New Art Video presented ‘Straight to DVD’, a discursive event and film screening that aimed tointerrogate the traditional practice of archiving through a series of playfulinterventions and anecdotal discussion. Artists, EricaEyres and Samuel De Lange as well as CCA Director, Francis McKee were invited to explorenotions of the archive, narrative, and misinformation through a series of shorttalks 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 hispresentation of Em Progresso. Images captured by his stolencamera have been retrieved and collected using specialized search software.Described as a “performance as much as pedagogy,” De Lange showed aselection 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 JuliusEastman video and memorabilia from ‘spectral’ exhibitions that never tookplace.

New Art Video concluded by discussing theirarchival experiment of trying to insert Eyres’ film into archives acrossScotland which lead into a discussion exploring the archive as both a personal andinstitutional site.