Raitis Smits | Digital Art and Archiving in the 21st Century

Raitis Smits will talk about his research in digital art preservation, key strategies, and main practices, particularly focusing on archiving and representation issues of internet based art from the ’90s. He will be introducing case studies on the Rhizome Archive at the New Museum that he studied as a part of his Fulbright research in New York. He will also discuss ongoing emulation of the RIXC Center “art server” started in 1997, a part of a large-scale European Digitalization project by the National Library of Latvia. He is currently working on his book on “new media art. preservation and representation problematics,” based on his doctoral thesis (defended in 2015). He will also introduce his curatorial practice through the exhibition projects – “net.art.lv” (RIXC gallery, 2010), “Save As” (kim? Contemporary Art Center, 2015), “Data Drift” (kim?/RIXC, 2016), exhibition and book, co-curated and co-edited with Lev Manovich.

Raitis Smits is artist, researcher and curator, working with art, science and emerging media since the ’90s. He has been pioneer of the internet radio and networked sound art, and is a co-founder of the RIXC Center for new media culture in Riga, where he organizes RIXC Art and Science festivals and curates the exhibitions in the RIXC Gallery. In his artistic practice he works together with Rasa Smite, creating visionary and innovative artworks on the edge of art, science and techno-ecologies. Currently, Raitis is visiting lecturer at MIT ACT, and his work (together with Rasa Smite) – “Biotricity. Swamp Radio” was shown in MIT CAVS 50 year anniversary program and is on view at Venice Architecture Biennale, Swamp Pavilion.