Documenting dilemmas. On the relevance of ethically ambiguous cases

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Published: Feb 20, 2017
DOI: https://doi.org/10.18239/sinobj_2017.00.05

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Renée van de Vall   
Maastricht University

Abstract

This paper argues that documentation best serves the conservation of contemporary art when it does not only collect and record information about the work, but also the dilemmas conservators have felt themselves confronted with when deciding their conservation strategy. The reason is that in the last two decades, in and through evolving and reflective practice, a situation has arisen in which new ethical paradigms are emerging, appropriate for different types of work and different logics of perpetuation. The paper outlines three different paradigms with corresponding paradigmatic cases, arguing that only a case-by-case method of ethical deliberation (casuist ethics) will help articulating the appropriate principles and guidelines for the newer paradigms. Documentation of conservation-ethical dilemmas is needed to enable this deliberation. Moreover, most cases will remain rather messy, many artworks consisting of heterogeneous assemblages of objects, ideas and practices that all imply their own logic of perpetuation, other artworks hovering between logics, or passing from one logic to another in the course of their biographies. Therefore the documentation of dilemmas will continue to be required to facilitate a casuist approach to taking responsible decisions and developing a body of professional experience.

Article Details

Issue
#00 Collecting the Immaterial
Section
Dossier

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Author Biography

Renée van de Vall   , Maastricht University

Renée van de Vall studied sociology and philosophy at the University of Amsterdam. She received her PhD in philosophy from the same university in 1992 and teaches at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences since 1993. She is Chair of the Department Literature & Art and head of the inter-facultary research programme Arts, Media & Culture (AMC). She has co-ordinated and tutored courses on bachelors and masters level and was Director of Studies of the MA Media Culture until 2010. Since 2009 she holds a chair in Art and Media.

Van de Vall’s research focuses on philosophy of art and aesthetics, specifically on the construction of spectatorship in contemporary visual and new media art; on the theory and ethics of contemporary art conservation; and on processes of globalisation in contemporary art and media. She was project leader of the NWO funded research project Transformations in Perception and Participation: Digital Games and currently leads another NWO funded project New Strategies in the Conservation of Contemporary Art and the NWO funded network Network for the Conservation of Contemporary Art (NECCAR).

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