UNFOLD #3: Reinterpreting the digital + Workshop presentation by Joost Rekveld

LIMA is pleased to announce the third public event within the framework of UNFOLD on December 1st, continuing with the research line mediation by reinterpretation. How to revisit digital and media artworks over time? This evening programme will concentrate on the consequences that are brought about when using the mode of mediation as an act of reinterpretation specifically in digital- and media artworks. The key lecturers will concentrate on the idea of variability; posing concerns about authorship and transparency while taking - often limiting institutional protocols into account. How can we negotiate preservation strategies with regard to these principles? 

Preserving media artworks is undeniably related to issues of technological obsolescence, networked connectivity and the interactive nature of digital art. A range of elements stretches the boundaries of traditional preservation methods and requires insights from both the artist and the curator to determinate the future viability of re-staging the piece. Most conservation practices are concentrating primarily on authenticity and functionality in relation to the rapid development of browsers, computer hardware and operating systems. How do we deal with the changes of digital or media artworks over time, and how can the performative aspect of a work be preserved?

UNFOLD presents and researches reinterpretation not as a strategy that reinvents the originally intended, but rather rethinks it. On December 1st, artists, academics and conservators will revolve around several topics in regard to the reinterpretation of digital art, followed by a panel discussion. 

The evening will start with a presentation of the workshop 'Sensory Augmentation and Obstruction' by Joost Rekveld, organised by LIMA in collaboration with Sonic Acts. Rekveld is an artist who is part of the UNFOLD research team. In the tree-day workshop, Rekveld and eight participants (most of them media artists) were introduced in different schools of thought on human observation. By developing different DIY tools and using them, they experiment with their surroundings. Inspired by two works on The Vasulkas, they worked with different sensory tools in order to create real time images. They used Android cellphones and cardboard DIY 'virtual reality' viewers. The built sensory viewing tools where tested during fieldtrips throught the city and presented on December 1st at UNFOLD. For detailed information on the workshop, see here. 

After the presentation, three keynote lectures will take place. Maaike Bleeker, professor of Theatre Studies in the Department of Media & Culture Studies at Utrecht University, will talk about ‘Reenactment and the Lifeness of Media.’

Dutch internet artist  Jan Robert Leegte will talk about born-digital art and freely discuss terms as reinterpretation, remake and reenactment as methods to gain understanding and knowledge of contemporary issues, in his case, digital materiality.

Sanneke Stigter, assistant Professor in Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage at the University of Amsterdam, will go into the question; 'Reinterpretation as a conservation strategy: danger or relief?'

Katja Kwastek will round up the evening by leading a panel discussion. She is professor Modern and Contemporary Art at the Faculty of Humanities of VU Amsterdam whose research interests focuses on modern and contemporary art and media, media aesthetics, audiences of art and digital humanities.

Thursday December 1st, 2016
Doors open: 6:30 PM
Start: 7:00 PM until 10:00 PM
7.5 / 5 euro (pin only)

This project is made possible by Mondriaan Fund and Creative Industries Fund NL

On the lectures:

Maaike Bleeker will talk about ‘Reenactment and the Lifeness of Media.’ This presentation proposes reenactment as perspective on the potential of media articulations to live a “life” beyond the medium that generated them. Such ‘lifeness’, Kember and Zylinska argue, is a fundamental yet often overlooked aspect of mediation. Reenactment draws attention to this aspect and how this raises important questions about reinterpretation as a strategy of preservation. Maaike Bleeker is a professor of Theatre Studies in the Department of Media & Culture Studies at Utrecht University. Her work engages with questions of perception, cognition and agency from a broad interdisciplinary perspective, with a special interest in embodiment, movement, and technology, and the performativity of meaning making and knowledge transmission. Recent publications include the co-edited volume Performance and Phenomenology: Traditions and Transformations(Routledge 2015) and the edited volume Transmission in Motion. The Technologizing of Dance (Routledge, 2016). She was the organizer of the 2011 world conference of Performance Studies international (PSi), titled Camillo 2.0: Technology, Memory, Experience (Utrecht, May 25-29, 2011) and served as President of Performance Studies international 2011-2016.

Sanneke Stigter will discuss the issue ‘Reinterpretation as a conservation strategy: danger or relief?’ To reinterpret a work each time it is re-created, is considered the most radical preservation strategy thinkable–even dangerous. Yet, it seems to be the only way to re-create artworks that are designed to vary with context. What does this mean for the profession of conservation? Sanneke Stigter published widely on the field of contemporary art conservation and takes part in several advisory boards and research projects devoted to the conservation of contemporary art. Since 2007 she directs the specialisation in Contemporary Art of the training program in Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage at the University of Amsterdam (MA and postgraduate). Her research interests lie in conservation theory, museum practice, oral history and artist interviews, with a special focus on installation art, photoworks, and conceptual art.

Jan Robert Leegte is a Dutch internet artist who materializes the internet in ways that are striking, funny and uncanny at the same time. Working with HTML as his 'stone and chisel', he believes 'the medium internet has given art a new impetus.' Recently, Leegte had an online retrospective 'On Digital Materiality' at Carroll Fletcher Gallery. In an accompanying essay he reflected on his development as an Internet artist over the last 19 years.  At UNFOLD#3, Leegte will talk about born-digital art and freely discuss terms as reinterpretation, remake and reenactment as methods to gain understanding and knowledge of contemporary issues, in his case, digital materiality.