As a side point to my last post, I'd like to mention a discussion I had today concerning displaying objects in Historic (Country) Houses. We talked of the tension between making something new look old, and something old look new. I think this presents many issues (mainly concerning the authenticity of an artwork and the historic narrative of the building), but is interesting in realising the control we can have over the age of an aesthetic.
To what degree do you clean a medieval painting without making it look younger than its actual age? And in doing this, are we going against the authenticity of the work? To what degree do you age the appearance of something new without disrupting the true history of the building/artworks it is displayed alongside? A fellow course member bought up a Conservator she knows in Venice, who talked of conserving frames in different ways (shining or rusticating) depending on where the art was due to be displayed. I found this interesting, and relevant to the discussion carried out in our last posts. And by the way, I'm really enjoying our discussion of conservation as it's an area I have never fully considered in my study/understanding of art - its great!
Another way to look at this is by focusing on works of art/architecture that deliberately desire to be free from preservation. As a starting point I have decided to continue this discussion by looking at stranger examples of interactive/non-preservable 'artworks', as opposed to techy/new media - starting with Mexico's 'Underwater Museum' Cancun.
The Cancun Underwater Museum is the first of its kind, consisting of a series of underwater sculptural installations. The sculptures are all designed to become artificial reefs and are constructed from special materials which create areas for corals to exist and marine creatures to live and breed. The idea rests in the development of the sculptures aesthetic over time, becoming part of the environment they exist in as marine life colonize the structures. The work focuses on the affinity between sculpture and its selected context. The 'conservation' of these sculptures would therefore not only be irrelevant, but would defeat the entire purpose of the installation. Instead, the motivation is to create sculptural work that can be interacted with both by the human audience, and the surrounding wildlife. The work, taken out of the water to be 're-touched'/'re-stored', would setback their aesthetic ambition.
Whilst retaining an artworks appearance through conservation, its context and location are often subject to change. What I enjoy about this work is that it operates in the opposite way: its aesthetic will be subject to change, whilst its context remains the same. And so we are free from the danger of mis-representing, or mis-interpreting the sculptures in a different location.
In thinking about these ideas I was reminded of the architectural offerings of African tribes, mentioned in a recent lecture. Built for the appropriation of the deity Ala, old men from the village are held responsible for deciding when the building and sculptures are finished. Once this is decided, the building is not lived in, worshiped in or visited; it is left to rot, the sculptures and architecture gradually fading back into the forest and becoming part of its surroundings. In contrast with the museological idiom of the west, the intention to preserve and collect is once again absent and irrelevant. In Igbo once the building and sculptures are complete it remains in the past, as an offering instead of a preservable structure or artwork.
These examples remind us that not all art is made to be preserved. Much work is made for a specific time period alone; one could argue that in some cases this makes the work more authentic. When visiting the Underwater Museum in 50 years time, the absence of conservation will allow for the developed sculptures to expose the time-span of the their existence.
In relation to our previous posts: 'Conservation of Contemporary Art?' & 'What happens to todays work in the future?', I am going to finish by suggesting that perhaps conservation is not irrelevant, but is certainly less relevant to contemporary art than to the more traditional art aesthetic. Whilst today we face greater risk of creating less durable and conservable artwork, maybe this is appropriate to and characteristic of the fast moving technological world that contemporary art is increasingly apart of.
Wow - there's so much to think about in response to your latest post; I love it! I'm going to try and focus on one of the first points of concern you raised: that contemporary development of art strategies may negate classical art practice:
I think a lot of what is being implied in this question relates to the expectation of 'what art is', and for this reason, the immediate danger here is to consider a notion of the stereotypical or cliche within History of Art. The contemporary practices of Installation or Performance - categories under which you suggested placing Bring the Happy - are often not recognised as relating to 'traditional' works; indeed, the suggestion that this kind of art 'moves away from arts traditional ties' owing to its function (participatory/conceptual rather than purely decorative) in itself is problematic.
There is clearly much to discuss around notions of categorisation, tradition verses the traditional, authenticity in the arts, and definitions of the classical and the contemporary (I have no doubt that D I S C O U R S E will investigate some of these terms in the future). However, your initial idea about Conservation with regards to the contemporary art is really interesting.
