Statement

Translated by ChatGPT

Background

This site was developed following an observational experience at the Art Archivist Training Program (2025.09.12.–2025.10.25.), organized by Korea Arts Management Service and operated by BFoundation. Through exposure not only to introductory archival studies and case studies of archive system development, but also to methods of cataloging and classification using Excel and the use of publishing software, I began uploading works by artists around me to the web-publishing software Omeka S. This experience ultimately led to the creation of this site, with the aim of contributing to a broader awareness of archival systems that can be utilized not only by institutions but also by individuals, as well as of the records generated within the art world.

Why a Digital Archive?

Among archives—which refer either to non-current records possessing enduring value or to the institutions that preserve them—art archives specifically denote records related to artists, collectives, exhibitions, and artistic events, as well as research institutions dedicated to such materials. In South Korea, art archives are managed by approximately twenty art institutions, including National Archives of Korean Arts, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, Asia Culture Center, and Nam June Paik Art Center, all of which have established archival systems that provide access to their holdings through searchable databases. However, it remains difficult to closely examine the actual methods and structures through which these institutions construct and classify their archives. 

How might we preserve the records of individual artists within conditions of limited resources and time? In circumstances where sufficient spatial and financial conditions for operating an archive are unavailable, in what ways can the production and collection of art archives continue sustainably? If we no longer assume the limitations of physical space, how might we collect, classify, and make use of materials about one another?

When considering the growth of artists, the successes and failures of projects, and the emergence and disappearance of alternative spaces that evolved alongside them, preserving records within the contemporary art world extends beyond merely providing accurate information about artists and careers already recognized as art historically significant. These records allow us to trace the networks of collaborators who contributed to artists’ early activities and the formation of their works, while also enabling a deeper imagination of the neighbors surrounding artworks and the value of the productions they collectively created.

If it is impossible to preserve every record, what if we instead accumulate the relationships between digitized materials and records, together with detailed descriptions and the moments of their production? While acknowledging the limitation that not everything can be preserved, might the act of documenting individual productions and spheres of activity from their respective positions provide a foundation for examining the neighbors and contexts that exist prior to being defined through art-historical value? With this expectation, the operation of a digital archive comes to resemble a landscape through which one can observe the environments in which an individual artist grew, as well as the collaborators with whom they interacted and evolved. At the same time, it is also a process through which individual producers and recorders cultivate their own villages, reference one another’s traces, and form relationships.

Within a digital environment, records become interconnected through metadata such as creators, dates of production, and related materials, allowing the contexts and individual temporalities of works to be traced through descriptive information. Through this, we may come to understand the relationships among records and the structures of their production contexts, while also examining artists’ activities and networks beyond the works themselves. Paying attention to provenance and original order while carefully writing descriptive elements for essential metadata fields—and furthermore, sharing the methods and cases through which such work is undertaken—may become an opportunity to observe, embrace, and expand the villages of individual producers: the neighbors, relationships, and collaborative environments through which they live and work together.

Significance and Purpose 

As the first digital collection of EJ Archives, the Daul RHEEM Digital Collection was developed with reference to the General International Standard Archival Description (ISAD(G)) International Council on Archives, Art Archives Seoul Museum of Art’s AA_M3 Classification and Description Manual and AA_R1 Registration Metadata Manual, and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea’s Guidelines for the Classification, Arrangement, and Description of Collected Records (Version 4.0). Just as these institutional manuals made it possible to establish the initial structure of this site, this project also seeks to present a practical example of archive construction based on such manuals. At the same time, it aims to continue as a case study for preserving, classifying, and appraising digital records dispersed across cloud environments, while laying a foundation for further research on these practices.

The structure of the collection and its projects does not pursue a fixed or completed result; rather, it seeks a form that continuously evolves alongside the cycles of records generated through direct engagement with the producer’s working environment. The ongoing process of classifying an artist’s growth and activities is itself a way of practicing art archiving in collaboration with the diverse forms of activity surrounding them. Through this living circulation of records, the project hopes to reveal the dynamism through which productions continually move back and forth across past systems and structures.
 

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1) Refer to the Dictionary of Archives Terminology published by the Society of American Archivists (SAA).
2) Hyerin Lee. (2024). Archival  Discourse  in  Contemporary  Art  and  the  Rethinking  of “Archival  Art”. Journal of Korean Society of Archives and Records Management, 24(1), 32.
3) Kim Ji Ah. (2022). A Study on Classification & Description of Art Archives : Focused on “The Art Archives, Seoul Museum of Art”. The Korean Journal of Archival Studies, 74, 82–83.