15 young scientists with various professional qualifications have been researching the conservation of contemporary art since the beginning of 2016. They presented their findings at the symposium The conservation of contemporary art poses increasingly complex questions. No wonder that the symposium “From different perspectives to common grounds in contemporary art conservation”, organized by the Cologne Institute of Conservation Sciences […]
15 young scientists with various professional qualifications have been researching the preservation of contemporary art since the beginning of 2016. They have now presented their findings at the symposium
The conservation of contemporary art poses increasingly complex questions. No wonder that the symposium “From different perspectives to common grounds in contemporary art conservation”, organized by the Cologne Institute of Conservation Sciences (CICS), was fully booked as a place for possible answers shortly after registration went live. As the event took place on July 25 and 26, 2018 in the Audimax of TH Köln, around 200 guests from ten countries were ultimately able to attend.
As part of the symposium, the 15 Early Stage Researchers from the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network “New Approaches in the Conservation of Contemporary Art” (nacca.eu), which is funded by the European Union, presented their research work on the conservation of contemporary art. These young scientists with various professional qualifications (conservators, curators, two artists, a museum scientist, an anthropologist, a journalist and a lawyer) have been working on various core topics since the beginning of 2016: Intention, authorship and authentication in contemporary art, the contemporary artwork and institutional conventions, reproduction of contemporary artworks and the relevance of interdisciplinary networks in the conservation of contemporary art.
Is an update of conservation theory necessary?
The knowledgeable keynotes by Renate Buschmann, Hanna Hölling, Johannes Gefeller, Ulrich Lang, Salvador Muñoz Viñas, Renata Peters, Marina Pugliese, Antonio Rava and Ursula Schädler-Saub provided an introduction to the thematic field. A recurring question was: Is an update of restoration theory necessary, an adaptation to the special requirements of the conservation of contemporary art? Hanna Hölling, Ulrich Lang and Antonio Rava, for example, shed light on the understanding of time in restoration based on ephemeral works that are designed for natural decay (as in the case of Zoe Leonard’s “Strange Fruit”, discussed by Nina Quabeck), or works whose survival is based on “rejuvenation” through material replacement (as in the case of Joseph Beuys’ “Capri Batteri” or – quite controversially – in the new production of Thomas Ruff’s “Portrait Pia Stadtbäumer”, discussed by Marta Garcia Celma).
Dealing properly with software-based art and the preservation of performance art
How do we preserve performance, asked Johannes Gefeller and Iona Goldie-Scott. Often it is not so much the preservation of “relics” as the “revitalization” of a performance that presents us with challenges (for example in the case of Tino Seghal, whose work fails conventional approaches because he rejects any form of documentation). How are tasks and knowledge redistributed when we take responsibility for the preservation of this type of artwork?
The process of “musealizing”, according to the quintessence of the contributions by Hanna Hölling, Renata Peters, Brian Castriota, Joanna Killiszek, Caitlin Spangler-Bickell and Aga Wielocha, should honor the dynamic, process-like character of the works that proliferate in our collections. Forcing works into narrow museum standards runs the risk of neglecting important facets – as Panda de Haan’s contribution to the museum life of Helio Oticia’s “Tropicalía” also demonstrated in concrete terms.
Claudia Röck, who deals with conservation strategies for software-based art, made those present aware that the “care” of these works is an eternal process, and Dušan Barok showed new ways of collective documentation using media wikis, the suitability of which the SFMoMA, for example, has been testing for some time.
Conservator = editor?
Several contributions referred to the parallels between the work of the restorer and the editor. Nina Quabeck and Dušan Barok emphasized that restoring, like documenting, involves deciding for certain narratives (for one restorative treatment or mode of presentation and against the other), and that in the long run it might be more helpful to incorporate these “editorial” decisions into our documentation rather than just describing the treatment/installation per se. Zoe Miller, exploring the pitfalls associated with understanding authorship, drew participants’ attention to the supposed invisibility of the editor and conservator and asked what the social consequence of this ‘practioner invisibilty’ of this professional field actually is.
Fortunately, many major topics were discussed during these two days with lively participation from all. Restorers today are called upon to convey the work of art to future generations not only as an object and a theoretical concept, but also as a process and an experience – and that demands a great deal, as Salvador Muñoz Viña concluded.
