anarchive is a series of DVD-Roms and Internet projects designed to explore an artist’s overall oeuvre via diverse archival material.

The project is an historical and critical research which main purpose is to constitute the memory and increase public awareness of some of the most important developments in contemporary art such as performances, works in public places, video works, installations, experiments with technologies. Beyond a mode of preservation, beyond producing important databases about a whole oeuvre, the project aims at stimulating various artists to develop new works through the use of digital techniques.

Each production of the series is an archive, but it’s mainly an “anarchive”, meaning approaching art works from new perspectives and trying to uncover unprecedented relationships between the works.

This research which belongs yet to archeology, is also an original artwork. The artists contribute to the conception of the DVD-Rom at different levels, by allowing access to their own archives and by commenting them, and mainly by assuming the art direction of the project.

The titles of the anarchive series published are :
- Muntadas Media Architecture Installations by Antoni Muntadas (Centre Pompidou, 1999)
- Digital Snow by Michael Snow (Centre Pompidou, 2002)
- Title TK by Thierry Kuntzel (Anarchive / Musée des Beaux-Arts,Nantes, 2006)
- On the Concile of Nicea by Jean Otth (Anarchive, 2007).

The series continues with artists such as Fujiko Nakaya, Masaki Fujihata, Peter Campus, Victor Burgin, Jochen Gerz, Joan Jonas, Norman White, Paul de Marinis, Bill Viola, Jim Campbell, Mona Hattoum, Gary Hill and others.

_An historical and critical approach

The archives of these artists, often quite extensive, provide the opportunity for an historical, theoretical, and critical study based on existing works, in order to complete and synthesize them. It has to be remedied to dispersed information, incomplete documents, photographs of poor quality, which don’t allow an accurate estimation of the different elements involved in a work and how they fit together. Sometimes new “documents” have to be produced with the artist precious collaboration.

anarchive aims to develop new approaches for describing works by using for example 3-D models simulation to explore and understand how installation elements are displayed and function together, or by producing a kind of equivalent to an interactive action. The computer program allows the interweaving of multiple relationships between the works, and mainly between these and different information fields, historical, social, economical. Each DVD-Rom includes an important database, that without pretending to exhaustiveness, is significant enough of the artist’s oeuvre. The research aims first to produce new looking over a work or a set of works, not just to establish chronologies or to feed the given art categories.

_An original work

Experimentation with the interface design and the interactivity of the system plays an important role in the series. Each work is based on the individual approach of artists who have yet strongly developed their own principles and concepts through a whole oeuvre. That’s why these authors are more able to invent non conventional proposals. The programmers are stimulated by such approaches to develop a research in their own field. The involvement of so high level artists and the quality of the teams working with them secure an original approach and a multimedia production exploring all its possibilities. The fundamentally pluridisciplinary nature of such a project requires expertise in many fields: art history and theory, computer programming, graphic design, writing, video production, etc. For this reason, a team is assembled for each DVD-Rom to assist the artist.

_A reference and educative tool

These computer archives, which aim to expose the general public to topics and questions in contemporary art, are also an educational tool as well as a precious source of documentation for researchers, critics and curators. Schools of Art, Art departments in Universities, Libraries, Media and Art Centres, constitute a major audience for this project.

_Production, publishing and distribution

The funding of the different titles involve the collaboration of partners from different countries following a specific interest they may have for one or other artist’s oeuvre, at different levels of production, publishing or distribution.

The production and the coordination of the project are assumed by ANARCHIVE, a non-profit organization.

The distribution of the series is international (as is the reknown of the artists involved). Therefore it includes, in addition to English and French, other languages depending on the artist's background.  Muntadas Media Architecture Installations is in Spanish, English, and French. Digital Snow as well as Title TK and On the Concile of Nicea are in English and French. Fujiko Nakaya and Masaki Fujihata’s titles will be in Japanese, French and English.

These titles are suitable for distribution in bookshops, museum stores and contemporary art centres as well as they can be accessed in other venues, like the libraries and media centres of Universities and Schools of Art. They are distributed also through Internet on Electronic Art Intermix 's site.

The main distributor for Europe is
Les Presses du réel
info@lespressesdureel.com
www.lespressesdureel.com
16 rue Quentin 21000 Dijon - France
tel +33 (0)3 80 30 75 23

Anne-Marie Duguet, Professor at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and director of the anarchive series, assumes the scientific direction of the project, in relation with L.A.M. Laboratoire des Arts et Médias (ex CRECA) University of Paris 1.
contactATanarchive.net [replace "AT" by "@"]