Reversibility of antibiotic resistance was analyzed for two non-MDR strains *A. baumannii* ST1894, ST373, and one XDR strain *A. baumannii* ST195. Biofilm cells of the three strains were regrown into the planktonic phase and then treated with colistin, imipenem, and ciprofloxacin. The MIC, MBIC, and MIC of the reverted planktonic cells are summarized in Table 7. The results showed that biofilm cells of *A. baumannii* ST1894 reverted to sensitive phenotype when the strain was regrown into planktonic cells. For *A. baumannii* ST373, reversion to sensitive phenotype occurred in colistin and imipenem but not in ciprofloxacin. This suggests that biofilm cells of that strain might have developed mutation associated with ciprofloxacin resistance. Besides, other mechanisms might be involved, such as mutations in the efflux pumps or regulators of efflux pumps could also lead to ciprofloxacin resistance. *A. baumannii* ST195 was resistant to ciprofloxacin and imipenem but sensitive to colistin. The MICs of the reverted planktonic cells were the same as the MBICs for the three antibiotics. The results showed that the antibiotic susceptibility of the strain did not revert to the original pattern. The level of resistance to ciprofloxacin and imipenem has increased, and the strain did not revert to its sensitive phenotype for

colistin. Together the results showed that biofilm formation in *A. baumannii* promotes either antibiotic tolerance that is reversible or the emergence of antibiotics resistance that is irreversible.

**Table 7.** Reversibility of antibiotic resistance of biofilm cells.

### *4.7. Isolation of Persister Cells in Planktonic and Biofilm Cells*

When *A. baumannii* ST1894 was treated with ciprofloxacin at a concentration equaled 20 times of its MIC, all planktonic cells were eradicated after 16 h of exposure to the antibiotic (Figure 2). However, 100 ± 30 CFU/peg biofilm cells survived after 24-h exposure to ciprofloxacin, which supports our hypothesis that persister cells in the biofilm was one of the reasons for the reduced susceptibility to antibiotics. Besides, these persister cells were responsible for the regrowth of biofilm cells after the cells were treated with antibiotic. Further examination of biofilm using CLSM demonstrated the presence of 1.9% persister cells when the biofilm was treated with ciprofloxacin at concentration of 1024 times of its MIC (Figure 3). Hence, the presence of persister cells in biofilm could be the reason for multidrug tolerance to different classes of antibiotics.

**Figure 2.** Detection of persisters from biofilm and planktonic cells of *A. baumannii* ST 1894. The number of viable biofilm and planktonic cells at different time points after treatment with 2048 μg/mL ciprofloxacin. Red solid and dotted lines represent untreated biofilm and planktonic cells, respectively. Blue solid and dotted lines represent biofilm and planktonic cells treated with ciprofloxacin, respectively.

**Figure 3.** CLSM image of *A. baumannii* ST1894 biofilm treated with ciprofloxacin at 1024 × MIC. Viable bacterial cells in the biofilm was detected by a Live/Dead Biofilm Viability Kit. Persister cells appear green in color, dead cells appear red in color.

### **5. Discussion**

The ability of *A. baumannii* to produce biofilm enhances its survival in adverse environments and increases the risk of healthcare-associated infections. The present study evaluated the biofilm-formation abilities of the clinical *A. baumannii* strains and the role of biofilm production for reduced susceptibility to antibiotics. The result showed that 59.6% of the clinical *A. baumannii* isolates were able to form a biofilm. This result is similar to the findings reported by Anghel et al. that about 63% of *A. baumannii* clinical strains were biofilm producers [26]. Our results showed that the strains with the same sequence types might have different biofilm-producing capacities, as in the case of ST2028, ST1417, ST195, ST1860, and ST2037.

Previous studies have documented that biofilm-forming strains were more resistant to antibiotics than the non-biofilm-forming strains [10,27]. However, in this study, we found that a significantly higher proportion of biofilm-forming isolates were non-MDR strains. Our results indicated an inverse relation between antibiotic resistance and biofilm-forming ability of the isolates. This finding is also in line with other studies that biofilm-forming *A. baumannii* was more susceptible to antibiotics [28,29]. A possible explanation for this might be that biofilm formation ensures the survival of the susceptible strains when exposed to antibiotics. However, the variations in methodologies involved in assessing biofilm formation may lead to different observations among different research groups. A standardized biofilm assay is needed for more objective comparison between different studies.

In this study, we observed that the majority of XDR and PDR *A. baumannii* isolates were weak or non-biofilm producers. The results are in accordance with the recent findings that biofilm-forming isolates exhibited lower rates of carbapenem resistance than the non-biofilm-forming isolates [30,31]. This result may be explained by the fact that energy required for expressing the carbapenemase and β-lactamases might reduce the biofilm formation in the isolates harboring those genes.

