Leaking Collections: The Digital Afterlife of Cultural Objects
[Online event]
November 6, 2024
6:00 – 8:00pm
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Exhibition Research Lab is pleased to present an online presentation/conversation between curator/researcher Annet Dekker, researcher and curator Dr. Daniela Agostinho and artist Ofri Cnaani, as part of The CONTACTLESS CONDITION exhibition public programme, moderated by Prof. Joasia Krysa.
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Inspired by the works in the exhibition, the conversation will address the politics of digital collections and the data afterlife of cultural objects. In recent years, many museums have incorporated data-driven tools into their digital collections. However, just as the drive to archive information has historically been fundamental to the exercise of colonial power, the digitization and datafication of collections are far from a purely technical endeavour. Recent research has shown that data infrastructures often perpetuate the colonial taxonomic gaze, transforming it into a symbolic calculus. This event will explore possible critical methodologies required to disseminate cultural knowledge while simultaneously protecting it, especially in the context of ongoing colonial power dynamics. The discussion will also consider how practice-based methodologies can trouble the afterlife of cultural data, and reimagine how we engage with and interpret these collections.
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Daniela Agostinho is Assistant Professor in Digital Communication and Culture at Aarhus University and currently a Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study. She works in the fields of visual and digital culture, artistic and curatorial research, with a focus on colonial archives and artistic responses to war and imperial histories. At Aarhus University, she is co-director of the research unit Postcolonial Entanglements and the Center for Critical Data Practices. She is co-editor of the books (W)archives: Archival Imaginaries, War, and Contemporary Art (Sternberg Press, 2020), Uncertain Archives: Critical Keywords for Big Data (MIT Press, 2021), The Uncertain Image (Routledge, 2019) and Panic and Mourning. The Cultural Work of Trauma (Walter De Gruyter, 2012). She currently co-directs the network Reparative Encounters: a transcontinental network for artistic research and reparative practices and she is working on a book titled Archival Encounters.
Annet Dekker (http://aaaan.net), is an Associate Professor Archival and Information Studies, and Comparative Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam, and Visiting Professor and co-director of the Centre for the Study of the Networked Image at London South Bank University. She publishes regularly in numerous collections and journals and is the editor of several volumes, among others, Documentation as Art: Expanded Digital Practices (co-edited with Gabriella Giannachi, Routledge 2023), Curating Digital Art. From Presenting and Collecting Digital Art to Networked Co-Curating (Valiz 2021), and Lost and Living [in] Archives. Collectively Shaping New Memories (Valiz 2017). Her monograph, Collecting and Conserving Net Art. Moving Beyond Conventional Methods (Routledge 2018) is a seminal work in the field of digital art conservation.
Ofri Cnaani is an artist and researcher who works across performance and media. She is a visiting scholar at the Institute of Visual Culture, TU Wien, Austria and a research fellow at the internationally Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) at the University of Amsterdam. Until recently Cnaani was an associate lecturer at the Visual Cultures Department, Goldsmiths, University of London. Her work has appeared at Tate Britain, UK; Venice Architecture Biennale; Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC; PS1/MoMA, NYC; Inhotim Institute, Brazil; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (MAC), Chile; Israel Museum; Tel-Aviv Museum of Art; Amos Rex Museum, Helsinki; Kiasma Museum, Helsinki; BMW Guggenheim Lab, NYC; The Fisher Museum of Art, L.A.; Twister, Network of Lombardy Contemporary Art Museums, Italy; Moscow Biennial; The Kitchen, NYC; Bronx Museum of the Arts, NYC; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, among others. Since 2021, Cnaani co-orgenizes Choreographic Devices, a three-days chorographic symposium at ICA, London.
Joasia Krysa is a curator and scholar working at the intersection of contemporary art, curatorial studies, and digital technology. She is Professor of Exhibition Research and Director of The Institute of Art and Technology (IAT) at Liverpool John Moores University, and holds adjunct position as Liverpool Biennial. Previous appointments include as Artistic Director of Kunsthal Aarhus, Denmark; part of curatorial team for international quinquennial exhibition Documenta 13, co-curator of the 9th Liverpool Biennial (2016) and curator of the 2nd Helsinki Biennial (2023).
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Our events are always free and open to open, but booking for this online event is required. Free tickets can be booked here.