As digital art continues to reshape cultural institutions, questions of preservation, authorship, and responsibility become increasingly urgent. Ahead of this year’s symposium, we speak with Amira Gad, Conservator of Modern & Contemporary Art at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen and co-curator of Sonsbeek 2026. She has previously held senior roles at Serpentine Galleries and KANAL-Centre Pompidou, and has long examined contemporary art in relation to shifting institutional, social, and political contexts.

In her keynote during Transformation Digital Art 2026, she will propose a reframing: digital art not merely as a technological artefact, but as a living cultural practice. What happens when museums built around objects encounter art forms that are processual, collaborative, and technologically unstable? How do we move beyond spectacle and novelty towards care and shared cultural meaning? And whose voices are amplified – or marginalised – as digital infrastructures become central to cultural production?

In the following conversation, Gad reflects on the role of organisations such as LI-MA in building resilient preservation infrastructures, why trust-based systems are critical in a platform-dependent world, and how collective, decentralised approaches may offer a way forward for digital art as a living, evolving heritage.

From your perspective, what role does LI-MA play in the long-term preservation of digital art in the Netherlands and internationally – and why do you think this kind of infrastructure matters at this moment?

From my perspective, LI-MA plays a uniquely resilient and adaptive role in the long-term preservation of digital art, both in the Netherlands and internationally. I often think of it as a cat with nine lives: it has repeatedly managed to land on its feet despite the constant shifts in technologies, institutional priorities, and the broader cultural sector. This resilience is crucial because most museums and heritage institutions simply cannot keep pace with the speed at which digital tools, formats, and infrastructures evolve.

That is precisely why organisations like LI-MA matter so much right now. They function not only as custodians of works, but as knowledge hubs that actively track technological change, develop preservation methodologies, and advise institutions on how to responsibly collect, conserve, and present digital art. In a moment when artistic practices are increasingly networked, time-based, and dependent on unstable systems, this kind of specialised infrastructure ensures that digital art does not become inaccessible or obsolete. Instead, it allows us to continue engaging with these works in ways that remain meaningful, historically grounded, and publicly accessible over time.

What’s sparking your curiosity in media art right now, and what journey might your talk take us on?

Right now, my curiosity in media art is really sparked by a shift in how we understand what exactly it is that we mean when we say "media art". Increasingly, I’m less interested in digital art as an object or a technological artifact, and more in it as a cultural practice – something fluid, networked, and deeply embedded in social, political, and economic systems. This is what led me to think about digital art through the lens of intangible heritage: not simply as files or formats to be archived, but as knowledge systems, communities, and contexts that must be actively transmitted over time. 

In my talk, I’ll take the audience on a journey through this idea. I’ll start by tracing how digital art has moved from early techno-utopian promises toward a more complex reality shaped by extraction, platform power, and global inequalities. From there, I’ll explore the tension cultural institutions face today: between presenting digital art as spectacle and engaging with it as a critical cultural discourse. Ultimately, the talk will propose a shift in mindset – toward more collaborative, decentralised, and context-driven approaches to collecting, curating, and preserving digital culture, so that it remains a living, evolving heritage rather than a static archive.

Why are trust-based infrastructures essential right now, particularly in a field shaped by technological precarity and platform dependency?

Trust-based infrastructures are essential today not only because media art depends on fragile and rapidly changing technologies, but also because they force us to confront what trust actually means in a platformised world. In this context, trust is not just about standards, technical reliability, or institutional continuity. It is also about transparency: understanding who funds the infrastructures we rely on, whose interests they serve, and what kinds of power relations they reproduce.

Many of the platforms and technological ecosystems that sustain digital culture are embedded in extractive economic models and geopolitical dynamics. When artists, institutions, and audiences engage with them, they are not neutral participants; they are actively contributing to systems that can widen global inequalities, concentrate technological power, and reinforce what we might call techno-state superstructures. Trust, then, must also include critical awareness: the ability to see clearly what we are participating in, and to make informed choices about the extent to which we want to support or resist these dynamics. 

This is where independent, public-oriented infrastructures become crucial in shaping our future outlook. They allow the field to move toward greater techno-diversity, ensuring that digital tools do not become entirely dependent on a narrow set of corporate or geopolitical power centres, but instead remain embedded within a plurality of cultural, social, and local contexts.

Without giving too much away, what’s one question or idea you hope continues to resonate after your talk?

One idea I hope continues to resonate is a question: Are our current institutional models truly capable of meeting digital artistic practices on their own terms, or are we still expecting those practices to adapt to structures that were never designed for them?

Much of the cultural sector still operates through relatively fixed frameworks of collection, conservation, and authorship that stem from object-based traditions. Yet digital art is inherently networked, processual, and interdependent – it evolves through collaboration, shared knowledge, and ongoing technological change. This creates a persistent mismatch between how institutions function and how these practices actually live and unfold.

What I hope resonates is the possibility of moving beyond institution-by-institution solutions toward more collective approaches: developing shared protocols, distributed knowledge systems, and collaborative infrastructures that are shaped in dialogue with artists, technologists, and practitioners themselves. 

The goal would be to build an agile ecosystem that can evolve over time: one where responsibility, expertise, and stewardship are not siloed, but held in common, allowing the field to adapt together rather than leaving each institution to struggle alone. This also shifts the balance, allowing for an ecosystem that can adapt to the realities and fluidity of artistic practices, rather thant the other way around. 

Header: Amira Gad. Photo by Marieke Wijntjes.