ARTCHAE : For a Media Ar(t)chaeology of Telepresence

Much of contemporary media entails forms of telepresence. Interaction and perception across physical distance today underpin both everyday media—such as mobile phones and teleconferencing platforms—and simulation-based media, including immersive and extended realities, which consistently incorporate a live component. ARTCHAE traces the roots of these processes to the electronic arts from the 1960s to the early 1980s—video art, installation art, and sound art—where mediated presence first became a site of experimentation, while simultaneity, embodied interaction, and self-recognition were already challenged. Combining analyses of media artworks by leading international scholars with interviews of prominent artists and curators, ARTCHAE proposes an ar(t)chaeology: a genealogical inquiry into telepresence grounded in the early insights of artists, particularly overlooked women, who explored the ways tele-media reconfigured private and public spaces, the mediation of the Self, and collective participation.