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

Case Study: Two installations by Torben Soeborg

Installations are in fact most often site specific, and this also raises the question: what happens then when a museum buys the installation and perhaps lent it out for exhibition in other museums/sites? Or the artist herself do it?

The artist can give detailed description / drawings / photos of how to built and place the installation AND “deliver” the elements and also build the installation himself  – example: My video installations. THE ECHO OF THE SEA IN THE BURNING FOREST from 1996 at "Kunst 96 i Vestsjaelland", Knabstrup, Denmark (Concept: Inspired by a sentense - [the echo of the sea in] the burning forest - from André Breton: La Manifest du surrealism, 1924):

• 3 Euro wooden palls
• 6 long wooden lists
• 6 fluorescent tubes, an old window
• 1 17’ video monitor
• 1 video player with auto repeat an a video tape.

… or the artist can just deliver the description / drawings / photos and the tape and let the museum or exhibition site built the installation without the artist being there – as I did with my installation: WAVE MOTION from Copenhagen 1985 when it was shown at Eymaros Art Space in Athens, Greece, in 1990

Of course the two installations were not quite identical - and you could ask the question: Would it still be the original art work? – or just a replica?
(… but I have to add that when I came to Athens and saw the result I was satisfied )