Keynote lecture
Following the early work in video art preservation in the 1980s and the 1990s, the efforts to preserve media installations and digital art, and more recently net-based art, contributed to raising the prospects for preserving the media arts at large. Apart from independent initiatives and private studies, a number of contemporary art museums have established media labs and adjusted working methods to address these new demands. However, this is still viewed as a luxury for most collections of media arts in the East and West, often lacking funding, infrastructure and expertise. The work not only requires an openness to a certain aesthetic, a technical and caring sensibility, but also unflinching advocacy for its relevance, inside and outside the collection. In this lecture, I will reflect on recent initiatives, approaches and tendencies in the field through my experience as a research fellow in the EU Marie Skłodowska-Curie-funded training network New Approaches in the Conservation of Contemporary Art (NACCA).
Dušan Barok is a research fellow and PhD candidate at the Media Studies Department of the University of Amsterdam. He is founding editor of the platform for collaborative studies of art, culture and media, Monoskop, and his practice involves networked media, participatory events and experimental publishing.
For recent publications see