Page 223 - The Black Box Book

generate more information. Is it ‘meta’ to try to preserve a project, which is itself an outcome of artists already behaving curatorially – seizing
is a commentary on the systems determining value in the first place? the means of dissemination as essential to the production of the work.
There seems to be resistance on the part of both case studies of artworks As such its preservation would thus benefit from collaborations that see
to cross over to the other side, whether it is conceptually embedded in curators encouraged to think and behave artistically.
the work to decay and thus hard to establish its boundary and appropriate If these are the considerations that those responsible – artists,
preservation. Moreover, it lends to considerations whether preservation curators, conservators, and archivists – have to consider, then what
questions or challenges the work itself by producing digital artefacts, about the non-human elements, the artwork and its network? What are
possibly in conflict with the work’s intentions. the differences for networked art practice before and after digital preser-
vation? Does it depend on whether the artwork was made before or after
P R E S E R VAT I O N O F N E T- the Internet, or used non-digital or non-electronic means? Our interest is
WORKED ART WORKS AND in digital preservation of networked art rather than digital art’s preserva-
tion – the work doesn’t have to be digital in the first place. As networked
PRACTICES… IN THE NETWORK art practices predate the web, then what did offline/online mean before
the Internet? Digital preservation suggests a move from one (unstable)
This chapter has offered a survey of approaches to the conservation format to another (more stable or which makes the work accessible).
of networked artworks and practices without undermining their unruly This move could however exist in the work itself – away from the intan-
materiality and criticality of institutional process and spaces. Mindful gible digital to a more physical manifestation, as in 6 Months Without,
of jeopardising the underlying principles and dimensions of the prac- or the opposite, in the Museum of Ordure, towards the abstraction,
tice itself, we sought nonetheless to trace the edges and boundaries of digitality, decomposition, and glitch of the digital dump. There are
the preservation of networked art practices. Ongoing debates about 20 years between the two case study artworks discussed in this
omissions and distortions in the construction of art histories and their chapter. That gap arguably includes the moment when a threshold of
subsequent influence on the production of future art practice add fur- society’s increasing digital ubiquity was crossed: the point where it became
ther urgency. Ensuring a reliable understanding of networked art prac- imperative that the internet never be turned off (Fisher, 2009). We note
tices during the last sixty years and contributing toward the evolution of that digital preservation on the industrial scale undertaken by museums,
preservation methods in response also helps us understand, in media libraries and archives is far from carbon neutral and risks being subject to
archaeological terms, “ how we ended up in this digital culture and [per- the same capitalist and environmentally damaging excesses of hoarding
haps] find alternative ways of thinking about [it].” (Parikka, 2001). Given and storage as other corners of the art world. This tension, and others
our conception of materiality has changed since the digital turn, we can raised through this research, indicate where current preservation and
only expect that artworks in the future will continue to evolve in further conservation processes – enacted by humans or by machines – may
contingent, precarious and hybrid ways. risk sealing unsustainable impermeable material and historical bounda-
We identified the problem of networked art practice preservation ries around networked art practice, thus depriving its potential to act in
as distinct from media art challenges of preservation. We highlighted the world and form connections with new nodes in its always-on network.
the necessity to focus on the performative processes of social, cultural,
and technological exchanges that underpin the work and maintain its
interaction with contemporary cultural ecologies.
Networked art practice comprises exchanges that can be revisited,
reemployed, reconsidered, and resituated due to their integral relevance
to our contemporary social, cultural and political experience. Thus, we see
greater promise in the undertaking of media archaeological excavation
of processes that underpin these works. Here, we see the possibility of
harnessing a source for the generation of new work, that is porous and
susceptible to contemporary discourse.
Of further interest is how artistic engagement with the internet and
other networks reveals a curatorial dimension already present in networked
art practices. While the future of networked art preservation depends
on collaboration between artists, curators, conservators, and archivists
performing their existing roles, we recognise that networked art practice
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