[-empyre-] Closing thoughts on Archiving New Media Art: Ephemerality and/or Sustainability

[Ricardo Dal Farra]

Hello all,
Thank you Tim and Renate for inviting me to paticipate in this list, 
and thank you to all the empyreans too, for your comments, 
contributions and readings of our comments this past month.
Best,
Ricardo

- -
Ricardo Dal Farra
Music Department, Concordia University - Canada
Electronic Arts Experimenting and Research Centre  - Argentina
rdalfarr at alcor.concordia.ca  /  ricardo at dalfarra.com.ar
http://www.fondation-langlois.org/flash/e/index.php?NumPage=1601
http://music.concordia.ca/people/faculty/full-time/ricardo-dal-farra.php


At 4:52 PM -0400 10/9/10, Timothy Murray wrote:
>Hello, everyone.   As we transition into another special topic, soon 
>to be introduced by Renate, I want to express my thanks and 
>enthusiasm for the  multilayered discussion of "Archiving New Media: 
>Ephemerality and/or Sustainability."  Particular thanks go to our 
>featured guests, Vanina Hofman from Taxonomedia, Claudia Kozak  and 
>Ricardo dal Farra from Argentina, Jon Ippolito and Mona Jimenez from 
>the US, and Gabriela Previdillo from Brazil.   When we framed this 
>discussion in dialogue with the Buenos Aires Taxonomedia conference, 
>we hoped that the framework of " ephemerality and/or 
>sustainability," would provide the occasion for reflections on not 
>only the practice of archiving but also its socio-cultural 
>implications.  Particularly welcome, from my point of view, is the 
>importance of contributions from Latin America that have made more 
>visible very crucial  issues of indigeneity that bear not only the 
>various platforms of art practice but also on the politics and 
>institutionalization of archiving itself.
>
>Those of us who have been engaged in institutional archival 
>projects, such as my Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, at 
>Cornell University,  continually find ourselves involved in spinning 
>justifactory narratives regarding the viability of archiving new 
>media art writ large but also pertaining to the challenges to 
>accessibility due to obsolescence, etc.   One of my greatest lessons 
>from this kind of work has been an ongoing sensitivity to the 
>extensive variations of  both "new media" and "archive" per se, as 
>well as to very different needs and articulations of the 
>international community we try to serve at the Goldsen Archive that 
>subsequently expand the parameters of the archive, in matter and 
>theory.    This resulted, for instance, in the broad expansion of 
>the initial mission of the Goldsen Archive away from focusing solely 
>on computer-based art to include the longer history of video art and 
>its relation to electronic art, partially in response to the 
>important overlap of performance and video in theWen Pulin Archive 
>of Chinese Avant-Garde Art, which we brought to the Goldsen from 
>Beijing six years ago, and more recently with a partnership with 
>Experimental Television Center.
>
>Key to these shifts have been the expression of need by communities 
>for whom new media (and video) have been vital to cultural and 
>political expression, often in less than ideal institutional 
>circumstances.   One very fruitful outcome of this month's 
>discussion has been the welcome addition to the -empyre- dialogue of 
>very specific accounts of the relation between new media and 
>indigenous practices and politics across Latin America, from Chile 
>to Argentina and Colombia to Brazil.   These accounts have 
>stimulated extremely interesting dialogues with our discussants from 
>better known media and performance initiatives in the UK , US, and 
>Spain, in a way that has foregrounded the importance of culturally 
>and politically based practices to the development of new media and 
>to the emergent complexities of its archivization.
>
>Thanks again for sharing time to focus on these very important 
>issues.  I end by extending a particularly warm welcome to the new 
>Latin American members of our -empyre- community.
>
>Best,
>
>Tim
>
>
>--
>Timothy Murray
>Director, Society for the Humanities
>http://www.arts.cornell.edu/sochum/
>Curator, The Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, Cornell Library
>http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu
>Professor of Comparative Literature and English
>A. D. White House
>27 East Avenue
>Cornell University
>Ithaca, New York 14853
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