both an artistic as preservation strategy. 

In the sections on the right you will find detailed information on all public events, network meetings and expert meetings, and the works produced.



Photos by Jose Miguel Biscaya.

Presentations and Press on UNFOLD:

This project is made possible by the Mondriaan Fund, Creative Industries Fund NL and is part of the collaborative research project Documenting Digital Art and is supported by Arts & Humanities Research Council.