September 29, 2006
Rhizome Tenth Anniversary Festival
August 2006 to February 2007
Rhizome celebrates Tenth Anniversary with Festival in New York and online.
From August 2006 through February 2007, Rhizome will present a number of innovative exhibits, performances, discussions, and online projects throughout New York and elsewhere, in celebration of ten years of leadership in the new media arts field. This ambitious slate of programs will honor the vibrancy, diversity, and strength of this growing field and will provide an opportunity to connect with new media art both online and offline.
Rhizome was initiated in 1996 as an online platform for the global new media art community. At that time, the organization’s focus was primarily upon Internet art. Ten years later, Rhizome retains this focus and has also grown to support a wide range of art that engage emerging technologies—including sound art, locative media, digital video, software art, and modifications of video games. As the Internet and other computing technologies have come to play a more prevalent role in culture, Rhizome has supported artists’ expanded involvement with these tools and materials. The anniversary festival provides a touchstone moment to celebrate new media art and look forward to further advancements in the field.
FESTIVAL HIGHLIGHTS include collaborations with a number of organizations committed to supporting new media, including Rhizome’s affiliate, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and also the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Kitchen, the Vera List Center, ISEA, and Foxy Production.
Rhizome and the New Museum will co-present Time Shares, a series of nine Internet-based exhibitions on themes ranging from globalization to pop culture to site-specific works in the popular online game space, Second Life. An exhibition of the eleven compelling Internet-based art works commissioned by Rhizome in 06-07 will also be included.
This Fall, The Kitchen will host a night of Internet-related performances, the Vera List Center will host a discussion about open source issues, and the Guggenheim will be the venue for two media activists’ performative lectures. In February, an exhibition at Foxy Production gallery will look at the relationship between nature and technology. The international group of artists included in these programs includes some of today’s most engaged practitioners, such as Young Hae Chang/ Heavy Industries (Hong Kong), Olia Lialina (Moscow), JODI.org (Rotterdam), Jacob Ciocci (Pittsburgh), the Yes Men (Glasgow/ Paris), Ze Frank (NY), Ricardo Miranda Zuniga (Mexico City/ NY), and the Raqs Media Collective (Delhi).
Considering Rhizome’s origin as an email list, Rhizome has always been a catalyst for discourse. During the festival, Rhizome and the New Museum of Contemporary Art will continue to collaborate on a new series of book releases, entitled Celebrating New Media Scholarship, three of which have already drawn very large audiences. Additionally, an online collaborative writing project, entitled Keylines, will provide a site for active discussion of issues relevant to new media and culture at large, including the environment, feminism, protest, and art historical questions. The site launches this week, with specially-commissioned essays by Raqs Media Collective, Bruce Sterling, David Ross, Lynn Hershman, and others.
For a full schedule, images, or more information, visit the website.
festival[at]rhizome.org
T: 212-219-1222 ext. 208
Rhizome would like to thank the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the New York State Council for the Arts (NYSCA), the Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA), College Art Association and the Experimental Television Center and for their generous support of the Festival.
Posted by jo at September 29, 2006 07:39 AM
