Contemporary Art: Who Cares?

Following our contribution to the ACCESS2CA seminar at the Moderna Galerija in Ljubljana (Slovenia) last year, the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage (ICN) has invited us to give a number of workshop at this year’s symposium ‘Contemporary Art: Who Cares?’. This international event will take place at the Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam this summer and is organized for (up-and-coming) professionals, from diverse disciplines, who are connected to the conservation of modern and contemporary art.

The symposium is co-organized by the Foundation for the Conservation of Contemporary Art in the Netherlands (SBMK) and the University of Amsterdam (UvA). Key note speakers include Stedelijk Museum‘s conservator Bart Rutten, Van Abbemuseum‘s director Charles Esche, Tate‘s Pip Laurenson, artists Eija Liisa Ahtila and Nedko Solakov and various other people from around the world with an interest/stake in contemporary art conservation with a special focus on complex, large scale multimedia installation works.

Our series of workshops will look at how contemporary art conservation can be made accessible to the public and the role of conservators and conservation information in this process. Participants of the sessions will learn about how organisations (in and outside of cultural heritage) are using new media and emerging technologies to engage with audiences. The workshop exercise wil give participants a first hand experience with (online) media, including various social networks, gaming, mobile applications and data visualization.

Eija-Liisa Ahtila, ‘The Wind’ (2002) from reel aesthete on Vimeo.

Curating the city, a museumnacht marathon on metropolitan museums, responsive heritage and the city as cultural platform

Doug Aitken's Sleepwalker was projected on the exterior walls of the MoMA

This Saturday the 10th annual museumnacht (museum night) will be organised in our hometown Amsterdam. Non-fiction will take part with a special marathon on museums and the city, in their basecamp De Verdieping. A wide group of institutions, designers and thinkers will join us at the table to discuss how pervasive urban museums are, and how the city can become a interactive museosphere.

The programme starts at 7 pm and goes on to 12, after which Viral Radio will take over with wall-surpassing bass and rhythm collections compiled by Juha & Cinnaman with Mamiko Motto. Outside, the facade of the building will be used as an urban screen for the duration of the museumnacht by students of MediaLAB Amsterdam. Inside, artists Amie Dicke and Sarah van Sonsbeeck will host the workshop ‘Build your own mobile museum’.

Tickets are available through n8.nl, make sure you get them soon: the previous 7 editions sold out before the start.

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Programme:

19 – 00 Interview Marathon >> with Michiel van Iersel and Juha van ‘t Zelfde
We will navigate through the night together with our guests, visitors, Hyvers and Twitterati, to try to articulate the future of museums in the city.

19 – 20 MyMuseum >> Blikopeners, Zichtbaar Afwezig and Urban Screens
Students of the Rietveld, Sandberg, UvA and HvA will talk about appropriating, editing and remixing the museum.

20 – 21 Museums And The City >> Stedelijk Museum
Curators Bart Rutten, Leontine Coelewij and Marten Jongema will look back at Stedelijk in de Stad and will look ahead towards a new Stedelijk Museum.

21 – 2 The Mobile Museum >> De Appel, Platform21/Supermaker, NIMk, Mediamatic
Representatives of various art institutions in Amsterdam will talk about their transient adventures in pop-up structures and mobile pavillions.

22 – 23 The Digital City >> VURB, The Mobile City, Nationaal Historisch Museum, Habbekrats
Now things will get unphysical, with VURB and The Mobile City talking about urban informatics and the city as an interaction platform. The Nationaal Historisch Museum will talk about being a distributed museum, and design firm Habbekrats will elaborate on how cities are embedded in (music) videos on YouTube.

23 – 00 Museum = City >> everybody everywhere
How will the museums in the future inhabit the city? How can it go beyond its walls? What is a museum without a building? How can visitors become users and producers of a museum? Can a city be a museum? These questions will be addressed in the round-up discussion with all logged in.

00 – 05 Viral Radio x Beat Dimensions >> Juha & Cinnaman and Mamiko Motto.
Rhythmculture, bass experimentation and computer improvisation to ground the night after such abstraction. With Amsterdam’s digital duo Juha & Cinnaman, and the one-woman social music revolution Mamiko Motto.