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Variants of Concern: Authenticity, Conservation, and the Type-Token

Distinction

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Variants of Concern: Authenticity, Conservation,

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Brian Castriota

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STUDIES IN CONSERVATION
https://doi.org/10.1080/00393630.2021.1974237

CRITICAL ASSESSMENT/PERSPECTIVE

Variants of Concern: Authenticity, Conservation, and the Type-Token

Distinction
Brian Castriota
Conservation Center, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, New York, USA

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Over the last 20 years, the conservation literature around installation and performance Received January 2021
artworks has increasingly relied on concepts and analogies from the philosophy of music to Accepted August 2021
reformulate the concept of authenticity for artworks that recur in multiple instances. Within
KEYWORDS
these frameworks, authenticity is often framed as a quality ascribed to a manifestation on Authenticity; identity;
the basis of its compliance with the artist’s explicit directives or a precision of formal instantiation; significant
resemblance with past manifestations. This article resituates the concept of authenticity properties; abstract objects;
invoked in fine art conservation within a wider discourse in analytic philosophy on the type- contemporary art;
token distinction and artworks as abstract entities that are instantiated in time and space. time-based media
Given the intersubjective nature and situatedness of authenticity judgements pertaining to
a work’s manifestations, this article considers the limitations of authenticity frameworks
predicated exclusively on score compliance and considers how a type-token ontology is
more capacious. This article demonstrates how this distinction already underpins existing
frameworks and discourses, how it aids in conceptualising the relationship between an
artwork’s potentially multiple versions or variants and their manifestations, and how it
accommodates the ways perceptions of an artwork’s identity are socially mediated through
time and may differ across its viewership.

Introduction
Conservation approaches to artworks that recur in
multiple instances, such as many installation and per-
formance artworks, have increasingly turned to frame-
works devised for theatrical and musical works to
gauge authenticity. In time-based media conservation,
in particular, authenticity is often framed as a quality
that can be guaranteed by discerning an artwork’s par-
ameters for display or enactment – a ‘score’ of sorts
(Viola 1999; van Wegen 1999; Real 2001; Rinehart
2004; Laurenson 2004; Laurenson 2006; MacDonald
2009; Phillips 2015) – and ensuring a work’s various
manifestations remain compliant with the artist’s ‘pre-
scriptions’ (Noël de Tilly 2011), or the properties
singled out as ‘work-defining’ (Laurenson 2006; after
Davies 2001). Within prevailing conservation frame-
works for these works, a manifestation’s authenticity
is seen to be judged not simply on the basis of
whether it has been authorised or certified by the
artist but also on the basis of its conformance to
their specifications. Nevertheless, questions about
authenticity and a work’s ‘identity’ often arise as new
versions, variants, edits, or replicas are generated in
response to losses, technological obsolescence, con-
textual changes, and living artists’ interests in rework-
ing older works. In practice, a ‘score compliance
authenticity’1 (Dodd [2012] 2015) may be difficult to
gauge or enforce for a work’s manifestations if an
artist’s specifications are not clearly defined, they
change or ‘unfold’ over time (Laurenson 2016), and/
or there is a lack of consensus about the degree to
which various properties should be regarded as signifi-
cant or constitutive of the work.
In this article, I reframe the notion of authenticity
within a type-token ontology, which I argue implicitly
underlies prevailing conservation frameworks. I draw
upon a discourse in analytic philosophy where art-
works have been described as abstract entities or
types, instantiated or tokened by one or more concrete
objects or events occurring in time and space. I have
previously considered this distinction in the context
of archaeological conservation (Castriota 2016), and it
has also been discussed in the context of contempor-
ary art conservation by Gordon (2011, 84) and
Hölling (2013, 244; 2015, 83–85; 2016, 20–21). Hölling
(2017, 209) has argued that an artwork’s ‘type can be
constituted by tokens of many different pasts – type
here being a virtual palimpsest of a work’s multiplicity’,
combining concepts from continental and analytic
philosophy. Bearing in mind what Eco (1962) observed
about the ‘open’ nature of works of art, it is fair to say
that the properties considered constitutive of a work’s
identity might not be defined exclusively by the artist.
These are, in fact, rarely specified solely or entirely in a
written script or score created by the artist (Laurenson
2004, 49), and are often culturally and historically

