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these films. We can think about them, we can try to develop strategies, but we have to
accept the fact.
Wolfgang Ernst: Let me try once more to clarify the difference between originals
that are defined by the process of ageing, i.e. by a temporal process, and the trace-like
notion of the original where something exists only for a fraction of time. On the one
hand, there is a terrible hardware-oblivion, something like an old tape of Jochen Gerz. If
we play it today and see these terribly faint images, then the tape possesses the structure
of ageing that is a feature of this particular tape. No other tape, no digital computer
program could ever simulate the ageing process, the process of disintegration, the
process of integration of these images, in the same way. That fulfils all the criteria of Benjamin's
classical notion of the original. The definition by Alois Riegl, who around the year
1900 described the value of art objects over time, can also be applied to the analogue
videotape. As long as something can decay, time is working on it, and that is the unmistakeable
process etched into a work that can be neither multiplied nor imitated. And for
that long we are indeed dealing with an idea of the original that is bound up with the
material, with the physical. But the moment an image is written as a program, it is no
longer subject to this temporal process of decay and ageing. If in the world of antiquity,
a Greek geometer or mathematician declares: '2+2=4', then that is a formula, so to
speak, that still exists today without ageing process, without a trace of change over time.
And the images generated in digital space only exist because they have been programmed,
they exist in a numerical space, in a mathematical, cybernetic numerical space
that even internally is no longer subject to an ageing process, but can only appear- and
there is the shift - when we plant it into hardware. The original is present virtually or latently,
but it becomes visible only when it is attached to hardware, which in turn changes
over time. That's where I see the difference to the classical original. Every Greek statue
exists in space, whilst the latent original in digital space which appears only for an instant
each time it is called up, will then disappear again.
Axel Wirths: But that would mean - to return once more to Reinhold Mißelbeck -
that museums and collections are indeed faced with a problem. And of course we have
come together here in order to work out a solution to this problem. I would like to suggest
once more that we organise a similar meeting to discuss issues of restoration and
adequate forms of storage. In this debate, I would like to see included the step from the
analogue to the digital mentioned by Wolfgang Ernst since the moment we restore a work
- just as the work of Jochen Gerz was restored - the point of restoration must be viewed
as the end of the obsolete notion of the original and a status quo has to be defined of
the idea of the original in the nineties or the year 2000, which ten years later will have
changed again.
Michael Wenzke presented several pragmatic and practical positions. While he is
talking more about installations and sculptures, I think his definitions are quite interesting.
He speaks of originality and rarity with regard to the insurance of sculptures and
media installations. In practice, in my experience, the artist possesses three copies plus
an artist-proof, so that when all three works have been sold, he can still show one, which
he is not allowed to sell. That ensures the rarity of the work. In this context, he also
spoke about restoration, and I was surprised to hear that an insurance would define the
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