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Brian Castriota

University College London, History of Art, Faculty Member

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Dr Brian Castriota is a Glasgow-based researcher, educator, and conservator specialised in time-based media, contemporary art, and archaeological materials. He is Time-Based Media Conservator at the National Galleries Scotland and Lecturer in Conservation of Contemporary Art and Media at University College London. Since 2018 he has worked as a freelance conservator for time-based media and contemporary art at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. He served as Supervising Conservator with Harvard Art Museums’ Archaeological Exploration of Sardis from 2018 to 2023 and has worked on various excavations in Turkey, Italy, and Egypt.

He completed graduate-level training in conservation at the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University (2014), he was a Samuel H. Kress Fellow in Time-Based Media Conservation at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (2014–2016), and he received a PhD in History of Art from the University of Glasgow (2019). As part of the Horizon 2020 Marie Skłowdoska-Curie ITN New Approaches in the Conservation of Contemporary Art (NACCA) his doctoral research examined notions of artwork identity and authenticity commonly invoked in conservation theory and practice. His publications have considered how ideas from post-structuralism and agential realism rework sedimented practices of conservation. His current research explores the potentials and practical applications of post-qualitative inquiry to the doings of conservation.

He was a contributor to the IFA-NYU’s Curriculum Development Committee for Time-Based Media Art Conservation Education, he has been an Adjunct Lecturer in Time-Based Media Conservation within the programme, and he continues to serve on their TBM Curriculum Advisory Board. He is Assistant Coordinator of ICOM-CC’s Theory, History, and Ethics of Conservation Working Group, he is a Steering Group Member of ICON’s Contemporary Art Network, and he served as Programme Chair/Asst. Programme Chair of AIC’s Electronic Media Group from 2020–22.

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The Courtauld Institute of Art

Jules Pelta Feldman

University of California, Berkeley

Bern University of Applied Sciences

Hanna B . Hölling

Bern University of the Arts

The University of New South Wales

Karolina Wilczyńska

Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań

Gabriella Giannachi

University of Exeter

Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts

Rebecca Schneider

Brown University

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Book chapters and essays by Brian Castriota

In the shadow of the state: Collecting performance at IMMA and institutions of care in the Irish context

Performance: The Ethics and the Politics of Conservation and Care, Volume I, 2023

The Enfolding Object of Conservation: Artwork Identity, Authenticity, and Documentation

Conservation of Contemporary Art: Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Practice, 2023

Conservation approaches for contemporary artworks have increasingly turned to a work’s identity a... more Conservation approaches for contemporary artworks have increasingly turned to a work’s identity as the object of conservation and perpetuation. Within the “performance paradigm” of conservation (van de Vall, Revista de História Da Arte 4, 7–17, 2015a) authenticity is often predicated on a manifestation’s compliance with an artist’s explicit directives. In practice, this paradigm is challenged by works of art that unfold in protracted states of creation and accrue new modes of presentation. This chapter reads notions of artwork identity, authenticity, and documentation for conservation purposes through poststructuralist, feminist, queer, and agential realist discourses. It troubles the assumption that conservators have access to a “view from above” (Haraway, Feminist Studies 14(3), 575–599, 1988) and that the boundaries or properties of an entity are determinate prior to and separate from our observation and description. Within Karen Barad’s agential realist framework, the documentation of artwork identity is reframed as a perspectival and partial representation of significances, which are made determinate through—and therefore entangled with—the specifics of our measurement or observation. This chapter shows how, through both our investigations and the documentation we create and leave behind, conservators and conservation researchers are enfolded with the entities we seek to know and care for, and how their boundaries and properties are continually enacted and reconfigured through these material-discursive practices. The objective referent of conservation documentation is therefore refocused as and around the phenomena produced through conservation research and practice.

