Archiv a databáze Vašulka Kitchen Brno
A Navigational Tool for Traversing the Vašulka Mediascape
The Vasulka Kitchen Brno archive is a place for education, sharing, and self-creation. It offers the public - researchers, students, artists, and others - access to the digital archive and the Woody and Steina Vašulka media library.
In addition to a collection of 1,252 audiovisual artifacts by the Vasulkas, the archive contains extensive documentary material: essays, photographs, correspondence, plans, posters, programs, audio documents, and exhibition catalogs. The Vasulka's have been collecting these items since the early 1970s as part of the documentation of their own work and for use in the wider community of The Electronic Kitchen, the New York space they co-founded in 1971. The content also includes works by their contemporaries, artists such as Peter Crown, David Dunn, Ralph Hocking, Sherry Miller, Phil Morton, Lynda Rodolitz, Jud Yalkut, and Gene Youngblood.
At the moment, the work of professional and structured processing of the archive has been carried out, comprising various activities, from archival research under the guidance of Barbara Šedivá, Kateřina Drajsajtlová and Jennifer Helia DeFelice, the selection of an appropriate methodology for processing the archive, professional consultations with experts from the National Film Archive and others, the selection of an appropriate database and its testing, documentation, and a proposal for the completion of a suitable depository. This long-term project, which covers the above-mentioned activities, is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic.
The archive allows for the mapping and reflection of Woody and Steina Vasulka's work as well as the work of other artists in the field of video art and electronic media. Within its framework, we initiate research projects and establish international cooperation with institutions of a similar type (audiovisual archives and research centers in the field of electronic media art). We also support educational projects on the protection, care, and preservation of audiovisual works in collections and archives.
We are gradually expanding the original corpus of the archive with new collections of audiovisual works, theoretical texts, lecture recordings, photographs, and other materials acquired, donated, or presented in the framework of our program. The Open Archive is thus conceived as a dynamic platform for the preservation and communication of historic and contemporary audiovisual works to the professional and lay public.
