Episode 066 Joanna Phillips

Show Notes

For episode 66 we are back in the conservation lab, visiting with the one and only Joanna Phillips. For any listeners familiar with time-based media conservation, Joanna hardly needs any introduction — she was among the first generation of practitioners in this field, and the second ever time-based media conservator at a US museum. At the Guggenheim Joanna established the first museum time-based media conservation lab. Her work has been incredibly influential in the field — she developed a series of incredibly helpful templates for documenting time-based media while at the Guggenheim that went on to be borrowed, copied, and iterated on by museums all over the globe. Joanna has always been incredibly generous in sharing her work — years ago she used to host these fantastic gatherings where TBM conservators in NYC could gather in the Guggenheim’s lab to hear about the latest research that she and Deena Engel’s NYU students were conducting as part of they Conservation of Computer Based Art Initiative. In our chat we hear all about these origins, and what Joanna has been up to in recent years in Düsseldorf where she has not only been leading the Düsseldorf Conservation Center, but also recently published volume co-edited with Deena Engel, with contributions from time-based media conservators, curators, registrars, and technicians from all over the globe. Tune in to hear Joanna’s story!

Links from the conversation with Joanna
> https://www.guggenheim.org/conservation/the-conserving-computer-based-art-initiative
> https://www.guggenheim.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/guggenheim-conservation-iteration-report-2012.pdf
> https://www.duesseldorf.de/restaurierungszentrum
> https://www.routledge.com/Conservation-of-Time-Based-Media-Art/Engel-Phillips/p/book/9780367460426

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Cass: From Small Data Industries, this is Art and Obsolescence. I'm your host Cass Fino-Radin, and on this show, I chat with people that are shaping the past present and future of art and technology. Today we are back in the conservation lab. 

[00:00:14] Joanna: Hi, my name is Joanna Phillips. I am a time-based media conservator and I am the director at RED the Restaurierungszentrum Düsseldorf or Dusseldorf Conservation Center.

[00:00:26] Cass: For any listeners familiar with time-based media conservation, Joanna Phillips hardly needs any introduction. She was among the first generation of practitioners in this field. She was, I think the second ever time-based media conservator at a US museum, at the Guggenheim where she also established the first museum time-based media conservation lab. Her work has been incredibly influential in the field. She developed a series of incredibly helpful templates for documenting time-based media while at the Guggenheim that went on to be borrowed, copied and iterated on by museums all over the globe. Joanna has always been incredibly generous in sharing her work. Years ago she used to host these fantastic gatherings where time-based media conservators in New York City could gather in the Guggenheim's lab to hear about the latest research that she and Deena Engel's, NYU students were conducting as part of the Guggenheims conservation of computer-based art initiative. When I was a plucky emerging conservator, I remember having so many inspiring conversations with Joanna about this field as I was just beginning to get acquainted with it. And it was just so nice to catch up with her all these years later and hear all about what she has been up to in recent years in Düsseldorf, including a recently published volume co edited with Deena Engel with contributions from time-based media, conservators, curators, registrars, and technicians from all over the globe, taking stock of current practices and conceptual frameworks that define the field of time-based media conservation. Now without further delay, let's dive in to this week's chat with Joanna Phillips. 