by Brian Castriota and Stephanie Auffret

Dictionary of Museology, 2023

Conservation (Preventive)

by Brian Castriota and Renata Franco Peters

Dictionary of Museology, 2023

Conservation (Remedial)

by Renata Franco Peters and Brian Castriota

Dictionary of Museology, 2023

Preprints of the Contributions to the Ottawa Congress, 12-16 September 1994 (pp. 12-16). London: ... more Preprints of the Contributions to the Ottawa Congress, 12-16 September 1994 (pp. 12-16). London: International Institute for the Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works. See Conservation, Preservation and Sustainability. CONSERVATION (REMEDIAL) (fr. Conservation curative, sp. Conservación curativa) De nition: Remedial conservation is a specialised term under the umbrella of 'conservation' and is closely related to 'restoration' (see 'Conservation' and 'Restoration' for detailed elaborations). It entails a set of activities that focus on the preservation or restoration of the material fabric of objects and their intangible features and discourses. The term encompasses various types of actions that tend to be performed directly on the material fabric of objects, often referred to as 'treatments'. Its use may be context speci c and is usually employed by specialists.

Always Already Fragment: Integrity, Deferral, and Possibility in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage

The Fragment in the Digital Age: Opportunities and Limitations of New Conservation-Restoration Techniques, 2021

The most important thing | learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to... more The most important thing | learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once amoment is gone it is gone forever.

On Creation & Conservation: Neil Clements & Brian Castriota in Conversation

Fellow Traveller, 2021

Articles by Brian Castriota

Object Trouble: Constructing and Performing Artwork Identity in the Museum

ArtMatters International Journal for Technical Art History, 2021

The collections of many private and public art institutions today contain a significant number of... more The collections of many private and public art institutions today contain a significant number of contemporary artworks that involve or combine live performance, technology, and an ephemeral or replenishable materiality. Existing acquisition, loan, and collection care policies – conceived around 'traditional' artworks that exist as contained, relatively static physical objects or assemblages – have been challenged by this ever-increasing category of 'other' artworks that do not conform to established frameworks and protocols. In response, new frameworks and approaches devised in the last 20 years have focused on artwork identity as the object of conservation, as part of efforts to render such works collectable within a museum context, and to preserve them for future generations. In this article the notion of artwork identity is examined through a lens of queer theory and poststructuralist criticism to consider how an artwork's seemingly fixed and singular essence is constructed, reified, and at times fractured within the museum space. This paper examines how the ongoing display and enactment of artworks – reframed as performatives – may either perpetuate the illusion of a fixed and stable artwork identity or subvert and queer that singularity through deviation. Artwork identity is reconceptualised as a perspectival impression of significance that may vary between individuals, contexts, and over time. Artworks previously characterised as 'unruly' actors in the museum sphere (Domínguez Rubio 2014) are positioned as entities that queer not only notions of artwork identity and essence, but also entrenched museum conventions, policies, practices, and larger institutional norms. With this in mind, this article proposes that the focus of conservation might be reoriented away from a univocal essentialism at the level of identity towards a processual and constructivist understanding of a work's multiple, socially produced and negotiated grounds and centres.

Variants of Concern: Authenticity, Conservation, and the Type-Token Distinction

Studies in Conservation, 2021

Over the last 20 years, the conservation literature around installation and performance artworks ... more Over the last 20 years, the conservation literature around installation and performance artworks has increasingly relied on concepts and analogies from the philosophy of music to reformulate the concept of authenticity for artworks that recur in multiple instances. Within these frameworks, authenticity is often framed as a quality ascribed to a manifestation on the basis of its compliance with the artist's explicit directives or a precision of formal resemblance with past manifestations. This article resituates the concept of authenticity invoked in fine art conservation within a wider discourse in analytic philosophy on the type-token distinction and artworks as abstract entities that are instantiated in time and space. Given the intersubjective nature and situatedness of authenticity judgements pertaining to a work's manifestations, this article considers the limitations of authenticity frameworks predicated exclusively on score compliance and considers how a type-token ontology is more capacious. This article demonstrates how this distinction already underpins existing frameworks and discourses, how it aids in conceptualising the relationship between an artwork's potentially multiple versions or variants and their manifestations, and how it accommodates the ways perceptions of an artwork's identity are socially mediated through time and may differ across its viewership.

