FREIRAUM digital // Digital Agora
coming in 2022
Since 2020, the Ben J. Riepe team has been working on the idea of a “FREIRAUM digital” as a virtual counterpart to the analog FREIRAUM and was also supported by the IMPULSE Academy in its initial conceptual considerations. In may we announce that our new FREIRAUM website, after many months of concept work and implementation, went online. As of now, please find all FREIRAUM-related information at www.freiraumdigital.com – not only concerning opening times and offerings, but also on the FREIRAUM working areas in the local community as well as on the international and digital levels as well as the connected projects. In addition to a new, more comprehensive website for the model project FREIRAUM, which is funded by TANZPAKT Stadt-Land-Bund, a “Digital Agora” is to be created as the core content of the website in 2022. The Digital Agora will serve as a virtual meeting, working and exchange place that enables collaborations on a digital level. The “Digital Agora” project is also supported by the RECONNECT funding program at the federal level.
OPENING
Digital Agora
On March 1, 2023 at 6 p.m., the Ben J. Riepe Team will open the “Digital Agora” with works by:
Anno Bolender/Lukas Picard, Céline Bellut, Luise Flügge/Katharina Maister, MEMORY EMPYRE, Gulliver DeLarge, Naoto Hieda , Brigitte Huezo, Andrea Isa, Robin Junicke/Miriam Michel, Katharina Kemme, Danila Lipatov, Tanz Station – Barmer Bahnhof, Ying Xiao
On Wednesday, March 1st, 6pm, the Ben J. Riepe team will officially open and present the „Digital Agora“, a project funded by TANZPAKT RECONNECT (a federal funding initiative). “Digital Agora” is a virtual and interactive exhibition and presentation platform that is thought out to transfer the FREIRAUM idea of collaborative and interdisciplinary work without hierarchy into the digital space.
The Digital Agora, a project funded by TANZPAKT RECONNECT (a federal funding initiative), opens a virtual Co-Working Space and a presentation platform and gives room for experiments and tryouts for the arts and all sciences close to them. From March 1st, the Digital Agora becomes alive and vibrant with interdisciplinary art, when ideas, conceptual sketches, works or different stages of work-in-progress can be shared in a Gather.Town workspace created by artist Hanna Noh. Gather-Town is a virtual platform program sporting both chat and streaming options. Different kinds of media such as video, sound, photos, or external websites can be embedded and presented here. For the Digital Agora’s opening, some of the works exhibited within the Gather-town space will be introduced live by the artists present.
These artistic works from the Open Call will be presented at the Digital Agora on March 1, starting at 6 pm. After a welcome and introduction, four artists* will give live-digital insights into their (work-in-progress) works on the opening evening:
Anno Bolender for “archive of tenderness*” – a collaborative platform and an unstable collection of tender moments, sounds, gestures, theories and stories. An exploration into what it means to engage with the world in a tender way.
Naoto Hieda “soup.glitches.me” – an online platform to archive and reanimate embodied vocabularies as a digital scrapbook for queer bodies.
Brigitte Huezo “DEAD CODE MUST BE ALIVE!” – Using the metaphor of an endless dystopian body of data, it explores the hyperreal visibility of cyberfeminism in hybrid spaces.
Katharina Kemme “The last days of Youth” – an ongoing photo essay that presents a varied and authentic picture of adolescent culture in Germany to reflect on self-discovery and identity development during teenage years.
The entire opening will be held as a hybrid format for which you can either attend the FREIRAUM space on Engelbertstraße 12 in Düsseldorf live or virtually by way of entering the Digital Agora in Gather.town here. (please note that the Digital Agora in Gather.Town is currently under construction still and will only be open for public from March 1st, 6pm German time, onwards)
As part of the global FREIRAUM community, we would love to welcome you in the Digital Agora Space in Gather.town – either on opening night, Wednesday, March 1st, from 6pm, German time, or at any time later when the Digital Agora is opened, to just pop in and experience the concepts and works in various stages that are exhibited there. As online space in the Digital Agora is limited two 20 people, we’re happy if you could give us a quick reply, whether you are planning to attend in Gather.Town on opening night.
Supported by DIEHL+RITTER/TANZPAKT RECONNECT, which is funded by the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media as part of the NEUSTART KULTUR initiative.
