<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 14px; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><div>Thanks for this great post Carolyn! </div><div><br></div><div>And may I add a couple thought to yours and Patrick L’s here about archiving…</div><div><br></div><div>Mona Jimenez always promotes a kind of “guerrilla archiving” which is to preserve what you can, when you can and do as much as you can! I love this idea – and think that of course things will be lost – look at the trashing of ancient temples and libraries happening in Syria at present and other places. </div><div><br></div><div>I inherited the incredibly talented filmmaker Diane Bonder’s film archive when she passed away, too young. She left her archive to five of us. It has been a huge honor to have been gifted this archive – but it is also a struggle - to find items, organize them, make prints from films from Diane’s notes, and to keep this going. It has taught us all a lot – about her, how she worked, her process and how much she trusted us as artist collaborators. </div><div><br></div><div>I propose also a kind of “adoption” policy to be encouraged among media makers themselves. This solo archiving business is for the birds in my opinion. You collect my work and I will collect yours. Save as many of your friends projects as you can handle. Make multiple archives, in multiple places, using multiple drives and means to preserve them.</div><div><br></div><div>Of course,we all are deeply indebted to Sherry and ETC for their archiving efforts. And to the Rose Goldsen Archive at Cornell for theirs! And to NYU for offering a program in Cinema Studies teaching students media preservation techniques (thank you Mona Jimenez)! Thanks to Video Date Bank, Women Make Movies, Electronic Arts Intermix, V-Tape, Canadian Filmmakers, Lux, and so many more distributors. and so many more… We all thank you for these institutional organized preservation efforts. </div><div><br></div><div>But I think as individuals, we too can help save the works we love.</div><div>Just a thought. </div><div>Kathy</div><div><br></div><span id="OLK_SRC_BODY_SECTION"><div style="font-family:Calibri; font-size:11pt; text-align:left; color:black; BORDER-BOTTOM: medium none; BORDER-LEFT: medium none; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0in; PADDING-LEFT: 0in; PADDING-RIGHT: 0in; BORDER-TOP: #b5c4df 1pt solid; BORDER-RIGHT: medium none; PADDING-TOP: 3pt"><span style="font-weight:bold">From: </span> <<a href="mailto:empyre-bounces@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au">empyre-bounces@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a>> on behalf of Carolyn Tennant <<a href="mailto:carolyn.tennant@gmail.com">carolyn.tennant@gmail.com</a>><br><span style="font-weight:bold">Reply-To: </span> soft_skinned_space <<a href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a>><br><span style="font-weight:bold">Date: </span> Saturday, September 12, 2015 at 12:43 PM<br><span style="font-weight:bold">To: </span> soft_skinned_space <<a href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a>><br><span style="font-weight:bold">Subject: </span> Re: [-empyre-] Video Behind: On the history<br></div><div><br></div>----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<div dir="ltr"><p class="MsoNormal">“The longevity has been a surprise.”<br><br>
Thank goodness for the Beer Cooler, Sherry, and for the (relatively) stable
environmental conditions you’ve provided for those tapes. Tim mentions that the
ETC tapes “all still run on standard tape players.” While the 1Ž2” open-reel and
UMatic tapes are more hardy than later formats (Ugh, 8mm? digi-8? Run!!), I’m
sure you’d agree the playback success you’ve had has much to do with their
previous steward. This surprise is a gift to both the current archivists and
future audiences. A few years ago I worked with an intern, a High Roads Fellow
from Cornell actually, and we were discussing the issues around video
preservation. She mentioned to me
something really revealing: “I thought I could just Google anything and find it
on Youtube.” The expectation is there. We don’t necessarily think we need to
preserve everything, but then who are we to judge what makes the cut, whether
or not it’s our work, or even if it is another’s archive? These are some of the
dilemmas that we discussed earlier this summer at the Archiving the Arts
symposium—when archiving one’s own work there is drive to edit, as well, thus
creating a new work.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br>
Renate asks “how much do we preserve, how much space do we have, who will
record our history if we do not?” A
friend of mine who I was visiting recently jumped on the computer to show me a
commercial that featured her grandfather’s Tire shop in Phoenix. Curious who
had posted the video, we looked into “DaddySinister “ and discovered that
he/she had uploaded a lot of early episodes of Soul Train to Youtube, and in
the process, had taken the effort to post-- as separate files-- local
commercials, station tags, etc. DaddySinister reminded me how important the
“Palimpsest,” as Sherry calls it, is to the archive. Do we stop the migration
process at the end of the work we’re digitizing, or let the rest of the tape
run? Of course Renate’s question of space is a serious one and not lost on me, as
we attempt to negotiate the long-term management of digital assets within a
University Library system. These newly migrated, massive files quickly eat up
space even though, in comparison to the storage needs of other Schools within
the University, it’s quite small. </p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Cambria"><br><br></span></div>
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