After I got involved with the GOGBOT festival in Enschede in 2010 as a symposium moderator I quickly became a regular advisor and ambassador next to being its symposium curator of this unusual and sympathetic event. GOGBOT is organized by the artist initiative PLANETART, which was founded in Hengelo in the nineties. Hengelo and Enschede are ten kilometers apart in the largely rural Dutch region called Twente. I was born in Hengelo and lived there until 1982, when I moved to Enschede for one year and left for Amsterdam from there. It was a delight to find the region shaken up and brought into the 21st century with GOGBOT. Very little interesting and exciting happened in Twente culturally until PLANETART shook up the region with Survival Research Laboratory type events from the early nineties onwards. These started at a small scale, but grew into the four day extravaganza GOGBOT is today. Nearly every interesting media artist in the Netherlands had one of their first exhibitions or performances at the festival. I scouted artists, advised on themes and in later years curated side programs and co-curated the festival. Here are a few of the artists I brought to GOGBOT.
Constant Dullaart during his Youtube on the Floor performance in the Oude Kerk in 2011
Peter Luining (r) and Rafael Rozendaal (l) during their screenings on the church ceiling
Angelo Vermeulen photographed after finishing his amazing Seeker sculpture for the 2014 Spaceship Earth festival theme