I. Digital archive environments

The Qualities and Significance of Documentation

Annet Dekker (Amsterdam) and Gabriella Giannachi (Exeter)
Documentation is usually regarded as an art project’s remain or trace that is created and used in different ways. In performance and digital art, documentation has become the focus of conservation and presentation strategies; however, there is a lack of standardized methods on how to make effective use of the different types of documentation. Using case studies from their own collections/practices, LIMA in Amsterdam, in collaboration with Tate and various artists / initiatives, in June 2020 organized a series of workshops to identify a typological framework of documentation. Specific attention was paid to performative installations, performance art in the museum, networked and research-based art projects.

"Training the Archive": Fragen an ein Forschungsprojekt zur Entwicklung und zum Einsatz von KI in der Museumspraxis

Francis Hunger (Leipzig) und Barbara Büscher (Köln/Leipzig) im Gespräch
„Training the Archive“ ist ein Kooperationsprojekt zwischen dem Ludwig Forum Aachen, dem Hartware MedienKunstVerein Dortmund sowie dem Visual Computing Institute der RWTH Aachen University. Das Projekt widmet sich visuellen Archiven und der Frage, wie in diesen Sammlungen neue Zusammenhänge mittels ‚Machine Learning‘ hergestellt werden können. Ziel ist die forschungsbasierte Entwicklung einer Software, die Kurator:innen und Künstler:innen neue Zugänge zu digitalisierten Bildsammlungen ermöglicht. Francis Hunger, einer der beteiligten Forscher erläutert im Gespräch einige Bedingungen, Determinanten und Kontextualisierungen dieses Projekts.

Archives in the Age of Transformation of Art Institutions

Marika Kupková and Monika Szűcsová (Brno)
This paper presents the development of the curatorial research project Black Box, which was established in the spring of 2020 in the Brno TIC Gallery to support contemporary art and artists at a time when artists and cultural institutions were affected by the existential crisis caused by the COVID-19 global pandemic. This experimental archive, which initially appeared to be temporary, has been developing its activities for a second year in a row. This text aims to provide a report on the ongoing remakes and postproductions of this archive and present various curatorial interventions carried out on the archived works of the participating artists. We observe a shift of exhibition institutions towards community centres with a diversified program, raising their social awareness and critical self-reflection, and building new means of communication on the axis of the artist-spectator. Especially in the latter area, creating and enabling access to an art archive is an essential tool.

Gallery inside out. Videomapping as Performative Mediation of the Vasulkas’ Videoart Archive

Jana Horáková (Brno)
This paper presents the performative exhibition “Vasulka Live Archive/video mapping” (20 December 2021, Brno House of Arts) in terms of the creative strategy and format chosen for it and in terms of the broader context of the exhibition project “Vasulka Live Archive/Interfaces”. This work has the character of a music video, created from fragments of videos by Steina and Woody Vasulka, which are interwoven with visualizations of the analytical work of artificial neural networks. The result is a new audiovisual work based on a remix aesthetic. Information on the "Vasulka Kitchen Brno Archive" has been added by Barbora Šedivá and Kateřina Drajsajtlová.