'I generally take a shortcut and say my work is appalling and formal. That’s the easiest way. Because it’s such a hard question to answer, and you can describe materials, you can describe format, you can describe your output—but it doesn’t really say anything about what the work does. And I don’t want to be that concise.'

—Lorna Mills

For the 22nd episode of Dutch Art & Design Today, I sat down with Lorna Mills, a Toronto-based artist whose digital artworks—often created from hundreds of hand-edited frames—are at once formal, frenetic, and unmistakably hers. Raised in Saskatchewan, she entered art through books and built a private museum in her imagination, guided at first by the World Book Encyclopedia and its arsenal of images. She later moved to Toronto to study painting, entering the art world through color, gesture, and pigment before moving into video, lenticular prints, and eventually digital media. Her early experiments with GIFs, both sourced and self-recorded, gave way to a meticulous visual language defined by animated collage, jagged edges, and looped visual rhythms that reframe how we see the internet—and ourselves—through a pictorial lens.

In this episode, Lorna and I discuss how her work emerged from formal training and evolved through the unruly spaces of early net art, artist-run spaces, and eventually blockchain platforms. We talk about her labor-intensive process—such as cutting individual frames by hand—and the way her animations interact with scale, whether installed across Times Square or released as intimate, square-format works on Tezos. Lorna also reflects on being part of the Art & the Blockchain exhibition at Upstream Gallery in Amsterdam back in 2022; where I first came across her work installed in a space, in person; as well as for instance her long collaboration with Transfer, and how she approaches pricing and accessibility across physical and digital markets. We speak about her sustained interest in pictorial composition, her refusal of minimalism, and her embrace of the internet’s raw, unfiltered abundance. Her work is as deeply informed by the history of painting as it is by the visual delirium of contemporary online culture—and in this conversation, that full spectrum comes through.

Read the essay 'The Digital Phantasmagoria of Lorna Mills'.

You can find Lorna on X ⁠@lm_netwebs and at her website ⁠LornaMillsImageDump.

You can find John on X ⁠@johnbezold⁠ and at his website ⁠johnbezold.com⁠.

'Dutch Art & Design Today' is published by ⁠Semicolon-Press⁠.

ISSN: 3050-6662

'Oftentimes when you see digital art, it feels unrooted. It feels like it’s hard to place, especially if you’re coming out of the tradition. And what I always say is—if you want to be a part of the tradition, you have to have a conversation with the tradition. And the most simplest way of having a conversation with the tradition is actually bringing up some of those works.'

—Adrian Pocobelli

For the 21st episode of Dutch Art & Design Today, I spoke with Adrian Pocobelli, a Berlin-based artist, editor, and curator whose work straddles the borders between digital art, art history, visual culture, and blockchain art experimentation. Born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and shaped by years spent in Montreal, Toronto, and now Berlin, Adrian’s trajectory moves from stamp collecting, from comics and trading cards, to Tezos, and bitcoin, and the evolving pixelated poetics of web3. With a background in English literature and studio art, and an early encounter with Italian painting in the Vatican, Adrian’s work charts a long arc across visual language, medium, and memory. Most importantly for this show, one of Adrian’s works from 2022 repurposes Raphael’s portrait of Castiglone. The work was sketched by Rembrandt while it was up for auction in 1639, in Amsterdam.

In this sweeping and layered conversation, we trace Adrian’s evolution from painting with inkjet printers and screen prints in Berlin to finding expressive liberation through his phone, his finger, and the emergence of blockchain-based platforms for digital art. We discuss his long-standing influence from figures as J.G. Ballard and William Burroughs; and his methodological use of randomness, repetition, and philosophical appropriation. Adrian recounts the development of his major series, including Screen Memories, The Peloponnesian War, Dante’s Inferno, and AI Girlfriend, each offering a different lens through which to view art history, contemporary systems, and visual culture.

We also dive into the world of art on the blockchain: Tezos, Ethereum, and Bitcoin as ecosystems for distribution, experimentation, and visual curation. Adrian offers a deeply articulate and practical framework for understanding these platforms, and reflects on his creation of The Artist Journal, his long-running YouTube series that blends curation, commentary, and community into what he calls a “newspaper of the imagination.” From glitch aesthetics to the spiritual politics of pixel art, and from contemporary appropriation to classical citation, this conversation unpacks the logic and poetics of digital art’s second generation—one rooted in tradition but carried on-chain.

You can find Adrian on X ⁠@pocobelli⁠ and at his website ⁠pocobelli.net.

You can find John on X ⁠@johnbezold⁠ and at his website ⁠johnbezold.com⁠.

'Dutch Art & Design Today' is published by ⁠Semicolon-Press⁠.

ISSN: 3050-6662

‘I think it’s our duty as a museum to address social issues, whether they’re in the past, or whether they’re happening now, because we have a societal role. We’re here for society… Art is about people. It’s about working together. It’s about how we look at each other, how we understand the world, and how we open our minds to what is unfamiliar. That’s what a museum should do.’

—Lidewij de Koekkoek

For the twentieth episode of Dutch Art & Design Today, I sat down with Lidewij de Koekkoek, who is the director of the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem. Lidewij has had a long and storied career in the Dutch cultural heritage world, shaped by her international upbringing in Belgium and the United States, her art historical studies at Leiden University, and a leadership style grounded in collaboration, curiosity, and care. From her early role in journalism and public art to senior roles at institutions including the Netherlands Architecture Institute, the Textile Museum in Tilburg, and the Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam, Lidewij has built a career at the intersection of strategy, storytelling, and public value of the arts.

In this hour long conversation, we trace Lidewij’s path through the Dutch cultural landscape—from the formative years of studying contemporary art and architecture through, to her later rediscovery of seventeenth-century painting, and deep belief in the relevance of historical collections today. Her career is marked by several directorial roles at Dutch museums, which have all informed her current outlook on what it means to be a museum director. We talk about her first directorship at the Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar, where she led a bold rebranding focused on the city’s Old Masters and modern art collections, and how both could be utilized to better communicate the importance of the city’s collection to the city’s citizens and their civic heritage. Alongside her time as director of the Rembrandt House in Amsterdam, where she helped reposition the museum around his studio, social networks, and contemporary relevance.

Finally, we discuss her current role at the Frans Hals Museum, and how its unique bifocal identity—combining a world-class collection of early modern painting with a cutting-edge contemporary programming and collection of works—makes it a deeply human institution. But also one with challenges due to its current location, and the limited amount of space it currently allows for display, as its ambitions outsize its current capacity, concerning the depth of the museum's collection. Ultimately, Lidewij makes clear that she sees the museum’s future as grounded in Haarlem, its civic pride, and the power of visual art to reflect and reshape society. From leadership philosophy to renovation plans, and from drag performances to Dutch Impressionism, this wide-ranging conversation explores what it means to shape a museum’s future—while staying anchored in its past.

Learn more about the Frans Hals Museum.

Cover: Esiri Erheriene-Essi, Having Your Cake and Eating it Too, 2019, 200 x 165 cm., oil, ink and xerox transfer on linen, Frans Hals Museum, Acquired in 2024

You can find John on X ⁠@johnbezold⁠ and at his website ⁠johnbezold.com⁠.

'Dutch Art & Design Today' is published by ⁠Semicolon-Press⁠.

ISSN: 3050-6662