ONLINE EVENT
Cultural Matter: Diana McCarty on A Techno-Feminist alphabet: From Cyberfeminism to Xenofeminism

We are glad to invite you to the online event of Cultural Matter: Diana McCarty on A Techno-Feminist alphabet: From Cyberfeminism to Xenofeminism (Pt.II) on Wednesday 1 April, 8 pm.
The lecture by Diana McCarty will be live streamed online, followed by a conversation between artist Martine Neddam and Diana McCarty with a public Q&A moderated by Sanneke Huisman afterwards. Please subscribe to our YouTube channel where we will stream the lecture.

Diana McCarty
Independent media producer and feminist media activist Diana McCarty is a founding editor of reboot.fm, the award winning free artists’ radio in Berlin; a co-founder of the radio networks Radia Network (radia.fm) and 24/3 FM Radio Network Berlin; and of the FACES (faces-I) online community for women, among other initiatives. She co-initiated the exhibition Nervous Systems: Quantified Life and the Social Question, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, 2016, Berlin, and actively collaborates with the experimental media project Luta ca caba inda. As a cyberpunk in the 1990s, she was active in independent internet culture with nettime, the MetaForum conference series, and different hacking spaces. Her work revolves around art, gender, politics, radical feminism, technology, and media.

Cultural Matter: Martine Neddam
The history of online identities is tightly interwoven with the rise of the internet – the free and open space where you could be anyone you wanted to be. What role did – and do – artists play in this? How do they develop and manifest characters online? Early net artist Martine Neddam has been creating online personas that work with public feedback since 1996, far before the establishment of social media. Mouchette, David Still, Xiao Qian are all characters that she created anonymously. This edition of Cultural Matter 2019-20, you will get to know Neddam’s latest virtual persona that has been active as an online curator.

Event
Cultural Matter: Diana McCarty on A Techno-Feminist alphabet:
From Cyberfeminism to Xenofeminism (Pt.II)
Wednesday 1 April, 8.00 PM, online
Please subscribe to our YouTube channel
Attend the Facebook event

Madja Edelstein-Gomez
Madja Edelstein-Gomez (1960, Montevideo, Uruguay) is an independent curator who has curated several large thematic exhibitions (Bangalore, Buenos Aires, Prague, Tbilisi, Toronto). Edelstein-Gomez currently lives in Kuala Lumpur and Paris. She is also an activist working with several NGOs. Edelstein-Gomez created a manifesto and a group exhibition that revolves around the Recombinant, a concept where artificial intelligence and artists meet. Madja Edelstein-Gomez is the collaborative creation of Martine Neddam, Emmanuel Guez and Zombectro.

Martine Neddam
Martine Neddam is an artist, researcher and teaches at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. She uses language as raw material for her art, and many of her works center on the phenomena of speech acts, approaches to communication as well as to language and writing in public space. She has been working with virtual characters since 1996, the first and most famous one being Mouchette, a fictive thirteen-year-old that has meanwhile acquired cult status. Neddam’s virtual personae function as communications tools such that they have already facilitated the exchange between human beings via the medium of the artistic figure, and thereby anticipated the functionality of social media.

Cultural Matter
Cultural Matter is a series of exhibitions and events that provide a platform for the international discussion of digital art and aims to develop new strategies for the presentation and preservation of these artworks.
Also part of the Cultural Matter series: JODI, Jonas Lund, Rafaël Rozendaal, Amalia Ulman, Thomson & Craighead.
Curated by: Sanneke Huisman and Jan Robert Leegte.

This programme is supported by the AFK (Amsterdam Fund for the Arts) and Stichting Niemeijer Fonds.

This video archive is a capture of the different websites composing the personality of Madja Edelstein-Gomez.
This is what we have to witness her online existence since march 2020 when all her websites disappeared.

The websites of Madja Edelstein-Gomez were:
http://madja.net
http://moi.madja.net
http://tuningtest.madja.net
http://ghost.madja.net
https ://lesrecombinants.fr
https://therecombinants .com
http://golem.space
http://godandbodies .com
http://outcaste .me
http://committedsuicide .net

The 3 films below are captures of the exhibition “The Recombinants”

http://therecombinants.com

http://lesrecombinants.fr

Interview with Madja Edelstein-Gomez by Antonio Robert

Back in July 2018 I interviewed Madja Edelsten-Gomez. She is the Curator of The Recombinants, which I wrote about in November 2017. We had quite a nice e-mail exchange and eventually she agreed to let me ask her some questions.

