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THEM F*CKIN’ ROBOTS screening

March 15th, 2012

The Active Space presents its first documentary screening by Ine Poppe and Sam Nemeth entitled “THEM F*CKIN’ ROBOTS” in
cooperation with Eyebeam Art and Technology Center on March 23, 2012 7-10PM.

“THEM F*CKIN’ ROBOTS” is a documentary about Norman White, one of the most influential media artists in his field. He produced humorous and beautiful work, but also trained hundreds of artists at the Ontario College of Art and Design to make their own, hands-on media art from 1976 onwards. This is on of the reasons a vast number of acclaimed media artists come from Canada. However, media-art does not cover the realm of White’s work: he produced a large oeuvre, from paintings to light murals to interactive robotics. Ine Poppe and Sam Nemeth filmed White and his students: they visited him in his huge watermill in Ontario and followed him and his students at work.
It took Poppe and Nemeth 5 years to finish Them F*ckin’ Robots. This had several reasons: it was hard to obtain material of the early works of White (video was still a ‘new’ medium) but moreover was it hard to fund a film about media art. In the contemporary cultural climate in the Netherlands no art- or film fund dared to take the risk of financing a documentary about media art, also because the film is about a ‘foreign’ artist. This reflects thematically in the film. The question wheather or not media art has a place in the mainstream art world is adressed as well as why it took Norman White such a long time -he started in the 1960-ies with electronic art- to get recognition. The film contains material from the 70-ies, 80-ies, 90-ies, 00-ies and original footage of the of the White family shot in the 40-ies,50-ies and 60-ies.

The screening of “THEM F*CKIN’ ROBOTS” takes place March 23, 2012, from 7-10 PM. Email ashley@566johnsonave.com.

THEM F*CKIN’ ROBOTS
March 23, 2012
The Active Space
566 Johnson Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11237
www.566johnsonave.com

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Directors Biography

Ine Poppe

Ine Poppe (1960, Amsterdam) is a documentary maker and writer. She publishes about digital culture, technology, art and science, mainly for the national newspaper NRC-Handelsblad. She lectures at the Audio Visual department of the Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam.

Poppe made several documentaries for Dutch National television. ‘Hippies from Hell’, about Dutch Hackers, was shown in Europe and America at festivals, musea and universities. It was the first online Dutch documentary, licensed together with Lawrence Lessig under Creative Commons.

Poppe wrote scripts for several computer games.
In 2002 she was winner of the Geneva-Europe Grand Prize for TV-scripts, with Necrocam, a film about a webcam inside a coffin.

Sam Nemeth

Sam Nemeth (1962, Rotterdam) lives in Amsterdam. He studied Film and Television at University of Amsterdam. He worked as a video maker for video collective Staats-TV Rabotnik, for the educational department of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and Dutch national tv. He was editor of the Dutch AV magazine Skrien. Sam held several functions at medialab Waag Society in Amsterdam and specializes in arts and technology and game development.
Aside from this he works as a free-lance documentary maker and writing journalist.
Sam Nemeth is currently lecturer/coach at The University of Eindhoven.

Document Credits

Screenplay : Ine …