Re-enactment, Users Manuals and DNA Storage: methods for media art preservation Louise Curham Curtin University louise.curham@curtin.edu.au Lucas Ihlein University of Wollongong lucasi@wollongong.edu.au Raja Appuswamy Eurecom, France raja.appuswamy@eurecom.fr Abstract This paper discusses a novel approach to media art preservation led by Australian artist-archivist group Teaching and Learning Cinema, using the field of expanded cinema as a case study. 1 Works of 1970s expanded cinema (which combine celluloid film projection with live performance) are typical of the inherent “lossiness” of much 20th and 21st century media art. 2 While offering richly embodied experiences in their moment of enactment, expanded cinema’s ephemerality means that it risks falling out of circulation and thus becoming unavailable for future experience. Teaching and Learning Cinema, over the past 20 years, has evolved a methodology for preserving works of expanded cinema, featuring three overlapping approaches. First, intergenerational transfer is attempted: in this phase, younger artists learn about the work from its originators, and produce live re-enactments. During the second phase, a users manual is assembled, encoding the artwork as a set of instructions with the intention of making it available for future generations of performers and audiences. Thirdly, the archived material from phases one and two is stored on synthetic DNA, with a view to transmission into the deep future (perhaps 1000 years). While the first two phases are urgent, preventing the work’s immediate extinction, the third phase is speculative, broadening the enquiry to explore the question of cultural heritage across much longer timeframes. Keywords Media art preservation; time-based art preservation; archival practice; preservation; DNA storage; manual making; expanded cinema; re-enactment; media art history. Expanded Cinema and the problem of lossiness Expanded cinema – a niche area of experimental film practice – emerged in the late 1960s, with particular energy in England, Japan, Austria and USA. While experimental cinema involved the production of abstract films, non- narrative films, and structuralist interventions in the cinematic medium itself, the field of expanded cinema is characterised by experimentation with the live screening event. As Teaching and Learning Cinema, our collaborative 1 For a survey of approaches to media art conservation, see [1]. Some significant contributions in media art conservation scholarship include [2] [3] [4] [5]. research since 2004 has placed particular focus on expanded cinema produced in the 1970s by members of the London Film Makers Co-op (LFMC). Characteristic works of expanded cinema produced by LFMC members include Annabel Nicholson’s Reel Time (1973), Anthony McCall’s Line Describing a Cone (1973), William Raban’s 2’45” (1973), and Guy Sherwin’s Man with Mirror (1976). Each of these works incorporates a performative event and the participation of an audience (to varying degrees) as integral components of the artwork itself. [8] In this paper we focus on a landmark work of expanded cinema, Horror Film 1 (1971), by Malcolm Le Grice. This work involves three 16mm projectors with coloured celluloid film loops, a live performer with their back to the audience moving slowly from the projection screen to the projectors, and an audio soundtrack playing the sounds of a person breathing. Each time Horror Film 1 is performed it is subtly different, depending on the dimensions of the space, the movements of the performer, and the spatial arrangement of the assembled audience. Expanded cinema works like Horror Film 1 were intended by their originating artists to be experienced in an embodied, co-present way, in the live moment. Documentation of specific performance iterations is available (in physical archives and on YouTube), and key scholars have argued that due to the inherent ephemerality of such performative artworks, viewing documentation materials can be a legitimate means of accessing them after the live moment has passed. [9] [10] However, our research also argues for the urgency of engaging in active intergenerational transmission, in order to offer future artists and audiences the opportunity to access the works with as much experiential richness as possible. [11] [12] This paper describes the use of Teaching and Learning Cinema’s method for the experiential preservation of Horror Film 1. Two components of our method are outlined: 2 The concept of lossiness is borrowed from the field of information science and is generally used to refer to data loss through file compression – see [6]. We use the term to refer to the loss of contextual and experiential “data” which we argue is inherent in ephemeral media art. For a lively discussion of lossiness and intergenerational transfer, see [7].