The media artist, performance artist and filmmaker VALIE EXPORT is considered a pioneer of feminist and conceptual art worldwide. Since the 1960s, VALIE EXPORT has created an extensive archive on her artistic and curatorial projects. In 2015, the artist's archive was acquired by her hometown of Linz and transferred to the collection of the LENTOS Kunstmuseum. Since November 2017, VALIE EXPORT's personal library and extensive estate have been accessible to researchers and interested parties at the VALIE EXPORT Center Linz.Since 2019, a digital representation of the artist's archive has been developed in collaboration with the VALIE EXPORT Center Linz. The presentation and research platform was made available to the public in 2023. The continuously growing, searchable inventory includes, among other things, metadata on the artist's library as well as digital copies of photographs, posters, typescripts, concept sheets, sketches, screenplays, press releases, invitations, lecture manuscripts, and materials on VALIE EXPORT's teaching activities in several languages.

The digital archive was designed with different application scenarios in mind.The skim, swim & dive strategy was implemented for this purpose. The functions strolling, browsing and detailed search are designed for three different types of users. On the one hand, this enables a non-hierarchical access to experience (skim), on the other hand, a hypothesis-guided research (swim) and finally, a targeted and scientifically motivated detailed search for specific archival materials (dive). For example, scholars can use advanced search functions and filters or search digitized texts via a full-text index of OCR-recognized archival materials. The digital representation of work-related and documentary materials contributes to making VALIE EXPORT's archive accessible as a living space for artistic and scholarly research. The curated section of the digital archive can transform VALIE EXPORT's co-developed approach to the archive as an aesthetic strategy into the net-based medium: The differentiation in terms of source, for example, between work and documentation is decisively identified through the metadata and the re-presentation of the artifacts in the digital. The digital archive maps the artist's ordering principles and reference structures - and thus foregrounds the special features of the comprehensive collection of documentary materials on art, science, exhibitions, and contemporary history.