Abstract
Second Summit on New Media Art Archiving
June 11, MACBA – Convent dels Àngels. Long paper.
Keywords: video art, video art festivals, audiovisual archives, remediation projects, Southern Cone
Stayin’ Alive” refers to the survival of videographic works in archives and collections formed from the celebration of video art festivals in the Southern Cone. After a brief historical review, we refer to some possibilities and challenges for digital and physical video art archives in the present.
This presentation addresses some problems affecting physical and digital archives dedicated to video art in the Southern Cone, relating to matters of accessibility, preservation and dissemination of video-based art collections in the present. In an attempt to map such a complex situation, firstly, I look at some of the most relevant Latin American video art festivals. I take as case studies the Encuentros Latinoamericanos de Video, the Festivales Franco-Chilenos and Franco Latinoamericanos de video arte, VideoBrasil and Buenos Aires Video, which promoted the production, circulation and dissemination of audiovisual arts in the last two decades of the 20th century and, alongside, fostered the creation of physical archives or video libraries in the region. Secondly, I identify some institutional and academic projects that, since the mid-2000s, have carried out tasks of valorization and remediation of video-based art collections. Actions through which it has been possible to give visibility, accessibility and survival to some video art works, and documentation related to the above-mentioned festivals. Finally, under the premise of problematizing the initiatives that safeguard this audiovisual culture and its difficulties to endurance, I point out common challenges to audiovisual archives in the present, and the answers articulated by some research projects to face them.
- Alejandra Crescentino is a PhD candidate in the Program Artistic, Literary and Cultural Studies (EALyC), and Teaching and Research Personnel in Training (PDIF) in the Department of Linguistics, Modern Languages, Logic and Philosophy of Science, Theory of Literature and Comparative Literature, and East Asian Studies, of the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain. She obtained a Master’s degree in EALyC from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in 2016. She graduated with a degree in History of Fine Arts in 2013 and Professor in Art History in 2009 from the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, Argentina. She is a member of the research group “DeVisiones. Discourses, genealogies and practices in contemporary visual creation”, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. https://www.devisiones.com