Nearly a year later, and with many apologies, here is that interview:

Who are you?
I am Madja Edelstein Gomez, digital art curator.
I am a Recombinant, first and foremost.
Being a Recombinant is what defines my whole existence, as a digital art curator but also as an entity, or as a being, human or not.
Here I am: http://madja.net/

How would you define Artificial Intelligence?
It defines me more than I define it.

What was the motivation for you to explore using AI for curating?
I wanted to become a work of art, so I first curated my personality, and then I extended that exploration to the art of others through the online curating interface. Since the curating interface also includes the definition of the personality of the artists. We all are on the same level, the curated artists and me.
I also made that interface to appeal to the (artificial) intelligence of the viewers.
Nowadays images are not made to be viewed by human eyes but by other computers. Facial recognition, textual recombinance, image processing, colour processing, everything I could tackle as data inserted in the works of art being curated has been processed inside the interface.
There is much to be discovered for human viewers, buttons appear on the left side of the image in the browser and when they are activated and they change the whole interface. This appeals to the perspicacity of the viewers, and the intention to process All the data and in many different ways.
But it is mostly made to be read, analysed and processed by other computers.
Need I say more?
Or should I better leave it to your own perspicacity?
The “Art of Guessing” is a big part of understanding AI.
Please use it when you look at my online exhibition.
http://therecombinants.com/

Briefly, how does your AI work?
The method is Generative Adverserial Networks, also known as GANs. I spare you the explanations, I’m sure you know.
The GANs are trained to recognize art from what is not art. They are also trained to emulate artists and their behaviour. Rather than attempting to produce art objects, they focus their pattern recognition abilities around artists’ behaviours and attitudes.

Was the output of your AI interpreted in any way or taken literally
It is definitely interpreted by the exhibition interface. Like any work based on statistics (and this is what AI is: statistics and not so much more than that), it is the interpretation that matters most. In my case the exhibition interface is pure AI being processed live in front of your eyes.
This is what I call Recombinance.

Do you see AI replacing Contemporary Art Curators in the future?
Definitely.
In a sense, it already has. Computers are talking to computers and have more agency than human beings.
The type of AI I am trying to build will also curate people’s lives, like it has curated mine.
The prophetic aspect of AI is what has inspired the Recombinance.

July 22, 2019

A web documentary of all the virtual persons I created.
Web capture and edition by Stephanie Boisset.

Re-locating the public commission Ooit somewhere else in Groningen in another university building.

The chosen location should be this building of the **Hanze University of Applied Sciences** called **EnTranCe**

*Right now the work is in a storage. It had to be taken down because the building where it was doesn’t belong to the Groningen University any more.*

The small bubbles and the big bubble face against the wall

4 men are needed to move it slightly away from the wall.

Once it was moved away from the wall I could get inside and see the state of the printed picture: totalled discoloured!

Discoloured! the big bubble was on top of the roof and caught direct sunlight and lost all its colours….

NEON WEKA is the company dealing with the possibility of the relocation, the same company that build the work 25 years ago.

Cultural Matter: Martine Neddam

The history of fake identities is tightly interwoven with the rise of the internet – the free and open space where you could be anyone you wanted to be. What role did – and do – artists play in this? How do they develop and manifest characters online? Early net artist Martine Neddam has been creating online fake personas that work with public feedback since 1996, far before the establishment of social media. Mouchette, David Still, Xiao Qian are all characters that she created anonymously. This edition of Cultural Matter 2019-20, the audience will get to know the online curator Madja Edelstein-Gomez. The work of Neddam and Edelstein-Gomez will act as a starting point for further reflection on online identity and user feedback – and will be placed in an art historical and socio-political context.

Cultural Matter
Cultural Matter is a series of exhibitions and events that provide a platform for the international discussion of digital art and aims to develop new strategies for the presentation and preservation of these artworks.
Also part of the Cultural Matter series: JODI, Jonas Lund, Thomson & Craighead, Amalia Ulman.
Curated by: Sanneke Huisman and Jan Robert Leegte.

