Instituto de História da Arte

The preservation of performance-based art-works, such as installations and performances, is often accompanied by frequent discussions regarding their documentation. How can performance based artworks, which are unrepeatable and contextual, be documented after the event? This paper aims to reflect upon the purpose of the documentation of performance-based artworks and about how the micro-decisions conservators make during the documentation process can influence and are influenced by their intentions. In this context, the concepts and practices of documentation are critically examined. With this goal in mind, the artwork Identificación (1975) by the Portuguese artist Manoel Barbosa (b. 1953) and the documentation produced in two different contexts by two different people (a choreographer and a conservator) are discussed.

Resumo
Refletindo sobre a problemática da conservação da arte contemporânea, este artigo discute o processo de documentação de “Luís Vaz 73” (1975), uma obra concebida pelo artista plástico Ernesto de Sousa (1921-1988) e pelo compositor, pianista e maestro, Jorge Peixinho (1940-1995). O processo de documentação consistiu em quatro passos: identi cação do problema de conservação que contextualiza o processo de documentação; recolha de documentação publicada e não publicada; produção de documentação, incluindo a realização de entrevistas; e sistematização e avaliação, que organiza a informação e expõe as falhas do próprio processo. Esta metodologia de documentação abre uma perspetiva que assenta na relação entre a produção de documentação e a sua aplicação na (re-)apresentação da obra, procurando uma abordagem re exiva que identi ca os desa os de cada passo deste processo, e informando futuras gerações sobre a conservação da obra.

Abstract
This paper aims to critically review the documentation process of the performance-based collab- orative artwork “Luís Vaz 73” (1975), created by the visual artist and performer Ernesto de Sousa (1921-1988), and the composer, pianist and conductor, Jorge Peixinho (1940-1995). The documen- tation process was developed in four phases: identification of the conservation problem, which con- textualizes the documentation process; gathering of documentation, published and unpublished; documentation production, which includes interviews to relevant actors; and assessment and sys- tematization, which organizes all relevant information and discusses the main weaknesses of the process. This documentation methodology opens a new perspective based on the relationship between the production of documentation and its application in the (re)presentation of the work This methodology looks for a reflexive approach, where the main challenges of the documentation process are reflected upon, thus informing future generations about this process.

Despite performance art’s originary stance against art commodification and institutionalisation, performance artworks are slowly being historicised and preserved for future generations. This art genre can be defined as consisting of unrepeatable events, specific in time and space, which may persist in some form in the memories of those who experienced them or in their documentation. The paradoxical relationship between performance art and its perpetuation in time has led to the development of many frameworks for its preservation. Artworks consisting of participatory practices present challenges that go beyond the work’s preservation, as traditional documentation methods do not usually encompass their social dimension. Equally relevant is the discussion about what changes this participatory trend will bring to the role of the conservator and to conservation practice in general. With this in mind, it is important to understand the future of conservation in an era of participation, in particular, in light of the burgeoning institutionalisation of performance-based artworks. This paper aims to discuss these issues while proposing the concept of body-archive of the conservator as an operative concept to re-evaluate the way documentation is currently executed. To illustrate this notion, the work Identificacíon (1975) by the Portuguese artist Manoel Barbosa and the participatory practices involved in its documentation process will be discussed.

After the experience gathered in the research project Documentation of Contemporary Art, this paper discusses a decision-making model for the preservation of contemporary complex artworks. In this project, social sciences disciplines and current conservation theories are brought together. For this model, qualitative methodologies for artist’s interviews and decision-making theories are applied.

