BEATRIZ DUARTE
Site em construção
Spatial practices as Experimental Preservation:
between the invisible and the ecological
Author: Beatriz Duarte and Inês Moreira
in Modes of (co)existence,
confined space,
global condition, resistence
Editor: :
Gabriela Vaz-Pinheiro
Published by: i2ADS – Instituto de Investigação em Arte, Design e Sociedade,
Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade do Porto
ISBN: 978-989-9049-48-2
2023
publishing researching; writing
Experimenting with porosities between spatial practices and material culture, a new area of knowledge production and artistic practice has emerged in recent years. Situated within the emerging field of Experimental Preservation, these practices incorporate a critical perspective and establish a tangential relationship with what is generally understood as heritage.
By pointing towards new approaches to material culture, these practices highlight concerns that can be broadly outlined: critically reevaluating the rigidity of established modes of operation and conceptual frameworks based on notions such as preservation, value, and authenticity; harnessing gaps in established knowledge by overcoming nostalgia and experimenting with alternative logics to address contemporary contradictions and complexities; aiming at redefining the past, producing new definitions for residual matter, recognizing alternative uses, and fostering awareness of new ecologies. It is important to emphasize how these spatial practices involve recording unexplored narratives and invisible aspects of what is neglected and unforeseen in contemporary heritage and cultures.
This essay contextualizes the relationship between preservation and material culture, notes the reconsiderations proposed by theorists in archaeology and contemporary critical heritage studies, and examines four case studies that propose hybrid connections between artistic creation, artistic practices, and urban space curation. The analyzed projects are diverse, ranging from the micro-scale of invisibility, matter, and fragments, as seen in cases like The Ethics of Dust by architect-artist Jorge Otero-Pailos and Sín Título by artist Martín Hernández Molín, to the macro scale of critical production and urban intervention in projects such as In the Name of the Past: Countering the Preservation Crusades by Beatriz Ramo from the STAR strategies + Architecture studio, and the Emscher Park project in the city of Ruhrgebiet, Germany.