New Art Video presented ‘Straight to DVD’, a discursive event and film screening that aimed to interrogate the traditional practice of archiving through a series of playful interventions and anecdotal discussion. Artists, Erica Eyres and Samuel De Lange as well as CCA Director, Francis McKee were invited to explore notions of the archive, narrative, and misinformation through a series of short talks with a discussion that followed. 

The event opened with the firstpublic screening of Eyres’ film, CPR Conference. Originally intended foran academic conference on comedy, the film’s content and format provedproblematic for the institutional environment and was omitted from theconference publication.

De Lange followed with his presentation of Em Progresso. Images captured by his stolen camera have been retrieved and collected using specialized search software. Described as a “performance as much as pedagogy,” De Lange showed a selection of these images and reflected on the ethics of this archival process.  

CCA director, Francis McKee explored glitches and anomalies from the CCA archive including a mislabelled Julius Eastman video and memorabilia from ‘spectral’ exhibitions that never took place.

New Art Video concluded by discussing their archival experiment of trying to insert Eyres’ film into archives across Scotland which lead into a discussion exploring the archive as both a personal and institutional site.