We also evaluated the relationship between biofilm-associated virulence genes and biofilm-forming abilities of the *A. baumannii* strains. *bap* was detected in a small proportion of strains tested, and all *bap*-positive strains were biofilm-formers, indicating the role of *Bap* in biofilm formation. It has been documented that *Bap* protein is necessary for mature biofilm formation on various abiotic surfaces; disruption of *Bap* resulted in a reduction of biofilm mass [32]. *csuE, adeFGH*, *ompA*, and *abaI* were detected in 82.7–95.2% of the *A. baumannii* strains; almost 50% of these strains were non-biofilm-forming

strains. It is, therefore, necessary to compare the expression levels of the biofilm-associated genes in the biofilm producers and non-biofilm producers.

To examine the emergence of antibiotic resistance during biofilm formation, MIC, MBIC, MBC, and MBEC of colistin, ciprofloxacin, and imipenem against nine selected *A. baumannii* strains were studied. These nine strains were non-MDR and strong biofilm formers. The results showed that biofilm cells of the nine strains developed a high-level of antibiotic resistance and required as high as 2048 times the MIC to inhibit the release of planktonic bacterial cells from biofilm or as high as 1024 times the MBC to eradicate the biofilm cells. Among the three antibiotics tested, imipenem had a high average fold-increase in both MBIC (386-fold) and MBEC (364-fold). As imipenem is uncharged and can penetrate the negatively charged biofilm matrix, thus, the high level of imipenem resistance was unlikely due to poor penetration. Resistance could be a result of the expression of β-lactamase, as a previous study reported that the activity of the β-lactamase promoter was elevated in biofilm cells of *Pseudomonas aeruginosa* [33]. Other possibilities for the emergence of imipenem resistance in the biofilm include the expression of the drug efflux system *adeFGH*, which is involved in the synthesis and transportation of autoinducer molecules during biofilm formation [14].

Ciprofloxacin had much higher fold-increase in MBEC than that in MBIC (407-fold vs. 31-fold), as ciprofloxacin is actively against metabolically active bacterial cells [34], it will be more difficult to eradicate persister cells developed in the biofilm, which are metabolically dormant. Colistin had the lowest average fold-increase in MBIC (21-fold) and MBEC (44-fold) compared to imipenem and ciprofloxacin. Studies also showed that colistin is effective against the metabolically inactive bacterial population in the biofilm [34]. Another study also showed that the bactericidal activity of colistin increased under anaerobic conditions, as the bactericidal action of the antibiotic was independent of the hydroxyl radical formed during aerobic respiration [34]. Overall, *A. baumannii* developed antibiotic resistance during biofilm formation, and the level of biofilm-specific resistance varied according to the induced responses of the biofilm population and the action mechanisms of the antibiotics.

CLSM images of a non-MDR *A. baumannii* ST1984 strain showed that 0.5%–3.7% of biofilm cells were viable after treatment with colistin, ciprofloxacin, and imipenem at 256–4096 times the MICs of these antibiotics. It is possible that the percentages of viable cells were higher because the presence of extracellular DNA in the biofilm might be stained by the propidium iodide stain and lead to an overestimation of dead cell proportions. The presence of persister cells is worrisome since colistin is the last resort for treatment of MDR *A. baumannii*, the emergence of biofilm-specific resistance makes the pathogen untreatable with the conventional antibiotics.

Although Qi et al. have reported the enhancement of antibiotic resistance by biofilm formation [28], our study investigated the reversibility of antibiotic resistance developed in the biofilm. We re-grew the biofilm cells to planktonic state and assessed the changes in MICs in three *A. baumannii* strains. Our novel findings demonstrated that reversion from resistant to susceptible occurred in two non-MDR strains but not in the XDR strain. Such a transient increase in antibiotic resistance in the non-MDR strains was due to the tolerance of antibiotics by the biofilm cells. There are multiple mechanisms involved in the development of antibiotic tolerance in biofilm. The reduced metabolic activity of biofilm and induction of stress responses due to the limitation of nutrients in the biofilm environment triggers antibiotic tolerance [35]. The presence of persister cells in the biofilm population activates the toxin/antitoxin systems, which leads to inhibition of protein translation, initiation of dormancy, and tolerance to antibiotics [36]. In this study, we demonstrated the presence of persister cells in *A. baumannii* strain ST1894, one of the two non-MDR strains, using CLSM imaging and persister cell isolation after treating with a high concentration of ciprofloxacin. The presence of persister cells made the pathogen extremely multidrug tolerant and could eventually lead to the emergence of antibiotic resistance. For the XDR strain (*A. baumannii* ST195), the planktonic cells regrown from biofilm cells exhibited a higher level of antibiotic resistance. This could be caused by mutations of drug targets upon exposure to high antibiotic concentrations. There are two noteworthy issues regarding this XDR strain. First, irreversible colistin resistance was developed during biofilm formation,

making the physicians barehanded to treat the infected patients. Second, although the strain was a weak biofilm former, high-level of irreversible antibiotic resistance was enhanced during biofilm formation. Detailed investigation at the genetic level is needed to understand the underlying regulatory mechanisms involved in the emergence of biofilm-mediated antibiotic resistance.

