| Franziska Lentzsch: The non-objecthood of video art is especially correct for older videos. Most of the videos produced in recent years are produced in an edition of a limited number—particularly due to the ease of duplication. But we have never really considered alternatives, as we are not allowed to. We always buy our videos, and this only permits unlimited viewing within our museum and the right to make exhibition copies and stills from the master, as well as transferral to new formats if needed (as for conservation reasons). On the other hand, there’s also our need to be flexible in showing our videos. | 
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Franziska Lentzsch is exhibition coordinator and curator at Kunsthaus Zürich and Adam Sherrett is an associate editor at NY Arts. The two held the following conversation over email about Video Lounge, an exhibition of material from Kunsthaus’ newly reformatted collection that concludes mid-November.
Adam Sherrett: Where did the Kunsthaus video collection start? How has it progressed from its inception?
Franziska Lentzsch: Our former curator and deputy director, Ms. Ursula Perucchi-Petri, started to buy videos for our collection at the end of the 70s. She and those who held her position after her have bought regularly for the collection, and it continues to grow even to this day. The Video Lounge exhibition itself will be very small and will include 30 to 40 videos and installations from our collection. We also want to inform the people that our collection has been fully "restored" (if one can use this word for such an undertaking) and is open to the public again.
AS: Why did Kunsthaus choose to “restore” these pieces and make them available to the public now?
FL: Many collections have realized they had a problem with videos being damaged from bad storage conditions, playing them too much, poor handling, etc. We had to face the problem of the conservation as well, but we realized the fragility and importance of videos very early, and reacted immediately by closing our collection to the public in order to start the process of review and restoration. Because we had to handle this project in addition to our daily business, it has taken us some years to get to Video Lounge.
It should be noted, though, that "restoration" is not the precise word for the project, as we have not (yet) actually restored any video due to financial reasons. Research in this field is very intense at the moment. We have simply tried to prolong the life of the videos that are still in a good condition by transferring them to new formats and producing exhibition copies.
AS: Part of the reason that research in the field of new media is so intense is that work doesn’t generally exist as an object; it is intangible and infinitely reproducible—as you’ve established with your collection’s transfer into new formats. With this in mind, have you considered alternatives to museum viewing? Like, for instance, online distribution?
FL: The non-objecthood of video art is especially correct for older videos. Most of the videos produced in recent years are produced in an edition of a limited number—particularly due to the ease of duplication.
But we have never really considered alternatives, as we are not allowed to. We always buy our videos, and this only permits unlimited viewing within our museum and the right to make exhibition copies and stills from the master, as well as transferal to new formats if needed (as for conservation reasons). On the other hand, there’s also our need to be flexible in showing our videos. We are also, by the way, not permitted to lend videos to other institutions or exhibitions without the explicit agreement of the artist or his estate.
AS: Do you currently work with the artists to expand the video collection beyond the museum walls? Where do you see Kunsthaus’ role in the future of digital media?
FL: We are often in contact with artists concerning exhibitions and special installations for their video works, but we are in general limited to our museum walls—both inside and outside. Our role in the future concerning video art will be collection, conservation, and continued research in our unique setting—based on financial possibilities, of course.
