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Media art where the artists or creative technicians are either deceased or not able to provide guidance on authenticity and installation |
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Group: Media Art |
Trend in 2021: |
Consensus Decision |
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Added to List: 2019 |
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Previous classification: Critically Endangered |
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Trend in 2022: |
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Imminence of Action Action is recommended within twelve months, detailed assessment is a priority. |
Significance of Loss The loss of tools, data or services within this group would impact on people and sectors around the world. |
Effort to Preserve Loss seems likely: by the time tools or techniques have been developed the material will likely have been lost. |
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Examples Works produced by media artists now deceased, such as: Jeremy Blake, Beatriz Da Costa, Heiko Daxl or Stanislaus Ostoja-Kotkowski. |
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‘Practically Extinct’ in the Presence of Aggravating Conditions Lack of documentation to enable maintenance; lack of clarity with respect to intellectual property; complex interdependencies on specific hardware, software or operating systems; lack of capacity in the gallery or workshop; lack of strategic investment; complex external dependencies; loss of institutional memory resulting from staff churn; poor working relationship between the gallery and artist/workshop; lack of conservation assessment. |
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‘Endangered’ in the Presence of Good Practice Strong documentation; clarity of preservation path and ensuing responsibilities; proven preservation plan; capacity of workshop to support re-installation; capacity of gallery to conserve; capacity of gallery to re-install; retention of institutional memory including archives of correspondence between gallery and artist/workshop; strong and continuing working relationship between the gallery and artist/workshop; regular conservation assessment. |
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2021 Jury Review This entry was added in 2019 as a subset of the 2017 ‘Media Art,’ which was first introduced with particular reference to historical media art but split by the 2019 Jury to ensure greater specificity in its recommendation. This entry represents works held in galleries where the artist is deceased or the workshop has closed, and there is limited prospect to obtain new documentation. The 2020 Jury found a trend towards greater risk based on how galleries, which often rely on visitors for income, have been closed for extended periods and circumstances of economic dislocation. The 2021 Jury agreed on a continued trend towards greater risk based on the increasing risk of this loss happening with more time sensitivity for early media artworks. |
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Additional Comments Some good work has been done here by V&A and others as part of the Preserving and Sharing Born Digital and Hybrid Objects From and Across The National Collection project, online at: https://www.vam.ac.uk/research/projects/preserving-and-sharing-born-digital-and-hybrid-objects. This includes decision model work around acquisition of complex collections such as media art. See: Ensom, T, and McConnachie, S. (2022) Preserving and sharing born-digital and hybrid objects from and across the National Collection, Decision Model Report: March 2022, online at: http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7097489 This entry includes a point in the lifecycle of all media art, so good practice recommendations are likely to become more important over time. Preservation issues may not become visible until the piece is brought out of storage for loan or exhibition, underscoring the value of continuous or periodic conservation assessment. The range of data/formats/hardware/software etc. can be new and varied, providing organizations with an ongoing technical challenge that they are not initially equipped to deal with. Some loss seems inevitable. We need to learn what documentation and metadata we need. We have an example where we have extracted art files, but we do not know what the artist's intent was, and we cannot ask as he has died. See also:
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Trend towards greater risk
No Change