eu co-operation

VEKTOR - European Contemporary Art Archives

Workshop Standardisation and Thesauri

Vienna, 1. - 2. 3. 2002

The workshop of the international project Vektor, which is supported by a grant from the European Union, took place in Vienna with the participation of all partners and members of the Vektor research platform (AVU Research Centre, Prague; Archive de la critique d´Art, Rennes; documenta Archiv, Kassel; Goldsmith College, London; Institut für moderne Kunst, Norimberg; Kunst-Bulletin, Zurich; Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana; Sikart, Zurich; Zentralarchiv des internationalen Kunsthandels, Köln).

The meeting's aim was an attempt at mutual integration and standardisation of archive strategies practised in various types of European archives of contemporary art. For the purpose of interconnecting individual archives the international meta-database system Dublin Core, which is used in England and the U.S.A, was presented and accepted by all members as a platform for further research.

The AVU Research Centre, as the main Czech representative, is one of the major member of the international project Vektor. It takes part in resolving questions concerning standardisation of archive systems, their interconnection and further co-operation. At the Vienna meeting it presented new web pages in English with information on continuing research work and on the archive database system accessible via the Internet to those interested abroad as well.

Together with members of the research platform, the AVU Research Centre will this year prepare a publication for documenting and archiving contemporary art which should become an important aid, both for building an archive, as well as for searching within them. This aid will consist of a detailed list of archives aimed at processing material on contemporary art in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Macedonia. The AVU Research Centre is preparing to translate the publication into Czech after it is published in German.

We ask that all public and private archives working with contemporary art provide information on their activities to the AVU Research Centre.