Situated knowledges and materiality in the conservation of performance art

Abstract

In which ways is conservation expanding to allow for an ethical care of performance artworks? This article draws on feminist epistemologies – primarily Donna Haraway’s ‘situated knowledges’ – to develop a critical enquiry on the politics and ethics in the conservation of performance artworks. Beginning by rehearsing those feminist perspectives in the context of the conservation of contemporary art, through the exploration of the activist performance artwork Música Negativa (Negative Music), created by the Portuguese artist E.M. de Melo e Castro in 1965, the article then looks at the situated knowledges that are part of the process of mapping the material history of performance art.