Where are all these people going? Conserving, installing and experiencing media art

The interactive media art installation Dove va tutta ’sta gente? (Where are all these people going?) by the artist group Studio Azzurro is one of its most important sensitive environments, which responds sensitively to visitors. The work was created in 2000 for the media art exhibition vision.ruhr in the Zollern colliery in Dortmund. It subsequently entered the museum’s collection but has never been shown to the public again in its entirety since 2001.

Ongoing technological innovations have created a challenge for the museum. As an institution, it is charged with the task of not only preserving artworks for future generations, but also with making them accessible. In this context numerous questions arise:

• Do its original technical components still work and how can they be preserved? Or do updated technical components and its programming need to be reintegrated into the work?
• How can the work be adapted to new spatial situations?
• How was the visual experience in 2000 different from today’s perception of the work? What is the main narrative and which central characteristics need to be preserved?
• How can we overcome knowledge gaps?
• How can these findings be documented and communicated effectively to future generations?

Questions like these will be explored by a team of conservators, technicians, art historians and the artists themselves: The research project „Legacies of Artists’ Studios (LAS): Sharing and Archiving Embodied Knowledge for the Conservation of Technology-Based Artworks“ is studying „Dove va tutta ’sta gente?“ to develop strategies for the preservation and future presentations of the work. Visitors are invited to to take a look at the test installation and to observe the ongoing research in progress.

Project partners

Cologne Institute of Conservation Sciences, TH Köln; HAWK Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaft und Kunst, Hildesheim; Museum Ostwall im Dortmunder U; Studio Azzurro, Mailand; Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Mailand; Wüstenrot Stiftung, Ludwigsburg; Künstler:innenarchiv der Stiftung Kunstfonds, Puhlheim; 235Media, Köln; Freelance conservators; RED – Restaurierungszentrum Düsseldorf