### **6. Conclusions**

We showed a negative relationship between biofilm-forming capacity and antibiotic susceptibility, in which the strong biofilm-formers were non-MDR strains. We also demonstrated the presence of persisters in the biofilm cells, which accounted for reduced susceptibilities of the *A. baumannii* strains. Another important finding was that growth in biofilm induced reversible antibiotic tolerance in the non-MDR strains but a higher level of irreversible resistance in the XDR strain, including the conversion from colistin sensitive to resistant. To address the regulatory mechanisms of biofilm-specific resistance, research should be undertaken to investigate the alterations at the genome and transcription levels of *A. baumannii* grown in biofilm status. A thorough understanding of the various contributing factors facilitates the design of new therapeutics that target biofilm-specific resistance.

**Supplementary Materials:** The following are available online at http://www.mdpi.com/2079-6382/9/11/817/s1, Figure S1: Biofilm-producing abilities and antibiotic susceptibility profiles of *A. baumannii* strains with different MLSTs, Table S1: Primers used for amplification of biofilm-associated genes.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, A.M.S. and P.H.-m.L.; methodology, A.M.S. and M.Z.Y.; validation, A.M.S.; formal analysis, A.M.S.; investigation, A.M.S. and M.Z.Y.; resources, G.K.-h.S. and B.K.C.W.; writing original draft preparation, A.M.S.; writing—review and editing, P.H.-m.L.; visualization, A.M.S. and P.H.-m.L.; supervision, P.H.-m.L.; project administration, P.H.-m.L.; funding acquisition, P.H.-m.L. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** A.M. Shenkutie is supported by the Hong Kong Fellowship Scheme PH16-01625.

**Acknowledgments:** The CLSM imaging was performed at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University Research Facility in Life Sciences with the support of Clara H.L. Hung.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.

### **References**

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© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

*Article*


the same relationship to the content as she would if she were confronting the original medium."41 Such an adaptation effectively preserves both the content and manner of reading the work. A default approach, by comparison, could be to simply scan and reproduce the pages either individually or in a linear PDF.42 It seems anomalous at the same time that the remediation renders the interactive adaptation monochrome, resembling a scanned photocopy in terms of its aesthetic character and quality. The respectful remediation otherwise preserves the work's non-linear and interactive navigability without wear or damage caused by physical browsing. Achieving this by preserving both the performative manner of engaging with the work as well as its content makes the web-adaptation arguably the 'ideal' copy.43

Other works in the *Artpool Web-Museum* similarly explore how the interactive interface offers digital preservation through remediation. As with Deisler's *UNI/vers(;)*, the remediation of Galántai's 1994 *Networker Bridge* from bookwork to interactive webpage is more or less respectful to its source instantiation, while taking the opportunity to 'improve' the original by adding hyperlinked sound to its text and graphics. (fig. 10.4) The work comprises a 'virtual' pack of sixty-four tarot cards derived from an eightpage A5 bookwork made "in homage to the networker friends of Artpool."44 Four 'virtual' cards are laid out face down in a row horizontally across the top of the browser window. Beneath the row of four cards are sixty-four hyperlinked names of artists in two columns. When individually clicked, one of the four cards turn face up to reveal a graphic artwork by that artist. The initial impression is that the card appears in a random column, but on closer inspection it clearly appears in the same place each time.

Sound is a significant additional element not available to the viewer in the bookwork instantiation. The turning of each card triggers a specific MP3

41 Bolter and Grusin, *Remediation*, 45.

42 Cf. Guillermo Deisler's *UNI/vers(;)*, published online at Monoskop, https://monoskop.org/images/b/b3/Univers\_2\_1988.pdf or at Fondazione Bonotto http s://www.fondazionebonotto.org/en/collection/fluxus/deislerguillermo/catalogue/8067. html.

43 Conscious of coincidentally appropriating the title of English post-punk band Wire's 1985 album, "The Ideal Copy," we are instead thinking of Galántai's "ideal web-site," as illustrated by hyperlinking to Endre Tót's page (https://artpool.hu/Tot/Default.html) from in György Galántai's virtual lecture at "Internet.galaxis," Museum of Ethnography, 2000, artpool.hu, https://artpool.hu/veletlen/naplo/0420.html#id.

44 Galántai and Klaniczay, *Artpool*, 503.

*Figure 10.4: "Networker Bridge" at Artpool's website, 1997.*

Screenshot of https://artpool.hu/bookwork/bridge/bridgeMain.html

audio loop of sound art, the relationship of which to the particular artist or image, however, is unclear. The viewer can trigger four MP3 loops at once, one for each column, allowing different combinations of layered loops. Although *Networker Bridge*'s temporal interactivity when remediated as a webpage marks a clear difference from its earlier instantiation as a bookwork, its shared title and content indicate the remediation retains and acknowledges the primary importance of the source work.

Such fidelity between initial and remediated instantiations of an artwork is less evident in the creation of *Networker Bridge* as a physical bookwork in the first instance. Galántai made this earlier version in 1994 by recycling and repurposing material from *Networker Post* (1992–94), a photocopied edition in 100 copies of 100 stamp sheets created by 100 artists as part of the 1992 *Decentralized Networker Congress*. This type of remediation emerges from the (neo-)avant-garde tradition of collage, copy art, and appropriation as a generative artistic strategy of making something new from existing material. As an archival method, digitization becomes an intermediary to preservation, whereas (neo-)avant-garde artistic techniques such as cut-up and collage act to reconfigure existing material more freely and aggressively. Digitization is a form of preservation that archives itself as a method wrapped around its object.

