Publishing Franklin Furnace's Second Decade Online: Providing Intellectual Access to Variable Media Art

FAIN: PW-50701-10

Franklin Furnace Archives, Inc. (Brooklyn, NY 11217-2998)
Michael Katchen (Project Director: July 2009 to July 2012)

The digitization and online publication of 6,500 images documenting 402 performances, installations, and exhibitions of variable media art produced at Franklin Furnace during its second decade of operation, 1986-96.

Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc. seeks $155,035 from the National Endowment for the Humanities for a two-year grant to digitize and publish on the internet records of performances, installations, exhibitions and other events produced by the organization during it second ten years, 1986 to 1996. This proposal expands upon a recent initiative that launched an online database on Franklin Furnace's website containing records of events from Franklin Furnace's first decade (1976-1985). Franklin Furnace uses best practices in the field to preserve and catalog what are now the only remaining artifacts of these singular, "variable media" works of social, political and cultural expression. Within a two-year period, Franklin Furnace plans to digitize, catalog and publish online approximately 6500 images of 402 events from its second decade. Making the event records at Franklin Furnace accessible to students and researchers online embeds the value of variable media art practice in history.