P-L-U 09

“RhizomeDC is a nonprofit community arts space located at 6950 Maple St NW, in the Takoma neighborhood of Washington DC. We are dedicated to promoting creativity as a force for personal empowerment and community engagement. We also strive to provide a home for non-mainstream programming in the DC area.
We host programs that promote creativity in all its forms. These include concerts, workshops, performances, talks, exhibitions, and demonstration projects in areas such as art, music, technology, theater, local food, poetry, as well as in more esoteric fields of knowledge.
We believe it’s more interesting to make your own culture than to consume culture made by others.
We are exploring new approaches to grassroots community education which seek to blur the lines between amateur and professional, teacher and student, and which free learning from rigid models of instruction and explication.
We also strongly support non-commercial artistic experiences and seek to provide a space for artists to create experimental works and share the results with the broader community.

RhizomeDC
6950 Maple St NW
Washington DC 20012
USA
https://www.rhizomedc.org/

Curatorial note

Dark Summer 2022
The title of the screening program to be presented on 7 July @ Rhizome DC describes best the two sides of the same coin. The human desire for peace and harmony representing sun and light and lightness, the return of the paradise after the pandemic – the positive side of human existence, but in 2022 it’s disturbing dark side is no local phenomenon any longer – but overall present destroying that paradise, not only on location in Ukraine, but by invading the Ukraine Russia started a new type of World War III, the war about Resources and Truth generating globalwide only misery and destruction, it’s a war which has no winners, only losers.
We all would prefer lying in the grass of the summer meadows listening to the calls of the birds and chirping crickets. Instead of this, however, there is to hear pitifully screaming children, the explosion of bombs and gun salvos of soldiers in agony. What is happening, at all??

The World is in turmoil, the human civilisation is in turmoil, culture is in turmoil, the artists are in turmoil – violence and war in Ukraine and elsewhere, the war of the political systems and ideologies, genocide, racism, intolerance, climate change, pandemic, expulsion, refugees, globalization – and all simultaneously! The global crisis!
And what function might art have in all that mess? What message may transport these Peace Letters?

In any case much more than just promising support and solidarity, rather summoning the positive creativity when we, that’s the world community, are staying together brainstorming, acting in respect and responsibility for each other. Art as a tool for sensitizing and encouragement and – Peace. The selected artists – coming from different continents and cultural backgrounds – show and offer their positive creativity via their audio-visual creations.

The solidarity screening in Washington shows for one evening the program @ Rhizome DC – 90 minutes presenting in a very concentrated way – the essence of art through the pieces of videoart as a way to send the message to the world – We have understood! – the positive powers of constructive creativity, solidarity and empathy – as if it would be our own funeral.

Dark Summer 2022 – consists of a selection of videos from Peace Letters 1, 2 amd 6 curated by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne and Yarina Butkovska (Ukraine), including – Arthur Woods (Switzerland)
Bruno Pavić (Croatia) – Anna Kryvenko (Ukraine) – Finn Harvor (South Korea) – Ulf Kristiansen (Norway) – Olexiy Khoroshko (Ukraine) – Isabel Pérez del Pulgar (Spain) – Irina Gabiani (Georgia)
Francesca Lolli (Italy) – Francesca Leoni (Italy) – Johanna Reich (Germany) – Oksana Chepelyk (Ukraine) – Perry Bard & Richard Sullivan (USA) – Abdoul-Ganiou Dermani (Togo) – Maryam Muliaee (Iran/USA) Cody Healey-Conelly – (USA) Shahar Marcus (Israel) – Oleg Chorny (Ukraine) – David King (Australia) – Harold Charre (France) – Manuela Barile (Portugal) – Agricola de Cologne (Germany)

The “Peace Letters to Ukraine Project” is initiated by the Cologne based media artist and chief-curator Wilfried Agricola de Cologne for The New Museum of Networked Art as a networked artistic action in reaction on the war against the Ukraine in solidarity with the Ukrainian people.

