The New Museum of Networked Art & A Virtual Memorial Foundation
are happy to present

WOW.23 / Latvia
//
The d/i/light Memorial
featuring The Sonic Memorial

presented by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne

@ Riga Forum 2019
6th International Holocaust Conference
Riga/Latvia – 21-22 May 2019

Conference program for download as PDF
The complete text of the presentation as PDF

The d/i/light Memorial
Artists commemorate the victims of the Holocaust
Artists against Intolerance, Racism & Anti-Semitism
http://dilight.nmartptoject.net”/a>
featuring
The Sonic Memorial
collective trauma, identity & sonic art
https://soc.nmartptoject.net”

created, developed and curated by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne

As a platform for significant initiatives, The d/i/light Memorial is representing primarily a contribution to an essential question of mankind, how can the memory of the Holocaust, respectively memory of the millions of individual victims, be kept vivid for future generations after the last Holocaust surviver died and nobody is left to give personal and authentic report about the human and emotional dimension of the Holocaust. While historical memorial sites preserve archeological artefacts and statistics remain widely anonymous and inhuman, for its initiator, the Cologne based media artist and curator, Wilfried Agricola de Cologne, only art has this potential to touch people at the bottom of their heart and motivate them to reflect, and this way, his artistic memorial project is giving a concrete answer, when he was launching „Shoah Film Collection“ in 2010 encouraging young artists generations to reflect this human dimension by using the new audiovisual media allowing to express processes, ideas and emotions in a kind of contemporary language people living nowadays understand and be willing to accept.
d/i/light – is standing for Darkness Into Light – referring to the process of keeping actively vivid the memory of the Holocaust, the artists commemorating the Holocaust show face against Intolerance, Racism and Antisemitism and this ways they do not turn only the memory from the darkness, but also the „darkness“, as such, (The Holocaust), into the light.
While The d/i/light Memorial is based on audiovisual media manifested in art films and videos created by 100 artists from 35 countries, ranging from documentary to videoart and experimental film, The Sonic Memorial, launched in 2015, is dedicated to the non-visual medium – sonic art, using sound as a tool for artistic creations offering another essential sensual approach to memory.

Since 2018, both memorial sites belong to – The 7 Memorials for Humanity – http://7mfh.a-virtual-memorial.org
Wilfried Agricola de Cologne is director and curator of artvideoKOELN – the international platform for audiovisual art & The New Museum of Networked Art, as well as the creator of the memorial sites of „The 7 Memorials for Humanity“ – initiated, developed and curated between 2009 and 2019.
In 2020 a couple of anniversaries will be celebrated, 10 years „The d/i/light Memorial“ aka The Shoah Film Collection, 15 years artvideoKoeln & 20 years The New Museum of Networked Art.

1991 – International ARCHA Conference Görlitz/Germany – 2-5 May 1991

Görlitz

Stadtgalle Görlitz – Municipal Conference Centre

International ARCHA Conference Goerlitz 1991 2- 5 May 1991
in collaboration with the City of Goerlitz, City of Halbersadt and City of Zittau
and the municipal museums

Patronage
Prof.Dr. Kurt Biedenkopf, prime Minister of The Free State of Saxony
Matthias Lechner, Mayor of the City of Goerlitz

Conference topic:
The new cultural situation after the Fall of the Berlin Wall 1989

Thursday, 2 May 1991
14h
International Artists Meeting
participants
Alistair McLennan, Belfast
Stig Danielson , Sweden
Margaret Hunter (UK)
Ms. Waltraut Starke, Oberlausitzer Kunstverein
Maria Zilla, Museum leipzig
Tomasz Pierczak, (Poland)
Roman Wiedlowski (Poland)
Detlef Dammann, Municipal Gallery Zwickau
Herbert Reich, ARCHA Society

Friday, 3 May 1991

10h City tour for the participants
11h reception at the Mayor of the City of Goerlitz
13h common dinner
14h Opening speech by Wilfried Agricola, President of ARCHA Society

