IMAP Preservation Guide

Media art presents a unique and evolving set of exhibition, collection and preservation challenges. For four decades, artists have created electronic works, from single-channel video to art made from digital source code, that demand new practices and vocabularies for exhibitors and collectors. The variable ecology of media art, with its reproducible forms, changing technologies and mutable contexts, is one of its most dynamic if challenging attributes.

PACKED publishes a Dutch translation of the Preservation Section of the EAI Online Resource Guide for Exhibiting, Collecting & Preserving Media Art in the form of an online manual. This text was originally written by Independent Media Arts Preservation, Inc. (IMAP). As time goes on the text will be completed by PACKED (in consultation with IMAP) with its own information (updates, interviews, case studies, …). The original English version can be read here. 

Independent Media Arts Preservation, Inc. (IMAP) is a nonprofit service, education, and advocacy organisation that has been committed to the preservation of non-commercial electronic media since 1999. EAI (Electronic Arts Intermix), like IMAP a New York-based nonprofit organisation, distributes and preserves a major collection of recent and historical video works by artists. Since 1971 it is one of the leading organisations in the United States with regards to the production, exhibition, distribution and preservation of video art, and more recent also of digital art projects. 

The IMAP Preservation Guide features a range of essential information on the preservation of single-channel videotapes, computer-based art works and installations: 
- best practices; basic questions; planning processes; budgets; agreements and reports; equipment and technical guidelines; 
- interviews with artists, curators, educators, collectors, conservators, archivists, technicians, scholars and other experts in the field; 
- case studies of significant projects and organisations;
- hard-to-find and out-of-print articles, conference papers and essays.

By providing access to basic information, recent developments and critical dialogue, we aim to broaden understanding and demystify the process of exhibiting, collecting and preserving media art.