Between Creation and Preservation

Abstract

/ This article is concerned with the pioneering digital archive of media arts ANARCHIVE, which is supervised by Anne-Marie Duguet (Université de Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne/University of New South Wales). Digitally archiving the works of media and video artists Antonio Muntadas ( Muntadas Media Architecture Installations, 1999), Michael Snow ( Digital Snow, 2002), Thierry Kuntzel ( Title TK, 2006), and Jean Otth ( Autour du Concile de Nicée, 2008), ANARCHIVE currently consists of one CD-ROM and three DVD-ROMs that include an important database of a given artist's oeuvre and that attest to the relational potential of digital archiving. Offering another type of digital archive than the ones found online, ANARCHIVE provides the user with what is arguably the most original form of digital archive today in the fields of contemporary and media arts. The rise of digital archives has accompanied a number of critical efforts that inquire into the ontological nature of the artefact once it has been `dematerialized'. More than a question of materiality or lack thereof, I wish to show that a project such as ANARCHIVE introduces another way of conceiving of cultural memory and digital preservation in the age of new media. Indeed, what such a project demonstrates is that relational aesthetics has come to occupy a more central role than materiality in the appreciation and preservation of cultural and media memories.