Video Art / Media Art Preservation:  Studies and Suggestions                      THE DANISH VIDEO ART DATA BANK

QUESTIONS TO DISCUSS

 Our concern right now is that there should be done something not tomorrow but NOW to preservation and conservation of the cultural heritage you have in video art and other forms for media art. As we already have pointed out you can find lots of reports from conferences, endless papers on surveys etc. on preservation/conservation of anything, also magnetic tapes/video both from America and the European Union but none of them have had any - or much - effect. If we really want to do something, then some of the questions we might discuss could be:

A
The people from Montevideo raised the moral and copyright question when you transfer the analogue art work to a more or less compressed digital media: Could you at all take the liberty to “change” an art work, produced at an analogue form by transferring it to a digital carrier? Gaby Wijers from Montevideo raises the question: “How far does digitisation change the meaning of the video work? By definition, digitisation of video art means changing the carrier and playback equipment of the work of art”

How should we / do we react to this?

 B
The Guggenheim Museum suggests to use a so called “Variable Media Questionnaire”. Should we use this questionnaire in our effort to preserve the variable media and more specific video art works? – how / when / with modifications?

You can find the questionnaire on the Internet – use the computers

 C
Can we – and should we - agree upon / accept a common European strategy and common European guidelines?

 D
… and can we – and should we – do something in common on a European scale concerning preservation/conservation/ restoration of video tapes?

If you have any reactions to this an/or any suggestions THE DANISH VIDEO ART DATA BANK would like to here from you! You can use the e mail or snail mail adress below.

Torben Soeborg
THE DANISH VIDEO ART DATA BANK
Themstrupvej 36
DK-4690 Haslev
Denmark
tel: +45-56.31.21.21
soeborg@inet.uni2.dk

http://www.videoart.suite.dk