It is impossible to fully understand the conservation of contemporary art without considering the subjectivity on the conservator's actions. This paper acknowledges the conservator as a performer. To explore this concept, several case-studies of the Portuguese artist Francisco Tropa are presented.
Francisco Tropa has been gaining recognition, especially with his nomination as the Portuguese ambassador to the 2011 Venice Biennale. The case-studies included in this paper are installations with strong performative features. This artist's oeuvre brings together time, space and various media, defining four main authorities as performers: the artist, the actor, the spectator and the conservator. While the artist plays himself a performance, the actor ends up by following the artist's guidelines. Spectators are invited to an active participation, thus becoming co-creators of meaning. Finally, and perhaps surprisingly, the conservator, while re-installing the works, becomes a creator, a performer. In this perspective, unlike the traditional view of conservation, that freezes artworks in a single state, a dynamic view is suggested, one that considers an artwork's trajectory, where change is desired and expected as part of the work itself.
The conservator has a pivotal role in those changes.
Subjectivity is inherent to the process and contributes to the precarious nature intrinsic to any performative action. Such observations impose the need to submit the conservator's role to a critical review.

The aim of this paper is to examine the artistic intentions towards the audience as well as the artist's representation of their reactions. Considering the subject and the inherent subjectivity to its discourse, the employed methodology joins conservation and psychology, crossing borders of knowledge and expanding it, which is essential to foster informed procedures in conservation practice. Unlike the traditional view of conservation, one that promotes the artwork's trajectory and considers change as part of the work is purposed in this paper. This interdisciplinary approach thus applies qualitative methodologies by interviewing the artist and analysing his answers, joining content analysis methods from psychology to a recurrent problematic in conservation practice. For this purpose, a case study will be used, addressing the Portuguese artist Francisco Tropa and his work A Assembleia de Euclides (2005-2010). In terms of a theoretical analysis, it was confirmed that the spectatorship is greatly included in the artistic intent, as in other performative artworks. It also became clear that the results of this discourse analysis open a field that requires an empirical addressing of the problem of spectatorship in terms of the audience and the artwork itself. Nevertheless, this dialog demonstrated the importance of an interdisciplinary view in this study, and provided the methodologies one should resort to in further empirical studies.

AbstrAct
As part of the “Documentation of Contemporary Art” research project, several installations by Francisco Tropa (b. 1968, Lisbon) were studied. These installations were part of three different projects initiated by the artist, and later become autonomous and dispersed into several different collections. This paper addresses the documentation process of these installations, regarding both its challenges and the applied preservation methodologies.
Tropa’s works are meant to change as part of a living process, creating different trajectories. According to the artist, artworks from the
same project establish tangible and intangible relationships among them. The documentation process of such a variable and interconnected œuvre presented unpredictable challenges, which ultimately acted as a catalyst to analyze the documentation process itself.
As a result of this analysis, new theoretical frameworks are proposed and the role of the conservator is reflected upon regarding the ways it affects the preservation of variable and interconnected artworks.

resuMo
No âmbito do projeto de investigação “Documentação de Arte Contemporânea”, foram estudadas diversas instalações
do artista português Francisco Tropa (n. 1968, Lisboa). Estas obras fazem parte de três projetos artísticos do autor, que se tornaram autónomas, dispersando‐se por várias coleções. O presente artigo re ete sobre o processo de documentação destas instalações, tanto a nível dos desa os colocam como das metodologias aplicadas na sua preservação. Estas obras estão em permanente mudança, criando diferentes trajetórias. Segundo o artista, algumas peças do mesmo projeto estabelecem relações tangíveis e intangíveis entre si, razão pela qual o processo de documentação destas obras apresentou desa os imprevisíveis que serviram como catalisador para repensar o próprio processo. Através desta análise, são propostas novas direções teóricas e o papel do conservador é debatido relativamente à forma como condiciona a preservação de obras variáveis e relacionadas.

This paper addresses the preservation of places of memory by reflecting upon two issues: (1) the importance of successfully assessing the social significance of a given conservation object, without disregarding its multiplicity, and (2) the relevance of communities for that process. An effective collaboration with communities, and the systematic documentation about the process is presented as a step towards a more complete and fair preservation of the intangible features, including the memories, of the object. In this context, examples from two buildings will be provided.

