Part 1:
On behalf of GIV, Anne Golden introduces the night's Laissez-passez: Wayward.ca and invited curator, Penny McCann, the Director of SAW Video in Ottawa. The night's Laissez-passez is entitled VIDEO CACHE and touches upon the lost Mediatheque archive at SAW Video. (The Mediatheque has since been relaunched and now features VIDEO CACHE anew).
Consult video documentation: Part 1
Part 2:
Mél Hogan gives an overview of the project and explains the seemingly complicated web of collaboration. With video artist, Nikki Forrest, Mél Hogan explains that Wayward.ca is part of her doctoral project which focuses on online video art archives, but also breaks from the definition of the archive as a fixed repository. Through Wayward.ca, Forrest and Hogan use the web as interface for experimentation with the circulation, distribution and storage of art and artistic ideas. Forrest explains that Wayward in some ways rejects the idea of us fulfilling a curatorial role, instead Wayward.ca hosts projects for collaboration but with no definable mandate. Forrest scrolls through the site to show an interview between Hogan and Forrest which explains and debates Wayward, as well as two additional videos featured on VIDEO CACHE: the 2003 Mediatheque launch video and a 2010, SAWdust, a 1990s SAW Video retrospective made by the project's archivist Anatoly Ignatiev, present at the screening at GIV.
Consult video documentation: Part 2
Part 3:
Forrest explains Wayward's first project, Splinter, which was a video art chain letter which began as Forrest responding to a video made by Hogan, and from which several invitations were mailed out to artists across the city and world. As Forrest and Hogan explain, Splinter now consists of 11 videos which are available online. The plan is to show them in another context at a later date, though this was not the intention at the outset. Explaining Spliter helps to contextualize the larger Wayward objective, and in particular Hogan's doctoral work toward opening up the channels of distribution from an archival perspective. As Forrest claims, the layer of confusion is productive in that it is a reflection of the current state of art online.
McCann is introduced and speaks as both the current Director of the Mediatheque and as an artist who had work in the Mediatheque. McCann explains the funding and objectives of the project in 2003. It remains a huge undertaking to place a collection of 500 works online, but in 2003 it was even more difficult. McCann explains who participated in the Mediatheque (approx. 11 centres) and explains that GIV was one such organisation who contributed work to the Mediatheque. McCann explains that SAW Video paid out 100 000$ in artists fees which was also a huge undertaking.
McCann explains her programme, and points out that there are 8 artists present at GIV on the night of Video Cache who had work in the Mediatheque, including Wayward collaborator Nikki Forrest. Others include Petunia Alves and Anne Golden of GIV, Anatoly Ignatiev (Mediatheque archivist), Tim Dallet, Phil Rose, Dino Coutraus, and McCann herself.
McCann also explains that the official launch took place in 2004, and had rights to show the work for 3 years. After 3 years, the "second Mediatheque was born" which continued to show 350 works, and these remained online in this second phase, until the Mediatheque crashed (had a "dramatic failure") in May 2009. McCann explains that the intention is to have the Mediatheque up and running again soon, but not to fix the old site but rather to create a new one better adapted to current technologies. The technology, encoding, and compression have changed and for McCann these factors point to a time to modernise the concept of the Mediatheque, relying on UGC and CMS available and widely supported. The work from the second phase of the Mediatheque will be carried over to the new Mediatheque, to be launched in 2011.
Consult video documentation: Part 3
Part 4:
McCann explains that in addition to these artists who remained on the site from the second phase of the Mediatheque, the idea of the new portal is to keep the collection growing though she concedes that this time around, it will be without artists fees being paid though they are trying to tackle the issue of monetization of content.
McCann explains that Mél Hogan has invited her to GIV to select ten works out of 500. McCann selected work that stood in for others, spanning meaning, works that were popular at SAW, works by senior artists, emerging artists, from the archive, etc. The 10 works amount to an hour. Tim Dallet and Phil Rose are present in the room and their work is screened.
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Consult video documentation: Part 4
Part 5:
Mél Hogan asks the audience if they have questions about the Mediatheque, which can also be directed at Anatoly Ignatiev, the Mediatheque's archivist, or to McCann as Director or herself as researcher, or to the artists present that night about their work.
Question from audience (Deb VanSlet, video artist): Why rebuild it and not resuscitate it?
