The two-day symposium “Digital Culture” took place within the scope of the NEXT LEVEL-Festival, on the UNESCO-Welterbe Zollverein in Essen and offered various thematic forums, panels and presentations. Digital formats and concepts for performance and concerts were presented and discussed, as well as live-act platforms and corresponding exploitation issues. The focus was on projects and initiatives from NRW.

EVENTS OF THE DIGITAL CULTURE SYMPOSIUM

FORUM: PERSPECTIVES FOR THE DIGITAL ARTS IN NRW
Open talk moderated by Klaas Werner (Office medienwerk.nrw)
Sunday, November 28, 2021, 3-4:30 pm

What are the perspectives for the digital arts in NRW? What about the qualification of artists and what technical support is needed? Are the actors in the scene and their needs sufficiently involved? How should things continue now that deficits in the field of digitalisation have become obvious during Corona? How can the numerous digital experiments and virtual artistic formats that emerged during the Corona pandemic be further developed in the long term?

These were the questions posed by a forum and panel organised as a cooperation between Office medienwerk.nrw, NRW KULTURsekretariat and Regionalverband Ruhr as part of the “Next Level – Festival for Games 2021”.

PANEL: DIGITAL ARTS IN NRW. WHAT HAS HAPPENED – WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
Moderated by: Fatma Idris (journalist)
Sunday, November 28, 2021, 5-6 pm

A discussion panel with the artist duo Jana Kerima Stolzer & Lex Rütten, Jasmin Vogel (Kulturforum Witten), Brigitta Muntendorf (artist and composer), Fabian Saavedra-Lara (Office medienwerk.nrw), Dr Christian Esch (NRW KULTURsekretariat). In cooperation between Office medienwerk.nrw, NRW KULTURsekretariat and Regionalverband Ruhr, in collaboration with WDR 3. The panel was recorded by WDR 3 for the programme “Forum” and broadcast at a later date.

For more than ten years, the Next Level  –  Festival for Games has been exploring interactive and participatory models of digital games culture and shedding light on their potential and perspectives. Like no other event in the field of tension between digital art forms and analogue experience formats, Next Level sheds light on exemplary media art in the games context and, in an exciting mix of performances and exhibitions, impulses and discussions, workshops and laboratories and workshops together with many partners, addresses different target groups who have one thing in common: an interest in games and in gaming at a high level. After three years in Cologne from 2010 to 2012 and three more in the Dortmunder U from 2013 to 2015, Next Level moved on to the NRW-Forum Düsseldorf from 2016 to 2018 and developed from a conference into a festival lasting several days. Since then, in addition to informational and discursive components, the focus has been on digital experience formats such as interactive installations or dance, theatre and music performances, but also artistically sophisticated and curated games courses. In 2019, the multi-day event took place for the first time at the UNESCO World Heritage Zollverein in Essen, where it successfully celebrated its tenth anniversary.
More info about Next Level