The curation, collection and then conservation of todays Interactive/Participatory/Techy/'New Media' pieces of art are complicated areas of arts practice - especially if the 'aesthetic traditions' you mentioned include the exhibiting of historical, maintained works (Greek Sculptures) in museums. The concern you express for the future exhibition of today's complicated (digital) artworks is shared, and I think its an area that we'd both benefit from researching. Shall we focus our consecutive posts on this topic and our findings?
So what category would we place Bring the Happy under as an artwork - Installation? Performance? Such work moves away from arts traditional ties, functioning as participatory/conceptual instead of a purely decorative function. But in making these innovations, what aesthetic traditions are being compromised? Last week I attended a talk at Temple Newsam (@TempleNewsam) addressing the conservation of art in the Leeds Collections. This talk was delivered by Jenny Hack (painting conservator) and Ian Fraser (head of preventive conservation).
Jenny Hack talked of the two modes of conservation: to re-store and to re-touch. I asked Jenny why, if we are so concerned with retaining the objects true authenticity, are Greek sculptures not brightly painted? In response we discussed the boundaries of the conservator. Although it is known that Greek Sculpture was once coloured, due to the lack of documentation 're-touching' them in this way may put us in danger of fabricating the works original appearance. This is being addressed by the use of digital technology, projecting onto works 'what may have been' without physically falsifying the material object.
With this in mind it seems today's art practice may come up against the opposite problem. Different to the Greeks we face no shortage of documentation; mass media (photographing, blogging, tweeting, filming) puts us in the position where such a suggestion would be impossible. Documenting is not only widely practiced, but has become a characteristic of our contemporary culture. However, are we instead in a greater danger of the loss of material object?
Jenny talked of the difficulty in conserving objects made of degradable materials or involving technologies that become obsolete (Bring the Happy), in place of durable materials such as oil paint. This issue is something that NeCCAR (Network for the Conservation of Contemporary Art Research) have been introduced to resolve. However aside from this issue regarding material, other questions must also be considered. How are we to conserve artworks that are location specific? How are we to conserve artworks that require a certain person or performance to function? When supposing this, it may be justified to state that contemporary art seems to place greater concern on concept over the durability of its aesthetic.
My main thinking when leaving the talk was: will contemporary art remain in museums as the ancient Greek culture continues to exist in ours? Perhaps this is missing the point of what contemporary art is all about. With 'concept' playing such a large role, maybe the physical object and its durability take the back seat. It may be that the artwork of today will exist in the future in-part as material object, but mostly through text and documentation... as projections not of 'what may have been', but 'what was'.
However large some of us understand the scope of art to be, it must be acknowledged that many people simply believe that art 'isn't for them'. One thing I particularly like about Invisible Flock's work is how accessible the piece is; through the medium of memory, Bring The Happy invites absolutely everyone to take part in and personally create a collective work of art. The work surely sits under many other categories as well: it could be understood as cultural mapping, or even something like sociological psychology. Guy Debord's 1955 term 'psychogeography' certainly fits the bill in some respect. But the way in which Richard and the team turn the invisible (memories) into a visual project illustrates the artistic endeavor of Bring The Happy - the emotional contours that overlay the Leeds City map create a beautiful new landscape, suggesting alternative understandings of familiar places.
The social engagement induced by the participatory nature of the work of Invisible Flock certainly help to define their practice, as well as the practices of many other arts organisations. Rather than considering this work via theories of relational aesthetics, I'd like to focus on the simple effects that I think Bring The Happy will have produced. As previously mentioned, a project of this nature involves a wider audience of people who might not identify in any way with art, encouraging the public not only to think about what the art is doing but to actually contribute to it as well. This must have been really exciting - and I think it is key to acknowledge that this art introduction happened outside the gallery. By staging the art event in different parts of the city center, the work was allowed to be diverse enough to represent a more accurate and emotional view of Leeds as a home to many different people.
The development of the Bring The Happy project is interesting, and to me it completely makes sense to continue sharing the discoveries of such a collection of memories. It may not have been the projects predominant aim to enable those who feel like art 'isn't for them' to wholeheartedly engage with it. But I believe that everyone's capacity to retain and share memories could somehow parallel everyone's potential to participate with art.
.JPG)