Pixelache has never had a centralised archiving system. For the first years of the Festival, an independent Finnish server was used for our websites and files. Since around 2007 onwards, with the rise of platform capitalism, and our pragmatism, our data has been mostly scattered around in different corporate platforms (Google, Flickr, Vimeo, Youtube, Bambuser, SoundCloud, Slack, etc). That makes our archival process both chaotic and vulnerable to changes in terms of service. Our data exists only as long as the services, and our access to it is limited to their interface. Using corporate platforms is also problematic in many ways since we are giving away many rights to our data. In parallel, personal long-standing active staff or members have been gathering data on their personal hard drives — Juha Huuskonen, Antti Ahonen, Petri Ruikka, Nathalie Aubret, Andrew Gryf Paterson, Ville Hyvönen from the 2000s, and newer members also since 2010s, Päivi Raivio, Agnieszka Pokrywka, John Fail, Ilpo Heikkinen, Egle Oddo, Mari Keski-Korsu, Steve Maher, Saša Nemec, Vishnu Vardheni, and into 2020s, Arlene Tucker, Irina Mutt, Soko Hwang. Despite the efforts of some, this media and files are also not organised. There’s been very little investment in managing our documentation & files better, nor in developing a digital archiving strategy for the long term, including sharing materials with Finnish national or audiovisual audio-visual archives.
After our 20th anniversary and joining the MEHI – Media Art History Finland project in 2022 we started the process of gathering, archiving, and systematising our data as a means of control of our own data. During 2024 we did background research and developed our archival strategy and are devoting part of our budget to archiving and buying the required hardware. In 2025 and onwards we plan to allocate more funds towards archival labour costs and systematising. Further work can be done to integrate media art events, such as festivals, into the MEHI database, which are currently under-represented.
Antti Ahonen is a multidisciplinary artist working on the fields of visual arts, performance, media art and photography. As a photographer he specialised in experimental live performances, He has worked for Pixelache festival, Smeds Ensemble, La Bas, National Theater, Teak and countless individual artists. He also works as artistic director for Association of experimental electronics KOELSE, a group of experimental electronics enthusiasts who gather old consumer-electronics and transform it into sound producing devices.
Andrew Gryf Paterson is a Scottish artist-organiser, educator, cultural producer, and independent researcher, based in Helsinki, Finland. His practice over a 25 year period has involved variable roles of initiator, participant, author and curator, according to different collaborative and cross-disciplinary processes. Andrew has worked across the fields of media/ network/ environmental arts and activism, specialising in workshop design, participatory platforms for engagement, and facilitation.
Planned Activities: gathering, sorting, organising data, compiling and systematising it on server
Collaborators, supporters and partners: MEHI – Finnish Media Art Network and Media Art History Finland [AvoinGLAM]
Membership Collaborators: Antti Ahonen and Andrew Gryf Paterson, with support from current and past membership[, active festival participants etc..]
Have a look at Pixelache’s past work via Internet Archive uploaded annual portfolios & reports (2023-2008): https://archive.org/details/@pixelache