Digital Memory and the Archive by Wolfgang Ernst, Edited and with an Introduction by Jussi Parikka:

In the popular imagination, archives are remote, largely obsolete institutions: either antiquated, inevitably dusty libraries or sinister repositories of personal secrets maintained by police states. Yet the archive is now a ubiquitous feature of digital life. Rather than being deleted, e-mails and other computer files are archived. Media software and cloud storage allow for the instantaneous cataloging and preservation of data, from music, photographs, and videos to personal information gathered by social media sites.

In this digital landscape, the archival-oriented media theories of Wolfgang Ernst are particularly relevant. Continue reading

An Acoustic Journey Through YouTube - presented by curatingyoutube.net at radioCona (on the occasion of the Radio Arts Space exhibition) :: December 7-16, 2011; 12:00 - 7:00 pm :: Galerija Škuc, Stari trg 21, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenija and FM 88.8MHz, Ljubljana and streamed here.

Youtube (YT) is an archive. An archive for not only movies and pictures, but also for music. That is why it is used, not only as a video platform, but in the same amount as a music platform. As a music archive, YT contains composed music, but also sounds, tones, voices and noises. Continue reading

[Ewa Partum, "Selfidentification," Warsaw 1980. Photo-montage (from a series of 8 images). Courtesy: The artist.] re.act.feminism #2 — a performing archive: Archive / Exhibitions / Workshops / Performances / Talks / Research :: until September 2013 :: First Venue (until January 2012): Centro Cultural Montehermoso Kulturunea, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain.

re.act.feminism #2 — a performing archive is a continually expanding, mobile and temporary performance archive travelling through six European countries from 2011 to 2013. In its current version, it presents gender-critical, feminist and queer performance art by 125 artists and artists collectives from the 1960s until the beginning of the 1980s, as well as contemporary positions. Continue reading

[Pro-test Lab at the Occupy Boston, Dewey Square, Boston, 2011. Photo by Nomeda Urbonas.] Disobedience Archive Continue reading

The ARPANET Dialogues Vol. III: ARPANET Test March 1976 with Joseph Beuys, Juan Downey, Rosalind Krauss & Henry Moore :: Published on 1 November 2011. Presented as a contribution to the project/publication The Archive as a Productive Space of Conflict.

“… The occasion of this conversation was suggested by Donald Lupton, a computer scientist and researcher working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in a lab funded by DARPA. Lupton has been commissioned with restarting the Agency’s art and culture propaganda project, which has lain relatively dormant since the early 60s. Unbeknownst to the four participants, this conversation is an early test case for exploring new forms of cultural dissemination with the aim of using Western intellectuals for spreading democratic values. Continue reading

The Deleted City is a digital archaeology of the world wide web as it exploded into the 21st century. At that time the web was often described as an enormous digital library that you could visit or contribute to by building a homepage. The early citizens of the net (or netizens) took their netizenship serious, and built homepages about themselves and subjects they were experts in. These pioneers found their brave new world at Geocities, a free webhosting provider that was modelled after a city and where you could get a free “piece of land” to build your digital home in a certain neighbourhood based on the subject of your homepage. Heartland was – as a neigbourhood for all things rural – by far the largest, but there were neighbourhoods for fashion, arts and far east related topics to name just a few. Continue reading

Preservation of Complex Objects Symposia (POCOS) :: October 11-12, 2011 :: The Lighthouse, 11 Mitchell Lane, Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Scotland, UK :: Online registration.

Preservation of software art presents challenges in many fronts, including complex interdependencies between objects; time-based and interactive properties; and diversity in the technologies and practices used for development. This exciting two-day symposium will provide a forum for participants to discuss these challenges, review and debate the latest developments in the field, witness real-life case studies, and engage in networking activities. The symposium will promote discussion on such topics as: Continue reading

(He)artbreaking to the Core: Zombie Data and the Arts of Re/De/Transcoding with Nina Wenhart (chair), Rosa Menkman, Melissa Barron, Daniela Kuka :: September 16, 2011; 1:00 -2:30 pm :: ISEA Istanbul.

Digital corpses all abound, zombie data that is still there, but cannot be performed anymore. Change is inevitable, if the artwork should survive. Besides the archivists’ efforts to revive the work in its original state, artists have developed their own strategies of embracing the errors and glitches of re/de/transcoding processes.

Codecs, programs, protocols and formats that are not supported anymore have become creative challenges and often initiate subversive practices. Not THAT, but HOW a work is changed and distorted becomes the choice of the artist. Continue reading

Tracing the Ephemeral: Tactical Media and the Lure of the Archive by David Garcia and Eric Kluitenberg

“Tactical Media emerged when the modest goals of media artists and media activists were transformed into a movement that challenged everyone to produce their own media in support of their own political struggles. This “new media” activism was based on the insight that the long-held distinction between the ‘street’ (reality) and the ‘media’ (representation) could no longer be upheld. On the contrary, the media had come to infuse all of society.

To challenge dominant (strategic) structures in society, it was necessary to develop new (tactical) means of producing and distributing media. Not a specialised task separate from the social movements, but a key activity around which social movements could coalesce.” [1] Continue reading

From Video Cache – Activating the Archive: An interview with Mél Hogan: “…In archives (traditionally) the emphasis has been on long-term preservation, which more often than not has meant rendering ‘originals’ inaccessible in the present as a means to protect or safeguard them for the future. Because archival discourse and practice have come a long way in the last decade to adapt to the continually changing technoscape, I don’t want to make it sound like the tension is between the traditional, as material/offline, and the new, as digital/online. I concentrate on the digital online as a complex realm when I study the archive, but obviously the discourses and ideas are shared with, if not borrowed from, years of traditional archival theory. Continue reading