Instantiation, Actualization, and Absence: The Continuation and Safeguarding of Katie Paterson's 'Future Library' (2014-2114)

Journal of the American Institute of Conservation, 2021

Over the last two decades, the conservation field has developed new frameworks for works that rec... more Over the last two decades, the conservation field has developed new frameworks for works that recur in multiple manifestations, such as many time-based media, installation, and performance artworks. Within these frameworks, authenticity is gauged primarily on a manifestation’s perceived compliance with the artist’s directives or specifications for the work. Such models have proven difficult to apply in practice when faced with artworks in protracted states of creation, that have an existence outside the walls of the collecting institution, and whose manifestations are dispersed and distributed in space and over time. This article examines how Future Library (2014–2114) – a century-long public artwork by the Scottish artist Katie Paterson – confounds the two-stage model of an artwork’s creation, and the conventional understanding of the artwork instantiated and made present in discrete, physical objects or events. Drawing upon Deleuze's philosophical writings, I characterize the varied ways in which an artwork or object of cultural heritage may be made present and may undergo change, while forever remaining partial, deferred, and absent. This article considers how the scope of what falls within the conservator’s gaze might be widened, and how an artwork’s conservation and creation might be understood as interdependent and concurrent acts of safeguarding and continuation.

Fifty-Plus Years of On-Site Metals Conservation at Sardis: Correlating Treatment Efficacy and Implementing New Approaches

by Emily B Frank and Brian Castriota

ICOM-CC Preprints of the 19th Triennial Conference, Beijing, 2021

In the last sixty-one years, the Harvard-Cornellled excavations at Sardis, Turkey, have produced ... more In the last sixty-one years, the Harvard-Cornellled excavations at Sardis, Turkey, have produced over 5,000 copper-alloy and iron finds. Since their excavation, these finds have been stored in on-site depots, which provide only minimal buffer against seasonal fluctuations in relative humidity (RH). A condition survey conducted in 2016 and 2017 detected signs of chloriderelated deterioration in roughly 40% of these finds. Conservation records since the 1960s document evolving stabilization treatment methods as new conservation research was put into practice. This paper describes a computational approach informed by network analysis that was used to correlate the history of copper-alloy stabilization treatments at Sardis with deterioration phenomena encountered during our survey. Our newly implemented approach to rehousing unstable metals in low-RH and/ or anoxic Escal enclosures is discussed along with our justification for maintaining certain treatment protocols in light of our findings and procedural shifts.

How Sustainable is File-based Video Art? Exploring the Foundations for Best Practice Development

by Sophie Bunz and Brian Castriota

Electronic Media Review, 2016

The acquisition of file-based video artworks into collecting institutions, charged with ensuring ... more The acquisition of file-based video artworks into collecting institutions, charged with ensuring their long-term viability and accessibility, presents conservators and collection caretakers with many new challenges. This paper explores issues observed in daily practice at the Time-Based Media Conservation Laboratory of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and is the product of a research consortium that was formed as part of a collaboration between the Guggenheim Conservation Department and the Master’s degree program in Conservation at the Bern University of the Arts, Switzerland. The authors of the paper employed a research methodology that included literature review, practical tests, and interviews with internationally-recognized experts engaged with codec development, software engineering, archiving, and digital video preservation. This study highlights specific areas of consensus around the many factors affecting a video file’s sustainability and playback consistency; considers some of the preservation options currently available, including normalization; and offers suggestions around the development of a basis for best practice in the acquisition and conservation of born-digital, file-based video artworks.

Mediating Meanings: Conservation of the Staffordshire Hoard

Postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies, 2016

Since the Staffordshire Hoard's discovery in 2009, soil removal has been carried out over several... more Since the Staffordshire Hoard's discovery in 2009, soil removal has been carried out over several years by conservators working with the Staffordshire Hoard Conservation Project at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. As a case study, this essay examines the practical and philosophical considerations that arose during the author's cleaning of object K1195, a gold and garnet cloisonné sword pommel cap, in 2012. Cleaning – understood as a culturally determined intervention that enacts permanent change on an object – is a frequent subject of debate within cultural heritage preservation. This essay considers the cleaning of an archaeological object with respect to its ontological status, borrowing concepts employed in the conservation of modern and contemporary works of art.

