ALAIN DEPOCAS, AGATHE JARCZYK, CHRISTOPH BLASE

Co-produced with PACKED

Blurry, fuzzy images on worn out videotapes, clouded sounds on threadbare audiotapes, scorched nitrate film, hard disks, damaged beyond repair: more and more media are falling victim to technological ageing and cultural oblivion. In the art sector as well, the challenge of preserving video and other electronic digital media has developed into a fundamental issue, seeping through more and more quickly into every department of museums, archives and art centers. Which guidelines are used internationally to safeguard this heritage for future generations, and what are the perspectives for the future? How is this process put into practice and what is the role of the artist? These and other questions are answered by three specialists from the field.

Alain Depocas (CA, 1959): as a Director for the Centre for Research and Documentation (CR+D) of the Daniel Langlois Foundation he is responsible for the collection, documenting the history and practice of electronic and digital art. Before this he was one of the coordinators of the Variable Media Network, an initiative targeted towards the preservation of ephemeral art forms. Since 2005 he is also a research leader with DOCAM, an international alliance investigating the documentation and preservation of the digital art heritage.

Agathe Jarczyk (CH, 1976) studied the preservation and restoration of ‘modern materials and media’ at the University of Applied Science in Bern, where she specialized in the preservation and management of video art. Since 2002 she works as a restaurateur for videocompany.ch, a Swiss organization focusing on the archiving, production and post-production of video art.

Christoph Blase (DE, 1956) has led the ‘Laboratory for antiquated video systems’ of the ZKM (Centre for Art & Media) in Karlsruhe since 2004, where scientific and art-historically founded methods are developed to preserve obsolete video formats, restore them and adapt them to new technologies.