Form Follows Fiction

To mark its 12.5-year jubilee, LI-MA revisits a formative moment: its very first public screening. As part of its early efforts to open up the collection to new perspectives, LI-MA invited four guest curators (Bart Rutten, Frederique Bergholtz, Talking Back to the Media, Juha Van 't Zelfde) to each present a thematic screening, exploring the collection through the lenses of cinema, performance, activism, and medium specificity, core currents in media art history. Beyond offering curated programmes, these evenings, under the banner of DE LIMA COLLECTIE, created space for dialogue between generations, practices, and technologies.

On 3 June, 2014, DE LIMA COLLECTIE #1: Cinema Revisited, curated by Bart Rutten (then curator at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam) set the tone for LI-MA’s mission, bringing care, context, and critical reflection to media art. Divided into three thematic chapters –⁠ Found Footage, Staged Reality, and Disney’s Claim to Reality –⁠ the screening explored how artists navigate the blurry boundary between fiction and documentary. It featured seminal works by Fiona Tan, Pilvi Takala, Broersen & Lukács, and others, reflecting media art’s distinctive ability to challenge, reframe, and reimagine reality using the tools of cinema.

Artists drew from collective memory and accessible media technologies to question how truths are told and constructed, a practice LI-MA supports not only by preserving media art, but by keeping it alive through dialogue, access, and reinterpretation.

The Programme

LI-MA’s first public screening offered a powerful demonstration of its mission: to preserve, activate, and recontextualise media art for today’s audiences. Curated under the theme Cinema Revisited, this programme foregrounded themes of authorship, power, and cultural memory through a selection of short works drawn from LI-MA’s growing collection. By presenting pioneering and contemporary voices together, the screening exemplified LI-MA’s commitment to bridging generations of media artists, making visible both the continuity and evolution of the field.

Among the earliest examples of media manipulation was Wim Liebrand’s Lieber Pappa (1993, 3’7”), a layered collage of archival fragments and original footage. Juxtaposing images of birds, planes, medical procedures, and mechanised voices, the work offers a dystopian reflection on human control, techno-culture, and the tensions between natural and constructed worlds. Its chilling repetition of the phrase "Lieber Pappa" evokes both intimacy and alarm, encapsulating Liebrand’s implicit call for ethical reflection in the face of technological power.

Fiona Tan’s Stolen Words (1991, 2’34”) delivers a quiet but pointed critique of media language and its numbing effect on global empathy. By layering banal news voice-overs atop arresting close-ups, Tan probes the disconnect between public rhetoric and private emotion, revealing how mass media both narrates and neutralises global suffering.

Peter Stel’s Look at Me (1998, 3’30”) shifts the focus inward, drawing attention to the overlooked gestures of daily life. His anthropological lens transforms the mundane into material for self-reflection, confronting viewers with their own image, mirrored in his subtly unsettling, lifelike projections.

A sharp irony runs through Rä di Martino’s untitled (Rambo) (2003, 3’, ), a silent film pastiche that deconstructs the myth of the American hero. By placing Rambo in a stylised, early cinema setting, di Martino critiques the propagandistic underpinnings of Western film narratives and their entanglement with military power.

Manuel Saiz’s Video Hacking (1999, 4’20”) blurs lines between documentary and fiction. Featuring a masked figure who secretly alters commercial videos, the mockumentary calls into question authorship, authenticity, and the role of artists in a hyper-mediated, copyright-driven culture.

In Bernard Gigounon’s Starship (2002, 6’), mirrored imagery and theatrical orchestration create a sensation of suspended gravity. Referencing science fiction’s visual language, Gigounon builds a meditative space in which viewers can reflect on perception, scale, and the aesthetics of futuristic architecture.

Nicolas Provost’s Plot Point (2007, 15’27”) re-assembles footage from Times Square into a cinematic crescendo that feels scripted, though it is not. Through editing and sound, Provost turns daily urban life into a narrative of tension and suspense, highlighting the blurred boundaries between fact and fiction.

Jeroen Kooijmans’ Fata Morgana (2006, 1’33”) explores the elasticity of cultural landscapes. A serene Dutch scene subtly shifts as a mosque replaces a church, questioning cultural permanence and inviting viewers to contemplate identity, memory, and the politics of visibility in Western contexts.

Pilvi Takala’s Real Snow White (2009, 9’15”) exposes the commodification of fantasy and the rigidity of public/private space. Dressed as Snow White, Takala is denied entry to Disneyland, revealing how even fictional identities are tightly policed when profitability is at stake.

Broersen & Lukács’ Mastering Bambi (2010, 2’32”) closed the programme with an atmospheric revisioning of Disney’s forest. By stripping the landscape of its iconic animal characters, the artists offer a haunting reimagining of nature – constructed, empty, and eerily sublime. Their work confronts the tension between ecological romanticism and digital simulation, reflecting both on media’s shaping of nature and our projections onto it.

The LI-MA Collection

In a field where the pioneers of the 1960s and today’s digital-native artists often exist in parallel yet unconnected contexts, these screenings asked: what lineages can we trace? How do today’s practices speak back to the past, and vice versa? By weaving together early video art works, performance documents, and contemporary experiments, these curated events reflect LI-MA’s commitment to long-term stewardship, public dialogue, and the evolving life of media art. As we mark 12.5 years of sustained care and collaboration, Cinema Revisited offers a clear example of how preservation is also participation, reframing the collection not as a static archive, but as a space for renewed interpretation and connection.

Become a Friend

Join us in preserving, archiving, and sharing media art for future generations. Your support helps us preserve, archive and share media art for future generations – and connects you to a forward-thinking, engaged community.