Interview with Arjon Dunnewind (festival director) Arjon Dunnewind has been the director of Impakt for the past twenty years. A project that started out within the framework of another organization has grown into one of the most exciting Media Arts Festivals in Europe, with an ever-growing number of people working 'round the clock, and throughput the whole year to make its diverse and stimulating programming come into being within five days. When asked how he became interested in Media Arts, he told me that it all stemmed from a general interest in experimental films, which where not so easily available in the 80s in the Netherlands: “My interest grew from curiosity of what happened at the begging of the century and how that influenced what people did afterward and the experimental movement after the second world war, going to the birth of video art and early video experiments and more contemporary artists that combined music performances with video projections. And simply my interest in those kinds of arts lead me to start organizing the Impakt festival”. The evolution of media arts after the first edition of the festival in 1989 has undergone many transformations. One of the most substantial ones is the development of the new media of internet and interactive CD ROMs as art platforms, which lead different curses: “the funny thing is that at a certain point in the mid 90s CD ROM were very common and very promising as the internet was, but while the internet is still flourishing and even creating a revolution -to the point of affecting how video artists operate and how musicians operate- the whole CD ROM and other variations slowly died out and merged into newer forms and the internet became interactive in a way that it replaced everything that the artists wanted to do with CD ROMs in the early years. This is an example of the emerging of a new art form, where you see part of it dying and part of it having a renewed influence.” The transformation brought about by the internet-fueled artistic expressions doesn't come from scratch, as Arjon reminds us: “even this art form that claims to be very innovative and challenging and groundbreaking, has its traditions and it styles that artists use over and over, creating its own formulas to fight the formulas that were there before. So you would find artists repeating the style of work that they have grown familiar with.” Impakt shows regularly net art within the Impakt Online program, which runs year round. The festival itself shows a wide selection of art which uses, besides the internet, different platforms that range from video art to performances, from installations to electronic music. Each type of art or event has its particularities, and they all demand attention to specific details when Arjon or other curators or programers decide upon the section of artwork. However, there are some overarching principles in the kind of art shown by Impakt. Arjon identifies his preference for art which “ touches on issues that are current on our society and that reflect on the development that a medium is undergoing, either in a technical way or in the way it is perceived and used by the general audience or by artists, and that's a criteria that you can apply to the way internet works or video art or electronic music.” MEDIA ART FOR EVERYONE? Part of the challenge of directing a festival like Impakt relies in creating a meaningful interaction between the audience and the works selected, a “stimulating sinergy that is caused by the program”, as Arjon puts it. Some people, not commonly acquainted with media arts, might be put off by the fact that they don't have enough knowledge to enjoy the program. “Of course there's a part that requires some knowledge”, says Arjon, “But knowledge about what? Well, knowledge about the things that are going on in the world. And that knowledge is generally available for anybody that has his or her eyes open and who is living in the western world which is a media-saturated society. And all the ideas and all the formats and all the methods are there in our media environment and you cannot avoid being confronted with that on a permanent basis, so artists refer to that and sometimes the reference might not be understood by you, but the general idea of what they respond to is often easy to understand and that could be the way image is used and manipulated by all of us in the end.” Besides this, video art —a selection of which is shown in the annual Panorama Program— is also “very fitted for use by an artist for very personal expressions that deal with feelings and views that are universal. So i think there is a lot of work in the festival that can be understood by no matter who is visiting it, because it deals with ideas that have been addressed by literature over the ages or by music over the ages.” Furthermore, the power of image and sound are constantly manipulated by people with specific political agendas, or by the entertainment industry and, in Arjon's view, this is why it is so important that “we have artists presented in festivals all over the world like Impakt that show things in a different way or that show how manipulative or how beautiful or how strong image and sound can be”. Besides Panorama, the festival also has a thematic programming. This year, the focus will be on the way new technologies are affecting our notions of time. Under the title of “Accelerated Living”, guest curators Stoffel Debuysere and María Palacios Cruz have curated a program that includes film, video, installations, conferences and music. The 20th edition of the festival will take place in several locations in the city of Utrecht, from the 14th until the 18th of October 2009. Festival visitors should bear in mind Arjon words: “the only right way to go to a festival or to encounter art is keeping in mind that its you who is experiencing it and that it is up to you to interpret it and to get something out of it, its not something that{s already there. You shouldn't be afraid that you are missing something. Art always plays with the idea of leaving things open to the spectator, not limiting itself to a simple interpretation; that would be a puzzle with a solution. You can decide what you get out of a work of art... that is what makes it so strong and keeps it interesting for a longer period. The more open an art work is the longer it will last.” We hope to see you soon in Utrecht. Posted by Miguel Escobar |
|