CONTACT Brian Castriota bcastriota@gmail.com

© The International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works 2021
2 B. CASTRIOTA
situated (MacNeil and Mak 2007; Marçal 2021) and bro-
kered over time in what Nöel de Tilly (2011, 15–16) has
characterised as the ‘socialisation’ of the work. Drawing
on the writing of sociologist Knorr Cetina (2001), Lauren-
son (2016) has similarly considered how some artworks
may be thought of as ‘epistemic objects’ – abstract,
socially mediated entities that are open, evolving, and
incomplete (see also Ewenstein and Whyte 2009).
Building on these discussions, this article considers
how an artwork’s identity is not defined solely by an
artist’s explicit directives and tacit sanctions, and
might be better understood as a continually nego-
tiated and therefore intersubjective, labile, and poten-
tially plural impression of a work’s significant
properties. I argue that authenticity is not a Boolean
true/false quality as it is commonly framed, but a jud-
gement of the degree of correspondence between a
concrete object or event and the abstract object or
type it is purported to instantiate or token. These jud-
gements – made on an individual basis – may depend
in part on knowledge of the artist’s authorisation, a
manifestation’s compliance with their verbal directives,
as well as a perceived ‘precision of resemblance’ (Ross
2006; Innocenti 2013) with past manifestations or
appearances. These judgements are, however, often
further modulated by the cultural values and subjectiv-
ities of the viewer or interpreter, who may ascribe
more or less value or significance to certain features
or properties. Moreover, the many versions or variants
of a work that may arise – characterised here as sub-
types of a megatype – may further complicate the per-
ceived tokening efficacy of a work’s manifestation(s)
and authenticity judgements. I suggest that conserva-
tors engage not only with a work’s concrete, spatio-
temporal manifestation(s), instance(s), or token(s) but
also these multiple types. In this sense, conservation
activities may be reconceptualised as the various
actions aimed at maintaining perceptions of congruity
between the concrete objects audiences encounter in
time and space, and artworks or cultural heritage
objects as situated and mediated abstract entities.
Authenticity and conservation
Authenticity is one of the more notoriously slippery
terms in conservation literature, often used inter-
changeably and vaguely to refer to an object’s orig-
inality, integrity, legitimacy, truthfulness, and what
Benjamin ([1935] 2003) termed ‘aura’. In his book, Con-
temporary Theory of Conservation, Muñoz Viñas (2005)
put forward a tautological argument in which he con-
tended that no action or change performed upon an
object could make it more authentic or real. He
argued that an object is always authentic no matter
what state it is in, and although a thing may be in an
undesirable or unexpected state, it is no less real:
The expected, imagined, or preferred state of an
object is not real unless it coincides with the existing
object. The real, existing object can be altered
through conservation to make it coincide with, or
come closer to, a different, preferred state, but the
object will be no more real than it was before. (2005,
93)
Muñoz Viñas importantly highlighted the subjective
nature of the coinciding that takes place between the
‘conservation object’ and the physical object encoun-
tered in time and space. However, the question of
authenticity does not revolve around the veracity of
the physical, encountered object, but rather the per-
ceived correspondence that may take place between
the work as abstract object and the concrete object
at hand. In this respect, authenticity judgements do
not concern the realness of the perceived thing, but
the perception that it satisfies the viewer’s criteria to
be regarded as a real, true, faithful, or legitimate
instance of the work it is purported to instantiate or be.
This distinction between the object at hand and the
object it is purported to be lies at the heart of the Refer-
ence Model for Open Archival Information Systems
where authenticity is defined as: ‘The degree to
which a person (or a system) regards an object as
what it is purported to be. Authenticity is judged on
the basis of evidence’ (ISO 2012, 9). For artworks, jud-
gements of authenticity are not concerned with
whether a physical object or phenomenon really
exists in time and space; this is undisputed, as no
one questions the realness or veracity of a carved
block of wood and its paint layers or the sounds ema-
nating from a speaker. Rather, perceptions of authen-
ticity concern the degree to which these things are
regarded as instances of something else: the particular
works of art or objects of cultural heritage they are pre-
sented as.
Writing about authenticity in the lives of women of
colour, Lee (2011, 259) has observed that the question
of authenticity arises from a ‘perceived epistemic
incongruity, a lack of correspondence’ between an
image or idea of a particular cultural identity and its
physical embodiment in lived experience. That idea
or image, Lee (2011, 261) notes, is neither singular
(‘culture is heterogeneous’) nor static (‘all culture
