Material Futures: Matter, Memory and Loss in Contemporary Art Production and Preservation

Organised by the University of Glasgow and the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network ‘New Approaches in the Conservation of Contemporary Art’ (NACCA), this two-day conference hosted at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow will provide a forum for professionals and students working across different disciplines to discuss urgent questions regarding artwork identity, permanence and impermanence, reproducibility and replication, and the role of the artist and the institution in constructing and maintaining memory. It will explore these questions and other areas where artistic practice, curatorial practice, and conservation decision-making intersect through themes of materiality, memory and loss.

CALL FOR PAPERS:

Papers for 20-minute presentations or panel proposals from artists and scholars in various fields are welcomed.

Please send a 250-word abstract and your contact details to materialfuturesconference@gmail.com by the 15th of March 2017.

Topics may include but are by no means restricted to:

• Individual and collective memory
  – How does one’s memory of a work impact its conservation?
  – Can remembrance be an act of conservation?
  – Can conservation be an act of remembrance?
• Material memory vs. material loss
  – How do materials remember?
  – How do we remember materials?
  – What form(s) do immaterial losses take?
• Memory and the archive in contemporary art practice and preservation
  – How is memory employed in art making and art conservation?
  – What forms do archives take?
  – Can documentation take the form of embodied memory?
• Traces and fragments
  – How do works of art persist?
  – In what ways do works leave traces?
  – Are they a part of the artwork or its documentation?
  – When does a work become a fragment?

Planning Committee: Dr. Dominic Paterson (University of Glasgow), Dr. Erma Hermens (Rijksmuseum), Brian Castriota (University of Glasgow), Nina Quabeck (University of Glasgow).

More information and updates can be found in official conference website: http://nacca.eu/conference-2017/