Safeguarding Ephemera

Experimental film and video emerged in the counterculture 1960s as lively, open-ended alternatives beyond the center. Meanwhile, contemporary art museums concentrated on concrete, commodifiable forms. Most considered the moving image an anathema, and were horrified by how sound appeared as fluid as water. In this environment, I founded MoMA’s video exhibition and collection programs, and saved every shred of paper artists gave me.

In 1997, I spent three weeks moving between Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Guangzhou and met with 35 media pioneers. Every evening, I worked long into the night refining notes and photographs of artwork I’d just seen. Hours later from the hotel business center using dialup, I laboriously uploaded and sent back to New York that day’s information, which a MoMA team posted as a new entry to my curatorial dispatches, Stir-fry. Readers followed me as each new chapter went up on MoMA’s recently launched website. Still online, my pre-blog adventure is a testament to the early history of media art in China. The ephemera I assembled resides in MoMA’s Library.

Today we live in a changed world. Media artists in China understand digital tools' potential and are prepared for this moment of release. We know from history that the pendulum always shifts, as one side rises with power and the other falls. The DIY spirit remains strong, as artists challenge the entrenched definitions of what art is and can be. And I will always collect and safeguard their documents for future scholars to read.