evolves and changes’). In the context of works of art,
questions of authenticity can be said to arise from a
similar perceived incongruity or lack of correspon-
dence between a manifestation’s formal attributes or
features and those singled out by a viewer
or interpreter as significant, essential, work-defining,
or constitutive of the artwork’s identity, that is, their
image or idea of what the work is or should be.
Smith (2006) has gone as far as to argue that ‘all
heritage is intangible’ in that no physical objects or
sites are inherently valuable, writing (2006, 3): ‘What
makes these things valuable and meaningful – what
 VARIANTS OF CONCERN: AUTHENTICITY, CONSERVATION, AND THE TYPE-TOKEN DISTINCTION
makes them “heritage”, or what makes the collection
of rocks in a field “Stonehenge” – are the present-day
cultural processes and activities that are undertaken
at and around them, and of which they become a
part’ (see also Marçal 2019, 196–197). It is ultimately
people who ascribe value, meaning, and an identity
to concrete objects or events existing or occurring in
time and space, and who ultimately regard these phys-
ical assemblages – to a greater or lesser degree – as
manifestations or embodiments of a particular
artwork or heritage object.
Instance multiplicity and the type-token
distinction
Muñoz Viñas’ discussion of authenticity highlights how
many classical and contemporary theories of conserva-
tion remain rooted in an entrenched nominalist ontol-
ogy where the material substance associated with a
work – such as a carved block of wood and its paint
layers – is viewed as identical with the work itself.
Most if not all the foundational theories of conserva-
tion were formulated around objects like paintings,
sculptures, and monuments, that is, discrete, physical
objects assembled by artists or delegated fabricators.
Any changes to these physical objects were under-
stood in conservation frameworks as changes to the
artworks themselves. Inhibiting material changes
perceived as losses, therefore, became the focus of
European conservation practices in the twentieth
century. We now, however, recognise an abundance
of ‘repeatable’ cultural heritage objects that are mate-
rialised in multiple physical manifestations or instantia-
tions, including many installation and performance
artworks, digital objects, and ‘intangible heritage’
items like traditional cultural practices and rituals.
Goodman is often cited in the conservation literature
for articulating a distinction between autographic
and allographic works, which concerns the production
history of a work’s manifestation(s) and whether a
work may have forged instances or not (Goodman
1984, 139–140). This distinction is often conflated
with his differentiation between works of the ‘singular
arts’ and ‘multiple arts’, the latter of which include
artistic works that allow for a plurality of ‘equally
genuine instances’ (Goodman 1968, 113).2 There is,
however, a much wider and generally overlooked dis-
course in aesthetics around whether individual works
of art might all be understood as abstract entities or
types with one or more token instances.
In 1906, semiotician Peirce put forward his type-
token distinction, based loosely on Plato’s Theory of
Forms, who explained how the word ‘the’:
… does not exist; it only determines things that do
exist. Such a definitely significant Form, I propose to
term a Type. A single event which happens once and
3
whose identity is limited to that one happening or a
Single object or thing which is in some single place
at any one instant of time, such event or thing being
significant only as occurring just when and where it
does, such as this or that word on a single line of a
single page of a single copy of a book, I will venture
to call Token … In order that a Type may be used, it
has to be embodied in a Token which shall be a sign
of the Type, and thereby of the object that the Type
signifies. I propose to call such a Token of a Type an
Instance of the Type, thus there may be twenty
instances of the Type ‘the’ on a page. ([1906] 1933,
423–424)
The type-token distinction has been foundational to
semiotic theories of the twentieth century, as well as
object-oriented computer programming, and knowl-
edge-based computational languages such as the
W3C Web Ontology Language. Wetzel, in her book
Types and Tokens: On Abstract Objects, demonstrates
the ubiquity of what she calls ‘type talk’ in almost
every realm of human discourse, observing (2009, 23)
that ‘species, genes, epigenotypes, languages, body
parts like the larynx, syllables, vowels, allophones,
computers like the Altair® 8800, Mozart’s Coronation
Concerto, the Queen’s gambit, the hydrogen atom,
the football’ are all abstract objects – types with one
or more concrete instances or tokens. As Wetzel
(2009, 21) succinctly puts it, ‘Type talk is pandemic. It
is not occasional; it is not unusual; it is the norm’.
This distinction has been the subject of consider-
able discourse in the field of aesthetics since the
mid-twentieth century, particularly in debates about
whether all works of art might be characterised as
abstracts or types made present to us through their
spatio-temporal, concrete, instantiations or tokens.
Key contributors to this discourse include Strawson
(1959, 231), Margolis (1959, 1977), Wollheim (1968),
