The Alliance
2022


series of flags

The Alliance to Restore Randomness (ARR) is an underground fuck-the-algorithm movement fighting predictive control. Their mission is to restore randomness in a world where coincidence, friction and randomness are banned from our systems. The ARR uses images as their munition and operates through various missions in the digital as wel as the physical space.

287587667_5213310465430397_3865358727819206396_n.jpeg

Spillway
2022


Short story / pocket publication

This story of technofiction takes place in the future. We meet Smittie, a woman in a modern world who is suffering under the predictive control of the Masters of Fact. The idea of a singular truth has been abandoned. In stead, multiple Reality Channels have been set up by the Masters. This mandatory network of truth production systems is run by an army of agents and algorithms in service of the Masters. Every aspect of living has now been completely datafied and automatized and predictability is the highest currency. Leaving the people numb and snoozing like zombies, stuck in their own devices and blindly following the recommendations..

But in the shadows the resistance is rising. An underground fuck-the-algorithm movement is fighting these predictive powers and Smittie joins these troopers in a mission to find a way out of this predetermined dystopia.

This story investigates the potential of fiction as a vehicle for meaningful change. More specifically it uses the genre of science fiction to help offer tools of resisting automation and predictive control in the now.

written & designed by Elki Boerdam
cover illustration: Michel Keppel

The Alliance
2022


action trolley

The Alliance to Restore Randomness (ARR) is an underground fuck-the-algorithm movement fighting predictive control. Their mission is to restore randomness in a world where coincidence, friction and randomness are banned from our systems. The ARR uses images as their munition and operates through various missions in the digital as wel as the physical space.

When an image finds herself on a desktop
2022


text / screenshots

Short texts written from the perspective of the screenshot. Published in PrtScn: The Lazy Art of Screenshot, a publication by the Institute of Network Cultures.

https://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/prtscn-the-lazy-art-of-screenshot/

Spillway
2022


pocket publication, 124 pages, color

A spillway is a passage for surplus (water) to run over or around an obstruction.

The images that are in my archive are often the noise of the internet. The surplus. The images we don’t need in the slick renderings of the modern present. They are the excess, the remains, the lost, the grit.

Spillway is a series of publications hosting these images and in their compositions propose new narratives for the surplus.

Reflection often occurs in mirrors,
2021


Research on the agency of images.
Presentated at the abandonded Slotervaart Hospital in Amsterdam as part of the End of the Year Presentation of the MA F for Fact of the Sandberg Institute.

maxresdefault.jpg

Teken aan de wand,
2021


Since years I have been collecting screenshots of detective walls. Recently this collection was published in Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant. In collaboration with Mark Moorman the article decribes the value of the detective board trope in contemporary tv culture.

Every word is a question, every result a optional path and every outcome a foreseeable ending to the story. Systems of search direct our quests and simulate adventure. Is it even possible to get lost?

Image compositions

Combining images has been a valuable research tool. These image combinations offer different reading options of the images and propose new narratives. They are printed on a4 paper. These compositions are used to frieze new contexts before the images are stored back again in the archive. I have made hundreds.

more on @elkioko

Reflection often occurs in mirrors,
2021


Research on the agency of images.
Presentated at the abandonded Slotervaart Hospital in Amsterdam as part of the End of the Year Presentation of the MA F for Fact of the Sandberg Institute.

The Input Party
2015-now


The Input Party is a (recurring) gathering where various participants share their image archives and together discuss this found imagery. These conversations often result in an insight of how the individual participants approach and treat existing images.

inputparty.nl

Input Party is an initiative of visual artist Rachel Sellem and myself.

Publication in The Archive Hotel ed.7
2021, print and digital.


Contribution to publication The Archive Hotel.
The Archive Hotel is an educational project that invites artists to give an insight into their work process.

The Archive Hotel debates the idea of creating images as a reaction, an awnser, a consequence or product of another image.

In this edition, alongside artist Johannes Elebaut, we were asked 4 questions on the role of our archive in our practices.

