Reshaping the Collectible

Three of the six studies focus on a work or group of works by individual artists and these artists are:

• Tony Conrad
• Ima-Abasi Okon
• Richard Bell

Three of the focused studies are thematic and these are:

• Remaking, Remastering, Reproduction
• The Lives of Net Art
• When Archives and Records Live in the Museum

How were these subjects selected?

The subjects of these focused studies were chosen following a consultation process across Tate, with staff nominating artworks or areas of study that had challenged their practice. These nominations came from registrars, conservators, curators, art handlers and archivists.

Artist, composer, musician, performer, teacher and filmmaker, Tony Conrad was a key figure in the New York avant-garde art scene in the 1960s, best known for his seminal experiments in minimal, long-duration sound and structural filmmaking. He was a central part of The Theatre of Eternal Music (later known as The Dream Syndicate), working collaboratively with La Monte Young, John Cale, Angus MacLise and Marian Zazeela among others. In 1966, Conrad created The Flicker, which created stroboscopic effects by switching between black and white and provided a model for the sub-genre of flicker films that would later emerge in experimental media practice. His other works explored the conceptual and material properties of film and he used video and performance to explore themes of power and authority.

Conrad later ventured into video and public-access television while teaching in the Department of Media Study at The State University Of New York, Buffalo, where he lived and worked alongside filmmakers and media artists Hollis Frampton, Paul Sharits, Steina and Woody Vasulka and Peter Weibel.

The research carried out as part of Reshaping the Collectible responded to Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain and the questions raised by the work entering Tate’s collection after Conrad’s death. What we learnt centred on the implications for our practice in acknowledging the community that had supported Conrad’s work, in particular Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain, since it was first performed in 1972. This led us to change the ways we acknowledge the contribution and knowledge of those outside the museum in our documentation, moving away from the ‘neutral’ voice of museum documentation. The research also focused on understanding the history of this artwork and its many varying iterations. This detailed history was supported by extensive interviews with past performers, producers and curators of the work, all of whom had an intimate connection with it. This led to a consideration of the role of memory in constructing the future of these artworks and the ethics of this work within conservation.

As conservators, collection managers and curators, this case study has served to develop our practice in relation to complex performance works in several ways, including how we acknowledge the many different types of knowledge and expertise about a work within the networks that have and continue to support their ongoing performance, how we document performance artworks, how we manage components of performance works, and how we develop practices that nurture and support their ongoing transmission.