FYI Talent Program

// about

// the programme

FYI Emerging Digital Maker Program 2023

The FYI Emerging Digital Maker Program is designed to teach you about the digital culture ecosystem in the Netherlands and how you can develop your professional art practice within it. This includes not only developing your own practice, building a network, and presenting your work, but also learning about working conditions, your rights as a cultural worker, and different avenues for subsidies and financial support. Taking the form of seven intimate sessions and three studio visits, you’ll have the opportunity—together with 25 other emerging makers in digital culture—to learn from experienced mentors and professionals in the field. 

Organised by The Hmm. Supported by the Creative Industry Fund.

▶▶ programme webpage

// location

Framer Framed, Amsterdam

Framer Framed is a platform for contemporary art, visual culture, and critical theory & practice. Each year the organisation presents a variety of exhibitions alongside diverse cultural and educational programs at its main location in Amsterdam Oost, as well as its project space Werkplaats Molenwijk in Amsterdam Noord.
With the belief that critical and contextualised programming is best explored with an open door and low threshold, Framer Framed’s public programs are always free of charge and resources are made readily available to emerging and established local and transnational communities, artists, and curators to turn their own ideas into tangible realities.
Framer Framed regularly commissions and co-produces new artworks and publications, organises international projects, and houses a bookshop and open reading space.

▶▶ website

// mapping the scene

we worked in pairs to add on the map places we know personally

📍 6-10-2023 // @Framer Framed, Amsterdam

_summary
During this session, we had an introduction to the history of digital culture in the Netherlands & some reflections on what exactly it is (to us), facilitated by Lilian Stolk (co-founder of The Hmm). Afterwards, we did an elaborate brainstorming about institutions, education, festivals and funds that work in the same field. Altogether, we made a visual map and discussed what is our personal experience with them.

_highlights
We collected places in four categories: institutions, funds, festivals, and education. On my end, I have experience with a very small batch of those, but here are some that I've mapped during the last two years (the list is work in progress):

education xpub (experimental publishing) / wdka (willem de kooning academy

institutions (including spaces, galleries, museums, even collectives)
Rotterdam: WORM / Varia / Roodkapje /
Groningen: SIGN project space /
Nijmegen: Extrapool /

festivals FIBER / STRP / Rewire festival / Sounds of music /

funds Together with Erica (xpub) we started researching this last year, ▶▶ here is our summary so far.

Also, here is my personal research since I've moved to the Netherlands: ▶ art scene in NL

// writing about yourself and your practice

📍 20-10-2023 // @Framer Framed, Amsterdam

This session was cancelled in order to support the strike against the war in Palestine.

Instead, we got it as homework - we received a detailed presentation made by Margarita Osipian from the Hmm. In it, she explained good practices and ways to write your bio and artist statement. By analysing various examples, she showed to us some useful ways to approach this impossible task :D

Here is my tryout!

Bio:

i am an artist, designer, and facilitator. i experiment with mediums such as visual, digital, and sound art. recently finished my master’s programme in fine art and media design: experimental publishing at the piet zwart institute in rotterdam. in the context of my master's research, i aimed at finding accessible entry points for other visual makers to use sound in their research and artistic work. in my practice, i weave diverse lines of work and disciplines - artistic research, collaborative practices exploration, publishing, documentation, and addressing socially-charged themes with a mixture of mediums.

Artist statement:

my artistic style is experimental and laboratorial. i am constantly trying out various techniques and stylistic approaches. many of my works are always work in progress and i don’t need something to be fully finished before i publish it. i value imperfection, small details, errors, and intuitive decisions when visualising complex concepts - very much in the concept of diy & diwo culture. anything that makes the artwork human. currently, i am interested in mixing different mediums and experimenting with visual, digital, and sound art. my latest research focus goes to ways to create collective sound-based publications.

// The Hmm @REBOOT

📍 15-11-2023 // @Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam

▶▶The Hmm @ REBOOT brings together eight artists, designers and researchers across generations, who are working with and reflecting on digital tools, online identities, and the deep impact of internet culture. During this special program in collaboration with Nieuwe Instituut, we’ll be highlighting three generations of makers. From the exhibition REBOOT, we invite the pioneers of digital art (1960-2000), and present-day makers who responded to their works. Finally, we present emerging young artists, designers, and makers from our Hmm FYI Emerging Digital Maker Program.

For this event, I collaborated with Léa Cadieux - we met during the FYI Talent Program, organised by the Hmm. We came up with a proposal to present our works in a joint presentation at the then-upcoming The Hmm @Reboot event. We collaborated on our presentation proposal before we got the chance to meet in person. We figured that both of us had very different outcomes from our work, yet we found that we had very similar processes. And values. We collaborated on an etherpad and exchanged messages in a chat. Our proposal was accepted by the programme organisers and we got the chance to present at the event <3 Here is the first cut of what we came up with - what we had in common in the way we work, which we called Protocol of collectiveness.

// further reads

_references that are connected to the programme or some reads that I am checking out [and are connected to the topic]

★ Janwillem Schrofer and Wendy Van Os-Thompson (2018). Plan and play, play and plan : defining your art practice. Amsterdam: Valiz. ‌
★ Nav Haq and Pascal Gielen (2020). The aesthetics of ambiguity. Understanding and addressing monoculture. Amsterdam: Valiz.