Events

Symposium on the exhibition «Swiss Video Art in the 1970s and 1980s. A Reconstruction»


When: 25–26 April 2008
Where: Terrace Hall of the Museum of Art in Lucerne


The research project *AktiveArchive is re-opening the debate about screening historical media art with a symposium on the exhibition at the Museum of Art in Lucerne. The event is designed for anyone with an interest in art history, art education, conservation and restoration, media theory or media technology.


Symposium on the exhibition «Swiss Video Art in the 1970s and 1980s. A Reconstruction»

Against the backdrop of the Lucerne exhibition, which has placed on display reconstructions of twenty video installations and more than thirty video tapes, along with authentic players, screens and projectors from the 1970s and 1980s, the symposium describes different approaches and factors relating to the preservation, documentation and rescreening of video art.

The speakers will report back from projects and initiatives in Holland, Austria, Germany and Switzerland, offering an update on recent research. Other themes will be the role art education can play in enabling people to understand these works and the reconstruction of installations by authorised contemporaries or artist’s assistants.

Case studies will be drawn from the exhibition to illustrate the criteria that might lead to exchanging one of the components in the piece and how documentation can help in preserving the work.

*AktiveArchive
AktiveArchive is a research project undertaken by Bern University of the Arts and the Swiss Institute for Art Research, with funding from the Ministry of Culture through Sitemapping.ch. It is dedicated to documenting and preserving digital art.

Programme