Studio Azzurro „Wohin gehen all diese Leute?“ - Medienkunst restaurieren – installieren – erfahren / Internationales Forschungsprojekt

In the organizer's words:

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 their most important ambienti sensibili, works that react sensitively to visitors.

The work was created in 2000 for the media art exhibition vision.ruhr at the Zeche Zollern in Dortmund, subsequently added to the museum's collection and has not been presented to the public in its entirety since 2001.

The ongoing innovation of technical devices presents the museum with a challenge, as it has the task of not only preserving works of art for future generations, but also making them tangible. The following questions arise, for example:

• Do the original technical work components still work and how can they be preserved? Or do technical components and programming need to be updated and integrated into the work?
• How can the work be adapted to new spatial situations?
• How does the visual experience in the year 2000 differ from our perception of the work today? Which content-related narrative and characteristics are central and should be preserved?
• How can gaps in knowledge be closed, documented and passed on to future generations in an understandable way?

Questions like these are now being investigated by a team of conservators, technicians, art historians and the artists. The research project Legacies of Artists' Studios (LAS): Sharing and Archiving Embodied Knowledge for the Conservation of Technology-Based Artworks is developing strategies for the preservation and future presentation of the work. Visitors are invited to follow a test installation of the work and the insights that emerge from it.

Project partners:

• Cologne Institute of Conservation Sciences, TH Köln, Prof. Dr. Gunnar Heydenreich, Juliana Maier

• HAWK University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Hildesheim, Prof. Dr. Tiziana Caianiello, Sandy Bruer

• Museum Ostwall in the Dortmunder U, Regina Selter, Nicole Grothe, Lisa Schiller

• Studio Azzurro, Milan

• Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Milan, Prof. Dr. Francesca Pola

• Wüstenrot Foundation, Ludwigsburg

• Artists' Archive of the Kunstfonds Foundation, Puhlheim, Anna Wondrak

• Freelance restorers: Julia Giebeler (Cologne), Mareike Opeña (New York)

• RED - Restoration Center Düsseldorf