Upgrade! Paris: Anne Laforet — on the occasion of the publication of Le netart au musée – Stratégies de conservation des Å“uvres en ligne (Questions Théoriques) :: June 5, 2011; 6:00 pm :: Les Douches, 5 rue Legouvré, 75010 Paris.

With some museums acquiring net art works in the recent years, issues of preservation and exhibition have arisen. On the one hand, the digital materials of these works are fragile and continually on the verge of obsolescence. On the other hand, these works have to be online and activated by their audience to be full works of art. Preservation is both related to the material dimension of the artwork but also is a dialog with the artist and the museum.

In her book, Le netart au musée – Stratégies de conservation des Å“uvres en ligne, Anne Laforet presents and examines an overview of specific preservation strategies developed by the institutions, archives, artists: emulation, migration, score, re-interpretation, self-archiving, automatic archiving, etc (which can be also combined)… and draws the proposal of an hybrid conservation she calls the “archaeological museum”.

Anne Laforet is an independent researcher. She has recently completed her PhD in information science (from the University of Avignon in France) on the preservation of net art which will be published in the coming month. She has written a report entitled “Net art and artistic institutions and museums” for the French Ministery of Culture in 2004. She has presented her research in Europe and Canada. Anne writes on digital art and digital culture for Arte.tv and Poptronics.fr. She takes part in collective projects, whether art and/or research. She’s a sound performer and wj (web jockey).