by Ida Hirsenfelder

Entries to media archives

The key notion that we will have to consider fully in the following passage which will deal briefly with a variety of identifiers that construct each of the eight interconnected archives in the GAMA portal is Michel Foucault's notion of the archive. In his book Archaeology of Knowledge he puts forward a definition of sorts:
"The archive is first and foremost the law of what can be said, the system that governs the appearance of statements as unique events. But the archive is also that one that determines that all this things said do not accumulate endlessly and in an amorphous mass, nor are they inscribed it the unbroken linearity, nor do they disappear in at the mercy of chance external accidents. But they are grouped together in distinct figures, composed together in accordance with multiple relations, maintained or blurred in accordance with specific regularities. The analysis of the archives then involves a privileged region, that one close to us and different from our present existence. It is a border of time that surrounds our presence which overhangs it and which indicates it in its otherness it is that which outside ourselves delimits us."  (Michael Foucault [tr. Alan Sheridan]: Archaeology of Knowledge, Routledge, London, 2002. p. 145.)

The understanding of this notion is crucial for appreciating the special context that has been created by the GAMA gateway and the difference of this context from the variety of discursive tools that have been created by each of the archives. The question we must ask is: How can such a gateway affect the archives and what should be emphasised so that they do not merge into a uniform overarching gateway that would go beyond the long term processes on which a particular archive has been created. Let us start with similarities and connecting points rather than differences. The primary characteristic that could equally be applied to all the archive is their incomplete nature, thus the archive is a form of understanding events and art works in an undisclosed, non-unified way, constantly adding other descriptions, formations or mappings, a way  directly dependent on the material the archives are dealing with.

Digitising the archive

If the gateway lose a connection with the media carrier altogether, it would become an entirely new immaterial information bank, consequently losing its meaning of traditional notion of the archive, and becoming disconnected with the media art works that have been used and recoded from texts, sounds, images into binary information. From descriptions of eight archives included in the GAMA portal it is quite clear that the older institutions which have sufficient funding at their disposal devote a large portion of their activities to conservation and preservation of the original carriers (Monte, HE, FF, Argos). However it could be argued that the actual media work is not the original carrier in itself, but the artwork or  any cultural product that it carries. If we accept this notion then all the archives have devised methods of copying the media works onto different carriers for the purposes of preservation or to provide copies for viewing in media libraries and for distribution to festivals and other public presentations.

Automated criterions of interpretation

So why would preventing a loss of the link between the information and the carrier be so important? To answer this question we must briefly deliberate on the notions of opening-up the archive, making media art works accessible and providing information. It is because the dynamics of constant changes to the archives is not entirely analogue to the dynamics of the database, as the implementation of the logic of the technological tools does not create automated criterions of interpretation that cater foremost to the needs of the end user and neglect the stable media art works. Apparently what is a contradiction of open access to information is that below the surface of usability and accessibility that is geared to the user in the interface, there is a system of storage networking protocols that is much more rigid than any traditional archive. In this sense an archive is more a document for the researchers and other users than an actual testimony for the future. Each of the eight archives has dealt with this issue according to its own needs and agreements with the artists and authors of media art works, by systematically maintaining the possibility of exceptions should the context of a certain media art work require this.

Transmission and circulation

If the purpose of the gateway is dissemination of the content of the archives it cannot lose its immediate link with the media art works or else it might be in danger of deforming their initial context. The tactics that are adopted to make things accessible and the strategies in which things are used give a direct meaning to the works and events. However with the digital archive it seems unavoidable that we are actually employing one entirely new media for presenting a set of things that were produced in a variety of other media. Nevertheless the internet provides an opportunity to question the institutional framework that assumes a responsibility as well as authority for interpreting materials and placing them in a specific context, since the user of the information on the Web has the chance to re-contextualise (to a certain extent) the information found. On the other hand, the institutions should take this into consideration and do their utmost to prevent any possible misinterpretation or misunderstanding. Both interpretations (that of the institution and that of the user) can be considered legitimate or not, depending of how faithful they are to the actual reading of the media art work. Furthermore, any given archive is already some sort of a gateway that mediates between different statements, it is an interplay of differences and analogies through which we structure and analyse strategies, narratives, typologies, categories, relations. But the purpose and the structure of the archive that constitute its intentions is never merely presenting a given set of material traces or events and making these undisclosed sparse traces visible and accessible to the interested public. The meaning of the archives as a historical process is to develop a discursive field in which the context of the things and events is understood within the discursive environment in which it was created, thus providing us with linguistic statements by which it is possible to conceive them. The archives are fully conscious of this responsibility, which is why most of them organise educational events (workshops, seminars, lectures, media library, exhibitions, screenings) and some of them also publish research material that is inseparable from other methods of presentation.

Criteria of discrimination

Of course, we cannot emphasise enough that the documents in a particular archive are not only conserved documents, but are selected according to a set of discriminatory criteria or decisions. It is not enough to simply claim that the archives included in GAMA deal with media art. However accurately the idea of media art applies to all the archives it is simultaneously an oblique field of art that pervades all the contemporary art practices. Some of the archives focus mainly on art video production while also including other media art works (Argos, C3, Heure Exquise!, Les Instants, Montevideo, SCCA), some preserve and present films (Filmform, Heure Exquise!), while Ars Electronica archive deals with the wide range of interconnectivity between art and technology. These points of reference are not simply constructed from the conceptual foundation that a particular archive draws upon, but are rather a set of statements that occur in their multiplicity not in their certainty. The criterion of discrimination in this sense is an affirmative act for all the archives and devotes special attention to local media art production. While some of the archives like C3, SCCA and to some extent also Film Form systematically restrict themselves to presenting local art production, others concentrate more or largely on the international scene. International context is most obvious with those archives based solely on festivals like Les Instants Video Festival and Ars Electronica. The focus of the festivals is quite clear, though they may cover a wide set of art practices that simply can't be placed in a single category. But we must also consider that some of the other archives whose activity is not confined to festival activities also organise large scale annual events. Last but not least, dissemination activities represent one of the methods of presenting artists included in the archives (Argos, Filmform, Heure Exquise!, Montevideo).