types of institutes is important because of the ephemeral, process or context-based character of the works. However, institutes without collections are finding themselves in a dilemma, as the institutional mandate has a different focus. Gerfried Stocker, artistic director of Ars Electronica, summarized this problem as follows: ‘Every euro we spend on dealing with this old material is one euro less for our real task, which is producing new projects, exhibits, festivals and things like this.’ 1
5•2
In addition to collecting and preserving media artworks, documents and documentations, media art institutes need to contribute continuously to the processes of fostering attention for their artefacts, and their re-contextualisation – a task traditionally carried out by external researchers, teachers and curators. As Bart De Baere, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp (MuHKA), formulated: ‘Preservation is not secured by conservation procedures, but by the continuous resumption of a web of meanings given… It is not the moment when things are cast out or not that is so decisive. Remembering and forgetting form a more important duo than preserving and throwing away.’ 2 He refers to the differentiation by Aleida Assmann between Speichergedächtnis (storage) and Funktionsgedächtnis (remembering), which together make up cultural memory. Assmann described Speichergedächtnis as the passive pole, and Funktionsgedächtnis as the active pole of memory. 3 Here the Internet is of the utmost importance and at the same time one of the areas where the current changes to our cultural life manifest very clearly. Assmann summarized this process as a transition from a culture of memory to a culture of attention, with the consequence that the abstract classification of a library catalogue is no longer sufficient. What is important in the visual medium of the Internet is the art of an attractive display, 4 meaning that, nowadays, users of media art archives expect high quality and great features on the websites they visit. 1 Gerfried Stocker at the workshop ‘Media Art
3 Assmann, Aleida, ‘Archive im Wandel der Medi-
Archiving – Politics and Strategies’, Ars Electronica Festival 2009, organized by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Media.Art.Research. and Ars Electronica on the occasion of the launch of the Gateway to Archives of Media Art (GAMA), 4 Linz, 5 September 2009. 2 De Baere, Bart, ‘Potentiality and Public Space.
Archives as a Metaphor and Example for a Political Culture’ (2002), pp. 106–7, in Von Bismarck, Beatrice, Sonja Eichele, Hans-Peter Feldmann (eds.), Interachive. Archivische Praktiken und Handlungsräume im zeitgenössischen Kunstfeld / Archival Practices and Sites in the Contemporary Art Field. Exhibition project “Interarchiv”, Kunstraum der Universität Lüneburg. Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2002, pp. 105-112.
engeschichte’ (p. 169), in Ebeling, Knut and Stephan Günzel (eds.), Archivologie. Theorien des Archivs in Philosophie, Medien und Künsten. Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos, 2009, pp. 165–75. Assmann, Aleida, ‘Druckerpresse und Internet – von einer Gedächtniskultur zu einer Aufmerksamkeitskultur’ (2003), in Archiv und Wirtschaft, 1/2003. Link: http://www.wirtschaftsarchive. de/zeitschrift/m_assmann.htm Attention in the context of the Internet is widely discussed; see, for example, Goldhaber, Michael H., ‘The Attention Economy and the Net’, in First Monday, 1997, vol. 2, no. 4. Link: http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/ article/view/519/440.