Diffracting Histories of Performance

Marçal, Hélia

doi:10.1080/13528165.2019.1717863

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…Conservators can also find ways to re-situate themselves by practising difference. One example would be to engage with re-enactment or re-fabrication processesand, more so, to yield their authority and let people with different backgrounds participate in these controlled experiments on the ways of making (Marçal 2019b). Re-enactment processes can, therefore, be seen as a form of recovering counter-narratives that exist in a state of potentiality and are yet to be performed, as a set of practices that can enact difference in the conservation processdifference in the ways in which we observe, categorise, and undertake treatment; difference in the ways we document our own positioning, and that of others; difference in the types of knowledges we choose to highlight and those that we exclude.…”

Section: Staying With the Liminalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Becoming Difference: On the Ethics of Conserving the In-Between

Marçal

2021

Studies in Conservation

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Notions of authenticity underpinning conservation practice have been challenged by artistic and museum practices that contest the mere possibility of singular material existence of objects. These practices work within the liminal, in-between, space some objects currently occupy. But how can conservation conciliate the preservation of an object's material manifestation, with the ethical need to recognise its other material possibilities? The ethical implications of conserving objects whose existence is contested are discussed. Drawing on feminist theory, it is argued that the path towards a fairer, inclusive, and sustainable conservation practice is dependent on the recognition of difference. The ethical ramifications that emerge from practices of conservation that reflect on performative inbetweenness, here called liminality, are explored. By demonstrating that the act of observation is always contingent, the ways we understand and conserve objects materially change them. How those changes can exclude their material possibilities and their becomings, are discussed. A possible ethical approach to conservation is proposed, that goes beyond modernist views of the object being conserved, recognising the exclusions inherent to any process of conservation, celebrating the diversity of material existences of objects we ought to protect.

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Section: Staying With the Liminalmentioning

confidence: 99%