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Material Futures: Matter, Memory and Loss in Contemporary Art Production and Preservation

NACCA Glasgow Conference 2017
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In the staging of existing works, commissioning of new works, and in planning for their futures, cooperation between contemporary artists and collecting institutions has become key. Contemporary artistic practices have prompted a reconsideration of boundaries between the roles of artists and institutional staff, and between processes of art production, exhibition, and preservation.

Organised by the University of Glasgow and the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network ‘New Approaches in the Conservation of Contemporary Art’ (NACCA), this two-day conference hosted at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow will provide a forum for professionals and students working across different disciplines to discuss urgent questions regarding artwork identity, permanence and impermanence, reproducibility and replication, and the role of the artist and the institution in constructing and maintaining memory. It will explore these questions and other areas where artistic practice, curatorial practice, and conservation decision-making intersect through themes of materiality, memory and loss.

Topics may include but are by no means restricted to:

Individual and collective memory
– How does one’s memory of a work impact its conservation?
– Can remembrance be an act of conservation?
– Can conservation be an act of remembrance?

Material memory vs. material loss
– How do materials remember?
– How do we remember materials?
– What form(s) do immaterial losses take?

Memory and the archive in contemporary art practice and preservation
– How is memory employed in art making and art conservation?
– What forms do archives take?
– Can documentation take the form of embodied memory?

Traces and fragments
– How do works of art persist?
– In what ways do works leave traces?
– Are they a part of the artwork or its documentation?
– When does a work become a fragment?

The conference is supported by the Innovative Training Network ‘New Approaches in the Conservation of Contemporary Art’ (NACCA), which receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 642892.

Planning Committee: Dr. Dominic Paterson (University of Glasgow), Dr. Erma Hermens (Rijksmuseum), Brian Castriota (University of Glasgow), Nina Quabeck (University of Glasgow).

More information about the event:
 NACCA website
 Facebook

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