Digital art pioneer Jonathan Harris to compile Top 10
Internet artist Jonathan Harris will be this year’s IDFA guest of honor. Harris is one of the most significant artists and innovators to emerge in the digital era. IDFA will present the world’s first ever retrospective of Harris’ work, and Harris will present his personal Top 10 at the festival. He has achieved widespread recognition for projects such as the interactive We Feel Fine, The Whale Hunt and I Love Your Work.
This is the first time IDFA’s annual Top 10 will not be compiled by a documentary filmmaker, but an interdisciplinary documentary artist. Harris is known principally as an internet artist, although he also moves freely between classic media such as photography, painting, performance art and design. Over the past ten years, he has produced a range of major works that are now seen as classics of the internet art genre. His work has been exhibited at the Centre Pompidou and Sundance New Frontier, for example, and is included in the permanent collection of MoMa in New York.
In 2013, he won the IDFA DocLab Award for Digital Storytelling for his interactive documentary I Love Your Work. Says Digital Journal's David Silverberg: “Whether you want to explore today’s zeitgeist with Universe or take society’s emotional temperature with We Feel Fine, Harris’s work should resonate with anyone curious how offline affairs can translate into bold artistic visions on the Web.”
Following in the footsteps of renowned filmmakers such as Agnes Varda, Werner Herzog and Rithy Panh as the festival’s guest of honor, Harris will present a Top 10 of his favourite films and documentary artworks, which can be seen in different ways during the festival. His selections not only includes the classic documentary Koyaanisqatsi, but also the visionary book on building The Nature of Order and video platform YouTube. Harris will explain the choices in his Top 10 during a special Filmmaker Talk.
The retrospective and the Top 10 will be presented both in cinemas and as part of the IDFA DocLab focus program Uncharted Rituals. The IDFA DocLab program is supported by the Netherlands Film Fund.