Launch on 7 July 2022

Launch on 7 July 2022

Launch on 7 July 2022

Agricola de Cologne @ http://and.nmartproject.net/?p=82

was launched on 1 January 2000 as an artist brand, standing for the

• curator of media art, designer of culture, interdisciplinary media artist, director of experimental shortfilms and videos
• founder and director of The New Museum of Networked Art – the experimental platform for art and new media (2000), a global network on different virtual and physical levels
• founder & curator of The Audiovisual Art Collections @ The New Museum of Networked Art including several thousand of art films & videos on the topics “memory” & identity”- a big share has “The Collective Trauma Film Collections – including Shoah Film Collection, The Refugee Film Collection and Never More! Hiroshima/Fukushima
• founder & director of artvideoKOELN – the curatorial initiative „art & moving images“ (2005)
• founder & director of CologneOFF – International Festival Platform (2005), including CologneOFF International Videoart Festival, animateCologne – Cologne Art & Animation Festival, 1minutCOLOGNE – Cologne One Minute Festival, exDox – experimental documentary festival, diLight – Darkness Into Light Festival, The W:OW Art Film & Video Festival
• founder & curator of The W:OW Project – We Are One World – global networking project (2017)

Besides for a broad bandwidth of dynamic curatorial contexts he is initiating in physical & virtual space like JavaMuseum (2001), NewMediaFest (2002), Violence Online Festival (2003), SoundLAB & VideoChannel (2004), CologneOFF (2005), netEX (2007), AVMCI (2012), Agricola de Cologne is standing also for the co-curator & co-organiser of events like festivals & exhibitions of contemporary art, but also for the jury member of divers festivals.

Since its introduction in 2000, Agricola de Cologne is represented as an artist & curator on more than 500 festivals and media art exhibitions in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Knoxville, Pittsburgh, Toronto, Montreal, Mexico City, Guadalajara, Merida, Caracas, Maracaibo, Buenos Aires, Rosario, Montevideo, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Santiago de Chile, Quito, Bogota, London, Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Madrid, Gijon, Sevilla, Valencia, Barcelona, Lisbon, Oslo, Bergen, Stockholm, Helsinki, Tampere, Kopenhagen, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Tokyo, Nagoya, Seoul, Manila, Hongkong, Bangkok, Phnom Penh, New Delhi, Guwahati, Mumbai, Kolkata, Jakarta, Perth, Melbourne, Casablanca, Rabat, Marrakesh, Addis Abeba, Istanbul, Ankara, Yerewan, Tblissi, Damaskus, Jerusalem, Tel-Aviv, Bethlehem, Gaza, Basel, Zurich, Vienna, Linz, Salzburg, Graz, Kiev, Kharkiv, Riga, Tallinn, Vilnius, Moscow, St.Petersburg, Kansk, Perm, Yekaterinburg, Sofia, Varna, Bukarest, Arad, Timisoara, Budapest, Belgrade, Zagreb, Split, Lubljana, Rome, Naples, Milan, Pescara, Venice, Torino, Bologna, Berlin, Cologne, Münster, Düsseldorf, Karlsruhe, Nuremberg & elsewhere, but also on Biennials like Venice Biennale 2003, 2005, Biennale of New Media Art Merida/MX 2003, Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth/Australia (2004), Biennale de Montreal (2004), Biennale of Video & New Media Santiago de Chile (2005), ISEA Nagoya (2002), ISEA Singapur (2008), ISEA Belfast (2009), Kochi Musziris Biennial (2016/2017)

His media art context “CologneOFF nomadic – videoart in a global context” is travelling since 2010 as a nomadic festival project around the globe with permanently changing programs.

Agricola de Cologne –> https://agricola-de.cologne
artvideoKOELN –> https://artvideo.koeln
Cologne International Videoart Festival –> https://cologneoff.nmartproject.net/a>
The New Museum of Networked Art –> https://www.nmartproject.net

Press Release 5 May 2022

PEACE Letters from Washington to Ukraine – Poster