RE: [-empyre-] (forwarded from Jaka Zeleznikar) Ana Maria Uribe

["Jim Andrews" <jim@vispo.com>]

> The process of collecting and curating Ana Maria's work will
> provide a very
> important example for all of us.  I do hope that one individual
> who has access
> to the files and knows the work will take up the task of doing
> this right away -
>
> and I would like to be kept current on how the job proceeds, the kinds of
> problems that arise, and what solutions are reached.  Even if PAD
> succeeds in
> establishing a central repository and some sort of emulation
> system that will
> allow continued access to older softwares, the initial task of
> collecting and
> organizing the work is best attended to by the author or a close
> associate.

Hi Marjorie,

Thank you for your valuable suggestions concerning the nature of archives.

Diego Uribe, Ana Maria's brother, is going to go through her files and make
a CD. If Regina's Attic is current, three CDs would be capable of holding
Ana Maria's hard drive. And I think it is current. With the economic
collapse of Argentina in 2001, I remember Ana Maria saying that a computer
would cost somewhere between 5 and 10 times as much as it did before the
collapse, so I doubt she upgraded her computer after the Attic project. I
think she mostly spent what money she had on travelling.

It is up to Diego to select what he thinks Ana Maria could tolerate being
released publicly. She was very careful and sparing with what she released
publicly, and I suspect Diego will have a good sense of what she could
tolerate in this regard. I am happy to work with Diego. There has been a
mirror of Ana Maria's site on my site for some time; our works go together
quite well. Coincidentally, it was only slightly before I asked her about
this that she told me she was ill. She agreed and set up the mirror. We do
not know the login and password to her tripod site, at this time, but it
will not be hard for me to retrieve any files involved in the few pieces not
present on the mirror.

So Diego will send me a CD, and this will probably take some time for him to
put together. I will forward him some of your suggestions concerning what to
consider.

Perhaps additional to the sorts of concerns you express, I am hoping that
Diego sees fit to include her 'scratch' graphics and sounds. It would be
gratifying to be able to include some of Ana Maria's unpublished graphical
or sound work in my own future work, and I suspect this will resonate with
others also. Even in one of her last emails she expressed a wish that we be
able to collaborate in the future.

I remember reading the conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth speculate on the fate
of his own work. He felt it improbable that much of his actual art objects
would survive and that it would be more in the practice of living artists in
how they approached things or didn't approach things, the questions they
asked or didn't ask, some having been covered. Hard to say. But I suspect
Ana Maria would like the idea of giving artists the opportunity to use parts
of her unpublished graphical/sound work in their own work.

Just what form to release this archive in will depend on the size and nature
of it. Whether on CD or as a zip file or what. I do have a copy of the 2001
CD she released titled Escaleras y otros Anipoemas. And she published a book
of her work which I see Regina has a little documentation on at
http://www.iis.com.br/~regvampi/museu/livros/uribe.htm

As I mentioned, I regard this as a long-term, ongoing project and perhaps it
will bring those of us who appreciate her work closer to Ana Maria's work,
in integrating something of Ana Maria into our own work or at least being
able to see some ways into the process and source of her work.

I have created an email group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/uribe for
people who want to participate or otherwise keep track of the progress and
developments concerning Ana Maria's work, use of her work, writing about her
work, etc.

Thanks again for your good suggestions, Marjorie, and also to Jaka and
Regina, Jorge, aLe, and others for raising the important issue of how to
proceed. I think that having a list will help with the project immensely and
keep us all informed on what's happening.

ja