Organizers Sarah Cook and Roddy Hunter were joined by artists, curators, archivists and an international group of graduate students to jointly investigate the question of preserving networked art practices during the ISEA 2020 virtual conference. The organizers conceived of such practices in a broad sense, spanning beyond art on the internet, to include all artworks which draw upon networks of distribution and exchange (online or offline) as their primary medium of production. The workshop set out to unpack the current state of digital preservation methods and approaches. The aim was to open up a discussion around present (and even future) implications of networked infrastructures on art practices, both on a technical as well as social level. The guest presentations that followed offered ways of thinking about preservation and networks, that resists easy classification.

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The Museum of Ordure’s Mission is to examine: 

1. The cultural value of ordure, shit, rubbish. 
2. The waste of human resources through various ownership, production, and management regimes. 
   What is shit for some, has value for others.¹  

The Museum of Ordure was a project by Stuart Brisley, Geoff Cox and Adrian Ward. It is a self-institution concerned with the management of human waste, the mandate for clean and proper language and the Internet as “an image dump”.²  

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After framings by Annet Dekker on ‘Networks of care’ for conservation of net art’ and Anisa Hawes detailing Rhizome’s web archiving tool Conifer, case studies followed on from the opening Q&A. Each case was discussed for twenty minutes, the first being the Museum of Ordure presented by Geoff Cox and the second being 6 Months Without presented by Nastja Säde Rönkkö.

Important points from the framing presentations, which were especially pertinent to the following case studies included:

• Distinctions between conservation, preservation and restoration.
• Fragments of documentation, and the questions of how fragments of documentation come together. Whether such fragments need to come together. The purpose of aligning these fragments – and the desire to present a work in its ‘original’, and if an authentic original can ever exist.
• The network as part of a work, the network’s agency.
• Provenance as linear in art historical frameworks, and how this linear path may or may not be possible for all works and mediums.
• Embedded duration, perceptions of permanence.
• The invisible hands of carers.

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We enjoyed presenting the research project ’Networked Art Practice after Digital Preservation’ at the Digital Curator symposium, Masaryk University, Brno on 3 December 2020.

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Next up, Sarah Cook and Roddy Hunter will give a paper on the developing project, ‘Networked Art Practice After Digital Preservation’, including reporting on our ISEA 2020 workshop, at the Digital Curator International Symposium, Masaryk University, Brno, this Thursday, 3 December, 10:50am (CET). Free and online.

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Thanks to everyone who took part in our workshop, Networked Art Practice After Digital Preservation, at ISEA2020.

Over 30 participants from across the world took part with enthusiasm and it was amazing to having a network of participants from São Paulo – Melbourne so committed for the five-hour duration of the workshop.

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Workshop: Networked art practice after digital preservation

ISEA 2020, 17 October 2020, 10:00 – 17:00 (EDT), online: apply here *

Led by Professor Sarah Cook (University of Glasgow) and Dr Roddy Hunter (University of Huddersfield), joined by special guests Dr Geoff Cox (London South Bank University), Dr Annet Dekker (University of Amsterdam), Anisa Hawes (web archivist, London) and Nastja Säde Rönkkö (artist, London/Helsinki).

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In addition to our workshop scheduled for Saturday, 17 October, Sarah and Roddy will be contributing a presentation and participating in a Q&A at the Artist Talks session 2 on Friday, 16 October.

Look us up here by selecting ‘Artist Talks’, hitting ‘Friday’ and scrolling down to ‘Artist Talks session 2 // Networked art practice after digital preservation’.

So join us online for that session on Friday, and hear other great presentations too, ahead of the workshop on Saturday!