[00:02:06] Joanna: I grew up in a suburb of Berlin, west Berlin at the time, right next to the Berlin Wall in the house that my grandfather had built with his bare hands between the two world wars. My parents are rather practical people, so the arts didn't really play a big role in their lives. But my father was really into computers and he still is. When I was around nine, I was the first kid in our school with a Commodore 64 at home and sometimes the other kids would come over after school to play computer games or print out their names real big on endless paper with our dot matrix printer. As a teenager, I became quite introvert, a bit weird perhaps. I shaved my head with the kitchen scissors when I was 13 and I didn't grow my hair back until I was 18. At that age, I really sympathized with those who had the courage to speak up and not fit in, and I admired all artists because they were able to channel their rage or, or confusion or love or whatever into something powerful like art or music. I enjoyed doing creative stuff like drawing or writing myself. And for a few years I was part of an experimental theater group called The Scheiße Kinder. I don't think I have to translate that. but I was never bold enough to aspire to becoming an artist myself. But I did become an avid consumer of all arts, old and new. To me, I think became a lens through which I could better access my own feelings. I love German expressionist poetry and classical music, punk music. I've discovered literature and old and new paintings, and I played the piano most days and I enjoyed to lock myself into my room and copy other people's art. I would, try and create a perfect copy of a 1920s photograph with a pencil or recreate a 15th century Da Vinci drawing, including the watermarks and the damages and the patina. I would treat the paper to look 500 years old. So I started to become interested in the techniques and the materials of art making and the materiality of decay from a really early age. But it somehow didn't occur to me to use art to produce my own imagery. I think it took me 15 more years to find out where my artistry lies. 

 I was 18. I, I just started to grow my hair back and I was about to finish high school my piano teacher, who was very much of a mentor to me in my teenage years, he, he showed up with a booklet from the Berlin National Gallery and that booklet featured the conservation examination treatment of a Rembrandt painting, or it's actually no longer assigned to him, but to a school. Der Mann mit dem gold Helm, the Man with the Golden Helmet, and I was immediately stunned by, the combination of science and manual skills, it was so convincing to me. It was like surgery, but operating on masterpieces. And, and then from there on, it somehow all fell into place for me. I, I went to my parents and stood up in front of them in our living room and formally announced my life plan to become a paintings conservator. You have to imagine this happened exactly 30 years ago that was years before the advent of the internet. For someone who was as unconnected as I was to the arts, it was like a real task to research how to actually become a conservator. And it was super difficult for me. I had to go to the job information center and to libraries and make landline phone calls to numbers I found in the yellow pages of different cities.

I eventually chose the conservation program at the art academy in Dresden. Because I thought it made sense to, further hone my practical drawing and painting skills. I liked Dresden's emphasis on the artistic craft aspect. What I also liked about Dresden was that it had a reputation of being the hardest program to get into. You have to imagine at that time in the mid 1990s, unlike today, going into art conservation was super popular among young kids and Dresden had a one week entrance examination to select 10 out of 120 applicants every year. So of course I failed the first time and then I came back the next year after preparing really hard for months. It's terrible. so in addition to demonstrating a hideous amount of pre-programmed knowledge on the history of art and architectures, like you studied it already, you also had to submit a portfolio of 20 of your own drawings and paintings and proof that you had absorbed at least a two year, mandatory pre-program internship. By the time I enrolled into my five year program, I had four years of internship training. I had worked on medieval church interiors. Easel paintings, polychrome wooden sculpture, mural paintings, and I had done a year of antiques furniture restoration in London. I never changed, my wish to become a paintings conservator. It was just really hard during my internship years to actually land a paintings, placement. So I was kind of circling around the center of my interest and then, in Dresden I was finally able to focus on the conservation of easel paintings. I studied in the class of Professor Heiber. He's this celebrity in conservation. He is very famous for his character, his determination and his innovations in paintings conservation. Professor Heiber really impacted my thinking to the present day from him. I learned how to translate concepts into practice. The concept of minimal intervention, for example, was one of his big themes. For example, instead of, gluing the whole painting onto a lining canvas, to treat a small tear, he developed a method, that's called the single thread tear mending technique in which he wove the torn canvas back together again, thread by thread under the microscope. And this way he prevented all the bad side effects that canvas lining had brought to generations of master paintings. I picked up the concept of minimal intervention again in my work with computer science professor Dina Engel from nyu. I think it was 2018 or 19, we co-authored our article on applying minimal intervention to the treatment of source code and software-based artworks. 