In contrast, cut-up and collage intervene within the work, leading to its transformation and reconfiguration. In this sense, the interactivity of artpool.hu still essentially enhances the 'active archive' by preserving its existing collection—albeit according to a new remediated order—rather than generating new material to be archived. The transformation and remediation of work in the process of its digital preservation recall Galántai's interest and working method in atomizing the whole to then reintegrate its elements within a new assemblage according to a different logic.The approaches taken to *UNI/vers(;)*, and *Networker Bridge* also provide insight into Galántai's thinking about how to liberate aesthetic experience from the bounds of the physical object in his 'museum of artistic inventions'.

#### ** /\* please add to and return: artpool's ray johnson website \*/ **

Of the twenty-nine projects in the *Artpool Web-Museum,*45 one of the most significant to test online remediation is the web-adaptation of the *Correspondence Art of Ray Johnson* exhibition online at artpool.hu and offline at Ernst Museum, Budapest in 1997. Conceptually curated across online and offline spaces at once, the exhibition focused on Johnson's practice particularly through his correspondence with Artpool from 1982 until he died in 1995. Johnson is invariably credited as instrumental in forming correspondence art as a distinct art practice and form at the turn of the 1950s and the '60s.46 At this time, he began circulating drawings, collages, and prints through the postal system instructing correspondents to "Please send to …" or "Please add to and return …,"47 thus encouraging chance, unpredictability and, distributed, networked authorship into his work.

45 "Artpool Web-Museum," artpool.hu, 2008, https://artpool.hu/onlineshow.html.

46 Ken Friedman, "The Early Days of Mail Art: An Historical Overview," in *Eternal Network: A Mail Art Anthology*, ed. Chuck Welch (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1995), 3–16.

47 "Glossary," *Ray Johnson Estate,* accessed March 12, 2021, http://www.rayjohnsonestate.com/glossary/.

Johnson's first mailing to Artpool came in 1982 following Galántai's concerted efforts to establish correspondence since 1979.48 Rather than forwarding Johnson's mailing to Wally Darnell in Saudi Arabia as requested, Galántai intervened by photocopying and redistributing it across Artpool's correspondence network for addition and modification and only then returned to Johnson. Thus began Galántai's *Buda Ray University* in response to Johnson's *Buddha University*, itself a reincarnation of *The New York Correspondance* [*sic*] *School* to establish Artpool's coordinates in Johnson's network. As a "visual communication network project,"49 the *Buda Ray University* resulted in work by 580 artists responding to Ray Johnson's five letters to Artpool between 1982 and 1988. This work formed one of eight sections of the exhibition, exhibited physically in Ernst Museum, with the same material digitized and exhibited on artpool.hu. The other sections included archival and bibliographic material, original artworks by Johnson and others, including "memorial works made after his death, correspondance [*sic*] from Artpool archives and across the network, and the Artpool Ray Johnson website and links to other online material."50

The *Ray Johnson Website* digitally preserves, reorders and disseminates the project beyond the duration of the physical exhibition and provides a resource for further research on Johnson's practice. Galántai considered the website "a work for the internet"51 combining "the sensation of a walk in a museum with leafing through a catalog or studying a book."52 Of particular importance was situating the exhibition within the hypermedia and hyperlinked context of the web to facilitate the "discovery of all other sites related to Ray Johnson in the world."53 Freed from the physical museum's spatial and temporal boundaries, the user experiences a much less linear, spatially predicated drift through the exhibition archive. Signifying chains of association and connection transpire through the user's browsing choices both within and beyond the online coordinates of artpool.hu, circumventing a degree of institutional curatorial authority.

48 György Galántai, "The Budapest Story of Ray Johnson," 1997, artpool.hu, https://artpool.hu/Ray/RJ\_history.html.

49 Galántai and Klaniczay, *Artpool,* 59.

50 Galántai and Klaniczay, *Artpool*, 215.

51 "Artpool's Ray Johnson Web Site," artpool.hu, 1997, https://artpool.hu/Ray/Ray\_about.html.

52 "Artpool's Ray Johnson Web Site."

53 "Artpool's Ray Johnson Web Site."

*Figure 10.5: György Galántai, "Exhibition Plan for Ray Johnson Memorial Space," Ernst Museum, Budapest, February 19–March 23, 1997.*

Courtesy of György Galántai and Artpool Art Research Center.

Galántai's hypertext, *A Garden of Correspondence,* prefaces the online exhibition with his curatorial notes*,* explaining that "the internet work [as the] representation and demonstration of exchange [...] is an open work."54 Further, to preserve the permanence of the open work is also to "preserve its alterability."55 By alterability, Galántai does not mean material manipulation of artworks, but instead the infinite possibilities of interpretation created through the work of the 'future artist' whose task is not to "create so called works, but to construct, cultivate territories that can relate to one another."56 The idea of the website, of the online exhibition or museum as a garden, emphasizes then a place of long-term cultivation of information based on wandering and finding new connections. In short, the *Ray Johnson Website* offers engagement with the exhibition in a parallel networked space and time, integrating the sensibility and methodology of Johnson's practice itself.

