With the Full Spectrum Curatorship programme, IMPAKT offers recent graduates and curators at the beginning of their career the opportunity to develop their own curatorial programme under the wings of one of the premier media art festivals in the Netherlands. Core to Full Spectrum is the development of a curatorial project under the guidance of internationally recognised curators. The team coach-curators for this edition consisted of: Angelique Spaninks (director and curator at MU Hybrid Art House, Eindhoven), Doreen A. Ríos (independent curator and researcher, founder of [ANTI]MATERIA), Florian Wüst (film curator, artist, and publisher. Curator of the upcoming IMPAKT Festival 2022: The Curse of Smooth Operations), Paulien Dresscher (independent researcher, curator and advisor and curator of the Digital Culture Program of the Dutch Film Festival) and Wade Wallerstein (digital anthropologist, strategist and curator).

Ten new curatorial projects
After an intensive five-months programme consisting of group presentations by the coach-curators and one-on-one mentoring sessions, ten curators presented their new, original projects. The projects stand out for their unorthodox approach to exhibition-making, addressing some of the urgent issues in our digital culture. The topics range from the NFT art market, stereotypical representations of AI, what it means to be human, processes of domestication within society and the human violence that fuels the current ecological crisis. 

Projects were presented by the Full Spectrum Curatorship Programme 2022 participants:
FaceOrFactory (Aljaž Rudolf & Eva Smrekar) (Ljubljana), Alorah Harman (United Stated / the Netherlands), Ana Ruiz Valencia (Colombia), Brooklyn J. Pakathi (South Africa), Hsiang-Yun Huang (Taiwan / the Netherlands), Jori Snels (the Netherlands), Joseph Steele (the Netherlands), Mae A. Miller-Likhethe (United States), Maria Sitte (Germany) and Rose Jepkorir Kiptum (Kenya).

We present here a selection of the projects developed during the Full Spectrum Curatorship 2022:

FaceOrFactory (Aljaž Rudolf & Eva Smrekar) (Ljubljana)
The Face of Corporate Building
The Face of Corporate Building is a research based curatorial project to explore the strategies that are used to construct the narratives and discursive structures of the NFT (art) market. NFTs are often portrayed as a new way of forming a depoliticized system of contemporary mythology. By using different archival, documentary or even forensic approaches, the project researches the properties of the (human) face in this new economic-digital landscape. On the one hand, the face is a place of identity and representation, on the other hand it also represents the front cover of dispersed discourses, economic transactions and political neutralisation. 

Alorah Harman (United States)
No More Humanoids
No More Humanoids is a speculative political campaign, curatorial practice, and research bureau centred around the generative power of technology imaginaries and the current state of cultural representations of AI. By labelling the stereotypical robotic “humanoid” as a toxic AI imaginary and taking a performative stance against it, the project uses humour, provocation, and impromptu solidarity-building through events and pop-up interventions to connect cultural practitioners, AI researchers, and journalists in debate and conversation. If our social imaginaries are our thinking tools, can our AI imaginaries become more ethical, orienting, or activating for societies in a capitalocene context?

Ana Ruiz Valencia (Colombia)
We Used to be Neighbors
In biology, the term ‘domestication’ refers to power relationships between humans and other species for food, work, clothing, or medicine. However, processes of domestication also operate within humans by defining dominant social, moral, or economic mindsets and establishing hierarchies, behaviours, and notions of truth. We Used to be Neighbors is a time-based curatorship proposing a conversation between alternative/non-western epistemologies on what we call nature, based on actions and works happening on the web, the radio, and public space. Artists are invited to develop site-specific, time-based, process-oriented works around domestication in biology but also in our relations with time, technolog(ies) and our own societies.

Jori Snels (Netherlands)
The in-between-space
What does it mean to be human? Is there anything essential and unchanging about who we are? How is our sense of self affected by the digital technologies we use? The proposed exhibition playfully explores such ontological questions about the Self through digital artworks that engage in worlding. Specifically, the worlding practices of the selected artworks are rooted in or inspired by Buddhist philosophies. The exhibition will be structured through three conceptual figures, which each represent a particular perspective that the audience takes on when they engage with the work: the Avatar, the Player, and the NPC (‘Non-Player Character’).

Maria Sitte (Germany)
Fading traces – Reconstructing ecological violence
The current ecological crisis is also the result of wars and human rights violations. The exhibition Fading traces brings together artistic positions that reconstruct traces of structural ecological violence. The artworks deal with political, socio-critical, environmental and economic issues in all its contradictions and, starting from intense artistic research, they expand and strain methods of mapping and archiving. By bringing together works by contemporary artists with historical archive material a cross-generational dialogue is intended to not only highlight the continuation of destructive ecological violence, but also manifests a constructive awareness of basic human needs. 

Hsiang-Yun Huang (Taiwan / the Netherlands)
Fake it real
We are facing an information crisis – overloaded, fragmental and unverifiable information pops up on our digital devices every day. Some claim we have entered a post-truth era, in which people are overwhelmed by fake news and experience the disappearance of objective standards for truth. Information selection is based less and less on experts and more on its potential for wide circulation. Since fake news spreads quicker than verified news, widespread fake news can carry persuasive power and thrive among algorithms based on popularity; the production of fake news is even carefully utilised by political parties and corporations to sway the public or maximise profits. The exhibition selects artists who deal with the representation of, resistance to, and reflection on the information crisis in the context of network capitalism and digital globalisation.

Read more about the selected curators and the Full Spectrum Curatorship Programme here:

Read more about the Programme

After the summer 2022 we will launch a new open call for the Full Spectrum Curatorship Programma 2023. Interested? Subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated.