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Video Art / Media Art Preservation: Studies and Suggestions
THE DANISH VIDEO ART DATA BANK |
Preserving video art … preserving the immaterial variable media:
Variable Media Initiative and conference by Guggenheim Museum, New York
The two last days in
March 2001 the Guggenheim Museum in New York organised a conference not only about video
art works but also about preserving any type of immaterial variable media art works.
The conference was
organised by Guggenheim Film and Media Art’s Senior Curator John G. Hanhardt and
Assistant Curator Jon Ippolito as part of the Guggenheim Variable Media Initiative. The conference raised
questions like: Should video art be preserved on tape or DVD? Can museums collect Web
sites? What does preserving an ephemeral installation have in common with re-enacting a
theatrical performance?
The Variable Media Initiative proposes that artists
pass on guidelines as to how their artworks might be translated into alternative mediums
once their current formats become obsolete. In keeping with the cross-disciplinary nature
of this paradigm, a series of focused discussions at the conference compared 8 case
studies of artworks created in entirely different mediums that nonetheless could be said
to present similar preservation challenges.
The 8 case studies
covered photo/collage (Jan Dibbets: “A White Wall”, 1991), film/performance (Ken
Jacobs: “Bitemporal Vision”, 1994), interactive installation (Felix
Gonzales-Torres: ”Untitled (Public Opinion)”, 1991), web site (Mark Napier:
“Net Flag”, 2001), audio installation (Bruce Nauman: “False Silence”,
1975), installation (Meg Webster: Stick Spiral”, 1986) and video installation (Nam
June Paik: “TV Garden”, 1974) – all works from the Guggenheim collection.
The conference
discussed the issues associated with collecting, preserving, and re-presenting these types
of art works. All could agree that the lifespan of works created in variable media is
significant shorter than for example an oil painting. In an attempt to capture and
preserve artist’s intent the museum has developed a questionnaire. In this the museum
asks the artists about present-tense parameters for displaying a piece, and their vision
for the future of the work. In the present, the questions address installation,
performance, interactivity, reproduction, duplication, encoding, and networking. I will
come back to these questions later.
Future concerns include
storage, emulation, migration and reinterpretation.
The storage strategy for most museums is to store
the artwork physically. The major disadvantage of storing obsolescent materials is that
the artwork will expire once these ephemeral materials cease to function.
To emulate an artwork is to devise a way of
“imitating” the original look by completely different means
(“imitating” an analogue video work on digital video or DVD and so on). This
could however be inconsistent with the artist’s intent.
To migrate an artwork involves upgrading equipment
and source material. The analogue videotape and player could be upgraded to digital
tape/player. The major disadvantage of migration is that the original appearances of the
artwork will probably change on its new medium – compare the discussion raised by
Montevideo referred to in VIDEO ART\e-monitor 3.
The most radical
preservation strategy is to reinterpret
the work each time it is re-created. This would mean to ask what contemporary medium would
have the metaphoric value of the original medium. This would not always be possible and it
is a dangerous technique when not warranted by the artist.
In the Variable Media
Initiative Guggenheim also operates with the two terms “reproduction”
and “duplication”.