Lectures: Cultural Politics

15h Example: Saxony
Dr. Reiner Zimmermann, Department “rt” @ Ministery for Art & Science of the Freestate of Saxony, Dresden

15.20 East-West: Example: Berlin
Peter Sauerbaum, Head of Cultural Department of Berlin

15.40 Example: Community East: Goerlitz
Ulf Großmann, Head of Cultural Department of the City of Goerlitz

16-17h Discussion

19.30 Charity concert @ Goerlitz City Hall
1
Introducing words
Herbert Reich, Board of Archa Society
Prof.Dr. Nollau – State Secretary Ministery of Culture & Science Dresden
on behalf of the Prime Minister Prof. Dr. Kurt Biedenkopf
Matthias Lechner, Mayor of the City of Goelitz
Sabina Moczko, Head of Cultural Department of the City of Halberstadt
Mr. Zimmermann, Head of Cultural Department of the City of Zittau

2.
Ensemble State Opera Dresden
performs songs by Mussorsky, Kurzbach, Schumann, Tchaikowski & Brahms

3.
Performance by
Barbara Heinisch, painting – Chris Parker, dancer – Frank Köllges, drums

4 May 1991

International Contributions

9:00h Stig Danielson, Swedish artist presents his project “Exile” about the Afghan war
9.30h Anu Litvak, Deputy Director of State estonian Art Museum – estonian Avantgarde 1960-1985
10.00 Mari Nommela, director of Tartu Art Museum – Recent Estonian Art since 1985
10.30 Marketta Mäkinnen, Deputy Director Alvar Aalto Museum Jyväskylä – Recent Finnish Art
11.00 Miczislaw Lapanowski, Director of BWA Gallery Zielon Gora – Biennale of Contemporary Polish Art

Lectures on: Art Funding

13.30 Prof Chaper Pult, Zurich – Swiss Cultural Foundation Pro Helvetia
14.00 Prof. Dr.- Peter Gerlach, Cologne art historian . Private Art Funding
14.30 Walter Smerling, Journalist Bonn – Art & Sponsoring
15.00 Prof. Jörn Merkert, director of Berlinische Galerie Berlin – Public Art Support: Berlin
15.30 Dr.Hartmut Vogel, Ministery of the Interior – Art Funding: Example Fedral State

until 17h – Discussions

17.00 Uwe Gellner, art historian – Development of the Collection of sculpture at Museum of magdeburg
17.30 Prof. Dr. Ingrid Schulze, University of Halle – the Artist: Johannes Wüsten
18.00 Dr. Vogt, directior of Zittau City Art Museum – Max Langer – the poetic painter of Oberlausitz

5 May 1991

10.00 Goelitz City Art Museum – Opening of the exhibition: The divisionsitic Principle by W.O.F. Agricola

12.30 official end of the conference

ISEA 2008 PDF catalogue

The Network – a challenge in New Media

by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne

“The Network” is the abbreviation for [NewMediaArtProjectNetwork]||cologne, an experimental project environment for art and new media developed, created, curated and directed by Wilfred Agricola de Cologne (AdC), a multidisciplinary media artist, New Media curator and media art activist from Cologne/Germany.
Starting on 1 January 2000 as his big life experiment, he uses the Internet as a tool, as an art medium in its complexity and a platform for creating a new type of art, based on communicating – a big challenge in many concerns, also because its purpose is merely non-commercial, it does not require a membership, registration or password.
“The Network” represents a hybrid, simultaneously a media art project, a manifestation of philosophical ideas around the themes” memory” and “identity”, a research and curatorial project, a composition of dynamic social contexts in progress, a virtual and physical network on different levels, but also a multi-dimensional event environment organised completely online, however, not institutionally structured or associated, but realised in form of an independent art project. AdC himself is acting as a hybrid of different identities, not just as an artist, but also as the programmer, multimedia developer, curator, director in different functions and other virtual and physical instances of different kind, one might even say, he is representing “the Network” himself, re-creating himself continuously, he exists through others.
What is now manifesting itself as “The Network”, was not planned like that. It developed from a small cell through exploring the Internet for what is Internet specific in terms of art. One can divide the evolutionary processes abbreviated in three phases, which, however, did not follow one after another in a linear way, but non-linear sometimes parallel, at the same time or temporarily displaced.