Conference Postprints and Proceedings by Brian Castriota

Authenticity, Identity, and Essentialism: Reframing Conservation Practice

What is the essence of conservation? Papers from the ICOM-CC and ICOFOM session at the 25th General Conference held in Kyoto, 4 September 2019, 2019

Fifty-plus years of on-site metals conservation at Sardis: Correlating treatment efficacy and implementing new approaches

Transcending Boundaries: Integrated Approaches to Conservation. ICOM-CC 19th Triennial Conference Preprints, Beijing, 17–21 May 2021, 2021

In the last sixty-one years, the Harvard-Cornell-led excavations at Sardis, Turkey, have produced... more In the last sixty-one years, the Harvard-Cornell-led excavations at Sardis, Turkey, have produced over 5,000 copper-alloy and iron finds. Since their excavation, these finds have been stored in on-site depots, which provide only minimal buffer against seasonal fluctuations in relative humidity (RH). A condition survey conducted in 2016 and 2017 detected signs of chloride-related deterioration in roughly 40% of these finds. Conservation records since the 1960s document evolving stabilization treatment methods as new conservation research was put into practice. This paper describes a computational approach informed by network analysis that was used to correlate the history of copper alloy stabilization treatments at Sardis with deterioration phenomena encountered during our survey. Our newly implemented approach to rehousing unstable metals in low-RH and/or anoxic Escal enclosures is discussed along with our justification for maintaining certain treatment protocols in light of our findings and procedural shifts.

Equipment Significance and Obsolescence in Diana Thater's "The Bad Infinite"

Talks by Brian Castriota

Towards a Collection of Artists' Moving Image in Scotland: Collection Care, Maintenance, and Preservation

Examination and Code Analysis of Siebren Versteeg's "Untitled Film II"

Papers by Brian Castriota

Garnets, Gold and Power in Late Antiquity: Contextualizing the Tournai and Apahida Treasures

Thesis by Brian Castriota

Castriota, Brian Eric. 2019. “Securing a futurity: artwork identity and authenticity in the conservation of contemporary art.” PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

In the conservation of cultural heritage, the concept of authenticity remains deeply anchored to ... more In the conservation of cultural heritage, the concept of authenticity remains deeply anchored to foundational theories of conservation formulated around “traditional” works of art where authenticity is seen to be predicated on the persistence of a discrete, material assemblage. The collections of many private and public art institutions now contain a growing number of contemporary artworks that involve or combine live performance, technology, and ephemeral or replenishable materials, which pose a challenge to material theories of conservation. Novel theories and practical approaches have embraced how these works may have multiple, equally genuine instances despite there being material and contextual variation among them. Within these frameworks, the authenticity of a manifestation is contingent on the artist’s authorisation or sanction and a manifestation’s perceived compliance with a score, derived by isolating a set of constitutive properties through artist interviews and empirical research.

This thesis traces the origins of existing ontological frameworks employed in fine art conservation and reformulates the concepts of artwork identity and authenticity. Drawing upon theoretical discourses from the fields of aesthetics and poststructuralist criticism read in the context of three works of contemporary art, authenticity is reframed as the degree to which an assemblage or event is regarded as an instance of the artwork it is purported to be. The notion of an artwork’s singular identity or abiding essence is recast as a construction that is performatively reified within the museum space through repetition. Musealisation processes aimed at making artworks durable and repeatable entities are reframed in Derridean terms as means of “centring.” This thesis examines the multiple centres or grounds that may emerge over time, fracturing the illusion of a work’s singular, self-same identity. Ontologies of artwork instantiation and tokening—concentrating on a work’s formal gallery manifestation and its embodiment of a fixed or finite set of constitutive properties—are expanded in recognition of the diverse means through which a work may be made present and may undergo change. Along these lines, this thesis proposes that the ethical remit of conservation might be reoriented away from enforcing score compliance, towards understanding how an artwork’s tokening links are (re)constituted among diverse audiences through time and securing the conditions that allow a work to continue becoming.

