Digital Care

Collaborative care for digital artworks through an open process.

Digital Care presents collaborative care for digital artworks through an open process. From March until October 2023, iconic works, including the_living, 1997-1998, by Debra Solomon, Ideofoon I, 1970-2013, by Dick Raaijmakers and Institute of Artificial Art Amsterdam, 1990-present, by Remko Scha, have been researched and shown in public programmes across the country. Talks with artists, scholars, producers, technicians and the public have explored what it means to present these works today – and preserve them for a future generation.

The programme poses questions about how to present digital works of art now and in the future, what role documentation and the archive play in this, whether and when new hardware and software can be used or whether the old, original equipment is needed to fully realise the work, does it do the work justice, or whether in some cases, does emulation provide the most suitable presentation of the work?

Collaboration with cultural institutions where the works were once made or which have a relationship with one of the works is key to this project. They will each 'adopt' key works that connect with their program and reflect on them: this increases visibility and support and makes the work part of a broader discussion in the run-up to the exhibition.

Participants at Digital Care: Performing the (Feminist) Internet, onstage looking up at Debra Solomon's the_living (1997-1998)on screen.

REBOOT. Pioneering Digital Art

REBOOT. Pioneering Digital Art opened at Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam on 7 October 2023 until 12 May 2024. The exhibition, an initiative of LI-MA and Nieuwe Instituut, celebrates the pioneering history of digital art and culture in the Netherlands. Curators Sanneke Huisman (LI-MA) and Klaas Kuitenbrouwer (Nieuwe Instituut) created the exhibition based around twenty ground-breaking digital artworks from the Netherlands from the period 1960-2000. The works were taken from the Digital Canon (1960-2000), a non-exhaustive, unfixed overview of influential digital art, which was compiled by experts in 2017–2019 and commissioned by LI-MA. In addition, they commissioned nine new works from ten contemporary makers, who took inspiration from these classics to explore how the debates they prompted remain relevant today.