IV session of the permanent seminar “Images (of art) and political ecology”: Contesting conservation. May 11, 2023
This session is conceived as a continuation of the seminar “Tracing Temporalities // Unearthing Archives” of the Cost Action TRACTS held at the Humboldt University of Berlin, in which Fossil Aesthetics research group was present through the participation of Alberto Berzosa and Pablo Martínez.
The paintings by Remedios Varo, the drawings by Dora García, the cinema by Rosa Barba, the videos by Patricia Esquivias, the tapestries by Teresa Lanceta and the sculptures by Eva Lootz are, more than anything else, matter. To be more precise: aggregates of matter of diverse nature. The conceptual propositions, as well as the sensitive power of all these artistic creations depend on the conditions of their materials, which require specific attention and care once they enter the museum and the archives, machines that fossil modernity conceived to stop time. Paradoxically, in the time in which the second Law of Thermodynamics was developed and the entropic condition of the universe became evident, new institutions were born and expanded whose main function is to produce the fiction that some of the works of humanity will pass to eternity. To achieve this end, and thanks to the energy exuberance provided by the intensification of fossil extraction and combustion, during the last century museums and archives designed and internationally agreed upon the ideal thermal conditions to become independent from the natural world and configure their own climatic universe. Based on the artistic proposals of Hans Haacke and Joana Moll, and the specific case of the Arquivo Nacional das Imagens em Movimento (ANIM) of the Cinemateca Portuguesa, we will address some of these issues in order to think about museum and archive institutions not only in terms of sustainability but also in terms of confidence in their power as a producing machines of habits and imaginaries. If the museum and the archive were re-conceptualized in the 19th century as spaces to civilize the populations that were beginning to multiply in the cities and at the same time to show the power of the states to order people, things, their memories and legacies, museums and archives to come should update their function according to the climatic emergency.
If you wish to attend the seminar, which will take place at the Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales del CSIC (C/ Albasanz, 26, Madrid, room to be determined) on May 11, 2023 at 10 am, please let us know through this contact form.