Digital art project the_living by Debra Solomon on show at film festival IFFR 2024
Debra Solomon's art project the_living, part of the exhibition REBOOT. Pioneering digital art, is also on show at a number of venues of the International Film Festival Rotterdam, which starts on 25 January. The work there is part of the Art Directions programme, in which the festival explores the boundaries of cinema, letting you experience alternative forms of 'film', inside and outside the cinema. IFFR visitors get a discount on a ticket to REBOOT, on presentation of their festival ticket.
10 January 2024
the_living at IFFR
Artist Debra Solomon features with her alter ego the_living in the exhibition REBOOT. Pioneering Digital Art at the Nieuwe Instituut. The artwork includes recordings of online performances Solomon used in the late 1990s to establish a digital personality for the then-new 'living environment' of chat rooms and other online communication tools. During the upcoming 53rd edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), she will hack into several screens at various festival locations as the_living. Solomon's persona will appear there at random moments among the regular narrowcasting.
Read more about the_living at IFFR on the festival website.
Art Directions
Platform for media art LI-MA - partner organisation and co-creator of REBOOT - and the film festival programme makers place Debra Solomon's pioneering work in the context of what IFFR itself describes as "carefully selected fiction and documentary feature films, short films and media art." With Art Directions, IFFR explores the boundaries of cinema in a programme full of alternative forms of 'film' that visitors can experience outside the cinema. Performances, live music and audiovisual installations will showcase the unexpected scope of the discipline in galleries and art institutions across the city.
Read more about this on the IFFR website too.
Art Directions Roundtable Discussion
On Friday 26 January, under the guidance of art historian and curator Sanneke Huisman (co-curator of REBOOT) Debra Solomon will enter into a conversation with a number of other participants in the Art Directions programme. They "discuss their backgrounds, working methods, approaches and motivations, and explore how their artistic practice relates to constantly changing technological and political realities," according to the description on the film festival's website. In addition to Solomon, it features Australian artist, sociologist and educator Luke Conroy, visual artist and audiovisual designer Anne Fehres, South African artist Phumulani Ntuli and Ukrainian filmmaker and artist Yuri Yefanov.
