Archived By Nikos

Posted: June 12th, 2021 ˑ Filled under: Archiving, By Nikos, conservation ˑ  Comments Closed

A text written by Nikos Voyiatzis about his personal attitude in finding and documenting this collection of videos.

(0) ((DAMN SITE MOUCHETTE!))
OR where obsessive practices and unintentional archiving meet

 

As part of my online practises, among fun, work, research, boredom and other things, I find myself with many obsessive tendencies of repetition, looping, visiting the same places, searching for the same things, dealing with  the same stuff. I consider my obsessive online practises an active space where my archiving, my art and all my online experience meet inside an extreme user identity.

Since I met mouchette.org and later on, when I started working with Martine Neddam on documenting and preserving mouchette in different ways, mouchette.org took a place of its own in my obsessive actions.

A couple of years ago I found some videos on youtube, while searching for references, readings, and user generated content related to mouchette.org.
These videos, 2 or 3 in number were made by russian users,  kids showcasing mouchette.org.
I immediately kept this in a playlist in youtube, entitled something like ‘mouchetteutube’, and forgot about it.

This year I remembered the existence of this playlist but I could not locate in which  of my youtube accounts it was, in the middle of all my playlists, so I decided to make a new one.

I started collecting more and more related videos in youtube, most of them made by russian kids, acting either as narrators, actors, animators, or directors. They kept referring to mouchette.org as a ‘DAMN SITE’, with creepy, scary content and most of them did not necessarily see it  as a work of art, something that reminds me of the way mouchette.org was perceived in its early years.

My new playlist was lost again, I think it was entitled ‘youtube and mouchette’, and anyway…. I ended up making a third one.
Observing these  videos and sharing  them with Martine we decided to archive these as  an important material related to the preservation of mouchette.org.
Martine actually said that I had created this archival task all by myself.

I finally created a collection of 14 videos, and saved them offline in  folders and subfolders, adding text descriptions and visual documents. Each folder contains snapshots, transcripts if applicable, and most importantly the documentation file, which contains description, metadata, comments by me and Martine, and technical metadata of the video files.
Keeping material related to mouchette.org can help somehow to preserve the work when it disappears from the web, as it always does. And this is also Martine’s practise in ‘about.mouchette.org’.

Throughout the process I could see these kids as unintentional archivists. They do not do this for the purpose of archiving per se, but they have their own reasons for making and storing self-made videos.  Most of them have their own youtube channels where they present, showcase, review, websites, video games etc…
However, the formation of a network among them and mouchette.org, the subjective navigations they design on the website, the creative interventions they do on it, brings these materials close to Martine’s notion of ‘generative preservation‘ a type of preservation which calls for new material created from existing data, not only re-interpreting things but also creating  entirely  new things out of them.

These unintentional archivists who do not follow given methods but create their own small corner in youtube to reflect and represent mouchette.org have really valuable information about the work. How does the work look and feel in different ages, seen by different people, using different devices, with different sounds and speaking in different languages. The practise of this network of youtube users comes across and mingles with my own obsessive practise, akin Martine’s  and  Mouchette’s obsessiveness.

And I still have no idea how and why mouchette.org became at the same time so scary and popular to them?

Nikos Voyiatzis, 6-2021

List of videos in the collection

1. mouchette. org вот што будет утром Τhe horrors of the mouchette site [Ужасы сайта mouchette] 09:28
https://vimeo.com/540130346

2. 3 REALLY CREEPY SITES sentimentalcorp, mouchette [3 ДЕЙСТВИТЕЛЬНО ЖУТКИХ САЙТА ] 12:34
https://vimeo.com/549895592

3. mouchette. org (this is what will happen in the morning) [mouchette. org вот што будет утром] 05:26
https://vimeo.com/551394051

4. Damn site mouchette [Проклятый сайт mouchette] 04:48
https://vimeo.com/551517706

5. Damn site mouchette [проклятый сайт мушет] 06:10
https://vimeo.com/551838307

6. Damn site mouchette.org [Проклятый сайт mouchette.org] 09:53
https://vimeo.com/552098106

7. Summoning the Spirits – Damn Site – Never Go Online at 3 AM Fear Show # 41 [Вызов Духов – Проклятый сайт – Никогда не выходи в интернет в 3 часа ночи Страхи Шоу #41] 13:36
https://vimeo.com/557203268

8. Exploring Mouchette Creepy Website 06:50
https://vimeo.com/559018015

9. Mouchette.org is a scary site [Mouchette.org qorxulu sayt] 06:56
https://vimeo.com/560996499

10. Scary channels and sites # 1 [Страшные каналы и сайты (нет) №1] 10:00
https://vimeo.com/562140501

11. Scary channels and sites # 2 [Страшные каналы и сайты (нет) №2] 10:00
https://vimeo.com/562145049

12. ON THE SITE MOUCHETTE.ORG/TRASH- REVIEW OF THE SITE MOUCHETTE.ORG, (#netstalking, #trash-review) [ЖЕСТЬ НА САЙТЕ MOUCHETTE.ORG/ТРЕШ-ОБЗОР САЙТА MOUCHETTE.ORG,(#нетсталкинг ,#треш-обзор )] 4:34
https://vimeo.com/562146052

13. We go to the site mouchette.org [Заходим на сайт мушетт орг] 06:16
https://vimeo.com/562199316

 

14. Mouchette website [Сайт мушет] 15:57
https://vimeo.com/562201629

 



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