• Thu 06 12 2018 •
loading.cologne

19:00

Venue: Academyspace, Herwarthstraße 3, 50672 Cologne
Free admission

The digital archive project is structured as a cultural memory bank for Cologne and North Rhine-Westphalia: an open access portal for personal and public audio, video, documents and graphics, in which everyone is invited to participate.
During the first part of the evening, the new digital platform will be presented by the designer THERESE SCHULEIT. Thus begins the kickoff of the beta phase of this digital environment and its labyrinthine evolution.

In the second part of the evening, the talk Contingency, Control and the Insanity of Frozen Memory by artist duo UBERMORGEN and JULIE BOSCHAT THOREZ will demonstrate and critically reflect on the technical possibilities of archives.

Ubermorgen will not only discuss the role of digital artefacts in the difference between remembering and forgetting, but will also address issues of digital protectionism and the current digital colonisation of Europe. Seemingly endless amounts of data have by now changed our understanding of time and space as well as our concepts of the real. Julie Boschat Thorez raises the question of how software and digital networks generate coincidences and new connections and how we can most proactively influence this.

The public platform has evolved through an intricate process of collaborations among organisations and individuals in Cologne and North Rhine-Westphalia that engage with memory practices. It is part of the programme axis found:erased:palimpsest.

THERESE SCHULEIT is an artist, information architect and freelance curator from Cologne. Her works examine the perception, materials and acoustic descriptions of urban and social spaces in installations, narratives and dialogical performances. She is the founder of the Festival for Applied Acoustics, and as her alter Ego Elektronentoto member of AIC - Art Initiatives Cologne. She was also part of the collective Mühlenkampf und Raumfaltung.

The artist duo UBERMORGEN, consisting of lizvlx and Hans Bernhard, have worked together since 1995. The two internet and software artists are pioneers of the net.art movement and creatively bring together code and language. Their project Google Will Eat Itself, in which they hack Google’s marketing tool AdSense, has been called “simply brilliant” by The New York Times. lizvlx and Hans Bernhard live and work in Vienna and Cologne.

JULIE BOSCHAT THOREZ is an artist and researcher who studies the influence digital systems have on human activity. In addition, she is involved with the long-term conservation of digital art. She supports the platform LIMA, for example, which is concerned with sustainable access to digital media art. Julie Boschat Thorez lives in Rotterdam.