Conferences by Louise Lawson
This paper is published as part of the research project 'Reshaping the Collectible: When Artworks Live in the Museum' Tate generously funded by the Mellon Foundation , 2022
Some performance artworks pose a particular challenge upon acquisition by a museum, since what th... more Some performance artworks pose a particular challenge upon acquisition by a museum, since what they are is neither immediately visible nor easy to document. One such work is Tony Conrad’s Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain 1972, and acquiring it for the Tate collection has led to the question of how can we capture and document the implicit and explicit knowledge needed for such artworks to exist into the future. Based on the approach developed for documenting Conrad’s Ten Years Alive, this essay provides a simplified, adaptable methodology that can be used to create bespoke processes for the documentation of complex performance artworks
This paper is published as part of the research project 'Reshaping the Collectible: When Artworks Live in the Museum' Tate generously funded by the Mellon Foundation , 2022
The team of conservators working on Tony Conrad’s performance work Ten Years Alive on the Infinit... more The team of conservators working on Tony Conrad’s performance work Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain 1972 had to find new ways to document, conserve and transmit it following the artist’s death in 2016. This article discusses the experimental process undertaken in trying to preserve the work’s complexity and multiplicity and the dossier that was developed for use by future performers, conservators and curators
This paper is published as part of the research project 'Reshaping the Collectible: When Artworks Live in the Museum' Tate generously funded by the Mellon Foundation , 2022
What does it take to collect and conserve performance art at Tate? This essay explores the instit... more What does it take to collect and conserve performance art at Tate? This essay explores the institutional collection care practices that guide the acquisition and long-term care of performance artworks, with a focus on Tony Conrad’s Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain 1972, a complex film and performance piece that was acquired by Tate in 2020.
SNSF Performance: Conservation, Materiality, Knowledge, 2021
This is a two-day colloquium gathering leading voices in the field of performance theory and care... more This is a two-day colloquium gathering leading voices in the field of performance theory and care.
--------This event aims at advancing the knowledge on this topic within the discipline of conservation on the one hand, while, on the other, locating the discourse of conservation within a broader field of the humanities disciplines concerned with the theories and practices of performance— performance studies, anthropology, art history, curatorial studies, heritage studies and museology.
---------We propose to contest the common-sense understanding of performance as a non-conservable form and ask questions concerning how, and to what extent, performance art and performance-based works can be conserved.
---------Keynotes: Prof Rebecca Schneider (Brown University), Prof Pip Laurenson (Tate/Maastricht University), Prof Gabriella Giannachi (University of Exter), Prof Barbara Büscher (University of Music and Theatre Leipzig).
--------Speakers: Hélia Marçal, Kate Lewis, Lizzie Gorfaine, Ana Janevski, Martha Joseph, Erin Brannigan, Brian Castriota, Farris Wahbeh, Louise Lawson, Rachel Mader, Siri Peyer, Sooyoung Leam, Karolina Wilczyńska, Iona Goldie-Scot, Claire Walsh and Ana Ribeiro.
-------The colloquium will feature two performance interludes by artists Frieder Butzmann (May 29) and Gisela Hochuli (May 30). We invite you to contribute to Gisela Hochuli’s performance by May 22 (please see the PDF for instructions).
------This colloquium is a part of the ongoing research project Performance: Conservation, Materiality, Knowledge funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation at Bern University of the Arts. The project focuses on the questions of conservation of performance-based works, their temporal specifics, the involvement of the human and non-human body, the world of their extended trace history, memory, and archive. Explored are notions of care, the ideals of traditional conservation and their relations to tacit or explicit knowledge, skill and technique. Taking as a starting point the necessity for conservators to access and deepen this area of study, and unlike queries that situate these questions within other disciples, in this project, we approach performance as a necessarily conservable form.
Papers by Louise Lawson
Studies in Art, Heritage, Law and the Market, Dec 30, 2023
The development of the documentation and conservation of performancebased artworks has been a key... more The development of the documentation and conservation of performancebased artworks has been a key priority for Tate's Conservation department. The rise in complexity of the relationship between the institution and the artworks entering the collection prompted the development of current practices relating to the documentation and conservation of performance within the time-based media conservation team. This chapter explores the development of the current documentation strategies for the conservation of performance at Tate, by highlighting not only the impact of collecting practices in the development of knowledge, but also how the process results on the creation of both theoretical and practical forms of practice. The chapter will focus on the development of core documentation tools and theoretical models for understanding performance art and how it relates to the museum.
