FULL SS 2021 #2
In this seminar, Caitlin DeSilvey and Martin Grünfeld will engage in conversation about the relevance of the concept of ‘curated decay’ for museum and heritage collections. Museum practice has traditionally aimed to protect objects by arresting processes of decay and degradation. In her work, however, DeSilvey has demonstrated that the accommodation of material and metabolic transformation in certain contexts has the potential to generate both cultural and ecological value. Over the past year, a transdisciplinary group of conservators, researchers and artists at the University of Copenhagen’s Medical Museion have taken up DeSilvey’s invitation to engage in ‘care beyond conservation’, with the development of an experimental site for exploring life processes at the museum – The Living Room. In their conversation, DeSilvey and Grünfeld will explore their collaborative research interests and explain how they are investigating and interpreting different ways of hosting life at the museum.