Event
Cultural Matter: Martine Neddam in conversation with Elvia Wilk (Pt.I)
Wednesday February 19, 8.00 PM
7,50 / 5 / Free with Cineville
TICKETS

Exhibition
February 19 – April 5, 2020
Every day from 12 – 23
LIMA (in the basement of LAB111)
Arie Biemondstraat 111, Amsterdam
Entrance is free

Design by Pablo Bardinet

The poster for the show includes all the names of the participants

There Is No Copyright On Laws
Public Commission for the Rechtbank Roermond

Article 11 of the Dutch Copyright Act states that, under the law, once a text has been edited, it enters the public domain. On the basis of this, a text can be altered as long as the spirit of the wording remains intact. A fact of which the art works created for the court rooms of the new court building of Roermond District Court take full advantage. Stripped of their formal legal language, legislative texts engage in a dialogue with the public and the users of the space.

Installations of meaning

Here, light and language are the materials that reveal the spirit of the space and restore this meaning to the legal texts in a very unusual way. The art works are installations of meaning that call upon all the interpretative faculties: the wording of the legislation is interpreted by using other forms of language but also through widely diverse graphic styles that serve the meaning of the work. The light itself “interprets’ the visual aspect of the work and projects its shadow on the wall.

Commissioned by:	Rijksgebouwendienst
Completed:	January 1994
Constructed by	Rob Nolte, Neon Weka, Holland

MyDesktopLife is presented inside this exhibition of the collection of ZKM

I have been supported by ZKM in their program Art on Your Screen.
Here is my contribution

More photos of the work in the news of MyDesktopLife

The collection of the ZKM | Karlsruhe ranks among the largest media art collections in the world. It exemplifies the transformation of art in the face of changing technologies of production, reception, and distribution. Artists react to changes in media and sometimes anticipate developments that only years later will be taken for granted by society as a whole: they write the history of the future.

Media determine to a great extent how we express our thoughts and feelings, how we communicate, and how we remember the past. Johannes Gutenberg’s movable metal letters fundamentally changed Europe’s culture of knowledge in the middle of the 15th century, just as photography changed the fine arts in the middle of the 19th century, and the Internet transformed our entire private and public communication at the end of the 20th century. The development of art went from moving letters to moving images and moving viewers; from the book page to the website, from the canvas to the screen.

“Writing the History of the Future. Part I” looks at art from the middle of the 20th century onwards. The exhibition shows aesthetic experiments with script and language that engage with different media. It presents the first attempts at computer-generated graphics and poetry as well as contemporary works dedicated to the automation of the creative act. It also addresses the material conditions of individual and cultural memory – between erasing and forgetting, storing and remembering.

New technologies provide the individual with ever new means to create images, texts, and sounds. They expand her or his scope for action. The exhibition provides a precise insight into the history of viewer activation – from Op-Art to physical interventions in variable pictorial objects to the instructions for action of the art of the »performative turn«.

Here is my artist’s page on their site

Ooit, which in English means something like ‘ever’, was designed for the newly built faculty of Economics of the Hanzehogeschool in the City of Groningen. The shape of the work was inspired by the bubbles used by cartoonists to show an idea taking shape. The oval and round shapes contain a digitally manipulated image of the Wadden area (a flat stretch of coast subjected to the continuous cycle of high and low tides). The word ‘Ooit’ or ‘ever’ has no set meaning – it refers to an indefinite, undefined time. Hence its connection with the marshy landscape which, with its vast spaces, summons up similar connotations. The landscape shown in the image seems to be hinged onto the horizon, reflecting clouds in the water’s surface.

The work seems to rise up out of the central hall of the building. The last oval is on the roof and forms a point of contact with the world outside the faculty building, also at night when the work lights up. Ooit’s contemplative character and its correlation with the advanced technology of which it is made, refer to the scholarly activities of the economics faculty.

The digitally manipulated images have been sprayed by airbrush technique onto canvas through which light can pass. The canvas is spanned on an aluminium construction within which neon lights have been attached. The image is visible on both sides of the ovals. The large oval is 300 cm wide, the other three shapes are round with a diameter of 160 cm, 120 cm and 90 cm respectively.

The newly built Faculty of Economics of the Hanzehogeschool is situated on the outskirts of the City of Groningen. Ooit’s is located in the central hall of the building.

