WJ-SPOTS is a project designed by media curator Anne Roquigny, inviting artists, critics, thinkers, inventors, researchers, curators, organizers and producers of cultural events, to look back on 15 years of artistic creation on the Internet.

It is planned as a series of live conferences, with simultaneous online surf on 3 large screens into a selection of URLs related to each presentation. After 3 previous and successful editions since 2009, the 4^th appointment of WJ-SPOTS in Bruxelles aimed to investigate about history and future of artistic creation on the Internet.

The concept of net art was born more than 15 years ago, and we surely have a point by saying that the Internet has become the most important and participative global media ever appeared. Now everybody wonders if it is just a showcase for artists and creative people or if there is a future for online arts and critical creative actions, and what are their possible forms and directions.

The format of WJ-SPOTS event is very innovative: during the speeches, web-jays using the WJ-Spots platform were surfing live through a list of representative websites selected by the speaker.

A multi-screen system was used to display those pages around the audience, and everybody had an opportunity to meet personalities from the Internet community and discover online contents (texts, sound, video, animations…) browsed during the lectures.

For further information:

Archives and publications are also available after the event: the conferences are edited, archived and available on www.digitalarti.com, and the full version of the conferences has been streamed live and archived on iMAL TV.The proceedings of the conferences, along with the bookmarks and screenshots of the speakers’ selected websites will be published by MCD Magazine (Musiques et Cultures Digitales) in a special French and English edition for early 2012. http://www.digitalmcd.com

The previous edition dedicated to the first WJ-SPOTS was published in November 2009 and included 44 interviews in French and English.

List of invited speakers:

Raphaël Bastide & Yannick Antoine (FR/BE, artists),

Michel Bauwens (BE, p2p2foundation),

Josephine Bosma (NL, journalist and critic),

Heath Bunting (UK, artist),

Paolo Cirio (IT, artist),

Florian Cramer (NL, Professor at Piet Zwart Institute),

Régine Debatty (BE, we-make-money-not-art, blogger and critic),

Constant Dullaart (NL, artist),

Jodi (BE/NL, artists),

Olia Lialina (RU/DE, artist),

Alessandro Ludovico (IT, neural.it),

Nicolas Malevé (BE, Constantvzw),

Miltos Manetas (GR, artist),

Julian Oliver (NZ/DE, artist),

Domenico Quaranta (IT, contemporary art critic and curator),

Rafael Rozendaal (NL, artist),

Sakrowski (DE, curatingYouTube),

Gordan Savičić (AT, artist).

Images Photogallery

Downloadable documents:

Article (pdf, 278 kb)