De maand juni staat bij CRUMB in het teken van documentatie en archivering van nieuwe media kunst. Aan de hand van discussies over documentatie en preservatie die voortkwamen uit de Archive 2020 bijeenkomst van Virtueel Platform wordt deze maand verder gepraat op de mailinglijst.

Recently, Virtueel Platform hosted a day long conference, Archive2020, to look at the urgent need to preserve works of new media art. From those discussions came a questioning of the differences between documentation and preservation, and that is what CRUMB is devoting their discussion to in June 2009 on their mailinglist.

In March 2008 CRUMB hosted a workshop with archivist Catlin Jones about documenting new media art. At that workshop, CRUMB learned of the importance of documentation, the reasons for it, and the difficulties of doing it, in terms of the long-term use of the material by the artist, the curator, the commissioner or institution. Key questions of the June discussions on the mailinglist are:

1. Can documentation alone be a form of preservation? What if we let important works of new media art die or disappear, but ensured documentation of them survived? Historically works of art have been documented through art criticism, book publication (i.e. image reproduction - copying) and exhibitions (with catalogues). It is common within the visual arts to argue that the more a work is shown, written about, lent to venues internationally, and its image reproduced, the greater its value and hence the more likely its chances of long-term survival. Could these tried and tested strategies actually work for new media art?

2. What has worked and what hasn't in terms of media art works being acquired into other institutional collections or frameworks (obvious examples include: the Turbulence commissioned works at DIA; ada'web at the Walker Art Center; Netzspannung at ZKM; Rhizome being a part of the New Museum). Are these documentation or preservation strategies? Can they even be compared or does everything always have to be argued for on a case-by-case basis? If you are a new media artist and are considering preparing a proposal for your work to be acquired by an organisation what would your FAQ or minimum criteria to them include?

3. Does new media art have an advantage in its documentation over other forms of art in that it is sometimes possible to reproduce it and multiply it, making many versions of the so-called original? What if online platforms and databases (such as Low-fi.org for instance) were to be 'archived' or 'accessioned' into many collections or on many servers, distributing the task of preservation?

This month's respondents from the Archive2020 meetings:
Annet Dekker, Virtual Platform
Sandra Fauconnier, NIMK
Anne Laforet
Gabriele Blome, Ludwig Boltman Institute, Linz
Heather Corcoran, FACT and GOTO10
Olga Goriunova, Runme.org
Alessandro Ludovico, Neural.it
Monika Fleischmann and Wolfgang Strauss, Netzspannung.org
Aymeric Mansoux, GOTO10
Christiane Paul, Whitney Museum and Forging the Future preservation project

joined by:
Axel Lapp, Axel Lapp Projects and CRUMB post-doc researcher
Caitlin Jones