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Pressrelease 17 February 2014 - Het Nieuwe Instituut Main Partner DEAF2014 (EN)

DEAF (Dutch Electronic Art Festival) is delighted about its partnership with Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam. Het Nieuwe Instituut is working closely with the DEAF curators to put the programme together and will also be the main location of the biennale.


The tenth edition of DEAF will take place from Wednesday 21 May until Saturday 24 May 2014 at various locations in the city. The main exhibition in Het Nieuwe Instituut is open until Monday 9 June.

DEAF and Het Nieuwe Instituut have entered this partnership in the conviction that together they can further increase and deepen the impact and meaning of DEAF. As a crossover biennale in the field of technology, art, science and society, DEAF has considerable affinity with Het Nieuwe Instituut: both have a critical outlook towards innovation, act on the basis of a cultural context and want to think and work beyond the boundaries of the classical creative disciplines.

The first edition of DEAF was held in 1994 and it originally started as a programme of its partner V2_ Institute for the Unstable Media, a leading interdisciplinary centre for art and media technology in Rotterdam. With a festival formula, the V2_ institute wanted to bring its activities to the attention of a wide audience. From 2012 onwards, DEAF changed from being an annual festival to a biennale held every other year. The DEAF organization has also become independent and has redefined its role as being the platform for e-culture; art, science and technology with a strong focus on architecture and design.

Het Nieuwe Instituut aims to illuminate and map our quickly changing world and foster discussion of it, in a networked fashion, with architects, designers, artists, makers, entrepreneurs, knowledge institutes, cultural organisations and other interested parties. All of Het Nieuwe Instituut’s activities are grounded in the principles of design and innovation – two concepts bound up with changing value systems. Het Nieuwe Instituut arose on 1 January 2013 out of a merger of the Netherlands Architecture Institute; Premsela, the Netherlands Institute for Design and Fashion; and Virtueel Platform, the e-culture knowledge institute.

DEAF2014 offers a rich and varied programme with a main exhibition, seminars, lectures, workshops, concerts and performances. The programme will be announced at the end of March, see www.deaf.nl for the full programme and www.hetnieuweinstituut.nl for the programme in Het Nieuwe Instituut.

Pressrelease 17 February 2014 - Het Nieuwe Instituut Main Partner DEAF2014 (EN)
photo: Johannes Schwartz