Heritage, Participation, Performativity, Care

Urgent questions need to be asked of conservation: Is there a place to contest long-accepted boundaries between official and non-official heritage? How do cultures of neglect relate to the cultures of care, and what are the effects of official conservation policies on what may be considered as living heritage? And, more importantly, what roles does conservation play in the structures of power around heritage?

The conference Heritage, Participation, Performativity, Care, co-hosted with UCL History of Art and organised in association with the Centre for Critical Heritage Studies, aims to create possibilities for a constructive and compassionate exchange—one that is purposefully about communicating and creating affective (not necessarily productive) relations.

New forms of discourse are encouraged to counter institutional hegemony in relation to forms of performativity, living heritage, and participation. The event is situated online, not simply in mitigation of the global pandemic, but in acknowledgement of the need to have a geographically and culturally diverse exchange, and in recognition of the possibilities this format offers to people who want to participate and might not have the same possibilities to do so if the event was to happen in-person.

The free event will take place on Friday 12 March from 10am. Confirmed speakers include Shadreck Chirikure (Oxford University), Farideh Fekrsanati (Museum am Rothenbaum, Kulturen und Künste der Welt), Tracy Ireland (University of Canberra), Shose Kessi (University of Cape Town), Sally Labern (the drawing shed and University of East London), Genner Ortiz (Leiden University), Ioannis Poulios (Hellenic Open University), and Jen Shannon (University of Colorado). The event will encompass presentations of projects, visions, perspectives, and moments of discussion.

On registration, participants will be automatically assigned a break-out room for the dedicated discussion session: a time for more informal, open and generative exchange, welcoming diverse voices to discuss what makes the heritage we ought to conserve and who is called to participate in creating and caring for those heritage practices.

All welcome! Any queries may be directed to Renata Peters.