54 György Galántai, "The Garden of Correspondence," 1997, artpool.hu, https://artpool.hu /Ray/Ray\_about.html.

55 Galántai, "Garden."

56 Galántai, "Garden."

*Figure 10.6: György Galántai, "Structure of the Artpool Ray Johnson Internet Site," 1997.*

Screenshot of https://artpool.hu/Ray/map.html

Just as Galántai made drawings of the exhibition design for Ernst Museum (fig. 10.5), he also drew a sitemap for the online exhibition. (fig. 10.6) The sitemap organizes an online exhibition in what Michael Connor has called 'informatic space',57 non-contiguous with the physical space denoted by the exhibition design for Ernst Museum. The former takes the silhouette of a Ray Johnson drawing as a spatial blueprint, whereas the exhibition design negotiates the pre-existing dimensions of the physical gallery. The left half of the sitemap is designed around one of Johnson's long-nosed portrait drawings. (fig. 10.7) Johnson takes his predilection for phallic caricature further here, as the nose extrudes diagonally from the face in the top left of the page traversing the page to the bottom right. As with the web design technique employed in *UNI/vers(;),* the drawing is rendered as an image map in eight sections, each hyperlinked to a different section of the online exhibition.

57 Michael Connor, "The Rules of the Game, Curating Online Exhibitions, Part 2: Mise-enscène," *Rhizome Blog*, April 12, 2021, https://rhizome.org/editorial/2021/apr/12/the-rules -of-the-game/.

*Figure 10.7: Artpool's "Ray Johnson Space," 1997.*

Screenshot of https://artpool.hu/Ray/raymap.html

Some sections and material are common to both the online and offline exhibition. Still, the online visitor has the choice to navigate the exhibition from multiple entry points, from where they drift through links and pages, increasingly disorientated and not always able to retrace their steps. The journey is sometimes interrupted by a broken link, leading to ejection from the site or reversed re-entry through the back button. Questions and decisions on which path to take and the experience of coming to the end of a line, remind us that subjective perception, history and biography is partial. No matter how detailed the research, how exhaustive the archiving, gaps in our consciousness always remain, even beyond the comprehension of our Flusserian 'cosmic brain'.58

58 "Telematic Society," artpool.hu*,* 2004, https://artpool.hu/2004/telematic.html.

#### ** /\* archiving artpool.hu \*/ **

Pioneers of late twentieth century networked art practice in so many ways, it is not surprising that Artpool were early adopters of the web. artpool.hu is a unique example of the emergent digital culture of that period and remains intact, predicated by its HTML substrate and interface to this day, over twentyfive years later. Of course, the web is a different place then and now. Then, the possibilities of accessing and sharing information across *cyberspace*, transcending borders and boundaries, felt exceptionally liberating. As a rapidly expanding resource, the web was understandably attractive to Galántai, particularly given his fascination and desire to exchange, process, and redirect information. The web provided untold possibility for a new type of digital samizdat culture and provided a direct channel of artistic communication between the contemporary Hungarian and international neo-avant-garde.

The digitization of *Radio Artpool*, for example, extends a notion of broadcasting across geographical space and historical time through ever-accelerating technological exchanges. This notion of the internet as a channel or medium of communication seems to be of primary importance in the founding and development of artpool.hu. Also, as can be seen from *UNI/vers(;)* and *Networker Bridge*, an interactive interface able to sustain temporal engagement with documented artefacts of networked art as hypermedia, in effect improving while preserving the original. To Galántai, cyberspace appears as a site of abstraction, conceptualization, extrapolation, and speculation: a space of transcendence rather than immanence. His sitemap for the *Ray Johnson Website* and his exhibition design for the *Correspondence Art of Ray Johnson* exhibition at Ernst Museum face different directions from the same point of origin, both drawn on paper. Both are representational, but one will become a work in itself exhibited online as part of the exhibition, while the other remains paratextual in relation to the offline exhibition.

artpool.hu does not intend to replicate the entire physical archive of archival material, as can be seen from the sound59 and video60 archiving Artpool Art Research Center. Neither does it account for all of the digitized

59 The sound archiving project of Artpool Art Research Center, accessed March 12, 2021, artpool.hu, https://artpool.hu/sound/projekt.html.

60 The video-archiving project of Artpool Art Research Center, accessed March 12, 2021, artpool.hu, https://artpool.hu/video/projekt.html.

projects, indexes of which appear on the site nonetheless.61 The central value of artpool.hu at this point of the transition of the archive to the museum, is as an index for online and offline archival holdings and an online platform to share existing digitized material in the interests of accessibility and research. To do anything else, to become an 'active archive' in a wholly different media landscape where self-archiving and machine learning are ubiquitous conditions of social and cultural production would require reconfiguration and rematerialization of artpool.hu's historical HTML substrate to reset its coordinates within the media present. However, let us remember that as the abacus is as much digital technology as the smartphone, artpool.hu's status as a historical digital artefact of late twentieth century networked art culture may yet become a source for remediation of future networked art practice itself.

