User:Sweettosee/Impakt Foundation

Impakt Foundation

The Impakt Foundation, located in Utrecht, The Netherlands, is a non-profit cultural institution that focuses on presenting and stimulating innovative audiovisual and in an interdisciplinary context. To this end Impakt organizes an annual five-day festival, as well as sponsoring year-round film and media arts events, web-based art pieces, an artist-in-residence program and an educational outreach program.

Founded in 1988 purely as the annual Impakt Festival, the organization grew and developed to incorporate more frequent events and programs, becoming an independent foundation in 1993.

Impakt Festival
Founded in 1988, the Impakt Festival is a five-day event incorporating film screenings, colloquiums, innovation labs, expert meetings, civil disobedience, art exhibitions, concerts and parties. These events take place in a variety of venues throughout the city of Utrecht, often including the Theater Kikker and the Filmtheater 't Hoogt.

Since 2006 each annual Impakt Festival has been based around an overarching theme, which provides the intellectual and theoretical backdrop for all of the festival's diverse events. The theme for the 2011 festival is "The Right to Know", while previous themes have included "Matrix City" (2010) "Accelerated Living"(2009) and "The Great Outdoors" (2006).

For the first time in 2011, Impakt has collaborated with the Centre for the Humanities and the Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University to elect a Festival Fellow : journalist Mercedes Bunz.

Artist Residencies
Under the program tile "Impakt Works", Impakt offers six opportunities per year for both Dutch and foreign artists to live and produce a finished project in Utrecht. These residencies are open to artists working in media arts, with digital media, video, sound, interactive technologies and related fields. Resident artists are provided accommodation, a studio space, basic technical equipment and a small stipend for traveling expenses.

Recent Impakt Works artists in residence include: Lucas Bambozzi, Marc Tuters & Ricarda Franzen, Linda Hilfling, James T. Hong, Jean Charles-Hue, Reynold Reynolds, Peter Burr, Julio Soto & Scott, Steve Reinke, Rosa Menkman, Erik Bünger and Wayne Horse.

Impakt Online
In the interest of supporting contemporary web-based artwork, Impakt sponsors two to four artists per year in creating pieces that use the technology and characteristics of the internet to explore the potential of the world wide web as a platform for art. Impakt Online commissions 2 to 4 projects a year in an online exhibition. These projects are then launched together to remain online for at least one year.

Previous artists who have developed work for Impakt Online include: Franz Alken, Gazira Babeli, Dominik Bartkowski, Marika Dermineur, Theo Deutinger, govcom.org, and Natalie Jeremijenko.

Impakt Events
In addition to the program of the annual festival, Impakt organizes monthly events showcasing contemporary works in film and media arts. These events include film premiers, open-air screenings, artist and researcher presentations, workshops, interviews and VJ exhibitions.

Education
In accordance with their mission statement, Impakt is dedicated to the stimulation and fostering of innovative audiovisual arts, as well as their presentation. Through the education program, Impakt introduces young artists with an interest in media arts to a variety of conceptual and technical outlets for their creativity.

Past workshops presented by Impakt's education department, targeted at students aged 15-18, include: "Inner City Narratives" an exploration of the electronic control systems of a modern city, "City MakeOver!" a debate about technologies impact on the evolution of an urban space, and "Alter Ego" a discussion of the role of identity in a virtual space.