[syndicate] "Holy Fire, Art of the Digital Age", Brussels, 18-30 April.

[Yves Bernard]

Holy Fire. Art of the Digital Age
April 18 - 30, 2008
iMAL Center for Digital Cultures and Technology
Brussels
http://www.imal.org

Featuring:
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)


iMAL Center for Digital Cultures and Technology 
(www.imal.org) 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 
and speak about our time.

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.


Galleries:

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


Collateral Events:

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

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 (Brescia, 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.


--
Yves Bernard    yb at imal.org
asbl iMAL vzw
Center for Digital Cultures and Technology
30 Quai des Charbonnages / Koolmijnenkaai 30
1080 Bruxelles/Brussel
tel 32 2 410 30 93

http://www.imal.org
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