CeROArt, 2020
To access the journal publication, follow this link: http://journals.openedition.org/ceroart/8119... more To access the journal publication, follow this link: http://journals.openedition.org/ceroart/8119. Can performance art be conserved? If so, how, and if not, why not? Enhanced by short philosophical reflection surrounding conservation and its entanglement with the world, this essay reviews the debates that took place on the occasion of the international colloquium devoted to the conservation of performance, Performance: The Ethics and the Politics of Care. The colloquium was organized at Bern University of the Arts on May 29-30, 2021 within the research project Performance: Conservation, Materiality, Knowledge (Swiss National Science Foundation, 2020-24). The essay investigates the notion of performance through the lens of its conserveability and through a multidisciplinary perspective represented by a diversity of voices during the colloquium. It ultimately presents both performance and conservation as inherently unstable categories that require a careful and reflective approach. To access recording of the event, follow these links: Day 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hTOVW1A_w0&t=17398s&ab_channel=SNSFPerformanceConservation Day 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQAIJ0DM59E&t=16535s&ab_channel=SNSFPerformanceConservation
Precarious Movement: Choreography and the Museum, 2024
Journal of the Institute of Conservation, 2019
Over the past two years, Tate's approach to the conservation of performance-based artworks has be... more Over the past two years, Tate's approach to the conservation of performance-based artworks has been evolving. This development has been propelled by the increasing presence of performance and performance-based artworks in Tate's collection and Tate's participation in various research projects. Our current approach considers the altering views in performance studies around the relationship between performance and documentation, and recent considerations around the impact of performance on the systems and structures of the museum. One of the results of the development of our approach is the Strategy for the Documentation and Conservation of Performance. The Strategy takes into account advances in conservation theory around time-based media and performance across departments at Tate, aiming at ensuring the continued activation of performance-based collection works from our collection. This paper explores the process of developing this Strategy, including the defining of terminology and the creation of the three documentation strands which fall under it: the Performance Specification, Activation Report, and the Networks of Interactions map.
Journal of the Institute of Conservation, 2017
Studies in Conservation, 2016
The paper crosses the boundaries between different genres, drawing on key material and emphasisin... more The paper crosses the boundaries between different genres, drawing on key material and emphasising the philosophical challenges around decision-making and values in relation to replication and replicas. In 1968, Philip K. Dick wrote the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? which became the inspiration for the 1982 film Bladerunner. The book is set in Los Angeles in a post-apocalyptic future where mankind has left Earth, resulting in androids being created to develop new 'off-world' colonies. The book and film create a novel and interesting framework to discuss the subject of replicas and replication within contemporary conservation practice. Key themes are decay promoting replication, original versus replica, creating empathy in replication. The debate focuses on the case study of Naum Gabo's Construction in Space (Crystal) of 1937-39; which was the sculpture replicated in the most recent replication project at Tate, completed in July 2015.
Books by Louise Lawson
Precarious Movements, 2024
Precarious Movements seeks to locate a specific strand of practice: choreographic works made for ... more Precarious Movements seeks to locate a specific strand of practice: choreographic works made for visual arts contexts. It is the works themselves that describes the general tendencies at the interface between these traditionally disparate disciplines. Artists such Maria Hassabi, Lee Ming Wei, Victoria Hunt, Shelley Lasica, and Adam Linder are defining an emerging field through their practice and a new choreo-artistic language through attention to, and exploration of, the intersecting and divergent threads of visual art and dance practices and histories. Sometimes directly engaging museology, as in the case of Hunt’s Copper Promises: Hinemihi Haka (2012) and Linder’s Cleaning Services (2013-2017), and sometimes through temporality and forms of attention, as in the practices of Ming Wei and Hassabi, these artists and their peers are examining the choreographic as a medium of artistic potential that addresses, unpicks, adds to, subverts, embellishes and critiques artistic legacies, futures, languages and forms.
It is through attention to the work of artists that we can arrive at some definitions and parameters which is the work that this book attempts to undertake. This book has emerged from Precarious Movements: Choreography in the Museum, a multi-year research project led by artists, theorists, curators, producers and conservators who, together with the contributors to this book, share an attention to specific case studies and significant details that help clarify the scope and constituency of what might best be described as a configuration of works mapping a new field of practice.
