When Visual Art Meets Cinema: The Reconstruction of "Projekt I-'90" by Peter Struycken

Media Art Installations at the Technological Crossroads

One of the main preservation problems encountered in the field of media art installation today is the dependency of each individual work on technology to function the way it was intended by the artist. This technology is by necessity determined by what is available at the moment of creation. To prolong the life span of a media art installation, once it enters the museum world, there are basically two possible strategies. The first is to preserve not only the artwork but also its apparatus, meaning all the original equipment and the technology necessary to produce and maintain this equipment. As this will prove almost impossible to sustain in the long run, the second strategy, adapting the artwork to the state of the technology, is the one usually chosen by people or institutions involved in the preservation of media art.

When technology-based artworks become part of a museum collection, their functionality is usually guaranteed by a maintenance plan that takes into consideration the need to replace certain parts when they become obsolete or unusable. Normally, this maintenance occurs in incremental steps over time, for example, in the replacement of a videotape player by a DVD player. Changes like these usually have only a slight impact on the nature and the appearance of the artwork and are considered standard procedure. Unavoidably, however, every single media art installation is going to encounter a situation in which changes in technology will have serious consequences for the appearance, the artistic meaning, or even the integrity of the work. As digital techniques are now rapidly replacing older analog systems, the very existence of many media art installations dating from the 1970s and 1980s is threatened by the fact that their equipment is becoming obsolete. In addition, a lack of knowledge about the correlation between the different parts of the installation, usually due to incomplete documentation, can further complicate the preservation process.

At such a juncture in time, the choices a conservator-restorer has to make are crucial. But they are not the sole players, as the artist can still claim an important role. In fact, many preservation projects of media installations today are done through close cooperation between conservator-restorer, one or more technical specialists, and the artist. Preserving media installations has become a complex process during which the different views on and opinions about the artwork need to be negotiated in a continuous dialogue between everyday practice and existing research.

In what follows, we will illustrate this process using as an example the case of the reconstruction and reinstallation of the media artwork "Projekt I-'90" by the Dutch artist Peter Struycken, consisting of film and slide projections. This reconstruction project demonstrates the problems and dilemmas encountered in media installation art, which are caused by rapidly changing display technologies. An integral part of this project was to research the circumstances under which the reconstruction of the artwork would be possible and the shape it would take in the end, which included involving the artist in the preservation project. There was also a sense of urgency as some of the original components—the slides and the motion picture material—could still be used or adapted, something that time would only make more difficult.

This case study is also a fine example of a productive collaboration between an art museum, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and a film archive, the EYE Film Institute Netherlands, on a preservation process. When the audiovisual preservation department of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam decided in spring 2008 to start working on the reconstruction of "Projekt I-'90," the first step was to locate the whereabouts of the different image elements of the installation. Although a set of slides, a worn-out 16mm film copy, and parts of the original equipment were found at the Stedelijk Museum, the original 16mm film material was stored in the vaults of the EYE Film Institute Netherlands. Realizing that the expertise of the audiovisual preservation department resided in the fields of equipment, video technology, and installation...