RECORD > AGAIN!

RECORD > AGAIN! – 40JAHREVIDEOKUNST.DE – TEIL 2 continues the work of the Part 1 presented in 2006 and focuses particularly on the early days of video art from the late nineteen sixties.

The difficult problematic was initially a purely technical one: While many tapes have survived, there had become impossible to play them. The old machines were lost and the tapes were usually unplayable. For the project RECORD > AGAIN!, a functioning assembly of technical devices for obsolete video systems was established at the ZKM | Laboratory for antiquated video systems. This made it possible to digitalize over fifty different video formats from the mid 60ies to the mid 80ties, thus preserving them for posterity.

Over the course of the work, numerous videos that were considered lost because no one had been able to watch them for over 25 years, became visible. Other were preserved as fragments in various versions and had to be meticulously reconstructed. Several pieces only existed in poor copies and had to be restored and newly digitalized. And some works are now being shown as they were initially conceived approximately 30 years ago.

RECORD > AGAIN! thus presents, decades later, several premieres and numerous repeat performances by and with: Joseph Beuys, Gábor Body, Claus Böhmler, Klaus vom Bruch, Holger Czukay, Lutz Dammbeck, Flatz, Michael Geissler, Jörg Herold, Jochen Hiltmann, Nan Hoover, Wolf Kahlen, Edmund Kuppel, Urs Lüthi, Ernst Mitzka, Michael Morgner, Marcel Odenbach, Klaus Rinke, Ulrike Rosenbach, Dieter Roth, Ulrich Rückriem, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Walter Schröder-Limmer, Telewissen, Ulay, Peter Weibel, Ursula Wevers and others. The material is largely being shown in the exhibition on historical equipment.

The catalog published by Hatje Cantz Verlag encompassing circa 480 pages features texts by Siegfried Zielinski, Ursula Wevers, Peter Weibel, Ute Vorkoeper, Wolfgang Stickel, Klaus Staeck, Rolf Sachsse, Sylvia Martin, Claus Löser, Gregor Jansen, Wilhelm Hein, Wulf Herzogenrath, Walter Grasskamp, Christiane Fricke, René Block and Christoph Blase in addition to an illustrated history of video technology, explanations of present-day conservation practices as well as a comprehensive annotated bibliography.