aemi & IMMA
Archives LIVE
aemi is delighted to partner with IMMA to present Archives LIVE, a series of live streamed public dialogues that reflect on the significant role played by the archive and museum collection in artist moving image culture, both in generating new work and as an overarching structure that supports the conservation of existing moving image practice.
The first session of Archives LIVE, Artists’ Working with Archives (Wed 07 Oct, 6.30pm), examines the archive as a resource, an enduring subject of interest and site of research for film artists. The second session of Archives LIVE, Conservation in Motion (Wed 21 Oct, 6.30pm) focuses on the conservation process that a moving image work goes through when it is acquired by an archive or a collection.
Session 2
Archives LIVE: Conservation in Motion – Wed 21 Oct / 18.30 – 20.00 (GMT+1)
Online
Registration: To attend using zoom platform, register here.
Tune In: Drop in on the IMMA You Tube Channel at the time of live broadcast here.
To coincide with the IMMA Collection initiatives of IMMA Screen and the ongoing Archive Digitisation Project, aemi has partnered with IMMA to devise two online discussions with artists and conservators on the subject of the archive.
Session 2 focuses on the conservation process that a moving image or artist film work goes through when it is acquired by an archive or a collection. This session leads on from the recent exhibition IMMA Archive: 1990s, From the Edge to the Centre and draws attention to the vital process of collaboration with artists that forms a key part of conservation of time based media and artist film. Drawing on works held in the IMMA Collection as case studies to explore the specific challenges encountered in documenting, caring for and ensuring the longevity of artist moving image and film works, this event assesses the significance of archives and the importance of public access to collections particularly in the context of the current Covid19 constraints. Guest participants include artist Jaki Irvine and Brian Castriota (archaeological & time-based media art conservator).
Online Details: You can attend by registering in advance to receive a zoom link directly to your inbox or you can tune in during live broadcast on the IMMA You Tube Channel, see links above.
Further info on Session 2:
Reflecting on recent experiences of the digitisation process related to the recent display of IMMA Archive: 1990s, From the Edge to the Centre – this session offers an artists’ and conservator’s perspective on the inherent methods involved to future proof the display of time based media and moving image artworks, drawing on ideas of artwork identity and authenticity commonly invoked in conservation theory and practice.
Drawing on work of IMMA Collection artist Jaki Irvine, this session centres on the ‘conservator to artist conversation’, as intrinsic to the work of time-based media conservation. Join Brian Castriota (conservator) as he conducts a conversation with Jaki Irvine to learn about the making of these works, and offers a live demonstration of how these kind of interviews between film artist and conservator, are key to his work. Key questions address the history of display and its variability, display parameters, equipment significance, etc. As with behind the scenes interviews, these conversations will enter into a Collection artwork’s archive, and serves as a vital information source for future curators and programmers, tasked with preserving and reinstalling time-based and moving image works.
This session will include time for reflection on the current lack of a distributor or archive in Ireland dedicated to disseminating and preserving moving image works by artists and experimental filmmakers. It will shed light on the various Irish arts organisations (galleries, museums, film archives) that hold moving image work by Irish artists and ask what might be involved in forming a connection between these institutions in order to provide clear access and research points for those interested in this vital and thriving area of visual culture.
Presented in collaboration with IMMA, and the context of IMMA Archive: 1990s, From the Edge to the Centre exhibition that celebrates an ambitious IMMA Collection and Archive Digitisation Project initiated in 2017, made possible by the support of the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. The IMMA archive project is the catalyst behind the IMMA and aemi collaboration, and presents an opportunity to embrace a shared ethos for supporting artists working with the moving image, as well as contributing to the important development of building infrastructures around the conservation of these practices in Ireland.
About Speakers
Jaki Irvine uses video installation, photography, music composition and writing – she explores the complex ways we imagine ourselves and the world around us, a process which, for Irvine,has both philosophical and political implications.
Her practice, as Anne Tallentire remarked, is ‘an invitation to see what might be learnt by attempting to think undistractedly about things we cannot help thinking about anyway, or cannot help have occur to us’. In 1995 Irvine’s work was included in General Release, the seminal exhibition of Young British Artists at the Venice Biennale and she represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 1997. She participated in numerous group shows including NoWhere Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark (1996), White Noise, Bern Kunsthalle, (1998), Intelligence, Tate Britain (2000) and Shifting Ground: 50 Years of Irish Art at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) (2000); Revolver II, Matt’s Gallery, London (2014); A Room of One’s Own, Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Mexico City (2015). Her solo exhibitions have included the Project Arts Centre (1996), Kerlin Gallery (2004, 2011) and the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (1999, 2005); Frith Street Gallery, London (1997, 1999, 2011) the Staatliche Kunsthalle in Baden-Baden, Germany (1998) Delfina Project Space London; Henry Moore Institute (2004) Leeds and Galleria Alessandro de March (2004),Milan.
In 2005 she showed The Silver Bridge in IMMA and Smart Project Space,
Amsterdam. In 2008, her multi channel installation, In a World Like This, was produced in collaboration with Chisenhale Gallery, London and The Model Arts and Niland Gallery, Sligo. To mark the exhibition, The Square Root of Minus 1 is Plus or Minus i , was published in early 2008. Her project, City of Women (2010), developed with Draoícht and The Lab, Foley Street, brought together women of many different backgrounds and ages, to perform for one night on Foley Street, re-enacting gestures from Hogarth’s, The Harlot’s Progress. In 2011 Before The Page is Turned, developed in the Dublin Graphic Print Studios, was presented at the Kerlin Gallery, Dublin. In 2014 her solo show, This Thing Echoes, was presented at Frith Street Gallery, London.
Irvine has written many critical texts and short writings on other artists work in the past, including Extinction Beckons, for Mike Nelson, a book commissioned by Matts Gallery. In 2013 she wrote Days of Surrender, her first novel, published by Copy Press, UK. Irvine is represented in the collections of IMMA, the Irish Arts Council, Tate Modern, FRAC and in numerous other collections, both public and private. She lives and works in Dublin and Mexico City. She is represented by Frith Street Gallery, London and Kerlin Gallery, Dublin. See more details here
Dr Brian Castriota is a Glasgow-based researcher and conservator specialised in the conservation of time-based media, contemporary art, and archaeological materials. He holds a Master’s degree in History of Art and Certificate in Conservation from the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU (2014), and a PhD in History of Art from the University of Glasgow (2019). As one of fifteen doctoral research projects in the Horizon 2020 Marie Skłowdoska-Curie ITN New Approaches in the Conservation of Contemporary Art (NACCA), his thesis research examined notions of artwork identity and authenticity commonly invoked in conservation theory and practice.
Since 2018 he has worked as a freelance conservator for time-based media and contemporary art at IMMA, as well as the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh. He currently serves as Supervising Conservator with the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis in Turkey and has worked with the expedition since 2011. Prior to his doctoral studies he was a Samuel H. Kress Fellow in Time-Based Media Conservation at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and worked as a contract conservator for time-based media artworks at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. He is a regular guest lecturer on the subject of time-based media and contemporary art conservation at the University of Glasgow and Edinburgh College of Art, and is an adjunct instructor for the NYU Institute of Fine Arts’ time-based media conservation stream of their MA/MS degree programme.See more details here
Event update
Listen again to the two Archives LIVE events: Artists Working with Archives (7 Oct), and Conservation in Motion (21 Oct)
More info here