The 1st phase started in 2000, when A Virtual Memorial – Memorial Project Environments against the Forgetting and for Humanity (AVM), was launched online, not more than just a raw construction of ideas, not really structured yet, but in this way a fertile soil for exploring, experimenting, and learning by doing.
Based on the artist’s very personal views, perceptions and philosophical ideas about human memory, humanity and a positive globalization, focussing on how people coming from most different cultural, religious, social, political or ethnic backgrounds deal with memory and the essential questions of life, AVM grew rapidly as a multi-media online context in quite a short time and became the framework for numerous subordinated theme related projects exploring Internet specific participatory, collaborative and networking aspects by inviting artists for participating and collaborating – just to mention a few project titles: “Memorial for the Victims of Terror”(2001), “Violence Online Festival” (2002), “ Rainforest Memorial (2003) “Women: Memory of Repression in Argentina” (2004) “://selfportrait – a show for Peace” (2006). The ancient idea of the finished and completed art project, was replaced by the new type that was ongoing, to be updated and extended this way and changing continuously, offering the visitors or users permanently new reasons to revisit the online environment again and again, resulting a kind of community on a voluntary basis. In these terms, the ideas behind AVM became the fundament of all activities within “The Network”, how different they may be.
Based on all those experiences promising perspectives for the future, the 2nd phase (starting in autumn 2000) is marked by AdC’s specific method of working on different project ideas and their realisation, and thematic and technological aspects at the same time.

The idea of a virtual museum was actually not really new, JavaMuseum – Forum for Internet Technology in Contemporary art – gave this idea its specific structures dedicated to the needs of a new art genre (Internet based art). The social aspects got a new dimension in form of curating, ie. taking another type of responsibility. AdC’s curating is not reduced to just selecting art works, contents and artists, collecting links and posting them online, but he curates also virtual space, that space, that is visible on a user’s computer monitor i.e, he designs/ programs specific visual contexts or interfaces for each new project realisation. Curating becomes this way an expression of a new type of artworking. JavaMuseum realised since 2001 besides some global competitions, more than 20 showcases of “netart in a global context” and hosts this way a comprehensive collection of works (1000) from the high time of netart (2000-2004). JavaMuseum stands for a wide range of projects followed in sequence.

The 3rd phase starting sometimes in 2002 parallel to phase 1 & 2, was based on the perception, that the virtual space of Internet gets actually it really meaning when it is confronted with the physical space. One might call it the cross-platform phase, cross-platform in terms of combining the basics of already existing or future project environments, since they showed how closely woven their structures are and how much they complement each other, on the other hand to realise new projects according to those perceptions in an exchange between virtual and physical space. But essential was, AdC had finally become aware that all those projects he had realised until now individually were all standing in a common all encompassing context, i.e a network, The new Network to be created by re-structuring anything done before went hand in hand with the new project platform to be developed. NewMediaFest was thought to act as a framework for new type of experimenting, see-> Violence Online Festival (2002-2004), followed by [R][F]200x—>XP – global networking project (2004 -2007). Two of its “Memory Channels” dedicated to specific media, video and sonic art, i.e VideoChannel – and SoundLAB, became soon acting independently combining all perceptions AdC made during the years, resulting in 2006 also the foundation of CologneOFF – Cologne Online Film Festival, a new type of mobile film and video festival taking place simultaneously online and in physical space in cooperation with partner festivals.
From the beginning, AdC’s activities were addressed to an and the audience, all project environments became social contexts. After The Network had entered the discussion as an idea, new service platforms for participating artists and curators and users in general , were created: see -> JIP – JavaMuseum Interview Project (2006), VIP – VideoChannel Interview Project (2007), AND – Artists Network Database (2006) – central place for organising the 1400 biographies of the participating artists and curators -, and netEX – networked experience – a publishing platform for announcements and calls (2005).

