(Im)Materiality in the Museum: Shaping Joseph Beuys’s Information Action through Curating Documentation

Description

Performance art increasingly enters museums in the form of material traces, as these provide a seemingly easy access to past events in terms of display. With the help of the example of Joseph Beuys’s performance Information Action (1972) at Tate, this paper demonstrates how museum professionals negotiate and conceptualise the meaning of these often ambiguous remains through their curatorial practice. By building on a constructivist approach borrowed from Science and Technology Studies, it becomes clear that through their practices, the professionals actively shape the identity of the artwork and its biography – and thereby also its potential pasts, presents, and futures.

Period	29 Jun 2017
Event title	Material Futures: Matter, Memory and Loss in Contemporary Art Production and Preservation
Event type	Conference
Location	Glasgow, United KingdomShow on map