From the Vaults : Unboxing Analogue Film Storage

Beyond their scientific, historical, and practical depictions, film vaults can be rediscovered as a dynamic and vibrant environment. They reveal many intertwined agencies, temporalities and material layers that continuously redefine and reshape the artefacts stored as epistemically and technologically driven objects involved in an ongoing process of intermediation and hybridization. Far from the mere arrangement of film cans on a shelf, film preservation is an ongoing process and a long-term commitment, consisting of integrating the film object within a complex network of media infrastructures, archival procedures, shared beliefs, and cultural techniques. In order to investigate analogue film storage, defined here as a multi-layered environment and a series of operational contexts, such as storage vault infrastructures, archival preservation routines, and research centres, I will approach the topic through five interconnected conceptual and operational frameworks: influence on film artefact morphology ; storage vaults as dynamic forces; critical time management in the archival workflow; active preservation as a set of knowledge production processes; and preservation centres as media infrastructures.