Eko Saputra

Statement:

I come from a cross-cultural background originally from Indonesia, now based in Venice, Italy. It’s an unusual mix, and I think that sense of in-betweenness is central to my work. As an interdisciplinary researcher and visual artist, I move between history, heritage, and technology. I’m drawn to the spaces where these worlds overlap, not to resolve their tensions, but to explore them. In my practice, digital technology is an active agent in shaping the outcome. I work with software and various computational processes, often translating them into physical objects: sculptures, images, installations, and symbolic forms. What fascinates me is how the aesthetic of the work is co-produced by the limitations and possibilities of the technologies I use. The final form is shaped as much by the machine’s boundaries as by my own intentions. In that sense, form follows the machine.

Lately, I’ve been exploring how this approach intersects with heritage practice on how these tangible and intangible traditions can be reimagined as living and evolving stories through contemporary technologies. My focus is on how heritage evolves when filtered through digital methods and how that affects our sense of identity, particularly in diasporic contexts. Place attachment, memory, and symbolic representation all become open to reinterpretation. This might sound contradictory using digital tools to explore the tradition but that’s part of what drives me. I don’t see heritage, history, or technology as an isolated categories. They constantly influence each other. In my work, I try to embrace that friction. By distorting, translating, or recomposing historical forms, I want to question how we preserve stories, what gets remembered, and how meaning changes over time.

As I don’t claim to offer definitive answers. But I see my practice as a conversation—a space to test out alternative ways of looking at the relationship between cultural memory and digital materiality. Sometimes uncertain, often layered, always in progress.

Academics:

  • PhD in History, Cultural Heritage, and Territory
    University of Teramo, Italy
  • Certificate: Curating Digital Arts,
    NODE Center for Curatorial Studies Berlin
  • MA in Performing Arts and Multimedia Productions,
    University of Bologna, Italy
  • BComp in Information Technology,
    University of Paramadina, Indonesia

SelectedExhibition:

ArtResidencies&Training:

  • 2025
    • ExtraLive Residency – Digital Art House Turku, Finland.
  • 2024
    • IT:U Interdisciplinary Transformation University of Austria, Linz.
    • Digital Spatialities Program – Palacio das Belas Artes, Lisbon.
    • Provenance Research Lab – Wikimedia Berlin.
  • 2023
    • Innovation:Lab – Theater Utrecht.
    • IT:U x Ars Electronica Founding Lab, Linz.
    • XR Labs, EIT Culture Creativity – Jagiellonian University Krakow.
  • 2022
    • Research Fellow – European Route of Ceramics, Faenza.
    • VeDPH Lab: University of Ca’Foscari, Venice
    • Research Fellow – Museum of Ceramics in Bolesławiec.
  • 2021
    • Research Fellow – European Route of Ceramics, Faenza.
  • 2019
    • Museum Fellowship Program – Peggy Guggenheim Venice.
  • 2018
    • History Festival – Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin.

Lectures&ConferenceSpeaker:

Performances:

  • 2012
    • Dancers for Dubai Shopping Festival, Dubai (United Arab Emirates)
    • Jury for International Folk Festival for Children, Mecklenburg-Pommeraner Folkloreensemble Ribnitz-Damgarten (Germany)
  • 2011
    • Dancers and Musicians at Festival Mondial De Folklore Montrejeau, Festival Rite: Les Bethmalais Saint Girons, XVIII Festival Folklore Et Partage (France)
  • 2010
    • Dancers and Musicians at World Folk Review Integration Poznan and the International Folklore Festival Warsaw (Poland)