Led collaboratively by the longtime curator of new media art Sarah Cook and networked performance artist Roddy Hunter, Networked art practice after digital preservation is a research project and network exploring challenges and solutions of preserving historical analogue and born-digital networked art practice.

Typically understood as inherently ephemeral (as in the case of mail art) or immaterial (as with internet-based exchanges), networked art practices often, deliberately, resists collection and preservation.

Taking a workshop-based approach to the research and development phase of the project, we hope to establish an international research network comprising artists, curators, researchers, and practitioners to explore current and future preservation strategies.

ISEA 2020 has accepted our proposal to host the inaugural workshop of the network at this year’s symposium in Montréal, which will now take place online. You can find out more information and sign up to take part here. If you are planning on coming to ISEA and are interested in our project, we’d very much welcome you to join our growing project snd network.

We want to hold future workshops so we can share the emerging outcomes of the research at each stage through informal presentation and exhibition. The content and context of each workshop will be shaped by the project’s emerging findings and the network’s decisions. We also aim to produce co-authored writing and research leading to exhibition and publication.

The initial phase of the project has been supported by the School of Art, Design and Architecture, University of Huddersfield and Museum Studies at the University of Glasgow.