Curating as Expanded Conservation

How do curation and conservation intersect when it comes to the presentation of post-1960s time-based artworks emerging from processes of what Lucy Lippard described as ‘the dematerialisation of the art object’? While in the case of works based on performance and installation each act of exhibiting – that is display or activation of an artwork – may already involve some aspects of preservation, not all preservation aims at displaying artworks. A four-hour seminar and workshop on the 18th November 2021 developed as part of What is a Living Archive? Curating the Unruly Materiality of Contemporary Art. This workshop, co-convened by Dr Judit Bodor, Principal Investigator of Curating Living Archives, with Dr Hanna B. Hölling from UCL. Invited contributors included artist/curator Prof André Stitt and Benjamin Sebastian and Joseph Morgan Schofield from ]performance s p a c e[. The workshop used material from the Alastair MacLennan performance art archive at DJCAD and explored how the intersection of curation and conservation might productively contribute to the way we engage with and conceptualize ephemeral practices.