New Media Museums

Dušan Barok

Video and installations have become the staples of artistic practice in the last three decades. Working with sound and digital media is also becoming more common. New media, which had been given the status of a separate genre, are now a common means of expression for contemporary artists. Compared to painting or sculpture, media-based works are more compact and portable, however their acquisition in collections is still relatively rare. As a result, it is not at all obvious from a long-term perspective that post-1989 media-based art will have the same representation in public collections as it has had in national award exhibitions and historical anthologies.

A key obstacle in collecting media arts is the lack of expertise in its preservation. Care for electrical objects and digital materials is not the responsibility of curators, restorers nor depository staff, while museums’ technical departments are seldom ready to take responsibility for parts of the collection. The installation of these works in galleries relies on the presence of the artist, who is tasked with the role of arbiter of aesthetic and technical decisions involved in the process. The freedom of museum staff to make these decisions independently is otherwise limited. When it comes to installations and time-based media, we are still far from the self-confidence that accompanies the installation of paintings and sculptures.

The New Media Museums project has aimed to address similar challenges by creating a platform for knowledge exchange and collaboration in collection, preservation and presentation of media arts and culture. Its founding members include art museums and other organisations involved in the presentation of media arts in Central Europe. The initial phase was designed as a practice-oriented research. The aim was to identify possible scenarios for the participating institutions to shape their preservation strategies and workflows to better incorporate new art forms. This was realised through case studies that each partner carried out on selected works from their collection.

The founding partners of the New Media Museums project include two museums: Olomouc Museum of Art (OMA), and Slovak National Galery (SNG), and three nonprofits: WRO Wroclaw, C3 Foundation, Budapest, and PAF Olomouc. Their mandate to build collections and preserve works of art therefore varies. Museums are bound by law to preserve art in their collections. As Jakub Frank noted, for this reason, curators tend to refrain from acquiring media-based works. There is a real fear in museums that they cannot provide the necessary quality care for media art.

Both SNG and OMA have dedicated staff for curating and restoring their collections of modern and contemporary art which include a growing number of media-based works and installations. In 2020, OMA has initiated the process of creating a collection of New media and intermedia artworks, acquired new works and started communication with the artists in order to provide them with satisfactory conditions to preserve their works. The SNG collection currently contains about one hundred media-based works, including 40 videos. The WRO and C3 collections are primarily digital and can also be referred to as archives. The WRO collection is linked to its biennial and exhibitions and mainly includes video art and video registrations of installations and performances, but also installations. The C3 collection includes net art, video art and media installations that the organisation has co-produced since 1996, currently counting 70 works by 40 artists. PAF has been developing a contemporary Czech moving image distribution platform for some time, adjusting the distribution strategy in the process towards more personal approach which proved to be more effective for an organisation of this scale and focus. However, all institutions have their stake in the presentation of works from their collections in gallery exhibitions and online.

Each partner operates an online catalogue with digital reproductions of works from their collections. OMA runs an online platform called the Central European Art Database (CEAD); SNG’s collection catalogue is available on Web umenia; WRO’s collection can be accessed through its Videoteka and Media Library as well as onsite; C3’s collection is available at catalog and collection; PAF’s distribution can be consulted online.

Traditionally, art conservation has been associated with architecture, sculpture and painting. The profession has evolved to adhere to the conditions of impartiality and objectivity, synonymous with 'minimal intervention.' This concept, derived from the positivist paradigm, remains a dominant attitude in conservation.¹⁾ In essence, it expects conservators-restorers to conduct scientific analysis of changes in materials to determine the necessary interventions to restore the original state. Although this approach remains relevant for a large number of works, the opening of collections to media works raises the question of whether it is also applicable to time-based, processual art.

The argument for rethinking preservation approaches triggered by time-based art essentially begins with unlearning the understanding of artistic intent and authorship as something that is given at the moment of creation of the work. The exclusive relationship between the artist and the work needs to be reconsidered. Conservation research in recent decades has persistently argued that this assumption is incompatible with the nature of the wide range of contemporary art, which requires different ways of determining the nature of the artwork.

Pip Laurenson, who introduced media conservation at the Tate, talks about the need to move away from trying to return an object to its original state and instead acknowledge change as an integral part of its identity. Indeed, media works in museum collections are usually realised through reinstallation. In practice, media works exist only when they are installed. In addition, many of their physical components, monitors, projectors, sound equipment, software and props, are interchangeable. Large parts of artworks are 'stored' only as a set of installation instructions and digital materials. Laurenson likens the act of installing a work to a performance, the results of which always vary because they depend on the interpretation of the work's specifications. Much like musical notation in music or a script in theatre.²⁾

Vivian van Saaze adds that the relationship between artist intent and the reinstallation of the work is not one-directional, but that authenticity and intention are “made”, constructed through documentation, interviews with the artist and discussions of the wider team and experts who are thus involved in the creative process. In contrast to the perspective of preserving the work by freezing it in a singular state, Van Saaze argues for practical and interventionist forms of engagement by museum staff.³⁾ According to philosopher Renée van de Vall, this is what distinguishes the paradigm of performative conservation from traditional, scientific conservation.⁴⁾.

The transformative impact of changing works on the perception of authorship and the role of preservation is not limited to installations. Authors such as Rudolf Frieling and Annet Dekker write about examples of site-specific, relational and performative works.⁵⁾ Dekker says that artists are of course still important in the process of reinstallation, but instead of an inward orientation, the museum assumes the role of intermediary for a group of people formed around the artwork in order to continue it, in other words, its “network of care.” Similar forms of distribution of authorship for the purpose of preservation are usually referred to as open, proliferative preservation. In this sense, Van de Vall speaks of a processual paradigm of preservation.⁶⁾ The latter differs from both the scientific paradigm, whose central concern is the material integrity of the work as a physical object, and the performative paradigm in that it fails to rely entirely on the conceptual identity of the work being expressed as a set of instructions. Indeed, processual works are subject to uncontrollable factors such as weather, material wear, audience interaction or participation. In this context, the main aim of preservation is to support the continuation of the work by transferring the necessary skills, procedures and information to the stakeholders.