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Conferences by Louise Lawson
--------This event aims at advancing the knowledge on this topic within the discipline of conservation on the one hand, while, on the other, locating the discourse of conservation within a broader field of the humanities disciplines concerned with the theories and practices of performance— performance studies, anthropology, art history, curatorial studies, heritage studies and museology.
---------We propose to contest the common-sense understanding of performance as a non-conservable form and ask questions concerning how, and to what extent, performance art and performance-based works can be conserved.
---------Keynotes: Prof Rebecca Schneider (Brown University), Prof Pip Laurenson (Tate/Maastricht University), Prof Gabriella Giannachi (University of Exter), Prof Barbara Büscher (University of Music and Theatre Leipzig).
--------Speakers: Hélia Marçal, Kate Lewis, Lizzie Gorfaine, Ana Janevski, Martha Joseph, Erin Brannigan, Brian Castriota, Farris Wahbeh, Louise Lawson, Rachel Mader, Siri Peyer, Sooyoung Leam, Karolina Wilczyńska, Iona Goldie-Scot, Claire Walsh and Ana Ribeiro.
-------The colloquium will feature two performance interludes by artists Frieder Butzmann (May 29) and Gisela Hochuli (May 30). We invite you to contribute to Gisela Hochuli’s performance by May 22 (please see the PDF for instructions).
------This colloquium is a part of the ongoing research project Performance: Conservation, Materiality, Knowledge funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation at Bern University of the Arts. The project focuses on the questions of conservation of performance-based works, their temporal specifics, the involvement of the human and non-human body, the world of their extended trace history, memory, and archive. Explored are notions of care, the ideals of traditional conservation and their relations to tacit or explicit knowledge, skill and technique. Taking as a starting point the necessity for conservators to access and deepen this area of study, and unlike queries that situate these questions within other disciples, in this project, we approach performance as a necessarily conservable form.
Papers by Louise Lawson
Books by Louise Lawson
It is through attention to the work of artists that we can arrive at some definitions and parameters which is the work that this book attempts to undertake. This book has emerged from Precarious Movements: Choreography in the Museum, a multi-year research project led by artists, theorists, curators, producers and conservators who, together with the contributors to this book, share an attention to specific case studies and significant details that help clarify the scope and constituency of what might best be described as a configuration of works mapping a new field of practice.
--------This event aims at advancing the knowledge on this topic within the discipline of conservation on the one hand, while, on the other, locating the discourse of conservation within a broader field of the humanities disciplines concerned with the theories and practices of performance— performance studies, anthropology, art history, curatorial studies, heritage studies and museology.
---------We propose to contest the common-sense understanding of performance as a non-conservable form and ask questions concerning how, and to what extent, performance art and performance-based works can be conserved.
---------Keynotes: Prof Rebecca Schneider (Brown University), Prof Pip Laurenson (Tate/Maastricht University), Prof Gabriella Giannachi (University of Exter), Prof Barbara Büscher (University of Music and Theatre Leipzig).
--------Speakers: Hélia Marçal, Kate Lewis, Lizzie Gorfaine, Ana Janevski, Martha Joseph, Erin Brannigan, Brian Castriota, Farris Wahbeh, Louise Lawson, Rachel Mader, Siri Peyer, Sooyoung Leam, Karolina Wilczyńska, Iona Goldie-Scot, Claire Walsh and Ana Ribeiro.
-------The colloquium will feature two performance interludes by artists Frieder Butzmann (May 29) and Gisela Hochuli (May 30). We invite you to contribute to Gisela Hochuli’s performance by May 22 (please see the PDF for instructions).
------This colloquium is a part of the ongoing research project Performance: Conservation, Materiality, Knowledge funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation at Bern University of the Arts. The project focuses on the questions of conservation of performance-based works, their temporal specifics, the involvement of the human and non-human body, the world of their extended trace history, memory, and archive. Explored are notions of care, the ideals of traditional conservation and their relations to tacit or explicit knowledge, skill and technique. Taking as a starting point the necessity for conservators to access and deepen this area of study, and unlike queries that situate these questions within other disciples, in this project, we approach performance as a necessarily conservable form.
It is through attention to the work of artists that we can arrive at some definitions and parameters which is the work that this book attempts to undertake. This book has emerged from Precarious Movements: Choreography in the Museum, a multi-year research project led by artists, theorists, curators, producers and conservators who, together with the contributors to this book, share an attention to specific case studies and significant details that help clarify the scope and constituency of what might best be described as a configuration of works mapping a new field of practice.