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Archive

At the UCM

The five-year duration of the MediaLab Madrid project generated extensive documentation that includes the intense activity that took place between 2002 and 2006. All this activity generated a large amount of material in the form of documents, DVDs, mini-DVs, CDs, photographs, dossiers of artists, catalogues, email, and press dossiers, forming an archive that represents the process of the activity, a direct sample of how the exhibitions, workshops, conferences, meetings, research projects, etc. were created. All this material was safeguarded by Ohlenschläger for 19 years, until in the context of the project MediaLab Madrid as a transversal laboratory model: art, science, technology, society + sustainability for the digital agenda she decided to donate the collection to the Complutense University of Madrid.

The archive is physically located in the General Archive of the Complutense University of Madrid, after the donation, at the express wish, of Karin Ohlenschläger. The address of the UCM General Archive is:

Faculty of Law, ground floor.
Plaza Menéndez Pelayo, s/n. 28040
Email: agucm@ucm.es

Telephone: 91 3945302/5904

To consult the collection, you must make an appointment, indicating the documentation you want to consult, indicating the archival reference code found in the database: https://www.ucm.es/servicios-ciudadano

Request an appointment

MediaLab Madrid archive on the web

Part of the MediaLab Madrid Archive is digitized, which can be accessed, in part, through this website, and the rest of the material, through a relational database that was designed expressly for the MediaLab Madrid Archive. For questions about this database, contact the person responsible for the archive: rcaerols@ucm.es

Go to Activities + Go to Publications +

About the creation of the Archive

Why the Complutense University?

It was Karin Ohlenschläger's wish that the MLM Archive be safeguarded at the Complutense University, since the first activity that began what finally became the MediaLab Madrid project was the first Festival and Symposium of Art, Science and Technology, in which In this context, the exhibition Cibervisión 02 (www.cibervisión.org) was developed within the framework of the Second Winter Cycle of Science and Technology of the Complutense Forum. The biochemist Federico Morán played a fundamental role in these first connections, as Karin Ohlenschläger herself reported.

Donation process

The donation process was the presentation of a proposal to the UCM for the collection comprised of all the documentation of MediaLab Madrid's activity. After several conversations, the Vice-Rector for Culture decided that its ideal place should be the General Archive of the UCM. That marked the start of nine months of gestation between Isabel Palomera and the direct monitoring of Raquel Caerols Mateo. The role of Isabel Palomera was fundamental for the MLM Archive to be found today in the collection of the General Archive of the UCM.

File Creation

At the end of 2019, the MediaLab Madrid project received a grant as a transversal laboratory model: art, science, technology, society + sustainability for the digital agenda, ref.: H2019/HUM-5740 (MediaLab-CM) in the call for regional projects of the Community of Madrid. In the context of this project, the MediaLab Madrid Archive was developed and created, coordinated by Raquel Caerols Mateo, and with the support of Professor Isidro Moreno.

More details in Nerea Etxebarria Gumuzio's Master's thesis: "Digitizing and communicating heritage: The challenges in the artistic practices of media art" (17/05/2022)

Importance of incorporation

The importance of the incorporation of the MediaLab Madrid Archive to the collections of a historical archive such as the General Archive of the UCM, represents a truly relevant contribution to the practices of new media art - more specifically, of the interrelationships among art, science, technology + society -, as it is the first time that a public institution, from a historical archive that preserves documentation of the long historical trajectory of the university institution, hosts a collection of new media art, which contributes to the first foundations of its institutionalization, its legitimation and constitutes part of the Cultural Heritage.