In the shadow of the state: Collecting performance at IMMA and institutions of care in the Irish context

Performance: The Ethics and the Politics of Conservation and Care, Volume I, 2023

The Enfolding Object of Conservation: Artwork Identity, Authenticity, and Documentation

Conservation of Contemporary Art: Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Practice, 2023

Conservation approaches for contemporary artworks have increasingly turned to a work’s identity a... more Conservation approaches for contemporary artworks have increasingly turned to a work’s identity as the object of conservation and perpetuation. Within the “performance paradigm” of conservation (van de Vall, Revista de História Da Arte 4, 7–17, 2015a) authenticity is often predicated on a manifestation’s compliance with an artist’s explicit directives. In practice, this paradigm is challenged by works of art that unfold in protracted states of creation and accrue new modes of presentation. This chapter reads notions of artwork identity, authenticity, and documentation for conservation purposes through poststructuralist, feminist, queer, and agential realist discourses. It troubles the assumption that conservators have access to a “view from above” (Haraway, Feminist Studies 14(3), 575–599, 1988) and that the boundaries or properties of an entity are determinate prior to and separate from our observation and description. Within Karen Barad’s agential realist framework, the documentation of artwork identity is reframed as a perspectival and partial representation of significances, which are made determinate through—and therefore entangled with—the specifics of our measurement or observation. This chapter shows how, through both our investigations and the documentation we create and leave behind, conservators and conservation researchers are enfolded with the entities we seek to know and care for, and how their boundaries and properties are continually enacted and reconfigured through these material-discursive practices. The objective referent of conservation documentation is therefore refocused as and around the phenomena produced through conservation research and practice.

by Brian Castriota and Stephanie Auffret

Dictionary of Museology, 2023

Conservation (Preventive)

by Brian Castriota and Renata Franco Peters

Dictionary of Museology, 2023

Conservation (Remedial)

by Renata Franco Peters and Brian Castriota

Dictionary of Museology, 2023

Preprints of the Contributions to the Ottawa Congress, 12-16 September 1994 (pp. 12-16). London: ... more Preprints of the Contributions to the Ottawa Congress, 12-16 September 1994 (pp. 12-16). London: International Institute for the Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works. See Conservation, Preservation and Sustainability. CONSERVATION (REMEDIAL) (fr. Conservation curative, sp. Conservación curativa) De nition: Remedial conservation is a specialised term under the umbrella of 'conservation' and is closely related to 'restoration' (see 'Conservation' and 'Restoration' for detailed elaborations). It entails a set of activities that focus on the preservation or restoration of the material fabric of objects and their intangible features and discourses. The term encompasses various types of actions that tend to be performed directly on the material fabric of objects, often referred to as 'treatments'. Its use may be context speci c and is usually employed by specialists.

Always Already Fragment: Integrity, Deferral, and Possibility in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage

The Fragment in the Digital Age: Opportunities and Limitations of New Conservation-Restoration Techniques, 2021

The most important thing | learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to... more The most important thing | learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once amoment is gone it is gone forever.

On Creation & Conservation: Neil Clements & Brian Castriota in Conversation

Fellow Traveller, 2021

Object Trouble: Constructing and Performing Artwork Identity in the Museum

ArtMatters International Journal for Technical Art History, 2021

The collections of many private and public art institutions today contain a significant number of... more The collections of many private and public art institutions today contain a significant number of contemporary artworks that involve or combine live performance, technology, and an ephemeral or replenishable materiality. Existing acquisition, loan, and collection care policies – conceived around 'traditional' artworks that exist as contained, relatively static physical objects or assemblages – have been challenged by this ever-increasing category of 'other' artworks that do not conform to established frameworks and protocols. In response, new frameworks and approaches devised in the last 20 years have focused on artwork identity as the object of conservation, as part of efforts to render such works collectable within a museum context, and to preserve them for future generations. In this article the notion of artwork identity is examined through a lens of queer theory and poststructuralist criticism to consider how an artwork's seemingly fixed and singular essence is constructed, reified, and at times fractured within the museum space. This paper examines how the ongoing display and enactment of artworks – reframed as performatives – may either perpetuate the illusion of a fixed and stable artwork identity or subvert and queer that singularity through deviation. Artwork identity is reconceptualised as a perspectival impression of significance that may vary between individuals, contexts, and over time. Artworks previously characterised as 'unruly' actors in the museum sphere (Domínguez Rubio 2014) are positioned as entities that queer not only notions of artwork identity and essence, but also entrenched museum conventions, policies, practices, and larger institutional norms. With this in mind, this article proposes that the focus of conservation might be reoriented away from a univocal essentialism at the level of identity towards a processual and constructivist understanding of a work's multiple, socially produced and negotiated grounds and centres.

