[spectre] Holy Fire. Art of the Digital Age

[Domenico Quaranta]

[FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE]


iMAL Center for Digital Cultures and Technology, Bruxelles

presents

Holy Fire. Art of the Digital Age
curated by Yves Bernard & Domenico Quaranta
April 18 – 30, 2008
iMAL Center for Digital Cultures and Technology, Bruxelles
Vernissage 18 April, 18:30 - 23:30

iMAL Center for Digital Cultures and Technology is proud to present Holy
Fire. Art of the Digital Age, a collective exhibition featuring a unique
panel of digital artworks created in the last ten years by
internationally known new media artists, and coming from galleries and
collections from around the world. Curated by iMAL director Yves Bernard
and Italian curator Domenico Quaranta, Holy Fire is, in fact, featured
into the “Off Program” of Art Brussels, the international contemporary
art fair (April 18 - 21, 2008). Taking its cue from this occasion, Holy
Fire is an attempt to explore how new media art, bypassing all the
stereotypes connected with its presumed immateriality, was able to enter
the art market.

Thus, Holy Fire is probably the first exhibition to show only
collectable media artworks already on the art market, in the form of
traditional media (prints, videos, sculptures) or customized media
objects. The exhibition wants to show that new media art is just art of
this century, to contribute to reduce the gap between digital art and
contemporary art, and to participate in a broader understanding and
acceptance of digital media. Holy Fire comes out from the belief that
talking about a “new media art” as something different and separated
from the contemporary art world doesn't really make sense today. All
contemporary art is, someway, new media art, as far as it makes use of
the digital media for various purposes. So, the artworks collected in
Holy Fire are not new media art, but simply art of our time: art which
appropriates institutional or corporate identities, creates fictional
ones, hacks softwares and game engines for its own purposes, infiltrates
online or offline communities in order to portray them or their own
myths, subverts existing tools or creates its own ones, explores the
aesthetics of computation and information spaces; or, more simply, art
which uses hardware and software in order to create art.

Over the last two decades, new media art experienced an exponential
growth, that changed it from a little and relatively closed niche of
experimentation into one of the biggest and more vital communities of
the contemporary scene, and into an entirely new “art world”, with its
own festivals, its own exhibition centers, its own magazines and
debates. Yet, this increasing importance is hardly ever recognized in
the contemporary art world, which is challenged by new media art in many
ways. New media art is often immaterial, temporary, performative; it
strongly relies on software and interfaces, and produce hardly sellable
artifacts, with a high obsolescence risk in supporting equipment. So,
it's always difficult to find new media art in contemporary art venues
and collections. In the meantime, many artists are fighting to find more
stable layouts for their works, in the effort to bring new media culture
in the contemporary art arena; and some brave individuals and
institutions are starting collecting new media, knowing that its
importance in the future could only grow up. With the accelerated
technological development (e.g. large flat screens, powerful beamers,
ubiquitous computing, wifi, fast internet) and the sociological and
cultural acceptance of digital tools and media, new media art is going
to become one of the main currents of 21th century art, looking at its
own nexus to our techno-environment as a strength (not deafness), and to
be part of our everyday life in our office, in public buildings as well
as in our home.

The title of the exhibition is a reference to a well-known book by Bruce
Sterling, a book which, among other issues, envision the art of the (at
that time, future) digital age. In the same time, the issue makes
reference to the passion that helps a growing number of people (artists,
curators, gallery owners and collectors) to take care of an art that is
temporary and variable by definition.


Artists:

Cory Arcangel (USA), Gazira Babeli (SL), Boredomresearch (UK),
Christophe Bruno (FR), Grégory Chatonsky (FR), Miguel Chevalier (FR),
Vuk Cosic (SLO), Shane Hope (USA), Jodi (BE/NL), Lab[au] (BE), Joan
Leandre (SP), Olia Lialina & Dragan Espenschied (RU/DE), Golan Levin
(USA), Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG (IT), Alison
Mealey (UK), Mark Napier (USA), Casey Reas (USA), Charles Sandison
(UK/FI), Antoine Schmitt (FR), Yacine Sebti (BE), Alexei Shulgin &
Aristarkh Chernyshev (RU), John F. Simon, Jr. (USA), Paul Slocum (USA),
Wolfgang Staehle (USA), Eddo Stern (USA), Ubermorgen.com (AT), Carlo
Zanni (IT).


Galleries:

Bitforms, New York; DAM Gallery, Berlin; Fabio Paris Art Gallery,
Brescia; Numeriscausa, Paris; Postmasters, New York; Project Gentili,
Prato; Rodolphe Janssen Gallery, Brussels; XL Gallery, Moscow.


Credit Line:

This exhibition is produced by iMAL Center for Digital Cultures and
Technology, and generously funded by
LIEDEKERKE.WOLTERS.WAELBROECK.KIRKPATRICK and DEXIA . It is supported
by: the Minister-President of the Government of the French-Speaking
Community of Belgium; the Minister of Culture and Audiovisual of the
French-Speaking Community of Belgium; the Ministery of the
French-Speaking Community of Belgium (Digital Art Section and Department
for Plastic Arts); the Brussels Capital Region; and the College of
Burgomaster and Deputies of the Municipality of Molenbeek-Saint-Jean.


