About the conference
Contemporary art conservation requires a re-assessment of the distinction between the work and its re-configuration in documentation.
Although documentation is crucial for the survival of many contemporary works of art, it is never neutral: all approaches, formats, media and systems have their own inherent affordances and blind spots and always transform what they document. Furthermore, in process-centered, technology-based or performative artworks in particular, we often can no longer make a sharp distinction between an original work and its subsequent documentation or replication: documentation is part of the work’s very core.
On the other hand, even the most meticulously documented works will need to be re-installed or re-performed regularly in order to survive, because otherwise important tacit know-how will get lost.
The role of the artist in this process is central, but contested: what if s/he changes her mind, loses interest or is no longer available? And what if the authorship of the work is distributed over several actors? Also, the role of the conservator has taken new dimensions: conservation responsibilities and tasks are now distributed over a diversity of agents.
Performing Documentation in the Conservation of Contemporary Art is jointly organized by the research project Documentation of Contemporary Art and the Network for Conservation of Contemporary Art Research (NeCCAR).
Scientific committee
Renée van de Vall (UM), Vivian van Saaze (UM), Gunnar Heydenreich (CiCS), Rita Macedo (FCT-IHA-UNL), Lúcia Almeida Matos (IHA-UNL/FBAUP)
Local organisation committee
Rita Macedo, Lúcia Almeida Matos, Cristina Oliveira, Andreia Nogueira, Hélia Marçal, Teresa Azevedo
Programme
View presentations from the conference
Renée van de Vall An Introductory Talk on NeCCAR
Gabriella Giannachi Documenting the User Experience: From Blast Theory’s Rider Spoke to RAMM’s Moor Studies and Tate’s Art Maps
Liliana Coutinho The Role of Artistic Documentation in Conserving and Convey Social Relationships
Rebecca Gordon Documenting Performance and Performing Documentation: On the Interplay of Documentation and Authenticity
Irene Müller Performing Art, Its Documentation, Its Archives – On the Need of Memories, the Quality of Blind Spots and New Approaches to Transmitting Performance Art
Ana Dinger Constructing Continuity: Considerations on the Perpetuation of Performance-Based Artworks
Allessandra Barbuto The Museum Role: Preserving, Documenting and Acquiring Performance
Kinga Olesiejuk The Modality of Documentations as Conjunction of Contemporary Conservation and Artistic Practices
Vivian van Saaze In the Absence of Documentation: Refelections on the Practice of Remembrance
Jo Ana Morfin Reactivation Strategies for Unstable Events
Rita Macedo and Lúcia Almeida Matos Documentation of Contemporary Art Project Presentation
Andreia Nogueira and Hélia Marçal Performativity in Conservation: The Challenges of Documenting Francisco Tropa’s Oeuvre
Christina Barros Oliveira Suddenly Butterflies! Documenting Life through Marta de Menezez Nature?
Renée van de Vall Documenting Dilemmas: On the Relevance of Ethnically Ambiguous Cases
Jan Marontate Analysing Incommensurable Values in Contemporary Art Documentation: Insights from Cultural Sociology
Sanneke Stigter Co-producing Conceptual art – A Conservator’s Testimony on Working with Jan Dibbets
Ursula Haller, Erich Gantzert-Castrillo and Ivo Mohrmann artemak®. From a Compilation of Questionnaires… to a Wiki-Based Online Platform… to an Interdisciplinary Documentation and Research Project
Katrien Blanchaert Documenting Evolving Artworks: A Case Study
Paolo Gili, Antonio Rava and Maria Teresa Roberto Pinot Gallizio’s Large-Format Canvases: Paintings Without Stretching Device and the Importance of Documentation for the Respect of the Anomaly of Modernist Paintings
Claudio Marchese, Federica Pace and Rita Salis Documenting La Mararana Arte Ambientale’s Works of Art: Cataloguing Conservation and Interviews
Siska Genbrugge Lost Line: A Case Study Documenting Contemporary art at LACMA
Julia Noordegraaf Documenting the Analogue Past in Marijke van Warmerdam’s Film Installations
Annet Dekker The Quest for the Survival of Net Art, or a Speculative Approach to Documentation
Andreia Magalhães Films in Art Museums: in a Troubled Position Between the Archive and the Collection
Teresa Azevedo In-Between Places: Ângela Ferreira’s Double-Sided, 1996–2012
Glenn Wharton Public Access in the Age of Documented Art