Variants of Concern: Authenticity, Conservation, and the Type-Token Distinction

Studies in Conservation, 2021

Over the last 20 years, the conservation literature around installation and performance artworks ... more Over the last 20 years, the conservation literature around installation and performance artworks has increasingly relied on concepts and analogies from the philosophy of music to reformulate the concept of authenticity for artworks that recur in multiple instances. Within these frameworks, authenticity is often framed as a quality ascribed to a manifestation on the basis of its compliance with the artist's explicit directives or a precision of formal resemblance with past manifestations. This article resituates the concept of authenticity invoked in fine art conservation within a wider discourse in analytic philosophy on the type-token distinction and artworks as abstract entities that are instantiated in time and space. Given the intersubjective nature and situatedness of authenticity judgements pertaining to a work's manifestations, this article considers the limitations of authenticity frameworks predicated exclusively on score compliance and considers how a type-token ontology is more capacious. This article demonstrates how this distinction already underpins existing frameworks and discourses, how it aids in conceptualising the relationship between an artwork's potentially multiple versions or variants and their manifestations, and how it accommodates the ways perceptions of an artwork's identity are socially mediated through time and may differ across its viewership.

Instantiation, Actualization, and Absence: The Continuation and Safeguarding of Katie Paterson's 'Future Library' (2014-2114)

Journal of the American Institute of Conservation, 2021

Over the last two decades, the conservation field has developed new frameworks for works that rec... more Over the last two decades, the conservation field has developed new frameworks for works that recur in multiple manifestations, such as many time-based media, installation, and performance artworks. Within these frameworks, authenticity is gauged primarily on a manifestation’s perceived compliance with the artist’s directives or specifications for the work. Such models have proven difficult to apply in practice when faced with artworks in protracted states of creation, that have an existence outside the walls of the collecting institution, and whose manifestations are dispersed and distributed in space and over time. This article examines how Future Library (2014–2114) – a century-long public artwork by the Scottish artist Katie Paterson – confounds the two-stage model of an artwork’s creation, and the conventional understanding of the artwork instantiated and made present in discrete, physical objects or events. Drawing upon Deleuze's philosophical writings, I characterize the varied ways in which an artwork or object of cultural heritage may be made present and may undergo change, while forever remaining partial, deferred, and absent. This article considers how the scope of what falls within the conservator’s gaze might be widened, and how an artwork’s conservation and creation might be understood as interdependent and concurrent acts of safeguarding and continuation.

Fifty-Plus Years of On-Site Metals Conservation at Sardis: Correlating Treatment Efficacy and Implementing New Approaches

by Emily B Frank and Brian Castriota

ICOM-CC Preprints of the 19th Triennial Conference, Beijing, 2021

In the last sixty-one years, the Harvard-Cornellled excavations at Sardis, Turkey, have produced ... more In the last sixty-one years, the Harvard-Cornellled excavations at Sardis, Turkey, have produced over 5,000 copper-alloy and iron finds. Since their excavation, these finds have been stored in on-site depots, which provide only minimal buffer against seasonal fluctuations in relative humidity (RH). A condition survey conducted in 2016 and 2017 detected signs of chloriderelated deterioration in roughly 40% of these finds. Conservation records since the 1960s document evolving stabilization treatment methods as new conservation research was put into practice. This paper describes a computational approach informed by network analysis that was used to correlate the history of copper-alloy stabilization treatments at Sardis with deterioration phenomena encountered during our survey. Our newly implemented approach to rehousing unstable metals in low-RH and/ or anoxic Escal enclosures is discussed along with our justification for maintaining certain treatment protocols in light of our findings and procedural shifts.