McCann explains that they started out with the intention of showcasing 500 works for three years for which artists fees would be paid. They will open up the archive to new artists who are SAW Video members and continue to showcase the works of artists who have stuck by them throughout the years. McCann explains that the dilemma of an artist run centre is that they must pay artists for their work, and that this is a dilemma that isn't quite resolved with regards to online distribution. But fees makes it that it is impossible to maintain the concept of the Mediatheque as a paying portal, as those funds have long dried up. McCann explains that while SAW Video presents work, they are not 'distributors'.
Consult video documentation: Part 5
Part 6:
Follow up question: The site crashed but the works exist... they are accessible and they exist on hard format, so why not just rebuild it as it was?
Hogan explains that the original contracts for the Mediatheque were only for 3 years, expiring in 2006. Artists were asked if they wished to continue to have their works featured online on the Mediatheque after the term of this contract thought this time without being paid fees: the majority did. So these will remain online as part of the new site.
McCann explains that the works watched for Video Cache were from the DVD back up copies, and so to resuscitate the site would actually entail re-compressing all the video form these high quality versions for web.
Ignatiev explains digitization. As the project's archivist, he explains the process of digitization from film, and various formats, to a format searchable by the wider public, linked to a Canadian database of filmmakers, find the work or artist name. Ignatiev explains the technical obstacles. The archive is not lost he says, just that representation of it (via the Mediatheque).
McCann explains that the tapes no longer exist, just the .avi files on DVD, which McCann explains is the Mediatheque (now), located in her office at SAW Video.
Hogan looks to pull up the cached version of the Mediatheque to show the audience...
Consult video documentation: Part 6
Part 7:
Comment from audience (Phil Rosen, artist whose work is in the Mediatheque): Talks about how at the time when the Mediatheque launched he was working on a PC given to him without the technology to compress files, and there was certainly no where to showcase work. He expresses his attachment to the site and the importance of still being part of the Mediatheque, and the media arts community as opposed to "dispersed pockets" once can join...?
Hogan pulls up the Wayback Machine.
McCann explains that the site lives on the Wayback Machine but McCann reinforces the fact that the building of the database and custom made (as opposed to today's CMS) site was a huge endeavour. McCann also says that it is impossible to rebuild it as it was.
Hogan explains the Mediatheque machine as viewed through the Wayback Machine.
Question from audience: Gisele Trudel, artist, asks where the Wayback Machine is cached.
Hogan explains that the Wayback Machine is cached at archive.org, where video and audio is collected also. The URL must be known to access the site through this archive. The Mediatheque had 4 different URLS as tests sites and because the funders required it being a separate entity from SAW Video.
Consult video documentation: Part 7
Part 8:
Question from audience: Frederick Belzile, artist, asks what causes the crash on a technical point of view.
McCann explains that the company they dealt with and who provided the bandwidth, while very generous, they were the ones in charge of the back end database, when the server crashed there was no recent back up of the database. It hadn't been updated in 6 years! Their server crashed. McCann explains that SAW Video was not able to back it up because it was in their corporate partners' hands, and SAW Video had no mirror of the database to compare with... so McCann explains that because the service was free they could not be held accountable for the crash, or at least, not financially.
Hogan points to the VIDEO CACHE catalogue - the email in which the crash is communicated by Ntegrating Solutions to SAW Video is copied (screen grab) and remains an important archival artefact in its own right.
McCann explains that despite the disappearance of the database, the videos live on on a server in Texas! And in her office on DVD. Basically the archive is lost because the link between the movie files and the database is broken. But McCann suggests that it is just as well that the site crashed because it was time for a change, and presumably the crash opened up this conversation. The site was gettign less traffic also due to the outdated Real Player format.
Hogan explains that while we are placing a lot of emphasis on the site, it is possible to rebuild an archive from all the digital traces available. It would just not make sense to create an archive now based on pre YouTube technologies for video.
McCann also points out that many of the works form the Mediatheque collection are not distributed anywhere else. She says this is because most artists in Ottawa don't have distributors, due in large part to the local base of most Canadian distributors, with VTape and GIV/Videographe on each side. McCann says it is important for her that artist have this kind of site to show their work.
Consult video documentation: Part 8
Part 9:
Comment from audience: Tim Dallet asks if artists expectations of the Mediatheque have changed since sites like Vimeo and YouTube are now so widespread.
McCann admits to belonging to all those venues but remains unsatisfied by them in terms of community-building. Community should have always been at the heart of the Mediatheque says McCann but that funders insisted on its National span. McCann sees that as a detriment to SAW Video and Ottawa/Gatineau.