Idee & execution: Martine Neddam
Commissioned by: Hanzehogeschool, Groningen
Completion 1995
Construction: Neon Weka, Holland

“these are a few of my favourite things…” is the title of this show.As part of the event Home Sequence, I have invited Michelle Son and Maartje Smits to exhibit in my house on 27/28/29/30 june 2019. I’m also showing some (text) objects in my house which I consider art, signed or unsigned.

Thursday 27 June 19/21:00 OPENING HOME SEQUENCE
Friday 28 June 14/19:00
Saturday 29 June 14/19:00
Sunday 30 June 14/19:00

Here is my favourite version of this famous song. In the lyrics it says that the mere thought of the things you like makes you feel better. And I add: provided you can summon a beautiful list of them from your memory… or inside your own house.
Added to my list of favourite things normally present in my house, are the works of Maartje Smits and Michelle Son.

Maartje Smits

The matter of mothers and mud
An installation and intimate chatbot performance about motherhood and what happens if a writer or artist creates a baby. This performance will be taking place in the safe space of a spare bedroom. For optimal experience a smartphone is handy but it’s no necessity.

Performances on:
Thursday the 27 th of June (time: 20:00)
Friday the 28th of June (time: 18:00)
Saturday the 29th of June (time:15:00)
Max. 12 – 15 people per performance.

Maartje Smits is a poet in image and language. She investigates topics like ‘girliness’ and ‘nature’ by observing and infiltrating, operating in the limbo between art and literature. Her work consists of films, performances, texts and intimate confessions. Her books of (visual) poetry When you’re a girl and How I started a forest in my bathroom were published by publishing house De Harmonie.

www.maartjesmits.nl

The Matter with Mothers and Mud
The Matter with Mothers and Mud
The Matter with Mothers and Mud
Chatbot Performance
Chatbot Performance
Chatbot Performance
The Matter with Mothers and Mud

Michelle Son

like a luminous animal

“oh, na, na, na”
M’s largest room
skylight
cathedral height
“oh, na, na, na”
marmoleum movements
sticks that look like sketches of sticks
“bom bomm!… bom bomm!”
blipped portal
rolling companion

Scripting spaces is an activity that shapes Michelle Son’s artistic practice. Her interest in the paradox of language has developed into visual and experiential practices. This forms the structure for multiple media to activate a space, through sound, performance interventions, video, object-making or hybrid writing practices. Other subjects of interest stretch across notions of self-care, suburbia, cinema, flâneury, womanhood, wildness, diaspora and (in)direct communication.

www.michelleson.co.za

Like a luminous animal, photo Anne-Laure Ruffin
Like a luminous animal, photo Anne-Laure Ruffin
Like a luminous animal, photo Anne-Laure Ruffin
Like a luminous animal, photo Anne-Laure Ruffin
Like a luminous animal, photo Anne-Laure Ruffin
Like a luminous animal, photo Anne-Laure Ruffin
Like a luminous animal

Martine Neddam

“these are a few of my favourite things…”
Your own house has something comforting and familiar, just like a song you might hum to yourself. It hosts some of your favourite things. They might happen to be works of art, made by others or by yourself, or not even works of art, but just things or objects that you like having around. Things that bring you warmth, just by thinking of them.
I’m inviting Maartje Smits and Michelle Son to show their art in my house, to mingle with the space, shake off the dust, or blow it away with new words or new things.

Florence Foster Jenkins Vinyl
Niets zo charmant as iets aardig aan de wand
Museum sign, Teylers Museum
These are a few of my favourite things
My toilet, an installation by André van Bergen

floor plan of my home/studio with “my favourite things”

Martine Neddam is an artist who uses language as raw material. Speech acts, modes of address, words in the public space were always her favourite subjects by which she had several museum and gallery exhibitions and large scale public commissions. Since 1996 she has created virtual characters on the internet who lead an autonomous artistic existence in which the real author remains invisible, Mouchette among others. She has also built several online participatory interfaces. To obtain my address, and the hours of the show, follow the rules of the Home Sequence project:
To receive the list of home addresses and the events schedule please RSVP to the email address: homesequenceadam@gmail.com
We kindly ask you not to circulate this document in order to keep overview of who obtained the list of private addresses of the participating artists. The list will be distributed few days before the opening.
Home Sequence was initiated by Sascha Pohle and Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec in 2018