[00:09:06] Cass: One of the things that's really interesting to me in talking to you and conservators who are part of your, cohort in time-based media conservation, is that of course you were part of the generation that emerged before time-based media conservation training programs existed. Because of that, what and when and where was the moment where you even realized that that was a thing? Were you still in school or was this in the years following? 

[00:09:35] Joanna: I moved from paintings to media via contemporary art conservation, like the, the broader, specialization of contemporary art conservation. So my paintings conservation era was wonderful, but it was around the time that I graduated that my ambition had already started to shift, towards that, what I thought, more exciting area of contemporary art conservation. I was really fascinated by, artists use of ephemeral materials and, obsolescing technologies because it really challenged the notion of the, unique sacrosanct original that all of our science and all of our work revolved around. And, I love to challenge existing systems, so I kind of moved towards that and after my studies I moved to Zurich to Switzerland to become an assistant conservator at the Swiss Institute of Art Research. And that's where I was able to, focus on contemporary art at first. And that's where my door and to media conservation finally opened very unexpectedly, almost by accident. That must have been around 2004 at a reception over a glass of wine. You have to imagine I'm like an emerging, conservator with, one or two years of job experience and, at the institute, it was the first time for me to be really, immersed in an institutional work environment that felt rewarding and, and nurturing. Very agile and collaborative, project oriented. There was money to travel to conferences and they mapped research interests and defined projects and raised funds. And I, loved the professionality of it all. I did some cleanup, recently and I found an old diary entry from that time, and I wrote down, I want to become a professional. That that was a decision that I made then, you know, in Zurich I wanted to go deeper into contemporary art. So that reception I'm talking about took place at the institute. And my, coworker, Irene Müller an art historian, she was a research partner in a cross institutional project called Active Archive, Active Archives. And that project focused on the preservation of historic electronic art, analog video and, closed circuit installations from the seventies and eighties. And the project was spearheaded by Johannes Gfeller. He, he was then the professor of media conservation at the Bern University of the Arts. Over wine, Irene asked me, hey, what I was up to, and I said, I want to dive deeper into contemporary art, but I didn't quite know how. And she said, Hey, have you ever thought about media art? Hmm, not really. And she just asked me, do you wanna join our project? And I thought, hell yes, of course. It was that easy. I didn't know a thing about media, but in 2004, there were hardly any people out there with a respectable CV in media conservation and certainly not many conservators. What I had to offer to that project, I thought was my conservation perspective. And because there wasn't a single conservator in the, in the group, and of course my, determination to display a very steep learning curve. 

For the next three years, I became an, Active Archive project partner, we staged an exhibition with historic video equipment. We hosted a symposium. We published the accompanying book on the reconstruction of seventies and eighties Swiss video art. and then we wrote another book, the Conpendium of Image Errors in Analog Video. Writing that conpendium of image errors was so ambitious and so painful. My role was to be the translator that put Johannes Gfeller's practical knowledge into written language with a standardized terminology, in two languages, German and English. The project took three times longer than we had planned. but that delay. Was the reason that I met one of my dearest friends and most influential media conservation heroes, Agathe Jarczyk. Agathe was one of the first, probably the first media conservation graduate from the Bern program. At the time she worked at the Video Company that was the name of the place Video Company in Zofingen in Switzerland, also near Bern and that video company produced a lot of artist video and they worked closely with Pippilotti Rist and Roman Signer and many other Swiss artists. So I was able to hire Agathe as a contributor to the companion and with her, the whole project, just became so much more fun. We ended up creating and recording most of those image errors together, the two of us at the Video Company. My Active Archive time was a high intensity crash course in media conservation and my two teachers were Johannes Gfeller and Agathe Jarczyk in many, many individual, one-on-one sessions. 

