Center for Critical Conservation

The Critical Conservation Essay section presents reflections, provocations, and research emerging from the project and its wider community of scholars, artists, and practitioners. Published regularly on this page, these writings confront questions at the heart of Critical Conservation: What does it mean to conserve in a time of ecological collapse and planetary crisis? What — and whom — are we trying to preserve? Where does conservation stand in a more-than-human world? What does it mean to decolonize conservation and challenge its institutional histories? Who holds the authority to conserve, and whose knowledge counts? How might conservation be radically rethought across art, craft, heritage, science, and the environment? The series invites diverse voices and experimental formats, opening a space for critical inquiry and new imaginaries of conservation.

Uncommoning Conservation: Situated Counter-narratIves Across Multinatural Worlds

JULIANA ROBLES DE LA PAVA

The notion of Critical Conservation urges us to be suspicious of any stable equivalence and compels us to inhabit contradictions rather than resolve them. In his well-known essay Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern, Bruno Latour proposes a reorientation of critical thought: not toward dismantling what is taken as given or self-evident, but toward engaging with what truly matters, those networks of people, instruments, practices and institutions that affect both humans and other-than-human beings on this planet.
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The Architectural Palimpsest: Ritual, Renewal, and Critical Conservation

SAMIDHA PULSAKAR

Modern conservation theory is predominantly informed by a Western material ontology that privileges original fabric, age-value, and expert authority. Articulated through influential charters such as the Venice Charter (1964) and institutionalised within global heritage frameworks like UNESCO, this paradigm equates authenticity with the physical continuity of historic material. Within this model, conservation is conceptualised as the stabilisation of the past, preserving tangible remnants of a specific historical moment and protecting them from alteration.
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