some more poorly conceptualized thoughts on all this:
Francis' examples here bring up some crucial points, i think. On the
one hand is the suggestion, and one that totally fits for me, to
approach NM work through an engagement with performance, though i would
still distinguish between "archiving" and "preserving." Here's why:
with much performance and site-specific works/happenings the ephemeral
"work" is often treated as a vehicle for it's documentation, which
becomes the concrete "work" that circulates in the economy. So the
recordings become the locus of exchange value - both intellectually (as
it's the way most people will know the work) and economically. So we
have an archive of documentations as objects, rather than an archive of
documentations of objects/events. (this is not a point about reality v
simulacra) This places the ball in the other hand - how archives can
become restrictive if given over to a "preservationist" tendency. The
MLK speech is a great example - the recordings of it are bound by
copyright law. this seems to just get me into the usual territory of
the commons argument, but that's certainly a space that needs expanding
in our "ownership society." It's also a site that goes way beyond the
concerns of academia. But the exclusionary aspects of archiving also
have huge implications in terms of "simple" historiography. Revisionism
would only be considered problematic from a preservationist stand
point, not because it's relativistic - which i would argue revisionism
isn't - but because it's grounded in interestedness, rather than
neutrality. i think Eduardo Navas' review of Rachel Greene's Internet
Art (discussed on Rhizome and NAR) points to a similar concern.
i'm glad Matt brought up Sorting Things Out, a great book for
considering the interface between ideology and the technology of
classification. i would also recommend Alan Sekula's critiques of photo
archives (in various sources) that addresses some of Marc's concerns
about inclusion/exclusion. Namely, asking the question of how an
archive OF something is created/maintained, rather than an archive
ABOUT something. Sounds like transmediale's use of wikipedia is a step
in that direction - though it just depends on who's participating.
best, ryan
On Feb 22, 2005, at 4:00 PM, Automatic digest processor wrote:
> My personal opinion on this stuff is that when you're dealing with new
> media artwork that is highly dependent on external resources (SMS
> networks, Google, eBay, etc.) a good model for preservation is that of
> performance, or even historical events. You can't ever capture and
> recreate the entire historical context of an artwork, and that
> volatility is most evident if you're dealing with technical standards
> that are obsolete in 5 years. But you can try to record it in as many
> ways as possible. Just like you can't ever recreate the experience of
> being on the mall in Washington D.C., hearing Martin Luther King Jr.
> give the "I have a dream" speech. But you can collect various
> artifacts: audio recordings, textual transcripts, articles about
> historical context, video interviews with march organizers or some
> random woman who rode a bus up from Baton Rouge to attend the march,
> etc., etc. Maybe out of that, some coherent sense of the past can be
> inferred.
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