Eco (1976; 1984), Sharpe (1976), Wolterstorff (1980),
Levinson (1980), Goodman (1984), Currie (1989),
Davies (2004; 2010), and the many authors in Art and
Abstract Objects (Mag Uidhir 2013). In his 1959 essay,
‘The Identity of a Work of Art’, Margolis deployed the
type-token distinction to develop an ontology of
works of art, building upon the discussions of Rudner
(1950) and MacDonald (1953, 214–215), as well as
Stevenson’s application of this distinction to poems
(1957). Margolis explained how when we discuss
unique, singular art objects we are actually referring
to ‘types’ or ‘megatypes’ manifested by a ‘prime
instance’ (1959, 40). By his account, a particular
painted canvas may be the ‘prime instance’ or token
of a particular work of art as a unique type. He
argued that ‘we identify the work of art with the mega-
type sculpture or painting as it is embodied in the
prime instance’ (1959, 41). Following Stevenson, he
also proposed that ‘variant versions’ (1957, 40) may
exist as distinct types, but their instances may token
the same ‘megatype’; he explained, ‘in a painting
4 B. CASTRIOTA
(I am addressing myself here to the proposals Steven-
son has made regarding poems), we require that
tokens be of the same type as well as megatype to
be said to be instances of the same painting; usually,
there will be a unique object’ (1957, 43). This notion
of the megatype and subtypes, as we will see, has
important implications for thinking about works of
contemporary art that are frequently editioned and
exist in multiple collections, as well as in multiple var-
iants or versions.
Eco also devoted considerable attention to the
type-token distinction, which underpinned his semio-
tic theories of sign production. In identifying artworks
as signs or sign-functions, Eco argued how ‘types are
recognised through their realizations into concrete
tokens’ (1984, 23) and explained that ‘if one views a
type (whether of content or expression) as a set of
properties that have been singled out as pertinent,
the token is obtained by mapping out the elements
of the original set in terms of those of the token
set’ (1976, 245). This notion of a type constituted
by a ‘set’ of ‘pertinent’ features or properties at
once recalls Goodman’s discussion of ‘constitutive’
(1968, 116) and ‘essential properties’ (1968, 212),
which has since become foundational to conservation
theories for time-based media artworks and the auth-
enticity of their manifestations (Laurenson 2004; Laur-
enson 2006).
The type-token distinction is clearly embedded in
the way we speak of works of art. When we describe
a work of art being (re)enacted, (re)performed,
(re)staged, (re)installed, (re)manifested, (re)fabricated,
replicated, or instantiated there is an implicit recog-
nition that it exists as some kind of abstract or
‘quasi-abstract’ entity (Irvin 2013, 250–261), one that
still exists even when it is not installed, enacted, or
otherwise materialised in time and space. In this
light, we might reconsider claims that installation or
performance artworks only ‘exist’ when they are
installed or performed (Phillips 2015, 171); rather, it
seems, there may be periods of ‘dormancy’, as
Lawson, Finbow, and Marçal (2019) put it, when
these works of art are not present to audiences in a
concrete, token instance of materialisation, and that
these works very much exist in other ways when
they are dormant, including in documentation and
in memory.
As the volume Art and Abstract Objects (Mag Uidhir
2013) demonstrates, there is still lively debate in the
field of aesthetics around whether artworks should or
should not be viewed as abstract objects. There are
certainly compelling arguments on both sides, and it
is well beyond the scope of this article to adjudicate
decades of philosophical discourse. If, however, we
set aside nominalist arguments (that there are no
abstract objects) and entertain a Platonist view that
artworks exist as created, abstract or quasi-abstract
entities that have been or may be instantiated in
space–time by one or more concrete objects, events,
or experiences, what might this afford frameworks
for cultural heritage preservation? How might this
ontology clarify the relationship between a work, its
versions, and its manifestations; the oft-invoked
concept of authenticity; and the role of conservators
in a work of art’s perpetuation?
Types and subtypes: Pauline Cummins, Inis
t’Oirr/Aran Dance
In 1985 Irish artist Pauline Cummins created a rear-pro-
jected, 35 mm slide dissolve and sound installation
titled Inis t’Oirr/Aran Dance (Figure 1). Over a period
of ten minutes, images of an Aran sweater and a
male figure dissolve and reappear, overlaid with draw-
ings and geometric patterns incised by the artist on
the original slides. This imagery is accompanied by a
quasi-erotic spoken word soundtrack voiced by the
artist, listened to by audiences through two pairs of
headphones. Although a ‘video version’ was created
in 1988, the work was predominantly installed as a
slide and sound installation between 1985 and 1997.
Prior to its acquisition into the collection of the Irish
Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) in 2000, the tape cas-
sette containing the original projector cue track was
lost, as was the memory of the precise sequence and
