The Archive 1994-2020 compiles the contents resulting from the research process of the Unidentified Video Observatory, spanning from its founding year to 2020, a pivotal turning point. Established in 1999 as the consolidation of a research initiative launched in 1994, this media archive emerges as a critical repository to document, organize, and perpetuate materials derived from an interdisciplinary project focused on the sociocultural, aesthetic, and technological phenomena of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Its creation responds to the need to ensure the continuity and accessibility of a heterogeneous corpus—comprising videographic records, visual imaginaries, textual documents, and conceptual constructs—generated during a historical period marked by paradigmatic transformations in the production, circulation, and consumption of knowledge.
The archive spans three decisive decades (1990-2020), tracing a temporal arc that transitions from the final vestiges of analog culture to the consolidation of digital hyperconnectivity, encompassing the emergence of decentralized networks and the rise of generative imagery. This periodization not only reflects technological changes but also interrogates mutations in creative practices, epistemologies of the image, and dynamics of socialization mediated by devices.
Structurally, the repository is organized into two complementary instances:
- Online Archive: Hosts approximately 60% of the total collection, selected based on agreements with authors and distributors. The materials included here intentionally preserve their original technical conditions—limited resolutions, obsolete compression formats, restricted color palettes—functioning as material testimonies to the limitations and aesthetics inherent to each technological context.
- Offline Master Archive: Contains the entirety of the holdings, ensuring the integrity of metadata, high-resolution versions, and unpublished documents, safeguarded under long-term digital preservation protocols. Beyond its custodial function, the archive operates as a critical device: the decision to maintain technical specificities in its online version not only evidences the material conditions of production of each era but also challenges users to reflect on planned obsolescence and the narrative of "technical progress." Similarly, the coexistence of analog, digital, and postdigital formats enriches its epistemological value, enabling comparative studies on the evolution of media supports, the materiality of information, and media ecologies. The totality of the offline master archive is availbale under apointment for public consulting at the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art Documentation Center.