How Sustainable is File-based Video Art? Exploring the Foundations for Best Practice Development

by Sophie Bunz and Brian Castriota

Electronic Media Review, 2016

The acquisition of file-based video artworks into collecting institutions, charged with ensuring ... more The acquisition of file-based video artworks into collecting institutions, charged with ensuring their long-term viability and accessibility, presents conservators and collection caretakers with many new challenges. This paper explores issues observed in daily practice at the Time-Based Media Conservation Laboratory of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and is the product of a research consortium that was formed as part of a collaboration between the Guggenheim Conservation Department and the Master’s degree program in Conservation at the Bern University of the Arts, Switzerland. The authors of the paper employed a research methodology that included literature review, practical tests, and interviews with internationally-recognized experts engaged with codec development, software engineering, archiving, and digital video preservation. This study highlights specific areas of consensus around the many factors affecting a video file’s sustainability and playback consistency; considers some of the preservation options currently available, including normalization; and offers suggestions around the development of a basis for best practice in the acquisition and conservation of born-digital, file-based video artworks.

Mediating Meanings: Conservation of the Staffordshire Hoard

Postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies, 2016

Since the Staffordshire Hoard's discovery in 2009, soil removal has been carried out over several... more Since the Staffordshire Hoard's discovery in 2009, soil removal has been carried out over several years by conservators working with the Staffordshire Hoard Conservation Project at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. As a case study, this essay examines the practical and philosophical considerations that arose during the author's cleaning of object K1195, a gold and garnet cloisonné sword pommel cap, in 2012. Cleaning – understood as a culturally determined intervention that enacts permanent change on an object – is a frequent subject of debate within cultural heritage preservation. This essay considers the cleaning of an archaeological object with respect to its ontological status, borrowing concepts employed in the conservation of modern and contemporary works of art.

Authenticity, Identity, and Essentialism: Reframing Conservation Practice

What is the essence of conservation? Papers from the ICOM-CC and ICOFOM session at the 25th General Conference held in Kyoto, 4 September 2019, 2019

Fifty-plus years of on-site metals conservation at Sardis: Correlating treatment efficacy and implementing new approaches

Transcending Boundaries: Integrated Approaches to Conservation. ICOM-CC 19th Triennial Conference Preprints, Beijing, 17–21 May 2021, 2021

In the last sixty-one years, the Harvard-Cornell-led excavations at Sardis, Turkey, have produced... more In the last sixty-one years, the Harvard-Cornell-led excavations at Sardis, Turkey, have produced over 5,000 copper-alloy and iron finds. Since their excavation, these finds have been stored in on-site depots, which provide only minimal buffer against seasonal fluctuations in relative humidity (RH). A condition survey conducted in 2016 and 2017 detected signs of chloride-related deterioration in roughly 40% of these finds. Conservation records since the 1960s document evolving stabilization treatment methods as new conservation research was put into practice. This paper describes a computational approach informed by network analysis that was used to correlate the history of copper alloy stabilization treatments at Sardis with deterioration phenomena encountered during our survey. Our newly implemented approach to rehousing unstable metals in low-RH and/or anoxic Escal enclosures is discussed along with our justification for maintaining certain treatment protocols in light of our findings and procedural shifts.

