Research project artemak+X

The artemak archive is being continued and developed as part of a project, artemak+X – Techniques and Materials of Modern and Contemporary Art, at the Dresden University of Fine Arts funded by the ESF and the state of Saxony. The project deals with current issues in the preservation and restoration of contemporary art, as well as associated analysis and testing of materials. Another major focus is the new development of the online platform artemak.art.

The stated purpose of the website is to serve as a research platform providing information – directly from artists by means of interviews and surveys – on the materials, techniques and preservation of contemporary artworks, and making it accessible in the long term. It offers not only conservators, but also artists, art scholars and all interested parties a growing number of interviews, indexed using thematic keywords and contextualized with additional content.

Additionally, the collected experiences and results of the project are to be made freely accessible in the form of an online publication, The Artist Interview in Conservation – A Handout, providing assistance to researchers in preparing, conducting, following up and evaluating interviews. Since 2018, there has also been an annual seminar at the HfBK Dresden on the topic, in which students conduct interviews with artists and become familiar with the possibilities and limits of the method.

In addition to developing the new artemak.art website, researchers are engaging in interdisciplinary collaboration, with their own points of focus in terms of materials and techniques in contemporary art, as well as possible preservation strategies for endangered works. The research work is carried out in the form of three doctorates and a post-doctoral project at HfBK Dresden and TU Dresden:

Microfading and lighting, preventive conservation (Dr Thomas Prestel, post-doctoral project at HfBK Dresden)

Preserving light art. Study on the conservation of electric light in contemporary art (Jonathan Debik, M.A., PhD student at HfBK Dresden)

Study on the use and ageing of fluorescent colours in contemporary painting (Dipl.-Rest. Sarah Giering, PhD student at HfBK Dresden)

Analytical investigation into fluorescent colours (Lukas Reiß, M.Sc., PhD student at TU Dresden)

 

Acknowledgements

We would like to take this opportunity to thank Prof. Erich Gantzert-Castrillo as the founder of artemak and supporter of the project artemak+X.

Our special thanks go to Jochen Beißert (HfBK Dresden) and Dr. Simone Fugger von dem Rech (HfBK Dresden) for their support with all aspects of data protection and copyright law.

We would also like to thank Prof. Thomas Kübler (Stadtarchiv Dresden), Dr. Sylvia Drebinger (Stadtarchiv Dresden), Antje Kirsch (HfBK Dresden) and Dr. Nina Quabeck (Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen) for the professional exchange and discussions on conducting and evaluating interviews.

We would like to thank Ines Liebscher (Stadtarchiv Dresden) for sharing information on digital archiving.

We would also like to thank our student assistants, who prepared large parts of the website: Sophie Gurjanov, Sarah Strahl and Lilian Megerlin.

 

Thanks to those involved in artemak.de

We would also like to thank everyone who was involved in setting up the website artemak.de. The previous project is no longer available on the Internet, but most of the content is available again on artemak.art.