In the early two thousands. Many art collections were entering a phase where they confronted the fact that their audio visual collections, their time is media collections were on tape. And in order to preserve them, they had to be digitized So that moment of digitization is really a moment where anything that's wrong with a tape, if there is, a scratch or a dirt or anything that could go wrong also with a machine, if there's a tape error, a machine error, or a playback error, in the act of digitization, that error is basically burned into the content of the artwork. With the compendium, we wanted to produce, a guideline or an aid. To those who were in charge of digitalization projects, that would explain to them, Hey, if your video doesn't play back properly and there's a black and white noise happening, or the image is skewing to one corner, then you probably have too much tape tension, and this is something that you can correct in your tape deck in order to prevent, to merge that era into your artwork. We basically had, the ambition to give a complete encyclopedic overview of all the different errors that could occur. And that, and many of them can be prevented by doing something in the analog realm, to avoid that they're being carried over and to the digital file. We wanted to create, a digitization aid so that artworks are being prevented from harm and compromise in that critical moment where they are transferred from the analog into the digital world.

[00:16:49] Cass: After your work on this book and the Active Archive project, you eventually moved to the US and you become a contemporary art conservator at the Guggenheim. What inspired that move what was that like? That must have been a big cultural shift.

[00:17:08] Joanna: Yeah you're so right. After my five years at the Swiss Institute of Art Research, my original plan was to start a PhD project on electronic art conservation. The Swiss Institute had just launched, a PhD program called the ProDoc program. And I pitched my PhD project to Maya Hoffman, the founder of the Luma Foundation, over a lunch meeting that our director had arranged. Around the same time, The Guggenheim posted a job as associate conservator of contemporary art, and that job description excited me so much that I just had to try my luck. I'd been following the, the Guggenheim's Variable Media Initiative from afar. And, and the museum was just such a beacon of innovation in that area. I was shocked when they invited me, for the interview and, the job was more broadly about contemporary art, I think what made me, stand out from the other applicants was my rare expertise in media conservation. Must have been around, uh, April, 2008. I received the offer for the Guggenheim job on the same day that, Maya Hoffman granted the PhD funding in Switzerland. And I had the roughest week of life-changing decision making. only competed by my decision to go back to Düsseldorf. After that week, I knew that I was needed in New York and that I would have to go there and, start a new life again at age 34, I walked down. Fifth Avenue after my second meeting with my future boss, Leena Stringari then Carol Stringari and I just cried and cried from 88th Street all the way down to 59th. I was going to do this. I was going to leave my friends and family behind again. I was going to become a professional and I called my dad from a phone booth in Grand Central and I told him I was going to drop the PhD and move to the United States of America. My dad, didn't approve at all. He said, you're never gonna have a chance like the PhD again come back home. I was like, sorry dad, have to do this. They need me here. Leena Stringari really did an excellent job, of convincing me that was my job cuz I had doubts at first. And, I tried to figure out a compromise where I could probably do my PhD and some work with the Guggenheim or some, she just wanted everything or nothing and, and it was good. She basically forced me to accept my luck. 

[00:19:44] Cass: You arrive at the Guggenheim as a contemporary art conservator. But of course, spoiler alert, you would go on to become a very influential time-based media art conservator and, and built out just an incredible program there. How did what you built, really come about? And what did things look like when they started?

