Heritage Conservation as Historical Method

The masterclass programme, Heritage Conservation as Historical Method, presents a transdisciplinary approach to decolonizing, transcultural, critical heritage, and post-humanist practice as a research lens for writing histories of science and will take place from 7-9 September 2021. 

Dean Sully will give a public lecture entitled Critical Heritage Conservation: Preferred Futures, Uncertain Presents and Speculative Pasts (7 September) which will then be followed by two intensive method workshops.

The public lecture will provide a practice-based account of heritage conservation as a set of research methods that contribute to broader debates about the past, and concerns about our futures. It will explore the principles of the conservation discipline within a framing of colonialism, and the need for additional methodological tools that go beyond the technical ability of heritage to merely present something of the past to be experienced in the present.

Workshops

• Workshop 1 (8 September): Decolonising One Discipline at a Time, Starting with Heritage Conservation!, in association with the University of Auckland's Department of Architecture. In Workshop 1, participants will consider the authorized discourse of heritage conservation and how this is subject to transformation through decolonizing and transcultural practice.

• Workshop 2 (9 September): Role of Creative Practice in Heritage Process: Speculative Pasts from Certain Futures. Past, Present and Future, Which Comes First?,  in association with Goldsmith’s Department of Design.  In Workshop 2, participants will look beyond human-centered heritage practice and seek to engage with more destabilized ideas of temporality and the more-than-human.

Dean's current research seeks to re-situate heritage practice, from maintaining the metastable authenticity of heritage places and objects towards co-curating ecosociologically-constituted multispecies worlds. This invitation comes out of Dean’s long-term collaborative projects to Decolonise Conservation (Sully 2007), and more recent creative heritage projects that respond to the challenges posed by the environmental humanities of the Anthropocene (Sully et al. 2020). Registration is now open for these events (via the links above).

References

Sully, Dean (ed.). 2007. Decolonising Conservation: Caring for Māori Meeting Houses Outside New Zealand. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.

Sully, Dean, Cecilie Gravesen, Katherine Beckwith, and Xiaozhou Li. 2020. Objects of the Misanthropocene A Time-Travelling Exhibition from the Museums of Beyond. https://misanthropocene.wixsite.com/museumofbeyond.