UNFOLD: Mediation by reinterpretation

UNFOLD Audience/Performer/Mirror 15 January 2020. Video Documentation of Emie Zile’s performance Audience/Performer/Lens

 

About UNFOLD

UNFOLD is LIMA's reinterpretation program, focusing on translations of new media artworks and practices to a new era, new technology, new context and to a new audience. 

Reinterpretation is a core concept in music, dance and theater. Every re-performance is a translation into a new, often contemporary, context. Re-performing a work based on documentation, a script, memory or score is an essential part of artistic practice. For complex works in the field of media art and digital art, this is not common, but just as urgent. Reinterpretation of media art can contribute to the preservation and better understanding of the work. Since 2016, LIMA has put reinterpretation on the map as an artistic and conservation strategy. In the interdisciplinary and international UNFOLD project contextualizing, documenting, analyzing, understanding, embodiment and transferring digital culture are central. Relevant questions are: What is the core and production method of a work? Which techniques are used in which context? How do we translate this artistic legacy, practice and knowledge to the next generation? How do reflect and learn from different interdisciplinary practises?

In 2021, UNFOLD will highlight female electronic pioneers. More information will be announced soon. 

UNFOLD: Mediation by reinterpretation

LIMA is researching new methods for the documentation, transmission and preservation of media art, digital art and performances. UNFOLD is a research project and a collaborative, international research network that together will be examining re-interpretation as emerging practice for the preservation of media artworks.

Processes of documentation and conservation of performance and post-net- and digital art are examined in relation to the liveness of dance, theatre and music, which have ensured its preservation and transmission by performative live-acts. Bearing in mind that media and digital art has taken over a lot from performance, could we develop new standards and techniques within media art preservation strategies by using reinterpretation to capture the hybrid, contextual and live qualities of the original piece rather than proposing an ongoing process of changing platforms and operating systems?

In June 2016, LIMA presented the kickoff of UNFOLD: Mediation and Remediation of media art, re-enactment and reinterpretation. 

By bringing together international professionals, curators, artists and scholars from 2016 on, LIMA aims to provide greater insight into the challenges related to conserving media art beyond the technology and creating a consortium to work on further research on this topic. Simultaneously, LIMA commissioned #64 by artist Joost Rekveld, a re-interpretation of two works by The Vasulkas. Through this production practise, a case study emerged for the researchers to draw upon, in order to identify parallels in the mediation of a work and related notions of authorship, authenticity, autonomy, documentation, memory, continuity and liveness. The final work premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in January 2017. 

Next to the expert-meetings and the conducted research, we are happy to have a total of four public events in order to screen works, invited guest-speakers, and shared questions with experts and audiences.

Past Public events:

Download the general presentation on UNFOLD by Lara Garcia Diaz, here. 

Since 2017 we show the development of and the debate around reinterpretation at the annual symposium Transformation Digital Art. And continue our series of meetings, workshops and presentations. We invite artists to hack, deconstruct and reformat works and archives. Whereas in the first years the emphasis was mainly on reflection, the emphasis is shifted towards production and live performance of performative and interactive digital works based on reinterpretation by professionals and students. Three interactive, performative digital art works are produced per year. Once a year LIMA, actively and live, shows the newly produced digital artworks, including debate, exhibition and online presentations where artists and researchers from different disciplines explore and reflect on each other's starting points and working methods. 

In 2020 LIMA presented the next steps of this emerging project with a new edition of UNFOLD, focusing on reinterpretation of Dan Graham’s iconic work Audience/Performer/Mirror, 1977, De Appel, Amsterdam. LIMA invited Keren Cytter, Jan Robert Leegte (and Miron Galić), Emile Zile and students of the Rietveld Academie to present their versions live. Reinterpretations by Adad Hannah, Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard, and Judith Hopf were exhibited together with testimonials from the (De Appel) archive. Together the works showed the possibilities of reinterpretation and gave an artistic anthology, and criticism, of the work. Gabriella Giannachi (researcher & professor of Performance and New Media at the University of Exeter), Annet Dekker (curator & researcher, assistant Professor of Media Studies University of Amsterdam) and Willem van Weelden (curator & researcher, tutor media theory Gerrit Rietveld Academie), reflected upon reinterpretation as both an artistic as preservation strategy.

In the sections on the right you will find detailed information on all public events, network meetings and expert meetings, and the works produced.

Photos by Jose Miguel Biscaya.

Presentations and Press on UNFOLD:

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

 

 

          

 

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