On Friday, 4 February, a special finissage will be organized, around the theme of Heiner Holtappels's upcoming departure. With the exhibition Technology Requested Heiner Holtappels will be saying his farewell as general and artistic director of the Netherlands Media Art Institute. Heiner Holtappels has held that position since1998, and wraps up his work here as of the end of February, 2011. The artists in the exhibition have a special relation with the Netherlands Media Art Institute, with their work having been shown a number of times at the Institute during the past twelve years. Technology Requested shows new installations that were realized in 2010. For example, the performance-installation by Sonia Cillari was created this year as an Artist in Residence project at the NIMk.
At 6:00 p.m. on February 4, 2011, Maya Brush, a 'Homo Virtualis', will be born . She is a virtual sculpture who enters the real world for the first time at that moment. Maya Brush is the first virtual beauty to be created solely by the computer – an artificial body which is oriented to human ideals of beauty, yet comes into being entirely virtually, without being created from any real model. Maya Brush has been developed over the past three years by the artist Kirsten Geisler. http://nimk.nl/eng/birth-maya-bush
About his departure Heiner Holtappels declared: “For 12 years I have had the considerable pleasure of working for the Institute, and with its highly competent and deeply involved staff. Now the time has come again to do something different. Running an institute is chiefly management. I now want to focus again on making art, to go to work at that myself and to support artists in realizing their ideas.”
Heiner Holtappels studied at the Staatliche Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf under K.O. Götz and sat the state examination in philosophy and art history. In addition to his function at the Netherlands Media Art Institute he is senior lecturer in Autonomous Art at the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in Arnhem. He is a member of the board of directors of the 5 Days Off Media Foundation, Dyne.org foundation, Moois Media Foundation, Nan Hoover Foundation and Euroz Foundation. He sits on the advisory boards of the Center of Art, Sangeorgiu de Mures and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest (both in Romania), and from 2000 through 2005 was chairman of the committee on Visual Art and Design for the Cultural Council.
Technology Requested is on show until February 6. Work by artists who apply new technologies to initiate interaction with their audience will be central to the exhibition Technology Requested. The artworks only come to life when the visitor enters the artwork's physical space. Works are shown by Alfredo Ciannameo, Sonia Cillari, Kirsten Geisler, Edwin van der Heide, Marnix de Nijs and Christiaan Zwanikken.