orientations of the slides and the timing of the
dissolves.
Upon its acquisition in 2000 a new Dataton cue
track was programmed for display with Kodak S-AV
projectors under the supervision of the artist. In prep-
aration for the work’s redisplay in 2018 – after 17 years
of dormancy – a set of slides was scanned for preser-
vation purposes and pin-registered exhibition dupes
were created from this set by Elke Trabandt at Activity
Studios. Whilst the work was on display (Figure 2)
some recurring technical difficulties encountered
with the Kodak S-AV projectors prompted Cummins
to create a digital, video version using the digital
scans of the slides and the original audio, fearing
that the slide configuration was potentially reaching
the end of its viability. In an interview I conducted
with Cummins in 2019, she explained that she found
the timing of the dissolves and the relationship
between the imagery and the audio narration in the
digital video much more to her satisfaction than the
timing hard-coded in the 2000 cue track, although
she preferred the 35 mm slide projection format. In
light of this – and given that the 2000 cue track was
only compatible with one make and model of projec-
tor – efforts were undertaken in 2019 and 2020 to
reprogramme the slide installation using the video as
a reference for the sequence and orientation of
the slides and the dissolve timings and durations
(Figure 3).
 VARIANTS OF CONCERN: AUTHENTICITY, CONSERVATION, AND THE TYPE-TOKEN DISTINCTION
Figure 1. Pauline Cummins, Inis t’Oirr/Aran Dance installed in 1985 as part of the Irish Exhibition of Living Art, Guinness Hop Store,
Dublin, Ireland. Photographer unknown. Reproduced courtesy of the Irish Museum of Modern Art and Pauline Cummins.
Framed within a type-token ontology, the authen-
ticity of a given manifestation of Inis t’Oirr/Aran Dance
can be rearticulated as the degree to which an installa-
tion presented to audiences is regarded by an individ-
ual as an instance of the work, that is, the degree to
which the experienced presentation is seen to token
the work-as-type. Many factors may influence how
this tokening link is constructed or sustained. For one,
this judgement may be determined by the perceived
presence of elements and features regarded by the
viewer or interpreter as significant; for Inis t’Oirr/Aran
Dance these may include the particular sequence of
images, timings of dissolves and their temporal
relationship to the artist’s spoken word soundtrack,
rear projection with slide projectors, two pairs of head-
phones, or a darkened viewing environment. The
degree of significance or value placed on any of these
elements or properties – and their perceived presence
in a manifestation – may inflect the degree to which
the overall, encountered object is regarded as a token
instance of the work. Significance ascribed by a
viewer or interpreter may be informed by the artist’s
statements or directives but also their knowledge or
memory of that element or property being a historical
feature of the entity, as well as other more intersubjec-
tive and culturally situated variables.
Working as a conservator on this artwork, I recog-
nised that programming a new Dataton cue track –
one that might be compatible with both Kodak
Ektapro and S-AV projectors – would not only improve
the short- and medium-term viability of the work as a
slide dissolve installation but would also allow us to
realise the artist’s desired image sequence and dissolve
timings. Cummins’ statements about her preference for
5
the slide format combined with my own prioritisation of
the historical value and age value conferred by this tech-
nology informed my view that 35 mm slide projection
should be regarded as a highly significant property
that should be maintained. Whilst the 2018 digital
video version is an authorised version or subtype of
the work that captures Cummins’ desired image-to-nar-
ration relationship, many – myself included – would find
its presentation less authentic than a slide dissolve
version, and Cummins herself also communicated her
preference for the slide format.
For these reasons, I used QCTools to document,
down to fractions of a second, the timings of the
image sequence and dissolve durations in Cummins’
2018 digital video and ensured that these were emu-
lated precisely in the programming of a new Dataton
cue track by Brendan Clarke at Insight Lighting in
2020 (Figure 3). Without playing them side-by-side,
few, if any viewers, would pick up on this degree of
detail, and there is certainly no way of verifying a pre-
cision of resemblance with the original cue track from
1985. However, there appeared to be a strong argu-
ment that the image sequence and dissolve timings
– sanctioned by Cummins in her video version and
her statements to me – should be regarded as perti-
nent features of the work, along with slide projection
technology. Programming a new Dataton cue track
with these precisely documented timings ensured
that these arguably significant properties were
carried over and might remain embodied in future
manifestations of the work employing this cue track.
In this way, we can see how the significance of any
one of these properties is not absolute but rather is
situated and contingent, brokered through discussions
6 B. CASTRIOTA

