The technique of conservation: on realms of theory and cultures of practice

What is conservation? Simplistic as it may seem, this question has many possible answers. Today, conservation no longer aims simply to prolong its objects’ material lives into the future. It is seen as an engagement with materiality, rather than material—that is, with the many specific factors determining how objects’ identity and meaning are entangled with the aspects of time, the environment, ruling values, politics, economy, conventions and culture. Additionally, beyond the concerns with objects, conservation now also engages with subjects, and the accompanying notions of the transmission of skill, tradition, memory and tacit knowledge. By glimpsing into the theories past and present, this paper argues that conservation is a complex techno-cultural practice with a strong, retroactive impact on its objects and subjects. Conservation offers an invaluably rich context to study a man-made world. Simultaneously, it allows us to pursue fundamental epistemic questions related to what, when and how artworks exist in the world and how our engagement with them is contingent upon the prevailing cultural–historical conditions.Qu’est-ce que la conservation-restauration? Aussi simple qu’elle puisse paraître, cette question prête à de nombreuses réponses possibles. Aujourd’hui, la conservation-restauration ne vise plus seulement à prolonger pour l’avenir, la vie matérielle des objets qu'elle traite. Elle est considérée comme bien plus impliquée dans la matérialité que dans la matière, en ce qu'elle s'attache aux nombreux facteurs spécifiques qui déterminent la façon dont l’identité et la signification des objets sont liées aux aspects temporels, environnementaux, au régime de valeurs, à la politique, à l’économie, aux conventions et à la culture. De plus, au-delà de ses préoccupations pour les objets, la conservation-restauration investit désormais également les sujets et notions connexes à la transmission des compétences, à la tradition, à la mémoire et à la connaissance tacite. A l'aune des théories anciennes et actuelles, cet article soutient que la conservation-restauration est une pratique techno-culturelle complexe avec un impact fort et rétroactif sur ses objets et ses sujets. La conservation-restauration offre un contexte d'une inestimable richesse pour étudier un monde construit par l’homme. Simultanément, elle nous permet d’approfondir un questionnement épistémique fondamental posant les quand, comment et par quoi les œuvres existent dans le monde et comment notre engagement vis à vis d’elles est contingent des conditions historiques et culturelles qui prévalent.Was ist Konservierung? Obwohl eine einfache Frage, gibt es viele Antworten. Heute zielt Konservierung nicht mehr einfach auf die Verlängerung der Lebensdauer von Material und Objekten (Bestandserhaltung). Es ist vielmehr eine Auseinandersetzung mit Materialität und den spezifischen Faktoren, die die Identität und Bedeutung eines Objektes bestimmen sowie die damit verbundenen Aspekten wie Zeit, Umwelt, Werte, Politik, Wirtschaft, Kommunikation und Kultur. Über die Belange des Objekts hinaus beschäftigt sich Bestandserhaltung heute auch mit den Subjekten und den Ideen der Übertragung von Fähigkeiten, Traditionen, Erinnerung und implizitem Wissen. Dieser Artikel argumentiert nach einem Streiflicht auf vergangene und zeitgenössische Theorien, dass Bestandserhaltung eine komplexe techno-kulturelle Praxis mit einem starken, retroaktiven Einfluss auf ihre Objekte und Subjekte ist. Sie bietet einen umfangreichen Kontext, um die vom Menschen geformte Welt zu studieren. Gleichzeitig erlaubt sie es uns fundamentale erkenntnistheoretische Fragen zu stellen, zum Beispiel wann, wie und was für Kunstwerke in der Welt existieren und wie unser Verhältnis zu ihnen von den herrschenden kultur-historischen Bedingungen geprägt ist.什么是保存修复？这个问题看似简单，却可能有很多答案。今天，保存修复不再单单是为了延长物质未来的寿命。它保护的不只是材料，我们可以把保存修复视作与物质性的一种联系，可以说有很多具体因素决定了物质的身份和意义，而这些又与时间、环境、执政价值观、政治、经济、公约和文化等方面串联在一起。此外，超出对对象的关注，如今的保存修复工作伴随着技能、传统、记忆、隐性知识的传播观念，也与主题产生了联系。通过窥探过去和现在的理论，作者认为保存修复是一种综合技术与文化的实践，它对其对象和主题有着强烈的、可追溯的影响力。保存修复为研究人造世界提供了无价的丰富的语境。同时，它使我们能够追寻有关世上存在何种艺术品以及何时、如何创造的等基本的认识论问题，而如何与艺术品产生关联则取决于当前的文化历史条件