You can find the digital version of the publication, and more on The Archive Hotel at their website.
www.the-archive-hotel.com

Input Party XL at the Posthoornkerk
2020


During this Input Party we printed out and explored the complete image archives of seven artists.
Together we discovered which archiving structures the artists are using, which narratives can be discovered within the archives and what happens when these different archives intertwine.
In this two-day workshop the participating artists were invited to collaborate with each other, the images and our Xerox machine. Diving deeper in the image archive as a tool for artistic process and research.

Participating artists: Aafke Bouman, Nastia Cistakova, Anne-Laure Ruffin, Clarinde Wesselink, Ton Zwerver, Rachel Sellem and Elki Boerdam.

This project is kindly made possible by the Amsterdams Fund for the Arts and Stadsherstel.

www.inputparty.nl

Currently I am writing a science fiction story on the loss of randomness and its impact on society. Join the Alliance and fight the recommendations!

This story is part of my reflection on chaos and randomness and their relation to the way we collect and process images.

Extraterrestrial: the picture as evidence of the unseen

Reading at The Hmm at De Ruimte, Amsterdam

90dayfiance.png

image composition

elementa-mathematica-magic-lantern-projecting-monster.jpg

gold-paint-huffer-halloween-cost2.jpg

image composition

note

studio wall

Part of the investigation on the documentation of the unseen and supernatural.

video database What Images Have You Seen So Far?

Input Party at Lowie Kopie
2020


The Input Party spent a day in a private copyshop and brought the Input Party archive. By processing these images we navigated in a playful way through the archive which resulted in material for an upcoming publication.

Made possible with the kind support of Lowie Kopie and the AFK.

25024656_1147687142000481_1017380621737000960_n.jpg

As
2016


Image collection.

published in de Volkskrant (Uitgelicht)

Poedels en Badkamers

Series of a6 booklets.

Sad Men Magazine
2020


Zine i.c.w. Io Cooman

Input Party x the Institute of Social History (IISG)
2020


The IISG has a collection that focuses on social history and has a collection of 250.000 photographs. For this Input Party the IISG is opening up a part of their collection for us to work with. In combination with images from participants own image archives, the images from IISG will serve as input to start a conversation about how archives are formed and how this selection process works.

Image Curator for the Hmm
2018


https://thehmm.nl/mustsee-october-2018/

The Hmm, an inclusive platform for internet cultures, asked me to be their one-month image curator.

What Images Have You Seen So Far?

Still from the video installation

19002243.jpg

manipulated copy of a rock

Input Party - A Visual Conversation (2017)

Workperiod where seven artists applied the Input Party method on their artistic process while developing new work. Results were shown in an exhibition in NEVERNEVERLAND, Amsterdam.

What images have you seen so far? (2017)

Two-screen videoinstallation, as part of the research for the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, What images have you seen so far? juxtaposes the historical material from the archive with contemporary web images. Pointing out our role as observers to reveal new layers of meaning in what we see through context and association.

This work was developed during the residency Open Media Art, commissioned by the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision and the Stimuleringsfonds creatieve industrie.

c3082789b-1.jpg

Wet cats that look like aliens

a6 zine

Share This. Art on social networks. (2015)

- Head of Research

SHARE THIS: Art on Social Networks was a threefold symposium and research program with Het Nieuwe Instituut, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Instituut voor Beeld en Geluid and Upload Cinema.

This research explored the possibitities of the social platform within the context of contemporary art. When does the platform becomes an autonomous artistic medium and which projects are, from a museological perspective, worth collecting and presenting?

image composition

CharlesAubry1875.jpg

Documental Environments

video installation.

Part of the research on the still as a new type of image.

image composition

mirror.jpg

The image as an archive

In an effort to explore my own intuitive methodology I investigated how intuition works. Working based on intuition for me means working with (un)definable aspects of memory and association. Taking one image as a case study I worked back on how association can establish an image archive within one image. And how from dealing with these archives new narratives can arise.

This exploration was presented in a lecture at the Retrouvailles symposium at Fanfare Amsterdam.

Youtube books

series of zines