[00:20:01] Joanna: So in the beginning, my official job title at the Guggenheim was conservator of contemporary art, not time-based media art. I was kind of hoping to be able to broaden my spectrum again and, come back into my comfort zone after, being outside of my comfort zone with all this new media stuff. I was actually looking forward to, treating all kinds of contemporary artworks, but in reality, from day one, I was exclusively working on time-based media. There was just so much to do. There was of course, a ton of backlog, everywhere. If you're a first generation time-based media conservator, and no one has done the work before you, then you just have to work into the future and into the past. We didn't really have a program in the beginning. It was more of a reactive process in which I developed practice step by step in response to the needs of our artworks. A lot of it had to do with translating external knowledge to art conservation. So video engineering to conservation equipment, maintenance to conservation, digital preservation to art conservation, and much later computer science to art conservation and vice versa. One of the first things I did, when I got there was to team up with Glenn Wharton at MoMA, and Glenn was New York's one other media conservator at the time. So we connected to join forces and find a post-production company in the city that we both wanted to work with. And you have to imagine at that time, most of the collections at, MoMA and, and the Guggenheim were still on tape. There's very little born digital art coming into the collections. We both didn't have media labs. So anytime we wanted to access or digitize audio visual content, we needed to work with the commercial post house. Our challenge was to find a place that we could entrust with our precious artwork. You don't just digitize 10 tapes simultaneously while you tend to another project. Glenn and I visited and compared these companies together, and finally we settled on DuArt, film and video on 55th Street and eighth, Avenue. This is where we found video engineer Maurice Schechter. Maurice was different. He was, deeply, deeply interested in art and conservation and, over the next 10 years, he became one of my closest collaborators, a teacher and a friend. I worked with him on many projects and he's become such an asset to the time-based media community in New York. 

[00:22:52] Cass: Continuing your legacy of firsts in the field. You built the first time-based media conservation lab in the US where did you even look for guidance? What did the lab look like at first and what did it grow into?

[00:23:05] Joanna: I didn't have an example to look to, as you say. But I was acting, out of the necessity that I needed to access the audio visual content on all of these different formats that we had collected, over decades. And, who did I, ask for guidance? It was Maurice Schechter of DuArt Film and Video. He was the one who provided the foundation for our Guggenheim lab. One day he actually showed up unannounced, with a cart, full of old equipment that he didn't need anymore. He gave me u-matic deck and an old monitor and a switch and a few other things. I asked him to officially, donate it to the Guggenheim and we wrote a little donation letter and he helped me set up a small viewing cart in the conservation lab. From there on, I started adding to it. Our media technicians had an equipment pool as well, and I found laser disc players there and DVD players and, that I could have video rack or two. And, Maurice then started to connect me to his, techie friends, elderly men in the city. And he made sure that I had first digs whenever a network station closed down or sold off its used equipment and they made special prices for me. Piece by piece, we patched the whole thing together it was really an iterative process and never ended throughout all these years. Then at some stage, Eric Piil from MIAP came in and helped. All my graduate interns and postgraduate fellows, they all further developed the lab. and then of course there was a space issue. You know, at first there was no space in the conservation lab I convinced my colleagues that I needed some space to put the equipment into. So my first lab was tiny, tiny, I was able to set it up in a former spray booth. Everything was on wheels. And whenever the spray booth was needed for solvent, action on paintings, then I needed to cart everything out again. but eventually I was able to carve out some, space from art storage, on another floor, and that's where we built our, our bigger space. And that is, the media lab until the present day.

[00:25:19] Cass: I know that one of these key collaborators for you in these years was Deena Engel, you worked together on the conservation of computer-based arts initiative. If you could share a bit about that, what was that project and what did you and Deena build together?

