LIMA is proud to present Mediakunst.net, an online catalogue bringing together the media art collections of Frans Hals Museum, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Van Abbemuseum, the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands and LIMA. These institutes joined forces and worked collectively on this project for three years. As a result, the complete media art collections of these institutes are accessible online. The media artworks hosted on Mediakunst.net are available for research, knowledge exchange, sustainable storage and presentation. The catalogue is now open for users worldwide.

www.mediakunst.net

Mediakunst.net from LIMA on Vimeo.

Five decades of media art accessible online
With Mediakunst.net, five decades of media art can be discovered online. Amongst these works are single channel videos, installations and software-based and online artworks by early pioneers and emerging talents. Mediakunst.net can easily be used by both the staff and visitors of museums. Searching by artist, title, year, keyword and collection is possible. Of all works a still, description and excerpt are available. Full-length versions are available to users with a personal login, available on request.

The collaborative approach initiated and coordinated by LIMA  provides visibility for and access to media art. The Dutch collections of video, media and digital art are accessible for experts, students, artists, curators and researchers. Next to this, Mediakunst.net is a new, joined interface for our collaborative digital repository - LIMA’s digital depot that ensures sustainable storage of media art collections. Bringing together professionals, curators, artists and researchers during the development of the project provided greater insight into the challenges related to documentation and (re)presentation of media art online. Since the catalogue is open for new media art collections, Mediakunst.net will be an ever-growing collection of media art in The Netherlands.

Design and development
Mediakunst.net is designed by Pier Taylor and developed by Jaap van der Kreeft/TOXUS. The design underlines the goal of giving sustained access to media art. It is made to exude confidence and dedication and to provide subtle guidance where needed. Its minimal design also provides a suitable environment to fully focus on the artwork. Designer Pier Taylor about Mediakunst.net: “Mediakunst.net is a viewing environment. It should feel spacious and pleasantly arranged. I want the people who visit to feel that they treat themselves well. That there is something dignified about interacting with it that reflects back on the artworks. Then when people take an interest in a work the interface recedes presence so the art gets all the attention.”

Launch
On Tuesday, June 19, at 3 pm, Mediakunst.net was launched at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam during a public event with LIMA director Gaby Wijers, designer Pier Taylor, artist Julika Rudelius, art critic Sacha Bronwasser, video artist and theoretician David Garcia and moderator Katja Kwastek.

You can read the article by Manique Hendricks (LIMA) on the launch of Mediakunst.net here.

Presskit
Download here

About the participating  collections

Frans Hals Museum
The media art collection of Frans Hals Museum provides an overview of the different ways artists view mankind and society, from critical and personal to more poetic. Artists question the principle of documentary authenticity or replace it with a more subjective or poetic perspective. The medium encourages the deconstruction and interpretation of works in which the artists develop vocabularies that reflect the imagery of contemporary visual culture. The collection focuses on three mainstays: staging of reality – ‘documentary but not documental’; performance and re-enactment – ‘politics of the body’; and documentary. With works by Rineke Dijkstra, Erik van Lieshout, Renzo Martens, Sven Augustijnen, Rory Pilgrim, Paul McCarthy, Andrea Fraser and Nathaniel Mellors.

LIMA
LIMA’s extensive distribution collection reflects the history of and contemporary developments in media art in the Netherlands and abroad. The LIMA collection collates the former and existing collections of the Netherlands Media Art Institute, MonteVideo, the Lijnbaancentrum, Time Based Arts and de Appel arts centre,  and yearly adds new works by established and emerging artists to its collection. This collection focuses on major themes within media art: works that comment upon (mass) communication and (mass) media, (performance) registrations, medium-specific works and narrative video art. It includes a surprising diversity of works ranging from early video experiments in the 1970s to recent digital productions by well-known national and international artists and emerging talents such as Nan Hoover, Marina Abramović, JODI, Nicolas Provost, Constant Dullaart, belit sağ and Douwe Dijkstra.

Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
The Stedelijk Museum started assembling the world’s first museum-based video collection in 1971. Where the initial focus was mainly on recording performances, in the last twenty years video has become a medium with a completely unique character and multiple trajectories, most of which are represented in the collection. The Stedelijk has a distinctive collection of works by artists such as Vito Acconci, Bruce Nauman and Nam June Paik, alongside iconic video installations by international celebrities like Douglas Gordon, Gary Hill, Diana Thater and William Kentridge. Dutch artists such as Fiona Tan, Aernout Mik, Marijke van Warmerdam and Rineke Dijkstra are also represented in the collection by a number of installations.

Van Abbemuseum
The Van Abbemuseum is a museum of modern and contemporary art with a collection of over 200 video works and installations by Dutch and international artists. The earliest works from the 1960s and 1970s are by American artists such as Bruce Nauman, John Baldessari and Dan Graham, VALIE EXPORT, Martha Rosler and Joan Jonas. Among the European artists of that period are Ulay and Abramović, Rebecca Horn, and Julião Sarmento. In the 1990s increasing numbers of spatial video installations were added to the collection, including works by Douglas Gordon, Steve McQueen and Matt Mullican, and Dutch artists such as Marijke van Warmerdam and Aernout Mik. In recent decades, the collection has expanded to encompass the globe with the inclusion of works by artists from Eastern Europe and the Middle East, including Yael Bartana, Chto Delat?, Deimantus Narkevicius, Harun Farocki and Hito Steyerl.

The Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands
The Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands manages a collection of about 140,000 objects and artworks. Acquisitions for the national collection began in the 20th century and continue up to the present day. A large part of the collection can be seen in Dutch museums, ministries and other (government) buildings. The sub-collection of media art that is part of mediakunst.net includes independent films, video work, multimedia installations, registrations of performances and documentary video work. This collection covers 25 years of Dutch film and video art making and gives a representative overview of the developments in Dutch video art from the seventies to the nineties.  With works by Livinus and Jeep van der Bundt, Ben d’Armagnac, Abramovic/Ulay, Lydia Schouten, Marja Samson and Ansuya Blom.

Mediakunst.net has been made possible with the expertise and support of the Mondriaan Fund, LIMA and the participating institutions. Special thanks to DEN and Museum Boijmans van Beuningen.