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And then the chimney smokes a New Project by Artist Marijke Van Warmerdam Latest in Dia's Series of Artist's Projects for the Web

Launches October 30, 2003 at Dia:Chelsea

On October 30, 2003, Dia launches And then the chimney smokes, a project for the world wide web by Dutch artist Marijke van Warmerdam, created as part of Dia's series of Artists' Projects for the Web. And then the chimney smokes can be seen at www.diacenter.org/vanwarmerdam. Dia and the artist will celebrate the project with an event at Dia's bookshop at 548 West 22nd Street on Thursday, October 30th, from 6 to 8 pm.

For And then the chimney smokes, van Warmerdam has created a project comprising a short film to be viewed online, which generates an unlimited edition allowing the viewer to acquire the artwork by downloading the film. By visiting Dia's website, viewers access a series of interactive pages leading to the film that may be downloaded, burned to CD, and packaged as an editioned artwork. The project includes viewer instructions.

Filmed on the site of a newly constructed family home, van Warmerdam's project explores the discrepancies between an idea and its realization. Expanding on the notion of construction, she guides the user through the assembly of their own copy of her unlimited but numbered edition artwork. Both the burning of a CD version of the film and the printing and assembly of a case for the CD become part of the work itself.

Though van Warmerdam works in a variety of media, she is best known for her short films and videos, which often concentrate on a simple action or moment. These moments range from banal acts that become mesmerizing through repetition-traveling on a highway behind trucks that take consecutive turns passing each other, watching a boy balancing a ball on his head-to more spectacular imagery with enchanted effects: a hat floating over a canyon or, from a new work premiering in 2004, a journey from the perspective of a rider of a bicycle that suddenly takes flight.

Marijke van Warmerdam
Van Warmerdam has shown internationally since the mid 1990s, including recent solo exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2000); FRAC Languedoc-Roussillon, Montpellier (1999); Museum Ludwig Köln, (1998); Malmö Konsthall (1998); Museum fur Gegenwartskunst, Zürich (1997); and Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (1997); and in group exhibitions at the Center for Contemporary Art, Kitakyushu, Japan (2002); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2002); PS1 Contemporary Art Center (2001); Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm (1998); and Museum of Modern Art, Oxford (1996). She exhibited in the Dutch Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1995. Van Warmerdam lives and works in Amsterdam.

Artists' Projects for the Web
Dia initiated a series of web-based works in early 1995, becoming one of the first arts organizations to foster the use of the world wide web as an artistic and conceptual medium. Dia's collection of web projects currently numbers twenty-one. Previous projects, which can be visited on Dia's website, include Glenn Ligon's Annotations (2003), Olia Lialina and Dragan Espenschied's Zombie and Mummy (2002), Jeanne Dunning's Tom Thumb: Notes Towards A Case History (2002), James Buckhouse and Holly Brubach's Tap (2002), Shimabuku's Moon Rabbit (2001), Feng Mengbo's Phantom Tales (2001), Stephen Vitiello's Tetrasomia (2000), Diller + Scofidio's Refresh (1998), and Komar and Melamid's The Most Wanted Paintings (1995). All may be viewed at www.diacenter.org.

Funding
The Artists' Projects for the Web have been funded in part by the New York State Council on the Arts.

Dia
Dia Art Foundation was founded in 1974. A nonprofit institution, Dia plays a vital role among visual arts organizations nationally and internationally by initiating, supporting, presenting, and preserving art projects, and by serving as a locus for interdisciplinary art and criticism. Dia presents its permanent collection at Dia:Beacon, in Beacon, New York; exhibitions and public programming at Dia:Chelsea (formerly Dia Center for the Arts), in New York City; and long-term, site-specific projects in the western United States, in New York City, and on Long Island.

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