NewMediaFest2020 is taking place between 26 December 2019 and 31 December 2020 – as an event structure in an exchange between virtual and physical space in collaboration with networking partners all over the world. During the Corona crisis, NewMediaFest2020 is operating as the 1st Corona Festival exclusively online.
NewMediaFest2020 is consisting of different ongoing components which are complementing each other – 12 monthly festival editions (January – December 2020) – The 365 Days Diary, starting on 1 January 2020, each day another article is dealing with “the making of…” of Agricola de Cologne’s activities (2000-2020) – packing 20 years into 365 days of 2020 – and “pages under construction” listing involved projects, artists, curators and other cultural instances participting and collaborating – at the end of 2020 everything will be linked with each other, this means, until the end of 2020 the whole project is in an ongoing process.
The Corona crisis has been changing the concept of NewMediaFest2020, now it is the intention to release more works of digital media online than actually planned in order to offer the audience/viewer/user now exclusively online all programs which have been presented in physical space before during the past 20 years – and a most current media art project has been added, entitled – “Corona! Shut Down?” – how do artists react on the Corona crisis and their consequences. Additional interventions are optional.
NewMediaFest2020 is the online//offline retrospective of Agricola de Cologne and his networked art creations 2000-2020. Agricola de Cologne is not only a living witness of the development of the digital technologies in art, he was a pioneer at his time when there were no experiences, yet, to explore their potential for artistic use, he was accompanying the course of life of many artists. As a curator, mediator and catalyst , Agricola de Cologne was encouraging artists in different disciplines to work with digital technologies, basically (digital) video and Internet based art (netart), but also soundart, and in this way, this retrospective is at the same time a retrospective of the art creation in these field during the past 20 years.
NewMediaFest2020 is honoring all included artists, curators and other cultural instances like festivals, museum , galleries etc which were collaborating with Agricola de Cologne during the past 20 years since 2000 – in the basic program online – there will be at least 12 physical venues- each month another one in another country presenting an individual Jubilee program – to be complemented by monthly features online in video, netart and soundart –
NewMediaFest2020is a big “Thanks” to all networked instances in shape of the participating artists, curators, venues, festivals and cultural institutions who joint and made this singular art working only possible – by including all of them in one or the other way in virtual or physical space.
