In many ways, the Langlois Foundation was a catalyst for action in the field, providing a steady stream of both financial and intellectual fuel for a wide range of projects. They were the major underwriter of both the Variable Media Network and V2_’s Capturing Unstable Media. Their most recent project DOCAM (Documentation and Conservation of Media Arts Heritage) capitalizes on their leadership role in the field and has provided a wealth of tools and resources.10 Somewhat ironically, however, this massive multiinstitutional, multidisciplinary research project also happens to be heavily funded by the Canadian government. With governments providing funding to private foundations, private foundations supporting public institutes, and smaller institutes grabbing what they can, any attempt to discern separate funding streams are ultimately foiled. ‘Following the money’ reveals that these seemingly divergent funding streams are in fact quite interdependent and have ultimately created a supportive network that has resulted in a large amount of high-quality research. Funding streams disrupted If the pool of funds is limited and interdependent, what happens when this delicate balance is disrupted? The field of media art preservation lost two of its main advocates recently, the Daniel Langlois Foundation and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Media.Art.Net.
With its government support withdrawn, the LBI had to shutter its doors completely and ‘archive’ its website. The situation at the Langlois Foundation is less definite. As a funding institute they have been incrementally scaling back their programming for years and the physical archive is being transferred to an as yet to be confirmed partner. Their website however – one of the most exceptional in the field – remains an active hub for research and the findings of DOCAM are closely linked to the Foundation. Other promising projects, such as Capturing Unstable Media and Variable Media Network, have also fallen by the wayside due to funding and shifting institutional priorities. These situations have very direct and practical implications for the preservation of media art history, and they also raise a number of broader theoretical questions. Within these multiple streams of funding is there a discernible ideological difference in what is being preserved? Do different funding sources result in different kinds of discourse? Large and dominant institutes like MoMA and the Tate have certainly been generous with their knowledge and support of smaller institutes, but their own collections contain only a fraction of the endangered material that is selected with criteria that excludes huge areas of cultural production. This is not news to anyone
4•5