Comment from audience: Tim Dallet wonders if artists will submit to the Mediatheque given these new options. At the time of the Mediatheque it was the sole option... Dallet makes a suggestion that he likes it when distributors have a lot of searchable categories.
Comment from audience: Gisele Trudel. She says this shows how this shows how unstable media is, whatever medium you choose. Tape, digital.. to maintain the archive is to maintain the archive but it continually is renewed.
McCann explains that money comes in to create but not to maintain these archives. McCann's task is to find money for the archive now that the grant is spent. How to keep the projet fresh? How to keep the relationships alive? A great challenge. No staff.
Comment from audience: Gisele Trudel makes the point that watching film from the 60s is now almost impossible because the means by which to watch are obsolete.
Comment from audience: Jennifer Leigh Fisher says that this has been the conversation--about instability--that has been going on for the last ten years, that the period of instability is itself quite long. There's no technology that comes to save the day.
Comment from audience: Deb VanSlet says it moves into the philosophical realm, and you just have to let it go.
Hogan explains that what is said 'lost' can, in the digital online realm, aslo be 'found' again.. through the likes of the Wayback Machine.
Consult video documentation: Part 9
Part 10:
Consult video documentation: Part 10
Comment from audience: Ignatiev explains that personal effort is more important than anything else. A person preserves things. We cannot judge what is good or bad, we just have to keep it. Ignatiev says he was involved in the Mediatheque because he is so attached to archiving and that people have--with emerging media especially--lost touch of reality and original objects. Ignatiev explains that we should rely on ourselves for preservation.
Comment from audience: Gisele Trudel wants to discuss the programme that McCann put together. Trudel feels the screening was focused on stop motion and film.
McCann explains her choice to focus on the SAW Video aesthetic at the same time. McCann explains that it is less about the content itself, but rather a showcase of elements from the Mediatheque--such as the oldest work form 1982, an analogue piece. Mr Rogers Vacation was about the hypnotic state/trends. She suggests that artists played with the medium itself, and animation is an example. For her watching video online is hypnotic.
McCann has a question for Anne Golden, from GIV, what did GIV think when they were asked in 2003 to participate in the Mediatheque.
Anne explains that, in conversation with Petunia Alves (also at GIV) that GIV also had a website showcasing clips and bios. They thought why not? Artist should be doing this. And also since SAW Video wasn't a crazy corporation, it made sense to participate even tough at the time there was nothing like it to assess the potential for success or failure. Golden remembers consulting the Mediatheque regularly to see works she hadn't seen. Golden says they wanted to copy it, someday somehow!
McCann says the one distributor (in another city) told them off and told them it wasn't their place to manage or distribute video in this way.
Part 11:
Comment from audience: Frederick Belzile wonders about artists fees for an archive seeing as the Mediatheque is not for diffusion or distribution per se. She personally does not mind not being paid if her work is being archived and if that in turn means being distributed online or watched by others.
McCann explains that the Mediatheque is now a service for their members. It is not open to everyone. The way they manage fees is that they are not paid for being on the site. But if these works are then curated in another context, the rule is that they have to be paid for.
Hogan points out that artists for VIDEO CACHE have been paid fees.
McCann says they can't be open to everyone because they do not have the staff, which is the new reality.
McCann asks Tim Dallet a question. What are his thoughts seeing it as part of VIDEO CACHE after all these years.
Tim Dallet explains that for him this gives the work a new life. His peice is 11 years old, and little is left form 11 years ago. The interest of the Mediatheque in the early 2000s was that artists had no other venues to show work to the public online. He suggests that this points to a larger problem of access, distribution and dissemination: how works circulates differently from the format intended originally by the artist. Sees the screening practice as essential to the survival of the Mediatheque archive.
McCann explains the coice of models for the new Mediatheque. They could have opted to become a channel on Vimeo, but then this raises a host of issues for works in the collection for which rights have not been cleared.. so then what happens is that copyright forces an exclusion fo certain works, so that's why they tried to keep the Mediatheque going without resorting to third party hosts.
McCann says that they are pairing up with Ntegrating Solutions again. It is likely to crash again one day, remarks McCann.
Consult video documentation: Part 11
Parts 12 and 13:
Anne Golden concludes the talk by inviting everyone to stay around for a drink. Thank-yous and applause. And drinking.
Consult video documentation: Part 12
Consult video documentation: Part 13