Despite the growing interest in performance artworks, museums worldwide still show some reservations when it comes to incorporating such works into their collections. This paper aims to explore the conservation challenges that these works present for museums.
Through the analysis of the relevant literature, the practices and theories surrounding the conservation of performance-based artworks are contextualized and examined. Notions of the conservation of performance artworks are reassessed in the light of ideas relating to archives and repertoires (Taylor 2008), which can be considered essential to the study of these works. By combining reflections about performance art acquisition and performance art conservation, a new conceptual framework based on an expanded view of conservation, which regards preservation as a process that includes presentation strategies, is proposed. In order to illustrate this examination, two case studies are presented as examples: sexyMF (2006) by Ana Borralho and João Galante (f. 2002, Lisbon) and Ad Verbum (2010), by Vasco Araújo (b. 1975, Lisbon).

RESUMO
Apesar do interesse recente na aquisição de obras de arte
da performance, a incorporação destas obras em coleções museológicas ainda é uma prática relativamente rara. Este artigo procura refletir sobre os desafios que estas obras apresentam à sua preservação, nomeadamente em coleções museológicas. Neste sentido, através da análise de bibliografia relevante, práticas e teorias da conservação de obras de arte de natureza performativa são contextualizadas e examinadas. A conservação destas obras é reconsiderada de forma a espelhar a dicotomia entre arquivoe repertório (Taylor 2008), que é considerada essencial para aarte da performance. Desta forma, repensa-se a conservação e incorporação destas obras a partir uma visão expandida da conservação, considerando que estratégias de apresentação podem promover a conservação efetiva destas obras. Para ilustrar esta reflexão, apresentam-se exemplos de dois casos de estudo: sexyMF (2006), de Ana Borralho and João Galante (f. 2002, Lisboa) e Ad Verbum (2010), de Vasco Araújo (n. 1975, Lisboa).

Over the past 2 years, Tate’s approach to the conservation of performance-based artworks has been evolving, propelled by the increasing presence of performance-based artworks in Tate’s collection and Tate’s participation in various related research projects. Tate’s current approach is informed by views from performance studies around the relationship between performance and documentation, and recent considerations of the impact of performance on the systems and structures of the museum. One of the main outcomes of this approach has been the development of a Strategy for the Documentation and Conservation of Performance. This strategy takes into account advances in conservation theory around time-based media and performance art generated from within Tate, aimed at ensuring the continued activation of performance-based works from the collection. This article explores the process of developing the strategy including the definition of terminology and the creation of three documentation tools: Performance Specification, Activation Report and Map of Interactions.

Numa sociedade em tudo dominada pelas tecnologias digitais, as obras adquiridas pelos museus, nos últimos dez anos, incluem naturalmente um número elevado de peças que fazem uso deste tipo de tecnologias. Alguns dos maiores museus de arte contempo- rânea do mundo, como a Tate, em Londres, o Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) ou o Guggenheim, em Nova Iorque, começaram a constituir os seus departamentos para lidar com as especificidades da conservação deste tipo de obras, a que chamam time-based media art. São consideradas time-based media as obras criadas através de práticas e materiais variáveis, com recurso a tecnologias ou formas artísticas que têm como base o tempo. Este tipo de obras tem vindo a colocar desafios com potencial para revolucionar a maneira de pensar a conservação dentro e fora do museu, permitindo novas explorações teóricas e práticas sobre a preservação do património em geral.

