[PRESS RELEASE]


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

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.

Credits:

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
www.imal.org
(métro Comte de Flandres/Graaf van Vlaanderen)

Vernissage:

Friday, April 18, 18:30 – 23:30

Opening Hours:

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

Contact:
[log in to unmask]
+ 32 (0)2 410 30 93
http://www.imal.org/


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.

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. [log in to unmask]
home. vicolo San Giorgio 18 - 25122 brescia (BS)
web. http://www.domenicoquaranta.net/




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