Figure 2. Inis t’Oirr/Aran Dance installed in 2020 at Limerick City Gallery of Art, Limerick, Ireland. Photo: Brian Castriota.

around how these ‘question-generating’ (Knorr Cetina
2001, 181) objects might be perpetuated. Conservators
thus play an active role both in how these abstract
entities are materialised as concrete objects in time
and space and in initiating and co-creating new
artwork subtypes.
The version history of Inis t’Oirr/Aran Dance illustrates
how for a single artwork, multiple subtypes may
emerge and co-exist: the 1985 slide version, the 1988
video version, the 2000 reprogrammed slide version,
the 2018 digital video version, and the 2019–2020
reprogrammed slide version. Each of these variants
may be thought of as subtypes of the ‘megatype’
artwork, and the same may be said of other works
with multiple presentation formats (e.g. ‘single-
channel version’, ‘non-activated installation version’,

Figure 3. Reprogramming of Inis t’Oirr/Aran Dance in 2019–2020. Top left: Cummins’ digital video version viewed in QCTools to
identify timecode and duration of dissolves. Bottom: a ‘score’ recording the timecode and duration of dissolves in the digital video.
Top right: Brendan Clarke at Insight Lighting in 2020 using this ‘score’ to create a new Dataton cue track – compatible with Kodak
Ektapro and S-AV projectors – in TRAX+ on an Apple iBook running OS9. Images: Brian Castriota.
 VARIANTS OF CONCERN: AUTHENTICITY, CONSERVATION, AND THE TYPE-TOKEN DISTINCTION
or ‘delegated performance version’). Following Irvin’s
distinction between tacit and explicit sanctions (2005),
I propose that these multiple versions or presentation
modes may be characterised as explicit subtypes of a
work; each of these subtypes’ manifestations may
stand as an instance of the megatype Inis t’Oirr/Aran
Dance and instantiate different significant properties
of the megatype. That said, it could be argued that
every manifestation of an artwork sanctioned by the
artist – when abstracted again – may function as an
implicit subtype, upon which future manifestations
may be modelled.3
Whilst this work is not editioned – it is ‘one of one’
as it were – we can see how this ontology is also useful
when considering editioned works, where a single
work may be held in multiple collections as well as
by the artist in their AP or ‘artist’s proof’. Each may
be thought of as subtypes of the same megatype
artwork, but each may also differ slightly and appear
to take on a unique character. In the case of ephemeral
or temporary artworks – as well as some performance
or installation works that might otherwise recur in mul-
tiple instances – audio-visual documentation is often
presented in the gallery as a surrogate for the work.
This follows Jones’s (1997) observations on the supple-
mentarity of photographs and video recordings, stand-
ing in addition to and at times in place of the live
performance. In this sense, audio-visual, graphical,
and textual documentation may function to instantiate
and make present a work of art (Davies 2010, 425), and
may emerge as an explicit subtype of the work in its
own right.
Although establishing a manifestation as a token
instance of an explicit subtype may be a more objec-
tive assessment, there may not be a consensus
among a work’s viewership on the significant or consti-
tutive properties of the megatype artwork. If a viewer
has experienced the work before or has some prior
knowledge of how the work looked or functioned in
the past that contradicts the thing they are encounter-
ing, that tokening link may waver. Likewise, depending
on the value an individual places on the various prop-
erties of a work, what is seen to constitute the mega-
type may differ across its viewership (Laurenson
2004, 51). The properties regarded as constitutive of
a work by one viewer or interpreter may not always
align with the precise constellation specified by the
work’s creator(s) at a particular point in time. In this
sense we can see how the megatype artwork – as an
indefinitely unfolding ‘epistemic object’ – is not
necessarily a fixed or consensual entity, totally deter-
mined by or entirely reduceable to a script or score.
Type and token in flux
One of the common – although by no means undis-