Equipment Significance and Obsolescence in Diana Thater's "The Bad Infinite"

Towards a Collection of Artists' Moving Image in Scotland: Collection Care, Maintenance, and Preservation

Examination and Code Analysis of Siebren Versteeg's "Untitled Film II"

Garnets, Gold and Power in Late Antiquity: Contextualizing the Tournai and Apahida Treasures

Castriota, Brian Eric. 2019. “Securing a futurity: artwork identity and authenticity in the conservation of contemporary art.” PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

In the conservation of cultural heritage, the concept of authenticity remains deeply anchored to ... more In the conservation of cultural heritage, the concept of authenticity remains deeply anchored to foundational theories of conservation formulated around “traditional” works of art where authenticity is seen to be predicated on the persistence of a discrete, material assemblage. The collections of many private and public art institutions now contain a growing number of contemporary artworks that involve or combine live performance, technology, and ephemeral or replenishable materials, which pose a challenge to material theories of conservation. Novel theories and practical approaches have embraced how these works may have multiple, equally genuine instances despite there being material and contextual variation among them. Within these frameworks, the authenticity of a manifestation is contingent on the artist’s authorisation or sanction and a manifestation’s perceived compliance with a score, derived by isolating a set of constitutive properties through artist interviews and empirical research.

This thesis traces the origins of existing ontological frameworks employed in fine art conservation and reformulates the concepts of artwork identity and authenticity. Drawing upon theoretical discourses from the fields of aesthetics and poststructuralist criticism read in the context of three works of contemporary art, authenticity is reframed as the degree to which an assemblage or event is regarded as an instance of the artwork it is purported to be. The notion of an artwork’s singular identity or abiding essence is recast as a construction that is performatively reified within the museum space through repetition. Musealisation processes aimed at making artworks durable and repeatable entities are reframed in Derridean terms as means of “centring.” This thesis examines the multiple centres or grounds that may emerge over time, fracturing the illusion of a work’s singular, self-same identity. Ontologies of artwork instantiation and tokening—concentrating on a work’s formal gallery manifestation and its embodiment of a fixed or finite set of constitutive properties—are expanded in recognition of the diverse means through which a work may be made present and may undergo change. Along these lines, this thesis proposes that the ethical remit of conservation might be reoriented away from enforcing score compliance, towards understanding how an artwork’s tokening links are (re)constituted among diverse audiences through time and securing the conditions that allow a work to continue becoming.

The Weight of Time: The Significance and Obsolescence of the Three-Gun CRT Video Projector in Diana Thater's "The Bad Infinite"

Time-based media artworks often depend on equipment components to convey their message or meaning... more Time-based media artworks often depend on equipment components to convey their message or meaning. One aspect of conservation responds to the ways these elements deteriorate physically and mechanically over time. The meaning and identity of these works are also subject to alteration as the technological landscape familiar to a viewing audience shifts. As advancements are made within consumer electronics industries, certain technologies, regardless of their functionality, can rapidly evince the passage of time and dramatically change the viewer’s experience of the work. When such a phenomenon of change is at odds with artistic intentionality, a divergence between perceptions of material and conceptual integrity may occur, with acute implications for conservation.

Using Diana Thater's 1993 video installation "The Bad Infinite" as a case study, this thesis establishes the significance of the three-gun CRT projector to Thater’s early video installations, and considers how technological obsolescence affects the perceived integrity of future iterations. Thater’s recent motivations to update her works to newer display technologies are traced, in part, to the impact that the accrued age value of the CRT projector has on the contemporary viewer experience. From discussions with the artist around equipment significance, recent reinstallations of her early works employing both “historic” CRT and LCD projectors are evaluated on the basis of their success in preserving aspects of the works’ integrity.

Through this case study, this thesis examines the deep temporal dimensionality of time-based media artworks by considering how an artwork’s meaning is liable to alteration through cultural forces and patterns of technological obsolescence beyond the control of conservation. These semantic alterations, compounded by conflicting perceptions of integrity, pose unique challenges to conservation decision-making, curatorial practices, and art-making in general. While parallels may be drawn between these semantic alterations and conventional notions of loss and patina, novel theoretical frameworks must be developed to fully grasp the mutability of technology-based artworks’ physical and conceptual substance, and the implications these patterns of change pose for conservation.

PERFORMANCE: THE ETHICS AND THE POLITICS OF CARE — # 1. Mapping the Field

by Hanna B . Hölling, Jules Pelta Feldman, Emilie Magnin, Rebecca Schneider, Gabriella Giannachi, Rachel Mader, Erin Brannigan, Louise Lawson, Karolina Wilczyńska, and Brian Castriota

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.