Unknown Error Occurred. ­Strategies to prevent the loss of digital artistic heritage

This year's matinee as part of Berlin Art Week focuses on the challenges that the fragility of 20th and 21st century material culture poses for artists, museums, and archives.

In our understanding of culture, the desire and effort to preserve works of art and documents—traces of our feelings and thoughts—for future generations goes unquestioned. However, the extreme impermanence of devices, data carriers, and software confronts individuals and society with new difficulties. While we fear that the digital space never forgets anything, we lose sight of the fact that we are simultaneously witnessing a rapid loss of digital artistic works and documents.

What strategies and resources do we have to address digital fragility? What new alliances would we need to preserve works for future generations? Can museums and cultural archives simply be custodians, orwill theygradually have to transform themselves into laboratories for electronic and digital sustainability? The discussion about the long-term preservation of digital and electronic artefacts is not just a technical debate. Will the digital transformation change our concept of cultural memory in the long term?

Cultural scientist Wolfgang Ullrich, media theorist Claus Pias (Leuphana), artist Harm van den Dorpel, and Margit Rosen, head of the ZKM collection and archives, discuss the already observable effects of digitization and possible scenarios for the future. Moderator: Saskia Trebing, monopol.