Location:

iMAL Center for Digital Cultures and Technology
30 Quai des Charbonnages/Koolmijnenkaai 30
1080 Bruxelles/Brussel 1080
(métro Comte de Flandres/Graaf van Vlaanderen)


Gallery Hours & Opening:

Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday : 12:00 - 19:00
Thursday: 12:00 - 21:00
Saturday, Sunday: 11:00 - 19:00
Closed on Monday


Entry Fee:

Adult : 8 EUR
Students, Unnemployed, Seniors: 4 EUR


Press:

Yves Bernard: yb at imal.org / + 32 (0)2 410 30 93
Domenico Quaranta: dom at domenicoquaranta.net

http://www.imal.org/HolyFire/


Collateral Events

"Holy Fire: Exhibiting and Collecting New Media Art". Conference-debate
Saturday 19 april, 11:30 - 13:30

One of the targets of the Holy Fire exhibition (iMAL, 18-30 april) is to
take a snapshot of the present situation of New Media Art, an art
practice arose from the meeting of art and computer technology in the
Sixties. This practice developed into a self-built, parallel art system
and had a second youth in the last half of the Nineties. New Media Art
has always been described as process oriented, immaterial, and therefore
un-collectable and un-preservable. Now getting to its adult age, it is
entering the contemporary art world and market.

Moderated by Patrick Lichty (Columbia College, Chicago),with Alexei
Shulgin (RU), Olia Lialina (RU/DE), Steve Sacks (bitforms, New York),
Wolf Lieser (DAM, Berlin), Stéphane Manguet (Numeriscausa, Paris),
Philippe Van Cauteren (SMAK, BE), Domenico Quaranta (I) and Yves Bernard
(Brussels).


Catalogue

Domenico Quaranta, Yves Bernard (eds), Holy Fire. Art of the Digital
Age, FPEditions, Brescia 2008.

Hardcover, color, 128 pages.
ISBN 978-88-903308-4-1
25.00 €

Featuring contributions by: Inke Arns & Jacob Lillemose, Yves Bernard,
Aristarkh Chernyshev, Roman Minaev & Alexei Shulgin, Vuk Cosic, Régine
Debatty, Steve Dietz, Joan Leandre, Olia Lialina & Dragan Espenschied,
Patrick Lichty, Wolf Lieser, Vicente Matallana, Eva & Franco Mattes aka
0100101110101101.org, Fabio Paris, Christiane Paul, Domenico Quaranta,
Charles Sandison, Magdalena Sawon & Tamas Banovich, Paul Slocum, Bruce
Sterling, Michele Thursz, Mark Tribe, Ubermorgen.com, Karen A. Verschooren.


About the Curators:

Yves Bernard (BE) has an academic background in architecture and
computer science and worked as research scientist for about 10 years.
Beginning of the 90s he founded one of the first european new media
studio where he produced awarded art&culture cd-roms (e.g. Milia d’Or
1998). In 1999 he created iMAL (interactive Media Art Lab), a non-profit
association for the new media arts. For the past decade he has worked
with artists as a producer (e.g. Salt Lake), an interaction design
adviser and a developer (e.g White Square). Yves curated or co-curated
many new media art exhibitions in Brussels : CONTinENT (2000), F2F
(2003), Infiltrations Digitales (2004), openLAB (2005), Art+Game (2006),
inaugural exhibition of iMAL new venue (2007). He is the (co-)author of
works merging Internet and the physical world such as Martini Ground
Zero, OFFFCAM and The Gate. He teaches digital art at ERG and he is the
director of iMAL, Center for Digital Cultures and Technology.
[www.erg.be/blogs/artNumeur/]

Domenico Quaranta (I) is an art critic and curator who lives and works
in Brescia, Italy. With a specific passion and interest in net art and
new media, Domenico regularly writes for Flash Art magazine. His first
book titled, NET ART 1994-1998: La vicenda di Äda’web was published in
2004; he also co-curated the Connessioni Leggendarie. Net.art 1995-2005
exhibition (Milan, October 2005) and co-edited, together with Matteo
Bittanti, the book GameScenes. Art in the Age of Videogames (Milan,
October 2006). Among his most recent publications, Todd Deutsch: Gamers
(ed., 2008) and Gazira Babeli (ed., 2008). He teaches “Net Art” at the
Accademia di Brera in Milan and runs the blog Spawn of the Surreal.
[www.domenicoquaranta.net]

About iMAL

iMAL (interactive Media Art Laboratory), is a non-profit association
created in Brussels in 1999. It was founded by individual artists, media
producers, interactive designers, software engineers, and by NICC (a
Belgian association of visual artists) with the objective to support
artistic forms and creative practices using computer and network
technologies as their medium. In October 2007, iMAL opened its new venue
in Brussels, a Center for Digital Cultures and Technology, a new place
of about 600m2 for the meeting of artistic, scientific and industrial
innovations, a place entirely dedicated to the contemporary artistic and
cultural practices emerging from the fusion of computer,
telecommunication, network and media.
IMAL is a laboratory and a workplace for artists in residence. It
supports artists during their experimentation and research process as
well as for the production and diffusion of their works. iMAL produces
professional workshops targeted to creative people (artists, designers,
developers,…) under the direction of recognised artists. iiMAL organises
public events and collaborates with other european centers. Works
(co-)produced by iMAL have been shown in Helsinki (Kiasma, 2003), Madrid
(VIDA, 2003), Los Angeles (AIM iV, 2003), Stuttgart (Filmwinter, 2004),
Lisbon (Alkantara, Close Encounters III, 2006), Amsterdam (Victorian
Circus at Brakke Grond, 2006), Basle (Viper, 2006), Montréal (Temps
d’Images, 2007), Sao Paulo (File, 2007), Ghent (Almost Cinema at
Vooruit, 2007), Shanghai (eArts/Ars Electronica, 2007), London (Sum/Some
of the PARTS, 2007).
iMAL is supported by the French-speaking Community of Belgium. More
about iMAL on www.imal.org/index.php?sub=about_EN

-- 

Domenico Quaranta

mob. +39 340 2392478
email. qrndnc at yahoo.it
home. vicolo San Giorgio 18 - 25122 brescia (BS)
web. http://www.domenicoquaranta.net/