From intangibility to materiality and back again: preserving Portuguese performance artworks from the 1970s

Performance art has seen growing incorporation in museum collections in the last decade, and yet Conservation is still struggling to find methods to conserve these artworks, which resist acts of containement. In the context of the present research, three problems hampering progress in the conservation of performance art were identified: (1) Conservation’s scope is often seen in opposition to the nature of performance artworks, (2) there is a lack of an epistemological analysis of Conservation’s documentation methodologies, and (3) there are difficulties in managing the artwork’s networks in institutional contexts. The third problem is beyond the scope of this thesis, as this project was undertaken outside an institutional setting. This thesis therefore sheds light on the first two issues by drawing on agential realism (Karen Barad 2007), an epistemological lens which considers that every act of knowing implies material and discursive entanglements within every agent involved. To answer the first problem, a relational ontology of Conservation, which considers that Conservation practice, instead of being associated only with tangible objects, constitutes and is coconstituted by material-discursive practices, is proposed. Following this reasoning the act of conservation is then presented as a set of decisions, which vary in scale and produce materialisations of artistic manifestations. This thesis argues that cultural heritage works, including performance art, are thus always intangible until being materialised by heritage practices, which are characterised by specific ways of seeing, or measurements. In this sense it will be demonstrated that performance art, instead of existing only in the present, exists in various material ways, which are recursively disseminated over time through practices of memorialisation. To understand the second problem, two performance artworks created in the 1970s by Portuguese artists have been documented for the first time in this thesis. The case study analyses demonstrate how current methodologies are focused on perfomance-based art’s materials instead of its materiality and how that process increases the number of exclusions in the documentation process. Exclusions are then explained as acts of affirmation of the dominant cultural and political discourse and, in that sense, contribute to the invisibility of counter-narratives which not only co-constitute but are an intentional part of the fabric of performance artworks. Aside from implying a constant delimitation in the materialisation of these works, exclusions also immortalise social injustices in the form of, for example, community misrecognition. Participation, understood in the broad sense as an act of yielding authority, is proposed as a way to materialise performance artworks while reducing the exclusions that occur in every documentation process. This thesis argues that a dislocation of authority to peripheral stakeholders is not a loss of authorial power, but a way to multiply the instances of the work in multiple body-archives. An outcome of this dissertation, is a proposal and detailed outline for an innovative methodology for documenting performance art works

Embracing transience and subjectivity in the conservation of complex contemporary artworks: contributions from ethnographic and psychological paradigms

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Conservação e Restauro, Perfil Ciências da Conservação Especialização em Arte ContemporâneaDrawing from philosophy and social sciences, mainly ethnography and psychology, this dissertation explores new roles that conservators often assume, while proposing new methodologies for artist’s interviews. In order to preserve complex artworks, such as installations or performances, conservation theory needs to embrace transience, and therefore suggest new and more adequate methodologies. Several authors already accepted change, and proposed concepts that acknowledge artworks’ trajectories. However, currently applied methodologies do not follow that perspective and endanger preservation of such complex artworks. Through a comparison between ethnographic objects and complex artworks, ethnographic methods showed promise for extrapolation into the conservation field. Examples from Bali’s cremation rituals and the Portuguese artist Francisco Tropa (b. 1968, Lisbon) helped illustrate this question. Ethnographic methods applied for interviewing and analysing the artist’s discourse were of great value, as they provide for validation and data reproducibility. From these methods, content analysis stood out by allowing a better structuration and validation of the artist’s discourse. During this process, conservators’ role was re-considered. Substantially different tasks and decisions are for conservators to make. Ultimately, are they interpreters, performers, executers, reporters, archivists, actants? Inevitably, this study held more questions than offered answers. However, it is by challenging currents practices, placing them constantly under scrutiny, that possibilities emerge. New theories for contemporary art preservation, contemporary in themselves, need to be uncovered in order to, subsequently, being questioned again. It is only through this demanding process that contemporary art conservation can continue to be propelled forward

Situated knowledges and materiality in the conservation of performance art

UIDB/04209/2020 UIDP/04209/2020In which ways is conservation expanding to allow for an ethical care of performance artworks? This article draws on feminist epistemologies – primarily Donna Haraway’s ‘situated knowledges’ – to develop a critical enquiry on the politics and ethics in the conservation of performance artworks. Beginning by rehearsing those feminist perspectives in the context of the conservation of contemporary art, through the exploration of the activist performance artwork Música Negativa (Negative Music), created by the Portuguese artist E.M. de Melo e Castro in 1965, the article then looks at the situated knowledges that are part of the process of mapping the material history of performance art.publishersversionpublishe

