Preserving and Exhibiting Media Art

This important and first-of-its-kind collection addresses the emerging challenges in the field of media art preservation and exhibition, providing an outline for the training of professionals in this field. Since the emergence of time-based media such as film, video and digital technology, artists have used them to experiment with their potential. The resulting artworks, with their basis in rapidly developing technologies that cross over into other domains such as broadcasting and social media, have challenged the traditional infrastructures for the collection, preservation and exhibition of art. Addressing these challenges, the authors provide a historical and theoretical survey of the field, and introduce students to the challenges and difficulties of preserving and exhibiting media art through a series of first-hand case studies. Situated at the threshold between archival practices and film and media theory, it also makes a strong contribution to the growing literature on archive theory and archival practices.

Julia Noordegraaf is Professor of Heritage and Digital Culture in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Amsterdam. Vinzenz Hediger is a professor of cinema studies at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt where he directs the Graudate Research Training Program "Configurations of film". He is a founding member of the Permanent Seminar on Histories of Film Theories, a co-founder and former steering committee member of NECS - European Network of Cinema and Media Studies (www.necs.org) and a member of the Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature. His publications include "Films That Work Harder. The Circulations of Industrial Film" (forthcoming from AUP) and "Nostalgia for the Coming Attraction. American Movie Trailers and the Culture of Film Consumption" (forthcoming from Columbia UP). Cosetta G. Saba is associate professor of film analysis and audiovisual practices in media art at the University of Udine, Italy. Barbara Le Maître is associate professor of film studies at Paris-III Sorbonne Nouvelle.