Video Vortex Reader II: moving images beyond YouTube

134 Video Vortex Reader II Moving Images Beyond Youtubecollection case studies135and document the project, and to comment on the state of video art online as an extensionand permutation of the archive, in a Canadian context and beyond. Documenting the Mediatheque’scrash and its pending revival serves as a springboard into a larger conversationabout the intricate and, as I argue here, paradoxical nature of online archives. More precisely,such projects demonstrate that the technical is always mitigated to some extent by andthrough the interplay of cultural, legal, and archival parameters.Making the Cut: Becoming a Video ArchiveWhether it is considered to represent an institution or a process, the word ‘archive’ is a disputedterm. As I will argue here, one sense of the term informs the other. Broadly defined, thetraditional archive is an ongoing intellectual effort to categorize, classify, organize, store, andpreserve certain historical narratives, based on principles of acquisition and the appraisal ofarchivists. 9 The internet has transformed our conceptual relationship to the archive, as a spacethat can be entered, visited, perused, and where objects can be touched, seen, and experienced.To some extent, the qualitative time/space dimensions that defined the archive havebeen superseded by the qualities of speed, access, and online, networking capabilities. Manyof the archive’s foundational concepts are being reassessed: value, access, and preservationare not only re-conceptualized in light of online media, but are disrupting the meaning of theiroffline counterparts, too. In other words, the focus lies not in the material/immaterial binary,but in how the digital online invariably disputes and challenges the definition of the archive.As there is no universal definition of what constitutes an archive, there is no objective way toassess the extent to which the Mediatheque is an archive. In Canada, there are no parametersthat define an archive, and thus small and large-scale initiatives, both off and online,can claim to constitute an archive. Although some university archives, provincial archives,and Library and Archives Canada have legislated mandates that determine what will be collected,arts and community-based archives have no legal compulsion to exist and as suchhave not imposed structural or procedural rules or policies. 10 The openness of the conceptof the archive is key to understanding the impact of online technologies upon the definitionand role of archives and archivists.9. For a few key theorists who question the role of the archive from post-colonial, queer, andfeminist perspectives see, jake moore, ‘Brief: Matricules (parts 1 and 2) Database and archiveproject: Studio XX the first 10 years’, DPI Online 7, 11 October, 2006, http://dpi.studioxx.org/demo/?q=fr/no/07/brief-matricules-database-and-archive-project-studio-xx-first-10-years; AnnCvetkovich, ‘In the Archives of Lesbian Feelings: Documentary and Popular Culture’, CameraObscura, 17 (2002): 107 – 147; Anjali Arondekar, ‘Without a Trace: Sexuality and the ColonialArchive’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 14 (2005): 10-27; Ra’ad in Janet A. Kaplan‘Flirtations with Evidence: The Factual and the Spurious Consort in the Works of The Atlas Group/Walid Raad’, Art in America, 92.9 (2004): 134-139; Lisa Gitelman, Always Already New: Media,History and the Data of Culture, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006; and Marlene Manoff,‘Theories of the Archive from Across the Disciplines’, Libraries and the Academy, 4.1(2004):9–25.10. See, Mél Hogan correspondence with Scott Goodine, Provincial Archives of Alberta personalcorrespondence, March 2007, from ‘Archiving Absence: a queer feminist framework’, MAThesis, Concordia University, Montréal, 2008.Arising from an initiative to account for and archive emerging video technologies, the Mediathequepilot project, Independents On Line (IOL), was first proposed in 2002, and aimed tostream the work of independent Canadian video-makers and film producers. Drawing fromthe SAW Video collection, which spanned 20 years of video production in the Ottawa-Hullregion of Canada, the IOL initiative would archive the collection through the digitization of approximately500 works in one year. As the project gained momentum, its name was changedto ‘Mediatheque’ to reflect the bilingual intentions behind the project, and to meet fundingrequirements. On paper, just three months were allocated to what was a massive undertaking.In this astoundingly short time, a database had to be created, an interface designed,works digitized, works collected, contracts signed, partnerships solidified, among many othertasks. Due in no small part to the budgeting magic of Kevin Morris, the project director, theplan was realized. As Morris puts it, ‘you’ve gotta work it – you’ve gotta juggle all the time andborrow from your own self’.This original proposal by SAW Video to the Department of Canadian Heritage was to archivethe SAW Video collection through the digitization of some of its older works in various videoformats. SAW Video’s works dated back to the late 1970s, and many were and remain storedin non-archival conditions, suffering from limited budgets, storage space, access to facilitiesand equipment, and know-how. According to Morris and the Mediatheque’s appointed digitalarchivist Anatoly Ignatiev, the grant to build the Mediatheque was specifically for archival purposes.While SAW Video could not claim to meet any of the basic requirements of the materialarchive, it could and did demonstrate to its funders that the web offered an extension andsubstitute to material definitions of storage, preservation, and access. If more people wereable to access rare works, the result would be a larger and less predictable cultural conversation.Preservation, in this case, was not primarily if at all about long-term care of the files, butrather about extending the ‘lives’ of the works showcased as facilitated by the online realm.According to Morris, SAW Video was an unlikely recipient for this archival grant. Canadahas a vast and rich video art history, much of which culminates in numerous locally-focuseddistribution centres. For example, the Centre for Art Tapes in Halifax, 11 VIVO in Vancouver, 12VTape 13 in Toronto, Video Pool in Winnipeg, 14 Video Femmes in Québec, 15 Groupe InterventionVideo and Vidéographe 16 in Montréal all had equally or more established video artcollections. Vtape in particular was and remains the best-equipped institution for cleaningtapes, migrating works, format shifting, and for video material preservation more generally.The particulars that led to SAW Video receiving the grant over these other institutions remainunclear, and became as much a challenge as an opportunity for the recipients. But, accordingto Morris (who drafted the proposal, and whose views were later reinforced by McCann),the Mediatheque had appeal because it was pitched as an archive rather than a circulation11. http://www.centreforarttapes.ca/.12. http://videoinstudios.com/aboutus.php.13. http://www.vtape.org/.14. http://videopool.typepad.com/video_pool_history/.15. http://www.videofemmes.org/accueil/.16. http://www.videographe.qc.ca.