The Performed Museum and the Exposed Archive. Interactivity and Augmented Reality at Fondazione Cineteca Italiana

Abstract

Given the pervasiveness of moving images in exhibitions dedicated to contemporary art, science and technology, cinema's museums are still reluctant to integrate new forms of visual media within their own set-ups.

The film archive is a place dedicated to the care and preservation of cinema's heritage, by its very nature intimate and hidden from the public eye. Given current eclectic definitions of archive, the space occupied by the latter seems to lose its grip on the real, fetishizing what appears to be an ancient past.

This article investigates the presence of moving images in cinema's museums through the case analysis of MIC – Museo Interattivo del Cinema and the Film Archive of Fondazione Cineteca Italiana (Milan). Here, the archive found a new life in the museum, which, in turn, found a natural expansion of its exhibition between the shelves of the archive. The latter, not only becomes an exhibition space, but also, thanks to the integration of augmented reality, a performative space. The analogical dimension of the films and its virtual counterpart coexist, giving life to a technological overlap which enrich the paradigmatic investigation of contemporary technically-driven aisthesis.