In summary, the preservation of contemporary art relies on the informed interpretation of the conservator, as discussed in Zuzana Bauerová's contribution to this collection. This is paralleled with the shift in archival theory that has occurred in recent decades. It has to do with the recognition of the power of institutions over history, as well as the fact that everything archivists do is subjective. Extending this thesis, artist Cornelia Sollfrank highlights the concept of 'situatedness', which can help conservators understand what they can do, rather than striving for objectivity.⁷⁾ Or, in the words of Donna Haraway, “feminist objectivity” can only be achieved through the interconnection of different, “partial perspectives.” It is important, then, to acknowledge the plurivocal narratives in determining the artist intent and pursuing documentation in general.⁸⁾

This collection consists of two main parts. The first, the reader, contains commissioned essays that present different approaches to media conservation. The second part contains video recordings from a colloquium organized as part of the project in March 2022 at the Olomouc Museum of Art. The presentations are divided into three blocks, focusing on case studies of the project partners, different museum practices, and archiving of video art and moving image. Many participants of the colloquium engage in a mutual conversation in a roundtable discussion. A closer look at the case studies is provided by the video documentary, which was produced on the occasion of a workshop at the Slovak National Gallery in September 2021.

Although the discussions within the New Media Museums project followed several axes, a few themes should be highlighted.

The first and obvious party to approach in solving issues associated with the presentation and preservation of problematic artworks is the artist. However, for museums, working with an artist is not necessarily straightforward. The views of artists on their work change over time, all the more so on the scale of several decades. On the other hand, their opinions are invaluable and there is an urgent need to document them in one way or another while they are still around. In the ideal situation, the artist would be interviewed on the occasion of acquisition or exhibition, and documentation of this exchange would remain available for further exhibitions of the work. Before that, it needs to be decided how to arrange these interviews to sufficiently resolve potential problems and how to keep this documentation available for future use. This also relates to broader issues related to the production and organisation of documentation.

As Tate media conservator Patricia Falcão once noted, although we often cannot clearly identify “significant properties” of the work at hand, it is important to think about them and try to write them down, because we learn a lot in the process. The exploration of “significant properties” is a means of determining what to focus attention on in order to answer fundamental questions about the work and what is important for its conservation. The concept was originally adopted by Pip Laurenson from the archive community, and later came to be used interchangeably with the terms “work determinative properties” and “work-defining properties.” Patricia Falcão also stressed the importance of involving the artist in the process, ideally from an early stage in acquisition.

Installation-based works change from exhibition to exhibition. In this context, several contributors put an emphasis on iteration reports, whose purpose is to chronicle changes to the currently exhibited iteration, including the decision-making process behind them. They serve as companions to the identity report of the work in question.⁹⁾

There are different institutional models to support preservation. The development of a media conservation lab seems to be suitable for larger collections of media installations such as Tate, MoMA and Guggenheim. A different approach in the form of a cross-departmental working group was mentioned. SFMOMA offers the example of its “Media Team,” which consists of curators, conservators, technicians and other staff who meet each month around issues related to the presentation, preservation, acquisitions and lending of media-based works. Yet another model is offered by LIMA, an Amsterdam-based NGO working on the one hand as a distributor of media art and on the other as a facility for the conservation of media-based works and components for the network of art museums in the country.

What feels relevant in our setting at the moment is to initiate communication on media preservation in institutions and to spearhead collaboration with third parties. Several pitfalls have to be considered. Of one hundred media-based works in the SNG collection, about ten are problematic from a media perspective. This is not enough to develop a caretaking partnership with an external institution. Instead, the museum works on a case-by-case basis, although it is interested in a more systematic approach. For WRO, collaboration on preservation with external parties is limited by financial constraints, while its institutional status does not require a museum standard. Likewise, the use of its video digitisation station is limited to the institution and its offer as a service to third parties is not planned. The digitisation process was made possible by participating in the large international project Digitising Contemporary Art (DCA). C3 has collaborated with various partners and projects on preservation such as Gateway to Archives of Media Art (GAMA), 404 Object Not Found and most recently with artist Mark Fridvalszki, as discussed in their presentation and essay.

In her contribution, art historian and conservation researcher Anna Schäffler recommends that museums establish long-term relationships with external stakeholders, which we might call “networks of care.” This can also be seen within the institution, in the form of building distributed knowledge, where preservation is the result of collaboration between conservators, curators, educators, archivists, technicians, and others. It can also be seen in the transition (in both vocabulary and practice) from registration, conservation, and curation to collections care, collections management, and stewardship. Museums can draw on post-custodial practices here: focus on facilitating processes and move from static cataloguing to mapping relationships between different stakeholders. Acquiring 'unruly' works opens up for their 'instituent potential', spurring positive changes in established institutional approaches.

This project is far from an isolated effort. It builds on the initiatives of Prague's etc. gallery, PAF Olomouc, Ludwig Museum Budapest and other organisations in the region.¹⁰⁾ In 2019, Vasulka Kitchen Brno organized the colloquium The Digital Era of Artworks in Galleries and Museums, which resulted in an open access book.¹¹⁾. In addition, the Národní filmový archiv, Prague, has carried out a large research project, “Audiovisual Work Outside the Context of Cinema,” aimed at building an infrastructure of professional care for the moving image in the Czech Republic.¹²⁾ The batons may be passed on.