Emilie Magnin

Emilie Magnin

CV follows

Supervisors

Prof. Dr. Noémie Etienne, Universität Bern, Institut für Kunstgeschichte
Dr Hanna B. Hölling, Research Professor, Materiality in Art and Culture Bern University of the Arts

Doctoral project 

Performance : Conservation, Materiality, Knowledge

This dissertation project takes place within the Swiss National Science Foundation funded research project Performance : Conservation, Materiality, Knowledge at the Bern University of the Arts where I was appointed doctoral candidate. The first few months of my mandate – starting October 1, 2020 – will be devoted to developing the concrete formulation of my question, theories and methods. Nonetheless I can already outline some particular areas of research or theories that I intend to explore within the broader scope of this research project. Please also find below a prelimi-nary list of sources that I am reading and summarizing in preparation for the beginning of my doctoral program, as well as the complete description of the SNSF project.
Led by Prof. Dr. Hanna B. Hölling and situated within the Institute Materiality in Art and Culture, the research project itself focuses on the many questions raised by the conservation of performance-based artworks and their temporal specifics in relationship with traditional theories of conservation. With the help of practical case-studies, it aims to investigate and characterize emerging and new methods for conserving performance-based artworks and to expose the knowledge-generating process of conservation and its relations to discourses from adjacent fields of research such as performance studies, anthropology, aesthetics and art history.
Coming from the field of time-based media conservation, I am particularly interested in investigating how time-based media conservation strategies can be applied to the conservation and documentation of performance-based art. Whether being intrinsic to performance or the production of conservation actions, audiovisual components such
as video files are becoming increasingly entangled with performance-based artworks and I find these particular dependencies extremely interesting as they encourage a collaborative approach. When it comes to performance, the transmission of knowledge is often permitted by documentation and therefore it is the conservator’s responsibility not only to compile or produce this documentation, but also to establish appropriate archiving procedures, especially for audiovisual materials that are prone to rapid obsolescence.
I am also interested in exploring the shifting role of contemporary art conservators within an institutional context and their influence over the future of performance-based artworks collected within these institutions. Gaining awareness of their own influence over the course of an artwork’s lifetime is leading conservators to perform all conservative actions in an informed and sensitive manner and to communicate openly about their actions. The new methods and strategies required to acknowledge of the conservators’ own subjectivity and to contextualize the decision-making process that led to specific conservation decisions are often inspired by adjacent disciplines and can foster synergies that I am hoping to develop within the scope of my future research.

Research priorities

Performance art, interdisciplinarity, decision-making analysis, anthropology, conservation theory, conservation-restora-tion practices, performance studies, art history, aesthetics, new materialism