61 The list of audio cassettes and videos digitized in the framework of Artpool Art Research Center's sound and video archiving project artpool.hu*,* accessed March 12, 2021, https://artpool.hu/sound/index.html and https://artpool.hu/video/index.html.

### **Biographies**

**Zdenka Badovinac** is a curator and writer, who has served from 1993 to 2020 as Director of the Moderna galerija in Ljubljana, comprised since 2011 of two locations: the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova. In her work, Badovinac highlights the difficult processes of redefining history alongside different avant-garde traditions within contemporary art. Badovinac's first exhibition to address these issues was *Body and the East—From the 1960s to the Present* (1998). She also initiated the first Eastern European art collection, Arteast 2000+. One of her most important recent projects is *NSK from Kapital to Capital: Neue Slowenische Kunst—The Event of the Final Decade of Yugoslavia*, Moderna galerija, 2015 (Traveled to Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven, 2016; Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2016; and to Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid, 2017); *NSK State Pavilion*, 5th Venice Biennale, 2017, co-curated with Charles Esche; *The Heritage of 1989: Case Study: The Second Yugoslav Documents Exhibition*, Modena galerija, Ljubljana, 2017, co-curated with Bojana Piškur; *Sites of Sustainability Pavilions, Manifestos, and Crypts, Hello World. Revising a Collection*, Hamburger Bahnhof—Museum für Gegenwart—Berlin, 2017; *Heavenly Beings: Neither Human nor Animal*, Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, Ljubljana, co-curated with Bojana Piškur, 2018; her most recent book is *Comradeship: Curating, Art, and Politics in Post-Socialist Europe* (New York: Independent Curators International—ICI, 2019). Badovinac is a founding member of L'Internationale, a confederation of seven modern and contemporary European art institutions. She was Slovenian Commissioner at the Venice Biennale from 1993 to 1997 and 2005, and Austrian Commissioner at the Sao Paulo Biennial in 2002, and was the President of CIMAM, International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art, 2010–13.

**Judit Bodor** is a contemporary art curator, educator, and researcher. Between 1999 and 2005, she worked at Artpool Art Research Center, Budapest. Since moving to the UK, she has worked in artist-led organizations including East Street Arts, Leeds and WAVE*particle,* Glasgow, and as a lecturer at Dartington College of Arts, York St John University, and The Glasgow School of Art. She has a practice-led Ph.D. in curating awarded from Aberystwyth University and her research focuses on artist archives and curating the histories and practices of post-1960s performance art and networked art practices. Her recent projects include *Alastair MacLennan: LIM(I)NAL* (2020), *Contexts, 10th Festival of Ephemeral Art* (2019), *Left Performance Histories* (2018), and *Silent Explosion: Ivor Davies and Destruction in Art* (2015–16). She is also co-founder/editor of Gordian Projects, an independent artist-led not-for-profit press, and currently works as Baxter Fellow in Curatorial Practice at the University of Dundee.

**David Crowley** teaches at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) in Dublin. His books include *Warsaw* (2003) and three volumes co-edited with Susan Reid: *Socialism and Style: Material Culture in Post-war Eastern Europe* (2000); *Socialist Spaces: Sites of Everyday Life in the Eastern Bloc* (2003); and *Pleasures in Socialism: Leisure and Luxury in the Eastern Bloc* (2010). Crowley also curates exhibitions including *Cold War Modern* at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2008–2009 (with Jane Pavitt); *Sounding the Body Electric: Experiments in Art and Music in Eastern Europe* (Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź, 2012 and Calvert 22, London, 2013); and *Notes from Underground: Art and Alternative Music in Eastern Europe 1968–1994* (Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź, 2018 and Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 2018), both with Daniel Muzyczuk. His edited volume *Ultra Sounds: The Sonic Art of Polish Radio Experimental Studio* was published by Kehrer in 2019.

**Lina Džuverović** is a curator and Lecturer in Arts Policy and Management at Birkbeck College, University of London. Her research focuses on feminist art histories and ways in which the sphere of contemporary art can become a site of solidarity and community-building. Previously Džuverović taught at the University of Reading; at IZK—Institute for Contemporary Art, University of Technology (TU), Graz; was artistic director of Calvert 22 Foundation in London; founding director of the London-based agency Electra; and has held curatorial roles at ICA and the Lux Centre, London; and at Momentum Biennial, Norway. She was awarded the 2006 Decibel Mid-Career Curatorial Fellowship by the Arts Council England. Selected curated and co-curated projects include *Monuments Should Not Be Trusted* (Nottingham Contemporary, 2016),

*Sanja Iveković: Unknown Heroine* (South London Gallery and Calvert 22 Foundation, 2012–2013), *IRWIN: Time for a New State* (Calvert 22, 2012), *27 Senses* (Chisenhale Gallery, London, 2010; Kunstmuseet KUBE, Alesund, Norway, 2009), *Favoured Nations*—Momentum, 5th Nordic Biennial of Contemporary Art (Moss, Norway, 2009), *Perfect Partner* by Kim Gordon, Tony Oursler, and Phil Morrison (Barbican Centre, London and across Europe, 2005) and *Her Noise* (South London Gallery, 2005).