O antigo mosteiro cisterciense de N.ª Senhora do Desterro, apesar das vicissitudes que sofreu e da obscuridade em que permaneceu a história da sua construção permanece, ainda hoje, como um marco arquitectónico fundamental na imagem da cidade de Lisboa. Em boa parte poupado pelo Terramoto, os estragos a que foi sujeito desde o final do séc. XIX ao início do XX, devem-se sobretudo à acção humana. Décadas de incúria e delapidações sucessivas, conduziram a uma descaracterização progressiva a que não foi também alheia a própria transformação em hospital, traduzida em alterações profundas de adaptação pouco adequadas ao edifício.
Contudo, bem longe da imagem que vulgarmente dele se transmite, o antigo Mosteiro do Desterro constitui, apesar do estado fragmentário a que chegou aos nossos dias, um raro testemunho da nossa mais qualificada arquitectura tardo-clássica, fazendo parte dos grandes complexos monástico-conventuais construídos no período filipino (1580-1640).
O presente artigo pretende, além de comprovar a autoria do arquitecto Baltazar Álvares, dar a conhecer, a partir das fontes documentais, o processo construtivo do mosteiro e alguns aspectos desconhecidos do seu projecto. Nomeadamente, as influências da traça erudita da fachada (derivada de um desenho de Rafael para a Villa Madama incluído no tratado de Serlio) e as características peculiares dos espaços monásticos, como os claustros, impostas pela topografia acidentada do terreno.

O Colégio jesuíta de S.to Antão-o-Novo foi um dos maiores empreendimentos arquitectónicos da centúria de Seiscentos, tendo o seu risco conhecido várias alterações no período filipino, no sentido de um classicismo monumental italianizante, próximo do modelo de S. Vicente de Fora. Com o patrocínio de D. Filipa de Sá, a igreja foi erguida entre 1612 e 1658, embora partes do exterior ficassem por terminar até ao séc. XVIII. Este artigo procura atestar a autoria projectual de Baltazar Álvares e esclarecer a direcção da obra que ficou a cargo de um dos seus discípulos, Diogo Marques Lucas. As questões associadas ao estatuto profissional dos arquitectos, a par do domínio das regras clássicas da arquitectura do tempo, são aspectos que transparecem da documentação inédita encontrada sobre a fase final da construção da igreja no séc. XVII, quando os contactos informados com centros artísticos externos eram já menos frequentes.

The jesuit college of Santo Antão-o-Novo was one of the largest architectural projects of the 17th century in Portugal. Its design was the object of several amendments during the Philippine period (1580-1640), bringing it closer to the kind of Italian monumental classicism exemplified by the monastery of São Vicente de Fora. Under the patronage of D. Filipa de Sá, the church was built between 1612 and 1658, though parts of the exterior were only concluded in the 18th century. This paper aims to assert Baltazar Álvares’ authorship of the project, while shedding some light on the building works supervision entrusted to one of his disciples, Diogo Marques Lucas. The paper will also consider the professional status of architects and their knowledge of the standards of classical architecture at the time. This analysis will be based on recently uncovered documentation about the final phase of the church’s building works, in the 17th century, at a time when informed contacts with foreign artistic centres had become less frequent.

A igreja do Convento dos Paulistas é hoje também designada de Santa Catarina porque existiu, no alto com o mesmo nome, no cimo da calçada, uma igreja com essa invocação - a igreja de Santa Catarina do Monte Sinai - fundada em 1557 por D. Catarina, mulher do rei D. João III. Muito danificado pelo Terramoto de 1755, esse templo, da autoria do arquitecto Afonso Álvares, e do qual se conhecem planta e desenhos em corte, seria finalmente demolido entre 1856-1862, acabando assim por dar o nome ao sítio e à Paróquia actual que passou para a igreja dos frades Paulistas, antes dedicada ao Santíssimo Sacramento. Em termos arquitectónicos, a igreja dos Paulistas (inic. 1654) radica-se no modelo do maneirismo italiano introduzido em Portugal com a construção da igreja de São Vicente de Fora em 1582, por iniciativa de Filipe II, de Espanha e cuja traça se deve a Baltazar Álvares. Começada tardiamente, a igreja dos Paulistas só viria a terminar-se  quando todas as outras igrejas deste tipo se encontravam já em fase de conclusão, dando origem à introdução de alguns pormenores decorativos mais tardios na fachada e, sobretudo, a uma decoração interna já totalmente executada em moldes barrocos.