The workshop (UCLAN Feb 5, 2007)

Encounters with the live art document:
A manual for art conservationalists, museums and collectors.


This workshop explores key contemporary issues relevant to the conservation of documents generated from ephemeral art practices. In writing on the problem of preserving performance works in history some theorists, such as Peggy Phelan, have argued that performance art is best left without a trace in order to preserve its original and authentic expression. Others, like Philip Auslander have suggested that the live event and the audience is not necessary given the proliferation of documents that regenerate the affective quality of performances. Artists and art students practicing and studying live art and ephemeral art practices can challenge and contribute to these perspectives by asking how works that we create are circulated in history by conservationists, archivists and public and private collections.

The workshop invites artists and art students to imagine their work in the future. Participants are asked to bring one document of a live/ephemeral/performance/time-based work in any shape, form or material to present to the group. The generation of ideas on how to extend the life of the document from the most banal to outrageous suggestions will be explored. The key is to imagine new possibilities for archiving that may be physically impossible, structurally undesirable, and altogether faulty logic and unsound science. The group may further elect to document the process of group brainstorming as a performance onto itself. Together, the group will collaboratively co-author a manual on how to preserve each document presented by workshop participants. All participants will be accredited as agreed upon in the workshop.

Some questions for students to consider before the workshop:

What is the relationship between the event and its documentation that you have chosen to present at the workshop? How do you see your document being conserved in time? How do you desire the audience to encounter the document? Under what circumstances? How would these consideration be useful or challenging to museum collections, gallery displays, public monuments etc.?

Students working in arts related fields at the graduate level are invited to participate in this workshop. It is highly recommended that students attend the lecture “Archive of the Future” presented prior to the workshop.