Conference Video Matters

The conference that took place on SEPTEMBER 24–25, 2015, at Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst reflected on current challenges in the documentation, care, and presentation of time-based art. The interest that museums and cultural heritage institutions have shown in this art form in the course of the last decades has been accompanied by technical changes and technological obsolescence, both of which have become fundamental issues for collections. Digitization as an archiving tool has strongly influenced the way video and other media are handled. Diverging opinions have surfaced both in the discussion on how best to ensure the survival of such endangered works and concerning modes of presentation, ranging from reconstruction to re-invention. Three interdisciplinary discussion rounds brought together professionals from Europe and the US:

THE ARCHIVE Given their dependence on technology, time-based media require specific care and documentation. Starting from the practical and conceptual observations encountered in archival work, this panel addressed a set of issues including sustainable strategies for preservation, creating meaning from the documentation process, and possibilities for opening up the archive. Moderator: Kati T. Kivinen

THE COLLECTION Both a continuation and a divergence from the Archive section, the Collection panel reflected on the specifics of managing time-based media collections from the perspectives of museums, exhibition spaces, and distributors of video art, taking into account their respective histories and developments. Moderator: Alice Koegel

THE EXHIBITION Time-based art is presented in diverse contexts, such as exhibitions, festivals, screenings, and the web. Which opportunities and requirements do those formats entail, and is there a middle ground between a historically informed exhibition practice and re-invention strategies for exhibiting time-based art? Moderator: Ursula Frohne

A conference organized within the framework of the research project Video Archive. Curators: Jenny Dirksen, Brigitte Franzen, Lou Jonas, Miriam Lowack, Anna Sophia Schultz