WRO Art Center has launched a new online resource providing users with access to its broad, thematic collections and multimedia publications
WRO has stepped up its efforts over the past several years to showcase rarely seen works of video art, enmeshing them within their particular historical contexts. The new online initiative is part of this programme, geared at both art-world specialists and the public at large. The new online database presents works that are no longer available in their physical form.
WRO published the first of its historical reviews of Polish media art in 2005, titled From Monument to Market: Video Art and Public Space. The project presents the material and symbolic development of public space and issues related to it, such as commercial, social and technological aspects. In the introduction to the publication, Dieter Daniels writes: "The distribution of media art is in a paradoxical situation: Works of art created in electronic-media formats make only limited use of the extraordinary potential for dissemination that is inherent to those media".
The online project addresses that situation, providing a free, easily accessible platform for intriguing works including Józef Robakowski's 2007 monograph Energetic Images: Bio-mechanical Recordings and earlier works, as well as the compilation DVD The Hidden Decade: Polish Video Art 1985–1995, published in 2010. The online edition presents a similar format to the original DVD publication, with the video or selection of video works chosen by the curator accompanied by primers on theoretical and historical materials for given subjects. Video artists whose works appear on the site cross generations, from Robakowski and Zygmunt Rytka to Wilhelm Sasnal and Zuzanna Janin.
The platform presently offers three resources: the full Monument to Market Programme of 27 video works and 13 essays, AC/DC/IT, a short history of video installation available in Polish, and WIDOK: The WRO Media Art Reader, an illustrated survey of video art concepts and history available in English. In planning are new projects produced by the centre, WRO - Artist Talk and DCA - Digitising Contemporary Art, along with forthcoming publications from the series WIDOK: The WRO Media Art Reader.
Explore the video archive at WRO: video.wrocenter.pl
WRO owns the largest collection of media art in Poland. Continuously updated since 1989, it holds both Polish and international works, including video art, recordings and documentation of audio visual performances, multimedia objects, interactive installations and Internet projects. The centre was opened in 2008 by the WRO Center for Media Art Foundation, an independent organization specializing in the areas where contemporary art and culture intersect with developing media. It hosts international exhibitions, screenings, lectures, workshops and residency programmes, along with developing projects in the realm of art, publishing, education and publicity, such as its new online platform and the WRO Media Art Biennale.
See more on WRO: www.wrocenter.pl
Editor: Agnieszka Le Nart
Source: WRO, e-flux