|
Olga Shishko & Tatiana Gorucheva
Mediatheque of Infocenter for
Media Culture
Moscow MediaArtLab’s
initiative
MEDIATHEQUE
will become the first systematic professional public archive of media art in
Russia. It will be a part of information center, whose task is to collect,
systemize, and to provide professional and non-professional audiences with
open access to diverse information on contemporary media culture. The latter
one includes not only media art, but also another creative, research and
experimental forms of activity aimed at exploring and solving a wide range
of problems related to development of new information-communication
technologies, their role in contemporary culture as well as results of their
impact on cultural processes. The most important reason of initiation of
this project is the lack of information which would let people study and
follow the process of development of world and local media cultures what
makes problematic elaboration of competent and appropriate methods for
pushing forward productive inter-relations between cultural and
technological spheres in Russia. Thus, Infocenter should become, first of
all, a platform for educational and research projects in this field.
Initially this project has been launched in
order to preserve films and videos by Russian artists from destruction and
loss as well as to collect documentation of such projects as installations,
performances, actions, whose production is based on the use of media. Besides
that MAL is about to launch special program aimed at exploring the most
appropriate methods of storing Internet based art projects. At the same time
regarding constantly growing interest to media art in Russia and to
MediaArtLab's collection in particular among professional artists, curators,
and researches, as well as audiences, the necessity to create public archive
on the professional platform is obvious. Other important goal is to stimulate
distribution of Russian media art all over Russia and abroad as well as to
further acquaintance of Russian audience with foreign media art through
organizing exchange, educational, festival programs in Moscow and Russian
regions. Regional museums, art and education centers are very interested in
receiving specially prepared by experts educational programs which would help
to acquaint local audiences with history and present development of media art
in Russia and abroad.
History
During 3 years of work MAL has already
collected more than 150 hours of video art works by Russian and international
artists on VHS tapes, its archive also includes a number of CD-ROMs. Basically
for the moment this collection consists of collections of Moscow studios that
doesn't exist any more, personal selections of works by Russian artists, and
different screening programs of Russian and international video art that were
specially organized and shown within the frame of other projects of
MediaArtLab.
Structure
Mediatheque will consist of:
audio-visual archive of media art works in
professional electronic and digital formats;
cart index and catalogue of artists and works;
computer database, full information bank with
the search system, which will be accessible on-line and off-line;
library, which will include books on history
and theory of media, media art, cyberculture, collections of essays,
catalogues, periodicals, etc.;
show room equipped with monitors, video
players, video projector, screen, computers with the Internet access .
Functions
Mediatheque will function as an open public
archive which will provide people with access to all stored materials and
information; equipment for their examination; navigation tools: catalogue, card
index, database; consulting assistance. Infocenters's bank of information and
art works also will be used in order to select and prepare special programs
according to requests of interested Russian and foreign organisations, as well
as for MediaArtLab's own and collaborative projects (seminars and workshops,
screenings, festivals, conferences). On the basis of collected materials
MediaArtLab is going to publish an anthology of Russian media art which will
consist of three volumes. The first one will be dedicated to experimental films
and video art, the second one - to multi media art, and the third one - to
Internet art.
|