**Daniel Grúň** is an art historian, curator, and writer. He studied art history at Trnava University (Slovakia). In 2009, he completed his Ph.D. thesis on art criticism of the 1960s in Czechoslovakia. He co-curated the first international retrospective *Július Koller: One Man Anti Show* and has been writing on artist's archives, self-historicization, and legacy of neo-avant-gardes. Currently, he teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, and conducts research at the Institute of Art History, Slovak Academy of Sciences. Recently he co-edited volumes *White Space in White Space, 1973−1982. Stano Filko, Miloš Laky, Ján Zavarský* (Vienna, 2021), *Tomáš Štrauss: Beyond the Great Divide: Essays on European Avant-gardes from East to West* (Dijon, 2020), and was editor of *Subjective Histories: Self-Historicization as Artistic Practice in Central-East Europe* (Bratislava, 2020). He is in charge of the Július Koller Society, lives and works in Bratislava.

**Roddy Hunter** is an artist, curator, educator, and writer. Following formative performance art interventions in urban spaces in Glasgow in the early 1990s, performances, and exhibitions of his work have since taken place across Europe, North America, and Asia. In the mid-1990s, he was a member of Hull Time Based Arts and developed an intertwined curatorial practice including projects in a range of art spaces, galleries, and museums. He gained an MA in Contemporary Arts from Nottingham Trent University in 1998 and his Ph.D. from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee in 2019. His most recent work engages with art, curating, networks, and performance after the internet, such as through his curatorial project, *The Next Art-of-Peace Biennale* (www.peacebiennale.info). He has held a number of academic roles in English universities and is presently Director of Teaching and Learning, School of Art, Design and Architecture, University of Huddersfield.

**Emese Kürti** is an art historian, researcher, art critic, and head of department of Museum of Fine Arts—Artpool Art Research Center in Budapest. Previously she worked at the Ludwig Museum—Museum of Contemporary Art (2009–2015), then she was the founder and head of the private research institution acb Reasearch Lab (2015–2018). She was a lecturer at the University of Fine Arts and the Central European University. In 2013 she received the best art critic prize of the Hungarian Section of AICA. She holds a Ph.D. in Film, Media and Contemporary Culture from Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. Her dissertation, published in 2018 at L'Harmattan, grounds a new narrative for Hungarian action art and happening practices based on a musical genealogy. In the last few years, she has been focusing on the transregional artistic collaborations between Hungary and Yugoslavia (*Screaming Hole. Poetry, Sound and Action as Intermedia Practice in the Work of Katalin Ladik*, 2017), the issues of the minority and the self-historicization and institutionalizing ambitions of the neo-avant-garde.

**Zsuzsa László** is a researcher at Artpool Art Research Center and is completing her Ph.D. in Art Theory at the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. Her dissertation discusses the emergence and critique of the concept of East European Art. Between 2009 and 2018, she was the curator of tranzit.hu, and she is still member of its board. In her research and curatorial activities, she explores transnational exhibition histories in the Cold War era, and their interconnections with cultural diplomacy and decentralized understandings of neoavant-gardes. Recent projects and publications she (co-)curated and co-edited include *1971: Parallel Nonsynchronism* (Municipal Gallery, Budapest, 2018*−*19), *Creativity* Exercises (GfZK, Leipzig, 2014; tranzit.hu, Budapest, 2015; Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, 2016; and the book published by Sternberg Press, 2020), *Sitting Together* (tranzit.sk, Bratislava, 2016), and *Parallel Chronologies* (2009*−*21).

**Karolina Majewska-Güde** is a researcher, art critic, and curator. She works as an Assistant Professor at the Institute of History and Theory of Art at Katholische Privat-Universität Linz. Her research focuses on East-Central European neo-avant-gardes, feminist art histories, contemporary issues of circulation, translation, and production of knowledge through artbased research. Majewska-Güde is a member of the curatorial collective pisze/mówi/robi devoted to curating talks, exhibitions, and workshops focused on artistic knowledge production and translations of artistic archives. https://karolinamajewska.wordpress.com https://piszemowirobi.tumblr.com

**Sven Spieker** teaches in the Comparative Literature Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He specializes in modern and contemporary art and culture, with an emphasis on Russia and Eastern Europe, and a special interest in issues related to documentary and knowledge production. Spieker has lectured and published on topics ranging from the historical avant-garde (Malevich, Rodchenko, Dziga Vertov) to late-twentieth-century art practice, from Wolfgang Kippenberger to subREAL. His books and articles have appeared in German, Korean, Russian, Swedish, Polish, and English. Spieker's latest book publication is an edited volume devoted to the relationship between art and destruction (MIT Press/Whitechapel Gallery, 2017). The monograph *The Big Archive* focused on the archive as a crucible of European modernism (MIT Press, 2008; Korean translation, 2014). Spieker is the founding editor of *ARTMargins Print* and *ARTMargins Online*. Current projects include a critical anthology of conceptual art in Eastern Europe and a study of education-based art in the 1960s.

