Prerecorded Lectures
Available on this site on April 5, 2021, at 12 PM EST
SOUTHEAST ASIA: PERFORMANCE ART AND THE BODY POLITIC
Chương-Đài Võ
Asia Art Archive
This talk discusses the archiving of performance-based practices in Southeast Asia, and implications for artistic work, critical discourses, and art histories, focusing on the 1993–1994 Artists’ General Assembly (AGA) as a turning point in the development of performance art practices in Singapore, and the role of archival collections in preserving obscured histories.
HISTORY OF CONSERVATION PRACTICES AT THE CRDS
Fatima Fall
Centre de Recherches et de Documentation du Senegal
This talk engages with the history of conservation practices at the Centre de Recherches et de Documentation du Senegal (CRDS), one of the oldest libraries in Francophone Africa; a history museum with 1,005 objects; a refurbished storage facility; a photographic collection holding a wealth of 42,971 documents; and a collaborative workspace.
The display of most Japanese paintings, and hanging scrolls in particular, was specific to the occasion, with the apparatus in which a painting was embedded—inclusive of backing papers, decorative silk mountings, and a dowel around which to roll and unroll the work—evolving to accommodate both occasional display and compact storage. This talk imagines a parallel history of Japanese painting in which vestiges of the history, time, use, and pedigree of the object could be discerned by sustained attention to the mounting apparatus.
Iwataro Oka
Oka Bokkodo Co., Ltd., Conservation Studio for National Treasures and Important Cultural Properties
This talk discusses Japanese paintings—typically painted on either paper or silk, and formatted in a variety of ways, including hanging scrolls, handscrolls, folding screens, and sliding-door panels—and the fundamental and contemporary Japanese conservation practices used to treat them.
Conserving Monuments, Reviving Temples: Communities, Monuments, and Politics in South India
Kavita Singh
School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
This presentation describes two organizations in South India involved in architectural conservation work: one a religious foundation that sponsors the excavation of medieval temples, and the other an association of heritage-lovers that rebuilds ancient temples while scrupulously adhering to conservation norms. Both organizations exemplify an emergent trend of crossovers, wherein approaches that adhere to the protocols of the museum regime are now also being applied to temples and icons as a form of devotional care.