[00:25:37] Joanna: When I met Deena Engel, she was the director of, New York University's undergraduate program for computer science. And I think I first heard her speak around 10 years ago, um, I think it was at Bobst library at NYU where she co-presented with Glenn Wharton, one of their joint case studies from the MoMA collection. It was a, touchscreen piece. I Want You To Want Me, one of the artists was there and, Glenn and Deena had invited colleagues, to present their collaborative research to us. This new thing that we're doing, source code analysis of software based artworks. But it wasn't until two years later that I really connected with Deena I approached her after a talk. I felt ready to start working on our software-based artworks in the Guggenheim collection and to do so I needed Deena's expertise and her perspective. I couldn't read or write code, and we had 20 plus works in unknown condition and I'd even didn't even dare to, switch on those, 15 year old computers. Dina and I both immediately connected and back in New York, she visited me in our media lab and we got started right away before the end of that same year. And for the next five years, every semester Deena would, select, would recruit two or three or four computer science students, very talented. Mostly female students that did amazingly creative work. These students would conduct source code analysis on our software based artworks. The computer science students revealed the intended behaviors of these works that we didn't know about before, or sometimes they were damaged and we couldn't perceive them anymore. So you needed to go into the code to really understand what they were meant to do. In return, we conservators, taught the students about our conservation perspective and the values that we consider preservation worthy. We built this amazing bridge between, conservation and computer science. and then we also included the artists. So together with the students we. We interviewed the artists. We interviewed Paul Chan and Shu Lea Cheang, mark Napier, John F. Simon Jr, Siebren Versteeg and others. These discussions with the artists, they were so enriched because, because of the students work, because through them we knew what was going on under the hood of these works. I wanted to strengthen our conservation position in this. I wanted to intensify our research and our. Conservation agency in this research. So I needed more conservation staff to support the project. And this is when I thought, okay, I, I have to give this a name. I have to brand our research. So I called it the CCBA initiative Conserving Computer, Computer-based Art initiative. I convinced our development department at the Guggenheim that we needed to find a sponsor for a dedicated, CCBA fellowship. After an extensive search, we were so grateful when the Thoma Foundation, agreed to sponsor the fellowship and, enable Jonathan Farbowitz to join the CCBA and focus on software-based art full-time for three years. And of course, Jonathan is now the time-based media conservator at the Metropolitan Museum. You asked what Deena and I have built, together with the students and with our fellows, we've conserved and restored and reconstructed and resituated and documented. We have saved many, software based works from the Guggenheim collection. and this was all done because Deena and I translated knowledge back and forth. Between our super different disciplines. she explained to me how programmers and computer scientists think and how they assess and value code, and I explained to her how conservatives identify work defining properties and attribute values, not just to code, but to, other artistic means. It was always super important for us, to also foster a community around our research and our activities. We published our work, but we also invited our colleagues from the Guggenheim and from NYU but also from other New York museums over to our media lab. We presented our case studies, at the end of every semester. And I remember Glenn, saying once jokingly, you know, this is our salon. We come here for our media salon. But I think it was this, in-person encounter that was so important. And that was so New York. Yeah. New York is magic in that way, because there's just critical mass for everything, for every little, niche interest. It's not a coincidence that, New York is kind of the capital of time-based media conservation, globally just with the highest, density of practitioners across different museums because you could just meet up after work at the oysters bar and talk about projects or, come to the salon have this real life human exchange on interests and activities. If I hope to have accomplished something with the CCBA and our collaboration with the computer scientist, I hope that we contributed a little bit to the art world's confidence that software based works are actually collectible, curators can acquire these things. Museums can collect these artworks of our time it's actually possible to provide care for them. 

[00:31:33] Cass: So shocking everyone in 2019 you announced that you would be moving on from the Guggenheim to the Düsseldorf Conservation Center where you are of course not only a time-based media conservator, but you are the center's director. So, could you give us some background, what does the center do and what kind of role does it serve in the conservation ecosystem?

[00:32:00] Joanna: I finally have the authority to create the system, the, work environment, that I think is ideal for supporting our work. Not just media conservation, but, all the other specialties within conservation. Because here at the center, you know, we have seven different departments, with different specializations. So I am now, building a department for media conservation. But I'm also, overlooking, paper and photography and paintings, contemporary art, modern materials, ceramics, applied arts, and conservation of wooden artifacts. So you have to imagine that in Düsseldorf the museums here don't have their own conservation department. It's kind of a unique model. And, even in Germany, not, a common thing. And the Conservation Center here is an independent institute that, provides conservation care, research collection care, to more than 12 museums and archives in the city. So overall, across all these different houses houses there are, 3.5 million objects. They span 3000 years of cultural heritage, from ancient spear heads to, VR installations. We just had our 45th anniversary and, the institution here was founded by Heinz Althöfer, he's a pretty famous figure in the conservation world. Just because he's a pioneer in contemporary art conservation, he adopted scientific examination methods really early on in conservation history. He also, published numerous publications that are standard literature and that have been translated in two 30 plus languages. And if you study conservation today, no matter where in the world, you are still gonna have to read his books. So when I told my Guggenheim folks that I was going to, go to Disseldorf, they knew Althöfer and, or heard about him and read his books, and they, were able to understand, oh, you know what that place was. When I first came here, the center was in pretty poor condition, mainly because we had a major issue with the building structure. It's a historic 1920s, building and a big part of the building was inhabitable because of static issues. So the first thing I had to do was to find, a few million euro, to reinstate the building, literally built foundations, underneath the labs. We completed the construction. And now we have wonderfully modern, dream labs, and a media conservation lab.

