The Critical Conservation Research Project

The Critical Conservation Research Project

Talk by Prof. Hanna B. Hölling (Bern)

Sep 15, 9.30am

Isabel Bader Centre for Performing Arts, Room 312

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.

Hanna B. Hölling is a Research Professor at Bern University of the Arts, Senior Fellow at Collegium Helveticum/ETH Zurich and Honorary Fellow in the History of Art Department, University College London. She works on conservation, material culture and postwar art history. On these topics, she has led research and published monographs, anthologies and numerous critical essays.

In partnership with the Agnes' Cultivating Sustainable Collections.