Rhizome is opening its self-hosted video platform to artists after commercial platforms repeatedly removed art videos from circulation. The New York organisation, an affiliate of the New Museum, is piloting dedicated artist channels on video.rhizome.org, known as VRO, inviting artists to apply for a place while it works out a sustainable model for the service.

Rhizome launched VRO in 2023 as a reliable home for videos from its own archive, including commissioned works and documentation of past events. The dangers of relying on commercial hosts became clear when Ann Hirsch's horny lil feminist, commissioned by Rhizome and the New Museum as an online exhibition in 2015, was taken down by Vimeo. The removal showed how easily a single platform decision could erase work that had been commissioned, exhibited and written about online.

The problem escalated this year. Electronic Arts Intermix, the nonprofit video and media art resource founded in 1971, was censored by Vimeo in May 2026. In response, Rhizome worked with EAI to migrate more than 3,000 artist videos from its collection, making them available through open-source streaming. The two organisations marked the move with an event, Trust & Safety, on 10 November, screening works from EAI's archive, including several removed from Vimeo, alongside a conversation between Rhizome's Michael Connor and EAI's Rebecca Cleman.

The episode has become a test case for the preservation of digital art. As platforms run by venture-backed companies tighten moderation and replace creative teams with automated systems, organisations that safeguard artists' work are increasingly building their own infrastructure rather than trusting it to services that can delete it without warning.