**Kristine Stiles** (Ph.D. 1987, University of California at Berkeley) is France Family Distinguished Professor of Art, Art History and Visual Studies at Duke University where she also holds a secondary appointment in the Theater Department. She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of the Arts from Dartington College of Arts and the University of Plymouth in England (2005). Stiles is an art historian specializing in contemporary art, artists' writings, and interdisciplinary experimental conceptual and performance global art; and she has taught "Trauma in Art, Literature, and Film" for twenty-eight years. She co-authored with Peter Selz, *Theories & Documents of Contemporary Art* (1996, 2012), and is the author of *Concerning Consequences: Studies in Art, Destruction, and Trauma* (2016) and *Correspondence Course: An Epistolary History of Carolee Schneemann and Her Circle* (2010), among other publications. She curated and wrote for the catalog for numerous exhibitions, including *Rauschenberg: Collecting & Connecting* (2014–15); *Jean Toche: Impressions from The Rogue Bush Imperial Presidency* (2009); *States of Mind: Dan & Lia Perjovschi* (2007); and *Raphael Montañez Ortiz: Years of the Warrior, Years of the Psyche, 1968–1988* (1988). She has authored over one hundred published essays and wrote "Uncorrupted Joy: International Art Actions," a monograph-length catalog essay for *Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object 1949–1979* (MoCA, Los Angeles; MAK, Vienna; Museu d'Art Contemporani, Barcelona; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, 1998–99. She is an equestrian.

#### 196 What Will Be Already Exists

**Tomasz Załuski** is an art historian and philosopher, assistant professor at the Department of Cultural Research at the University of Łódź and at the Department of Art History and Art Theory at the Władysław Strzemiński Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź, Poland. His research interests include modern and contemporary art; social, political, and economic contexts of artistic culture; artistic activism and self-organization; documentation and artistic archives. He is the author of the book, *Modernizm artystyczny i powtórzenie. Próba reinterpretacji*, 2008 (Artistic modernism and repetition: An attempt at reinterpretation); and the editor of the volumes: *Sztuki w przestrzeni transmedialnej* (Arts in transmedial space), 2010; *Skuteczność sztuki* (The effectiveness of art), 2014; *Socrealizmy i modernizacje* (Socialist realisms and modernisations) with Aleksandra Sumorok, 2017; *Wideo w sztukach wizualnych* (The video in the visual arts) with Ryszard W. Kluszczyński, 2018; *Galeria Wschodnia: Dokumenty 1984–2017 / Documents 1984–2017*, with Daniel Muzyczuk. He is also an editor of the journals: *Art and Documentation* and *Hybris: The Online Philosophical Magazine*.

# Cultural Studies

Gabriele Klein

Pina Bausch's Dance Theater Company, Artistic Practices and Reception

2020, 440 p., pb., col. ill. 29,99 € (DE), 978-3-8376-5055-6 E-Book: PDF: 29,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-5055-0

Elisa Ganivet Border Wall Aesthetics Artworks in Border Spaces

2019, 250 p., hardcover, ill. 79,99 € (DE), 978-3-8376-4777-8 E-Book: PDF: 79,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-4777-2

Nina Käsehage (ed.) Religious Fundamentalism in the Age of Pandemic

April 2021, 278 p., pb., col. ill. 37,00 € (DE), 978-3-8376-5485-1 E-Book: available as free open access publication PDF: ISBN 978-3-8394-5485-5

All print, e-book and open access versions of the titles in our list are available in our online shop www.transcript-publishing.com

# Cultural Studies

Ivana Pilic, Anne Wiederhold-Daryanavard (eds.) Art Practices in the Migration Society Transcultural Strategies in Action at Brunnenpassage in Vienna

March 2021, 244 p., pb. 29,00 € (DE), 978-3-8376-5620-6 E-Book: PDF: 25,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-5620-0

German A. Duarte, Justin Michael Battin (eds.) Reading »Black Mirror« Insights into Technology and the Post-Media Condition

January 2021, 334 p., pb. 32,00 € (DE), 978-3-8376-5232-1 E-Book: PDF: 31,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-5232-5

Cindy Kohtala, Yana Boeva, Peter Troxler (eds.) Digital Culture & Society (DCS) Vol. 6, Issue 1/2020 – Alternative Histories in DIY Cultures and Maker Utopias

February 2021, 214 p., pb., ill. 29,99 € (DE), 978-3-8376-4955-0 E-Book: PDF: 29,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-4955-4

All print, e-book and open access versions of the titles in our list are available in our online shop www.transcript-publishing.com

How do artist archives survive and stay authentic in radically changed contexts? The volume addresses the challenge of continuity, sustainability, and institutionalization of archives established by Eastern European artists. At its center stands the 40th anniversary of the Artpool Art Research Center founded in 1979 in Budapest as an underground institution based on György Galántai's "Active Archive" concept. Ten internationally renowned scholars propose contemporary interpretations of this concept and frame artist archives not as mere sources of art history but as models of self-historicization. The contributions give knowledgeable insights into the transition of Cold War art networks and institutional landscapes.

COST is supported by the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme of the European Union