Unpacking the Score: Fluxus and the Material Legacy of Intermediality

It is October 1959. I am visiting George Brecht’s just opened exhibition at the Reuben Gallery in New York. Titled toward events: an arrangement and displaying various objects as propositions, the exhibition is difficult to classify—it is neither an “object exhibition” nor can one really see “performances” (Fig. 1).[1] The “toward” in the title suggests an experiment; the “arrangement”— a musical connotation. In fact, the concepts presented here have been derived from music. The objects are treated like scores. Before putting up his show, Brecht—a chemist by profession and an intriguing personality—had worked for various US companies such as Johnson and Johnson, authoring five U.S. patents and two co-patents, feminine tampons among others. His move towards fine arts coincided with his attendance at John Cage’s classes at the New School for Social Research, known for propagating new approaches to composing sound, music, and noise. As a result of his studies, Brecht conceives of textual notations of varying lengths that allow a great deal of freedom in their execution. These works stand apart from his contemporary Allan Kaprow’s instructions for Happenings that, more prescriptive, constrained room for improvisation (see, for instance, his 18 Happenings in 6 Parts from 1959). In his creative practice, Brecht also differs markedly from Cage, who organizes everyday sounds into musical compositions. Instead, Brecht accepts everyday situations, chance events, and “all occurrences” that might result from an encounter between the participants and the objects as a legitimate outcome. (Here, my use of the word “participants” rather than “viewers” emphasizes the subjects’ engagement over the passive, disembodied viewing.) Brecht wants to ensure that “the details of everyday life, the random constellations of objects that surround us, stop going unnoticed.”[2] To present these details, constellations, or occurrences in the context of a creative, authorial project, Brecht writes scores for them—an important aspect of my present contestation with the material legacy of Fluxus

Lost in Museums? Changeable Media, Their World, and Performance

From the perspective of museums and conservation, where does a work lie, how and where is it? This essay sets out to analyse Mark Rothko’s Harvard Murals exhibited in the form of an augmented reality at the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, MA. With the help of this and further examples, it argues that the changeable character of artworks does not comply with the traditional museum and its techniques of musealisation that privilege the idea of artworks as objects manifest in a physical matter. The traditional functionality of a museum has therefore been challenged. Accepting the changeable nature of artworks, contemporary conservation does not return artworks to their past condition but actively takes part in their actualisation on the basis of the archive. Further artworks by Yoko Ono and Nam June Paik are understood in terms of their duration, slow and fast, while the museum and conservation acquire a particular relation to time

Reflections on the Impossibility of Material Continuation

Have you ever considered, or been challenged by, the recent artistic media based on film, video and computer code, the so-called non-traditional media? Certainly—you might say—these media are, in a sense, nothing really new, since they are already a part of our increasingly mediatized culture. Indubitably, digital media cast their shadow on every aspect of modern life; they both form our culture and are being formed by it. Changeable by nature, digital media question established views considering what an artwork is, or might be, and what is being exhibited and preserved, as well as what enters the realm of cultural memory, and in which configuration. Being in the process of continuous reformulation and in and re-scription, these artworks move between formats and platforms, seemingly unconcerned with the gravity of their physical carriage—media as vehicles, as it were, of the concept, a floating synthesis of an artist’s mind and of all those engaged in the work’s genesis. But beware: the future of ever-expanding digital memory comes upon us, an immortalization gesture of sorts, directed against forgetting and oblivion. The digital cloud, multi-nodal, networked system of intra and internet, web-based mobile platforms, increasingly participatory applications, peer-to-peer formats that lack any representational content, have already commenced generating a multiplicity of mutable versions, variations, and clones. They lack reference to any of the familiar object-based (or objectified) strategies that for decades formed theories of traditional conservation. Imagine, then, the unfulfilled dreams of these stewards of heritage that attend to materialist ideologies by wishing to conserve artworks as physical objects

Relevance of laboratory testing for the diagnosis of primary immunodeficiencies: a review of case-based examples of selected immunodeficiencies

The field of primary immunodeficiencies (PIDs) is one of several in the area of clinical immunology that has not been static, but rather has shown exponential growth due to enhanced physician, scientist and patient education and awareness, leading to identification of new diseases, new molecular diagnoses of existing clinical phenotypes, broadening of the spectrum of clinical and phenotypic presentations associated with a single or related gene defects, increased bioinformatics resources, and utilization of advanced diagnostic technology and methodology for disease diagnosis and management resulting in improved outcomes and survival. There are currently over 200 PIDs with at least 170 associated genetic defects identified, with several of these being reported in recent years. The enormous clinical and immunological heterogeneity in the PIDs makes diagnosis challenging, but there is no doubt that early and accurate diagnosis facilitates prompt intervention leading to decreased morbidity and mortality. Diagnosis of PIDs often requires correlation of data obtained from clinical and radiological findings with laboratory immunological analyses and genetic testing. The field of laboratory diagnostic immunology is also rapidly burgeoning, both in terms of novel technologies and applications, and knowledge of human immunology. Over the years, the classification of PIDs has been primarily based on the immunological defect(s) ("immunophenotype") with the relatively recent addition of genotype, though there are clinical classifications as well. There can be substantial overlap in terms of the broad immunophenotype and clinical features between PIDs, and therefore, it is relevant to refine, at a cellular and molecular level, unique immunological defects that allow for a specific and accurate diagnosis. The diagnostic testing armamentarium for PID includes flow cytometry - phenotyping and functional, cellular and molecular assays, protein analysis, and mutation identification by gene sequencing. The complexity and diversity of the laboratory diagnosis of PIDs necessitates many of the above-mentioned tests being performed in highly specialized reference laboratories. Despite these restrictions, there remains an urgent need for improved standardization and optimization of phenotypic and functional flow cytometry and protein-specific assays. A key component in the interpretation of immunological assays is the comparison of patient data to that obtained in a statistically-robust manner from age and gender-matched healthy donors. This review highlights a few of the laboratory assays available for the diagnostic work-up of broad categories of PIDs, based on immunophenotyping, followed by examples of disease-specific testing