Sarah, the project you are doing with Thompson and Craighead sounds like a grand experiment that I look forward to following. You seem to have found a way to account for the variability in artist’s intent while continuing to put the artist at the heart of the ongoing preservation discussion.
I also agree with the gist of Glenn’s talk, as summarized in the link I included below, that the preservation of (any, but especially newer media) artworks in museum collections should include voices of the artist, curators, conservators, etc. Glenn has suggested we move from the rhetoric of “artist’s intent” to “artist sanctions.” In our book, Jon and I had called them “accounts.” Whatever we call these testimonies, the trick is, of course, in exactly the weight given to each voice. And the part I’m interested in is how those weights get implemented (and cemented) in institutional practices and standards. I’m sure some institutions will see a new need and opportunity to put living artists at the heart of these discussions, developing new practices and standards to accommodate this, while others may cite the slipperiness of the artist’s view as a reason to keep artists at arm’s length - extending a different, and unfortunate, history of institutional practice.
And how we engage living artists speaks directly to the question of how we engage dead artists.
Richard Rinehart
Director
Samek Art Museum
Bucknell University
570-577-3213
http://museum.blogs.bucknell.edu <http://museum.blogs.bucknell.edu/>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: "Sarah Cook (Staff)" <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] A clumsy question about media art history
> Date: August 25, 2015 at 11:16:59 AM EDT
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Reply-To: "Sarah Cook (Staff)" <[log in to unmask]>
>
> Hi again all, on this other channel (thread),
>
> Thanks so much for such a great discussion and rich links. I love that Memo did the brain-dump he did, as an artist's own perspective on the medium they work with does tend to result in deeper specific thinking of the experience of the viewer, which is perhaps something which is missing from our discussion so far -- the platform/medium/support might change from one exhibition to another, and that change be documented, but capturing the difference in experience is still the elusive bit?
>
> I'll be speaking at the conference at Bard which has been mentioned twice here already, so any key questions you want me to work on or tease out, please do post here.
>
> To take up Rick's question:
>
> On 24 Aug 2015, at 19:21, Richard Rinehart <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> I wonder what folks here think about some conservators recently recommending de-emphasizing the artist’s viewpoint in preservation decisions: http://www.voca.network/artist-intent/ <http://www.voca.network/artist-intent/>
>
> I completely agree that an artist's intent changes over time as they find themselves nearer or further from their work - what they hoped it would be, and what is has become, or how the audience thinks of it. I have been testing this with the cooperation of Jon Thomson & Alison Craighead and their work Stutterer, which will take until 2080 or so to run completely (and only if we keep it plugged in that long, nevermind the hardware/software on which it runs). They can speak to it more directly but we now joke that the preservation documentation file for the work will consist of a timeline on which I will map their answers to the same questions I repeatedly ask them at regular intervals (and how their answers change if I remind them of their previous answers or not).
>
> But it is this question from Danny I really also want to work on:
>
> On 24 Aug 2015, at 13:55, "Birchall, Danny" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> & so even the artist's death may not be a barrier to the migration & realisation of their works in new forms....
>
>
> What can we learn from literature, music, and other disciplines in this?
>
> Sarah
>
>
>
> The University of Dundee is a registered Scottish Charity, No: SC015096
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