THEME 2017: MEDIA ARCHAEOLOGY

NEoN Digital Arts Festival 2017
7th-12th November 2017, Dundee

In 2017 under the theme of Media Archaeology NEoN presents its 9th annual festival across the city of Dundee during 7th-12th November 2017.

We are very excited to be co-commissioning work with internationally renowned Furtherfield. This co-commission will form part of London-based new media arts organisation Furtherfield’s ongoing investigations into the politics of the blockchain, smart contracts, and cryptocurrency systems like Ethereum. It will manifest as an online commission, a workshop and artist talk. While archaeology has often understood cultures through excavations of hoards and coins, what will today’s digital currencies tell future archaeologists about the way we live and trade? The co-commission will also be part of the V&A London’s Digital Futures programme.

NEoN will return to West Ward Works, DC Thomson’s old print works, to present a large group exhibition featuring work by artists such as Verity Birt (UK) whose work, Rites of the Zeitgeber, through the excavation (online and on-land) of archaeology, folklore and mythology, seeks to open up narratives from epistemologies which have been historically suppressed and eradicated.

Ruined Polaroids by veteran photojournalist William Miller (USA), have been produced by a broken Polaroid SX-70 camera. With the majority of representational elements removed from the images, the resulting abstract images function as a signature of the polaroid process itself.

VOID (Belgium) will recreate the project Bruit Blanc – producing a series of resin disc moulds taken from the space’s architectural surface (floors, walls, ceilings). These discs are then played like vinyl records in an attempt to read all the sounds that every surface has absorbed during its history, starting from the idea that sound leaves traces of its interaction – a sound archaeology of the space.

NEoN is pleased to announce the inclusion of ‘Material Speculation: ISIS’ by Morehshin Allahyari (Iran/USA), This project of 3D modelling and 3D printing focuses on the reconstruction of 12 original artefacts that were destroyed by ISIS in 2015. The original artefacts selected include statues from the Roman period city of Hatra and Assyrian artefacts from Nineveh. ‘Material Speculation: ISIS’ creates a practical and political possibility for artefact archival, while also proposing 3D printing technology as a tool both for resistance and documentation.

Working with major partners from across the city, such as Dundee Contemporary Arts, Hannah Maclure Centre and the University of Dundee, the festival will host workshops, solo exhibitions, a screening programme and a mini-symposium. The full programme of events will be released by the end of August 2017.