WHAT IS CONSERVATION AND WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO CONSERVE?

In the realm of art and culture, conservation has multiple meanings

What is conservation, and what does it mean to conserve? In the realm of art and culture, conservation has multiple meanings. Traditionally associated with the physical enhancement of both the structure and appearance of objects imbued with specific value—particularly in the West, where it has been linked with expert mending, repair, and restoration—conservation today has evolved beyond merely prolonging the material lives of objects. It now engages with materiality rather than just the material, exploring how an object’s identity and meaning are entangled with concepts of time, space, environment, values, politics, economy, conventions and culture. Additionally, conservation extends beyond its focus on “objects” to include subjects, addressing the intersubjective and intergenerational transmission of tradition, memory, skills, techniques and expertise—whether tangible or intangible.

In much of the Western world and its spheres of influence, however, conservation is still largely governed by an ontology that prioritizes authenticism and the singular authorial agency tied to an intent. This approach is further reinforced by insights gained through technical investigations into the physicality of objects, creating an exclusive domain for experts sanctioned to perform conservation work. However, outside this context—gradually recognized in the era of unlearning colonial and imperial harms—indigenous cultures have long maintained preservation practices rooted in orality and the repeated ritual tending to and remaking of objects, a process unanchored to material sameness.

It is crucial to recognize conservation as an amalgamation of cultures and a fusion of theory and practice

Craftspeople from these cultures, along with other individuals considered “non-experts,” including artists and artisans elsewhere, have engaged in upkeep practices without these being acknowledged or critically evaluated as conservation. Simultaneously, various conservation specialisms in the West—such as those dealing with electronic media, performance, architecture, archeological and “ethnographic” objects—operate in silos and have rarely interacted. Moreover, recent theoretical advancements in contemporary art and “ethnographic” conservation have only slowly begun to reach other areas of conservation. Today, it is crucial to recognize conservation as an amalgamation of its diverse cultures and a critical fusion of theory and practice. This includes understanding the varied approaches to objects, practices and expertise.

Critical Conservation redefines conservation as a critical practice, theorizing it as a discursive, pluricultural, decolonial and epistemic activity shaped by politics, conventions, education, the economy and institutions. Emerging from the critical-reflective developments of recent decades—particularly in the realms of contemporary art and “ethnographic” conservation—Critical Conservation aims to engage with present communities of practice, including Indigenous communities, as well as artists, artisans, and craftspeople, who have been considered external to the expert domain of professional and scholarly conservation in the West. Through transversal conservation foster transtemporal dialogue, bringing together separate fields of practice, such as architectural, time-based media art and archeological conservation often operating in the silos of their specialisms. Explore conservation futures through experimental conservation. The central theorems underpinning these investigations as a methodological cluster across the three temporal registers are the concepts of the “conservation object,” “practice,” and “expertise.”

Critical Conservation redefines conservation as a discursive, pluricultural, decolonial and epistemic activity