Long before experts were considering a WEB 2.0, AdC was already working on his he personal Web 2.0 as a kind of open system. He sees his multi-facetted work on The Network as his specific type of artworking, where he can develop his abilities to the full.
While the success of The Network is manifesting itself visually online to each visitor, the site statistics show how many came: 500 000 hits in 2000, and more than 8 million hits during the past 12 months (Mai 2007-April 2008).
Certainly, some of the incorporated project environments can be considered as completed, The Network as such as a dynamic work in progress, however is ongoing with an open end.

The Network ~
[NewMediaArtProjectNetwork]:||cologne – experimental platform for art and New Media http://www.nmartproject.net/
NetEX – networked experience (2005- ) http://netex.nmartproject.net/
netMAX – publishing environments (2007 -) http://max.nmartproject.net
AND – Artists Network Database (2006 -) http://and.nmartproject.net
A Virtual Memorial – memorial project environments (2000 – ) http://www.a-virtual-memorial.org/
Memorial for the Victims of Terror (2001- ) http://terror.a-virtual-memorial.org
Memorial for the Victims of Aids (2001-) http://aids.a-virtual-memorial.org
Tsunami Memorial (2004 -) http://tsunami.a-virtual-memorial.org
Family Portrait (2001-2005) http://familyportrait.engad.org/
Women: Memory of Repression in Argentina (2004- ) http://argentina.engad.org
://selfportrait – a show for Bethlehem (2006- ) http://self.engad.org
Cinematheque – streaming media project environments (2001 – ) http://cinematheque.le-musee-divisioniste.org/
JavaMuseum – Forum for Internet Technology in Contemporary Art (2001 – ) http://www.javamuseum.org/
JIP – JavaMuseum Interview Project (2006 – ) http://jip.javamuseum.org/
NewMediaFest – festival project enviroments (2002 – ) http://www.newmediafest.org/
Violence Online Festival (2002- ) http://violence.newmediafest.org/
[R][R][F] 200X – global networking project (2004-2007 ) http://rrf200x.newmediafest.org/
IMPACT event series project (2005) http://impact.newmediafest.org/
VideoChannel – video project environments (2004 – ) http://videochannel.newmediafest.org/
VIP – VideoChannel Projectenvironments (2006-) http://vip.newmediafest.org
SoundLAB – sonic art project environments (2004 – ) http://soundlab.newmediafest.org/
SIP – SoundLAB – Interview Project (2006-) http://sip.newmediafest.org
CologneOFF – Cologne Online Film Festival (2006 -) http://coff.newmediafest.org/
Agricola de Cologne site (2000- ) http://www.agricola-de.cologne
Agricola de Cologne Moving Picture Collection (2001)

2017 – Kochi Muziris Biennial 2016/2017 –
23-26 February 2017 – Kochi/Kerala/ India

Program 1

Curatorial statement
The selection Focus/Asia includes artists from Western and Eastern areas of Asia, eg. Palestine, Israel, Turkey, Iran -Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, China, Philippines and Japan. The very short „moving images“ use a common pictorial language which is characterized by individual aesthetics and philosophical concepts –Ying and Yang are nearly in harmony, wouldn’t be there a typical subtle criticism, which does not accuse, however –abstractly transformed into symbols and metaphores which need to be decoded first. Differently than the familiar narratives of a short or features film, these videos start a process or even multiple processes, but do not complete them -leaving the viewer in confusion inviting him to complete the process via reflecting. In this way, each video is incorprating a kind of interactive component. The presentation format in shape of a screening giving the viewer only one chance to view requires a particular attention, also because the non-linear structures of the individual video and the screening program, as such, are generating again and again -the unexpected.

