Olia Lialina: Trimester 1

"I don't think that art history is the right context for understanding net art and explaining it to others. The history of computing, networks and user interfaces are things I would suggest to net art researchers and new media historians learn; those are essential contexts."

Olia Lialina interviewed by Sven Spieker for ArtMargins, 2007 [1]

Piet Zwart Networked Media welcomes Olia Lialina who is currently a research fellow with the Lectorate: Communication in a Digital Age. Born in Russia, Lialina is a curator, writer, net artist and Professor at the Merz Akademie[2] in Stuttgart. She is a self-proclaimed animated gif model whose work engages with the vernacular of the web in critical, insightful and playful ways. Her projects, such as MY BOYFRIEND CAME BACK FROM THE WAR[3] and ANNA KARENINA GOES TO PARADISE,[4] have been exhibited widely and are considered pioneering examples of early net art. Next to these activities, most recently she co-edited with Dragan Espenschied, Digital Folklore, a book exploring user generated aesthetics and digital culture.

Digital Folklore[5], ed. Olia Lialina & Dragan Espenschied, 2009

Along with Lialina's research for the Lectorate, she will be co-teaching with Renee Turner a seminar entitled Users and Abusers. Through a series of close readings and discussions, the project will examine how users immerse themselves in networked environments, find tactics to subvert prescriptive software, plot possible paths of resistance and invent their own aesthetics through invention, appropriation and remixing. Next to Digital Folklore, the group will be reading texts by Henry Jenkins, Sherry Turkle, Michel de Certeau, Malcolm Gladwell and Steven Heller.

In conjunction with .IMG Festival Rotterdam, Lialina will offer a free Digital Folklore Workshop in collaboration with Moddr_ labs at the Goethe-Institut, Rotterdam. Taking place on October 28th from 13:00-20:00, interested participants will need to contact Leslie Robbins to register via E-Mail: L.J.Drost-Robbins@hro.nl.

Lialina's teaching at Piet Zwart Networked Media will be wrapped-up in December with a Speed Show featuring work from past and present PZI students and selected BA projects made within CrossLab. The Speed Show format was formulated by Aram Bartholl and extols the virtues of the internet browser. Exhibitions have taken place in Vienna, Berlin and Amsterdam.[6]

Olia Lialina's main site: http://art.teleportacia.org/