The Aesthetics of Change: On the Relative Durations of the Impermanent

Can we conceive of artworks in terms of their temporal duration – as events, performances and processes? Can artworks, including the recent portion of artistic production as well as traditional artworks, be rethought in terms of time and their intrinsic temporalities? Why and how would it matter for their conservation? This paper offers an opportunity to rethink traditional paradigms of conservation and art theory that regard objects as fixed and static entities. It proposes letting go of the belief in the apparent stability of objects that for too long has offered a skewed message by isolating the negative qualities of change. The kind of thinking in the expanded field of curation and conservation presented here fosters the acknowledgement of changeability and impermanence of these media as a condition of possibility for their survival.