PLASMA 2025 Speaker Series Presents: Joost Rekveld

Joost Rekveld "Liberate the Machines!"

Joost Rekveld is an artist who wonders what humans can learn from a dialogue with the machines they have constructed. In a form of media archeology, he investigates modes of material engagement with devices from forgotten corners in the history of science and technology. The outcomes of these investigations often take the shape of abstract films that function like alien phenomenologies. In their sensuality they are an attempt to reach an intimate and embodied understanding of our technological world.

His films have been shown world-wide in a wide range of festivals and venues for experimental film, animation or other kinds of moving image. He had retrospectives at the Barbican in London and the Ann Arbor film festival amongst others, and in 2017 he was filmmaker in focus at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Individual films were screened at hundreds of venues, including the ICA and the Tate Modern in London, The Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. His film “#11, Marey <-> Moire” was the first Dutch film ever to be shown at the Sundance Film Festival. He realized several installations and did many collaborative projects involving composers, music ensembles, theatre companies and dance companies.

Since 1990 he has been putting together many film programmes, he curated several exhibitions and he occasionally publishes essays. He has been giving lectures since 1993, has been teaching since 1996, and from 2008 to 2014 he was the course director of the ArtScience Interfaculty of the Royal Conservatoire and the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. Since 2017 he has been affiliated to the School of Arts University College Ghent (KASK) as an artistic researcher

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