Conservators face issues in preserving video and modern material artworks

Jonathan Furmanski, an assistant conservator at the institute, describes one particularly unruly video installation. "The Philo T. Farnsworth Video Obelisk" (by Skip Sweeney and Video Free America) was recorded on "a phenomenally obscure 1-inch tape that plays only on a specific type of Sony deck. I needed to locate and repair such a deck in order to extract the signal from the tape. The signal itself was loaded with its own problems because the artists created a montage from a variety of sources that caused the video signal to fluctuate dramatically from scene to scene. Artists are not engineers and like to push tools like video equipment until they do something unexpected. And that unexpected thing is often the 'art.' "

The question looms large for conservators: How will audiences of the future view art created with technologies of the past? To explore this and other delicate issues, more than 300 conservators, artists, curators and art historians gathered at the Getty Center for a three-day "Object in Transition" conference earlier this year. Aimed at getting a grip on art in flux, attendees discussed new media.

On a cautionary note, Pip Laurenson, head of Time-Based Media Conservation at London's Tate museum, described how easily technology-driven work can fly off the rails, as she recalled an encounter with Bruce Nauman's 1986 installation "Violent Incident." The video sculpture is supposed to consist of 12 TV monitors playing different versions of a videotaped domestic argument. But when "Violent Incident" was reinstalled last year, Laurenson said curators failed to properly reconfigure the original structure. "Not understanding the structure of the work, three layers of monitors each shared one channel," she noted. "Not knowing what to do with the fourth layer, [the curators] simply left them out."

Old technology