CLIENT: LUDWIG FORUM FOR INTERNATIONAL ARTS, AACHEN
JULY 2004

Thanks to a new conservation strategy, video works from the early years of video art are accessible to the public again. The Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst in Aachen shows refurbished artists’ videos from the museum’s collection in its exhibition Video et Cogito from July 2, 2004. The Ludwig Forum is Germany’s first art collection undertaking concrete measures for the protection of its valuable artists’ video collection in co-operation with 235 MEDIA.

The custom conservation strategy was developed at 235 MEDIA in Cologne with the support of specialised video technicians and a graduate restorer. The strategy is applicable to other collections, too, and creates the basis for a continued restoration of video art works. Additionally, the exhibition presents extensive information documenting the process of conservation and underlines the before/after effect in a series of photographs.

The development was made possible within the settings of the MedienKunstArchiv project for the conservation and digital archiving of video art tapes. The MedienKunstArchiv project (MKA) is supported by the German Kulturstiftung des Bundes (Federal Cultural Foundation) and the Kunststiftung NRW (North Rhine-Westphalia Art Foundation) and will make video art accessible online to the public for the first time. In a first stage, some 1,100 artists’ videos shall be digitised and entered into an online archive by the end of the year.