[00:34:44] Cass: Looking back at your career, you've always kind of been a, builder and a convener and very entrepreneurial in the way that you approach things and seeing gaps and making something happen. I know it's still early in your time there at the conservation center, relatively speaking, but, what do you have your sights set on for the center? 

[00:35:03] Joanna: I want to, elevate the center to become a hub for spearheading an innovative, conservation research and practice in Europe. I am very confident that we have a few parameters here that really are unique. For example, we have all these different specialties, under one roof and we have a phenomenal, exchange. So what the salon was at the Guggenheim, we have a salon, every third Wednesday, every month. it's called the Lab Talk and we just, present to each other our work and put it to discussion quite formally sometimes. It's just, um, critical mass to have a, conversation going about conservation that, isn't easily had elsewhere, because most museums have small departments, one or two or three conservators and, rarely does the museum have such a broad spectrum of collection goods that we have that span. What is the similarity or the common denominator between a ancient spearhead and a VR piece? And that's what I think is really, interesting here. In my position now, I am on the same level as the museum directors in the city here. We are independent and of course we work in close exchange, with the museums and we, help museums prepare their exhibition and loan programs and make recommendations for preventive conservation, et cetera. But we also, have a very, overarching perspective on, the collections of Düsseldorf and their, needs to be, cared for, even if they're not scheduled for exhibition. And that's a freedom that we have here because we can, do what we believe is necessary and what we believe is a good investment into furthering our practice to better practice.

[00:37:14] Cass: Recently you and Deena have come out with another book, Called the Conservation of Time-based Media Art. Who is the book for and what does it cover?

[00:37:26] Joanna: The book is for everyone who is either producing media art, exhibiting media art, collecting media art, caring for media art. We wanted to give an overview of the whole spectrum of time-based media practices as they stand today. But we also made sure to invite many, many perspectives and, voices from all kinds of practitioners with all kinds of different, backgrounds. Media technicians who are writing about the installation of, time-based media works. We have, theorists who write about, the notions of ecologies, and ontologies in time-based media. We have chapters that talk about overarching, aspects of time-based media conservation, like documentation, ingest, but we also have very medium specific chapters, like a big chapter on video art, a big chapter on software based art, a big chapter on film and, sound and on slide based art. We have, 34 authors that have joined us, and we encouraged all of the authors to also invite additional voices, our authors interviewed others, recorded those interviews, transcribed them, and, included these perspectives and voices and text boxes or citations or case study presentations within the book. So all in all, we have, over 120, perspectives in that book. It's really a testament to the diversity of this community. And it's common interest to contribute to the written record. Some of our contributors the written word is not necessarily their means of, dissemination. But worked with all of them because we felt that it's important to capture all of these different, interfaces with the artwork and the stakeholders surrounding those artworks. It's in the Routledge series Conservation Of, so, you know, there are other titles, conservation of easel paintings, conservation of plastics and so forth. And so this is conservation of time-based media. So we hope that with this title, we also enrolled the somewhat obscure specialty of time-based media conservation into the canon of conservation disciplines. This is now a real thing that can't be ignored. It's the latest specialty, within conservation.

[00:39:56] Cass: As a time-based media conservator and a leader. Anything in your thinking that has really shifted over the years that the field hasn't caught up to yet?