Micro-decisions in the documentation of performance-based artworks

The preservation of performance-based artworks, such as installations and performances, is often accompanied by frequent discussions regarding their documentation. How can performance-based artworks, which are unrepeatable and contextual, be documented after the event? This paper aims to reflect upon the purpose of the documentation of performance-based artworks and about how the micro-decisions conservators make during the documentation process can influence and are influenced by their intentions. In this context, the concepts and practices of documentation are critically examined. With this goal in mind, the artwork Identificación (1975) by the Portuguese artist Manoel Barbosa (b. 1953) and the documentation produced in two different contexts by two different people (a choreographer and a conservator) are discussed.publishersversionpublishe

on the material legacies and their possibilities for transmission

UIDB/04209/2020 UIDP/04209/2020 SFRH/BD/90040/2012 PD/BD/105900/2014What is the material legacy of performance artworks? What are the possibilities for those legacies, and how much of that depends on the artist's involvement in the historicisation and institutionalisation of their own works? This paper will reflect on the legacies of performance art and its memories and on the ways the museum and the artist work in the co-production of their material manifestations. It will explore this theme through two complementary perspectives – one of a curator, and one of a conservator, also bringing together the agencies of artists, institutions, and objects themselves. In bridging the workings of the exhibition and the museum’s backstage, we aim to provide an integral approach to the material lives of performance artworks and to the manifold of material manifestations of their legacies.publishersversionpublishe

Performance Art in the Realm of the Museum: The Potential of Reenactment as Practice of Memorialization

UIDB/04209/2020 UIDP/04209/2020Can reenactments be a way to create counter-narratives in and for the museum? Through the analysis of political performance (or what the artist Tania Bruguera calls ‘political-timing-specific’ artworks), this essay discusses the potential of reenactment as both a practice of materializing memories and narratives of oppression and of rethinking museum policies in terms of preservation and display. Its main argument is that, while the archive can be regarded as a form of materializing the memory of these works, reenactment is more than a way of recovering the past; it is also a device for reconstructing memories of activism and oppression. This essay further suggests that reenactments of political-timing-specific works demand a change in accessioning, conservation, and presentation practices, which might be inclined to erase decentralized art-historical and material narratives.publishersversionpublishe

Unruly objects: NFTs, blockchain technologies and bio-conservation

This article explores and challenges notions and methodologies of conservation, including the use of blockchain technologies as a means of establishing provenance of a physical BioArtwork, of the artist’s documentation encapsulating their intentions and of the conservator’s records required for the artwork’s ongoing care. The exploration is done through a case study of an art project called ‘Unruly Objects and Biological Conservation’ created by Anna Dumitriu with support from Alex May. The artwork consists of three items containing RFID tags sealed in resin ‐ which point to the location of the artist’s documentation. Therefore, the works physically include instructions for maintaining their inherent concepts and materiality for the benefit of the conservators. Such instructions can often be difficult to track down, or become disassociated from the artwork while the digital preservation of this storage method also poses its own set of questions. The works also include biological material including mud from a bacterial ecosystem known as a Winogradsky Column, living plant material and SARS-CoV-2 (coronavirus) RNA from a plasmid construct

A Word About Performance Art

Conservation of Time-based Media Art is the first book to take stock of the current practices and conceptual frameworks that define the emerging field of time-based media conservation, which focuses on contemporary artworks that contain video, audio, film, slides or software components. Written and compiled by a diverse group of time-based media practitioners around the world, including conservators, curators, registrars and technicians among others, this volume offers a comprehensive survey of specialized practices that have developed around the collection, preservation and display of time-based media art. Divided into 23 chapters with contributions from 36 authors and 85 additional voices, the narrative of this book provides both an overview and detailed guidance on critical topics, including the acquisition, examination, documentation and installation of time-based media art; cross-medium and medium-specific treatment approaches and methods; the registration, storage, and management of digital and physical artwork components; collection surveys and project advocacy; lab infrastructures, staffing and the institutional implementation of time-based media conservation. Conservation of Time-based Media Art serves as a critical resource for conservation students and for a diverse professional audience who engage with time-based media art, including conservation practitioners and other collection caretakers, curators, art historians, collectors, gallerists, artists, scholars and academics

Staging Contemporary Art, by Tatja Scholte (Amsterdam University Press, 2022)

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