Talking Back to the Media in 1985 combined playful interventions with a critique of the current mass media and was led by international artists such as John Baldessari, Barbara Kruger, Raul Marroquin, David Garcia, General Idea, Sebastián Lopez and Hans Haacke, to name but a few. The impact of Talking Back to the Media was based on its scale; for a full month every avenue of mass communication in Amsterdam was used by artists, with important new works being commissioned for television, radio, posters, cinema and printed journals. During this month the artists could place works in the media landscape of a major European city at a scale approaching that of the mainstream mass media. This engagement with the full infrastructure of a range of media platforms (rather than through selective reporting or images alone) anticipated a certain revolution in media and communications which occurred a decade later. In the internet revolution that was to come not only artists but all citizens would not just be able to 'talk back to the media', but could also think and act beyond the media. This project, entitled Artists Talking Back to the Media 1985-2016 (ATBTTM) reflects on the 1985 incarnation of Talking Back to the Media in juxtaposition with relative contemporary artistic practices.

In the seventies and eighties, a large amount of Latin American artists came to the Netherlands, and especially to Amsterdam because the capital was at that time an international hotspot that was known for its open cultural climate. Artists from all over the world came to experiment with video and the Netherlands was one of the rare places where this new medium was accepted at an early stage. Amsterdam was a city where one could express themselves freely, artistically, sexually and politically. Therefore many Colombian artists came to the Netherlands, and many of them stayed. Since Talking Back to the Media, the Colombian art scene has also evolved and the amount of exhibition spaces and other types of cultural events and institutions in Cali and Bogotá has increased over the last years. Looking to art media and journalism in recent times, it can be said that Colombia has become a place recognised now for its open artistic climate, just as Amsterdam was in the 1980s. After thirty years, it is time to not only look back, but to also enlarge our vision geographically in order to pose some critical reflections. How did the Colombian scene evolve? How do young contemporary Colombian artists work nowadays? How do they look at their predecessors that went to the Netherlands, and can or in what ways can Colombian practices be related to Dutch contemporary artists?

The LIMA team has landed in Colombia to conduct a series of workshops, presentations and exhibitions in Cali and Bogotá taking place from 9th - 18th November. Sanneke Huisman (LIMA), George Barker (LIMA), Nell Donkers (de Appel) and the artists Raul Marroquin and Douwe Dijkstra are participating in the project alongside Ivan Tovar and Natalia Castillo Overdugo who have facilitated the operations on a local level in Colombia. From the extensive archive located at LIMA and de Appel arts centre, a video, poster and paper selection has been made for presentation in collaboration with the artists and the multiple participating institutions in Colombia. This selection aims to represent the manifestation of 1985 in as many aspects as possible, containing national and international artists such as Raul Marroquin, General Idea, Ulises Carrión, Barbara Bloom, Eric Bogosian and Richard Serra. The chosen works represent the different media that were used in the Talking Back to the Media project of 1985 as well as an amalgamation of its conceptual frameworks of mass media critique and dissemination. Contemporary artists from the LIMA collection will also be presented including works from Douwe Dijkstra, Elodie Pong, Oliver Laric and Constant Dullaart. The contemporary works chosen for exhibition aim to draw genealogies between artists relations with the mass media of the past and present, tracing similarities and drawing differences between now and then technological and ideological practices. The opening of the exhibition at La Casa Obesa Mejia - organized in association with La Museo Tertulia and the Cali Film Festival - will be on the 11th November in Cali at 5:00pm. In Bogotá, the exhibition will take place at KB | espacio para la cultura.



In the spirit of the original Talking Back to the Media, a process of rapid intervention to the subject matter of talking back to the media has been enlisted as the curatorial process for the project in Colombia. By hosting presentations and workshops at local universities such as Bellas Artes and CREA Universidad Nacional de Bogotá with the aid of Raul Marroquin, young visual artists have responded to the project and will also exhibit works that speak to the overarching themes of Artists Talking Back to the Media. Through the inclusion of the perspective of young and establish Colombian media artists, it is the intention to reinvigorate some of the artistic energy geared towards mass media critiquethat was observed in the original Talking Back to the Media. The contemporary artists selected (both Colombian and Dutch) will represent a generation that has, under the ever increasing importance of the internet, become the media. In selecting such works and presenting them through discussion and exhibition, the project seeks to ask how contemporary artists position themselves in a rapidly changing media landscape, and if historical philosophies surrounding older media and mediums still hold relevance to their work.

Academic research and reflection was and will also be an important part of the Talking Back to the Media project. By involving local communities in university programmes and the thriving local art scene in San Felipe Bogotá , LIMA hopes to interrogate, question, and source new perspectives on the shift that has taken place in the media landscape from 1985 to the current day and its relation to artistic practices. Upon return to the Netherlands, the project will become further disseminated as LIMA will collaborate with a working group at the VU University in 2017. Led by Sven Lütticken, art history students will research Talking Back To The Media in order to contribute comparable perspectives on the development of media technology, art history, social practices and curatorial structures in the Netherlands from 1985 to the present day. In collaboration with LIMA, the further research taken into Talking Back to the Media in the VU will also contribute to a symposium anticipated to be held in May 2015, where both the contemporary and historic exhibitions will be examined by scholars and artists.

Artists Talking Back to the Media has been supported by the Mondriaan Fund and the Dutch Embassy Colombia. Content from the workshops and exhibitions in Colombia as well as further information about the exhibitions is available at De Hoeksteen Live Cornerstone.

Text Sanneke Huisman from LiMA website: http://www.li-ma.nl/site/nl/news/artists-talking-back-media-colombia