[00:40:06] Joanna: I think something that we really have to stay aware of is that the broad majority of collection professionals have not caught up yet. And I think we have to communicate much more widely and efficiently in order to raise awareness. Moving back Europe really opened my eyes. There are like four time-based media conservators in the whole country here. Each of them in a different institution working on their own. There's no network, no annual meeting like the EMG meeting, no platform. I feel it's almost stagnant here. We also have, in the German speaking world, three different programs who are supposed to, produce graduates with a specialty in time-based media, but within Germany, they're really only, catering to the library and archives world. Uh, so there's not a strong art component and for some reason, out of the Bern program. We haven't been seeing, graduates this year or the next year. The last fellowship position I announced I had hardly any applications. And so I am actually developing a bit of a concern, who are the people who are going to care for those collections tomorrow, because, um, that doesn't seem to be a strong, output of interested graduates. At least in Europe, I dunno what it's like in the US but, we're having that problem, with a lack of emerging conservators, in the whole conservation industry, in the industry of, Cultural heritage preservation and programs are actually closing here. Programs that have been, active for decades, because there are not enough students enrolling anymore and it's probably the poor, prospect financially after all these years of studying and, and pre-program internship and whatnot. And then you have shitty payment in your job. And who wants to do that? Uh, no one. So I think the museums really have to do catch up work and, create work environments and salaries that are appropriate, to enable, conservation otherwise we're steering straight into a crisis. The last few talks I gave. It was all about this here in Germany, because, we've created a real problem for the heritage preservation tomorrow. The salaries at the conservation center are good and appropriate, and we also, offer many postgraduate fellowships, so, do send in your applications.

[00:42:49] Cass: As such a seasoned, experienced professional in the field, you know, who has mentored many emerging conservators, I can't think of many people better equipped to give advice. So I guess if there's anybody listening who is interested in getting into time-based media conservation, what advice would you give them? 

[00:43:07] Joanna: Get into one of the academic programs, to get a masters degree in media conservation. There's the school in Bern. There's a brand new program at the UCL in London, and there are also programs in the German speaking world, that, with a bit of tweaking would cater to your interest in art as well, I think. On your way to becoming a time-based media conservator, try to pick up as much experience as you can. From the practical world of installing these artworks, because the academic programs can remove you a little bit from the on the ground work. Go and intern with media technicians who install these works every day. Go and work in a video encoding department of a post house to, uh, familiarize yourself with different codes, et cetera. Try and, grasp as much firsthand insight into all the different facets of media production and media installation and build your own curriculum. Come for postgraduate fellowship at the Düsseldorf Conservation Center there's a fellowship every year that you can apply for. I want to start a good habit of, offering this center as, as a salon and as a place where we present and discuss our work together and build community in Düsseldorf, but also nationally or internationally. 

[00:44:43] Cass: Yeah, it's a little bit further than a subway ride to the Guggenheim, but I can't wait to visit.

[00:44:48] Joanna: You are always so welcome. I would be delighted to have you here.

[00:44:53] Cass: Well, Joanna, thank you so much for your time and for coming on the show. It was just so great to hear more about your story and to catch up

[00:45:00] Joanna: Thank you for sending me on this journey, because I really had to go back 30 years and, remember how it all came together it was good. Thank you.

[00:45:12] Cass: And thank you, dear listener for joining me for this conversation with Joanna Phillips. As always, if you like what you're hearing on the show, listener support is hugely important to making it all happen. You can always join us over at patreon.com/artobsolescence, or if you are interested in making a one-time tax deductible gift through our fiscal sponsor, the New York Foundation for the Arts you can do so over at artandobsolescence.com/donate. And there you can also find the full episode archive, including full transcripts and show notes. And of course you can always find us on social media @artobsolescence and last but not least, this week's episode was edited by Tessa Hall until next time take care of my friends. My name is Cass Fino-Radin and this has been Art and Obsolescence.