Zentrum für Netzkunst (ZfN) reconstructs, preserves, and safeguards net art and net culture.
Net art is a form of digital art that uses the internet as its medium and often as its subject matter. Net artists have been reflecting critically on the political, social and cultural implications of the newly spread medium – the roots of our contemporary information and data society. As one of the most radical art forms, net art breaks with traditional art institutions, is free, interactive and collaborative, performative, ironic, and vanishing at a rapid pace.
Due to its ephemeral nature, net art is particularly vulnerable to disappearing, as are internet phenomena in general. As the only initiative of its kind in Berlin, Zentrum für Netzkunst explores the possibilities of archiving and contextualizing net art with a particular focus on the Berlin scene. As part of this mission, we started the netart repository: an online knowledge base and database of net artworks, artists, curators and theorists.
We believe that net art and internet history also need their own public space where education and exchange on net art can take place. Our curatorial program includes exhibitions as well as events like artist talks, reading groups, workshops and experimental art mediation formats like Sticker Residencies or board games. The chosen topics reflect the structure of our members: they foster a narrative spanning different generations of users, are embedded in an international context, and carry our specific local and personal stories of technology.
Members of the association are:
!Mediengruppe Bitnik,
Anneliese Ostertag,
Cornelia Sollfrank,
Gregor Sedlak,
Holger Friese,
Igor Štromajer,
Julia Kochanek,
Paloma Oliveira,
Tabea Rossol,
Tereza Havlíková,
Vera Choudy-Lartisant,
and Robert Sakrowski.