Focus / Asia
curated by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne
https://downloads.nmartproject.net/CologneOFF.2017.India_Program-Focus.Asia-2.pdf

Sai Hua Kuan (Singapore) – Space Dawing No.5, 2009, 1:02
Mani Mehrvarz (Iran) – Wistful Affection For The Past, 2013, 3:06
Anupong Charoenmitr (Thailand) – To Face, 2014, 5:55
Mehmet ÖGÜT (Turkey) – The Basket Seller, 2014, 5:40
Noriyuki Suzuki (Japan) – Fragment, 2012, 6:31
Shuai-Cheng Pu (Taiwan) – Consciousness Spin Project, 2015, 5:39
Richard Legaspi (Philippines) – Making Love with the Wind, 2015, 9:40
Sanglim Han (S.Korea) – Bloom, 2012, 3:35
Weigang Song (China) – Walling Dissensus, 2014, 5:01
Shahar Marcus (Israel) – Seeds, 2012, 5:03
Mohammed Harb (Palestine) – Without Windows, 2009, 5:00
Yovista Ahtajida (Indonesia) – Re-Interpreting Trump, 2016, 1:15

Program 2

Curatorial statement
The selection„Focus/World“ is based on „The Refugee Film Collection“ at The New Museum of Networked Art –initiated by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne in 2015 on occasion of the international refugee crisis. The selectedvideos created by artists from Germany, Israel, Morocco, France, Netherlands, Mexico, Croatia and Ukraine, deal with the globalwide phenomenon of transmigration which got these day a particular relevance through military conflicts and terror (Middle East, Ukraine), poverty and lack of perspectives (Africa, Asia, Latin America), also caused by failed national and international politics and economics and the natural and human-made climate change resulting countless individual human tragedies.The videos offer a view on different sides of transmigration, for those who migrate an uprooting but on the other hand a chance for survival, but for those who are supposed to give them shelter migrants are too often notexperienced as achance, but rather a thread causing aloss of priviledges manifested in foreclosure,xenophobia, racism and violence. The artists dedicate their reflection to empathy and humanity

Focus / World – The Refugee Film Collection
curated by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne
http://downloads.nmartproject.net/CologneOFF.2017.India_Program2-Focus.World-2.pdf

Maria Korporal (Netherlands) – Stay or fly away?, 2015, 0:49
Mauricio Saenz (Mexico) – Flight simulator, 2014, 4:17
Les Riches Douaniers (Gilles Richard & Fabrice Zoll) (France) – The Lonely Migrant, 2011, 16:15
Johannes Christopher Gérard (Germany) – disorientated displacement, 2016, 05:02
Masha Maria Yozefpolsky (Israel) – In Between SiO2, 2016, 10:00
Oksana Chepelyk (Ukraine) – «Letter from Ukraine», 2014, 7:31
Mohamed Thara (Morocco) – As Long As I Can Hold My Breath, 2016, 9:40
Lucija Konda Labas (Croatia) – We are the dogs – Wir sind Hunde, 2016, 1:11
Anna Faroqhi & Haim Peretz (Germany) – Lichtenberg Cleans Up, 2016, 4:34

WOW.24 @ 12th Video Vortex Malta
Valletta – 26-28 September 2019
https://networkcultures.org/videovortex/video-vortex-12/

WOW Malta

In Troubled Waters – curated by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne
Hdys (USA) – We The People, 2018, 3:51
Angelina Voskopoulou (Greece) – Blind Traveller, 2018, 1:27
Paolo Bandinu (Italy) – No Country, 2015, 2: 21
Abe Abraham (USA) – Salt Water, 2017, 5:52
Fu LE (France) – Mass, 2019, 10:00
Cigdem Slankard (Turkey/USA) – Fresh Start, 2017, 12:50
Sonia Guggisberg (Brazil) – Skaramanga Camp, 2017, 9:00
Mathilde Babo (France) – After The Spring, 2016, 4:00
Anna Faroqhi & Haim Peretz (Germany) – Lichtenberg Cleans Up, 2016, 4:34
Alessandro Inglima (Italy) – Breathe, 2014, 2:41

Video Vortex XII & WOW.24 @ K-Spazju Kreattiv in Valletta/Malta

Please download the complete Video Vortex XII program as PDF
https://downloads.nmartproject.net/190821_vv12_program.pdf