puted – axioms in metaphysics is that abstract entities
7
are causally inert, that is, that they are unaffected by
difference or deviation either in a particular token
instance or other contextual circumstances. So does
a type-token ontology accommodate how the per-
ceived identity of an artwork, or its significant proper-
ties, may be temporally labile and socially produced? In
his General Course on Linguistics, semiotician de Saus-
sure (1916/2013) described how the identity of a sign
is assigned on the basis of relational conditions
being met, which may also vary over time. Using two
analogies reminiscent of the Ship of Theseus paradox
discussed by Heraclitus, Plato, and Plutarch, de Saus-
sure explained,
We assign identity, for instance, to two trains (the ‘8.45
from Geneva to Paris’), one of which leaves twenty-
four hours after the other. We treat it as the ‘same’
train, even though probably the locomotive, the car-
riages, the staff, etc. are not the same. Or if a street
is demolished and then rebuilt, we say it is the same
street, although there may be physically little or
nothing left of the old one. How is it that a street
can be reconstructed entirely and still be the same?
Because it is not a purely material structure. It has
other characteristics which are independent of its
bricks and mortar; for example, its situation in relation
to other streets. Similarly the train is identified by its
departure time, its route, and any other features
which distinguish it from other trains. Whenever the
same conditions are fulfilled, the same entities
reappear. (de Saussure and Harris [1916]/2013, 107)
In these examples, it is not a material consistency that
makes the same train or the same street ‘reappear’ –
effectively as tokens of a type – but rather through
the repetition of particular relational conditions. This
chimes with poststructuralist approaches to identity,
where the performative repetition of norms or conven-
tions may produce the illusion of a self-same entity
reappearing (see Castriota 2021a), and where the
meaning of a word or the ‘essence’ of a particular
national, cultural, ethnic, or gender identity may
evolve or multiply over time as a consequence of the
‘play of difference’ (Derrida [1968] 2001, 352). In the
case of works of art, when certain conditions are
met – when a ‘critical mass’ (Gordon 2014) of pertinent
or constitutive properties of the type are perceived to
be present in a concrete, spatio-temporal object or
event – the work effectively (re)appears to audiences.
However, these conditions may vary over time, and
changes in the surrounding contextual ecosystem
may also redound onto the perceived identity of the
work, thereby producing a kind of semantic drift.
Paraphrasing de Saussure and Harris, Daylight
(2011, 140–141) wrote,
Even when it would appear that the form or the
meaning of a word has remained unchanged, it will
have actually changed due to other changes in the
form or meaning of neighboring words … In the
case of the chess game, the value of every piece
8 B. CASTRIOTA
changes after each move, even though only one piece
has been moved. With language, the problem of dia-
chronic identity is even more obscure, without the
aid of physical pieces to assure some continuity in
time.
Analogy may be drawn here with artworks where
their material constitution may remain the same but
changes in the surrounding contextual ecosystem
may alter perceptions of a work’s identity and a mani-
festation’s authenticity. There are many changes in
the surrounding ‘system’ that can produce a change
in the perceived identity of an artwork even when
no material change has occurred, for example, in
the re-display of a time-based media installation
with historic display equipment that causes a ‘con-
temporary’ work of art to look outmoded or dated
to viewers. The meaning connoted by a highly
visible or audible piece of obsolete technology –
like a CRT monitor or slide projector – may have an
enormous impact on the meaning and aesthetic
experience of the work of art that employs it, and
obsolescence itself may alter our perspectives on
the identities of artworks.
Discussing commodities in his posthumously pub-
lished The Arcades Project, Walter Benjamin quotes a
1935 letter from Theodor Adorno:
With the vitiation of their use value, the alienated
things are hollowed out and, as ciphers, they draw in
meanings. Subjectivity takes possession of them
insofar as it invests them with intentions of desire
and fear. And insofar as defunct things stand in as
images of subjective intentions, these latter present
themselves as immemorial and eternal. (Adorno
1935; cited in Benjamin 2002, 466)
Benjamin (2002, 466) comments:
… the number of ‘hollowed-out’ things increases at a
rate and on a scale that was previously unknown for
technical progress is continually withdrawing newly
introduced objects from circulation.
The supposed nullification of a ‘defunct’ piece of
display equipment’s ‘use value’ by the electronics
industries – thereby withdrawing it from circulation,
ubiquity, and familiarity – allows the technology –
and by extension the work that employs it – to
become a ‘cipher’ and to ‘draw in meanings’. A work
of art can therefore acquire what might be called a
semantic patina even if no physical change has taken
place, and questions of authenticity may arise if such
an alteration is viewed negatively as a loss. Impor-
tantly, this phenomenon is not limited only to technol-
ogy-based artworks. For example, there may come a
point in the future when policing and crowd control
is conducted primarily by armed drones, and the
mounted police employed in Tania Bruguera’s per-
formance artwork Tatlin’s Whisper #5 of 2008 may be
regarded as a quaint vestige of a bygone era, which
may cause manifestations of this work employing
horses to lose their intended power and effect.4
In this way, we can see how an individual’s sense of
a work’s identity is shaped not only by an artist’s state-
ments, the history of the work’s manifestations, and
the beholder’s values and subjectivities, but also by
advances and changes in the wider cultural systems
and contexts in which these works are entangled.
Given this situatedness, we can also see how even if
certain formal properties are maintained across each
manifestation, changes in the surrounding system
can attenuate the tokening efficacy of these features,
and a viewer or audience member’s perception that
the thing encountered is fully the work it is purported
to be.
Sustaining tokening links
In traditions of heritage preservation originating in the
Global North, revealing and protecting the continuity
of a physical object’s material substance has been
regarded as the primary means through which to
establish and secure its authenticity, that is – we
might say – a perceived correspondence between
the encountered, concrete object and the abstract
entity that it is purported to instantiate or be. Tokening
links may be further buttressed through scientific ana-
lyses, producing empirical evidence upon which claims
of material continuity or provenience might be sup-
ported. Conversely, such analyses may yield data that
may be interpreted as contradictory to what the
object ‘should’ be; for many, the radiocarbon dating
of the Shroud of Turin to the Middle Ages rather
than the first century CE effectively severs the tokening
link between the physical object and the idea of what
it ought to be.
Methods of sustaining tokening links vis-à-vis
empirical confirmation of material continuity are, of
course, less useful when dealing with artworks that
contain replenishable material elements, or recur in
successive episodes of fabrication, installation, and/or
enactment, as is the case with many contemporary art-
works. In these cases, perceptions of a manifestation’s
authenticity are seen to be secured by ensuring com-
pliance with the artist’s directives and/or by maintain-
ing a degree of formal resemblance between
materially variable instances, thereby sustaining a con-
sistent visual or aesthetic effect and experience. In this
regard, judgements of authenticity are predicated on
the degree to which the properties regarded by an
individual as significant are recognised as embodied
in a concrete object or event by that same individual
(Figure 4).
However, as discussed, this constellation of signifi-
cant properties is not defined solely by the artist;
viewers or audience members may hold differing
 VARIANTS OF CONCERN: AUTHENTICITY, CONSERVATION, AND THE TYPE-TOKEN DISTINCTION 9

Figure 4. Diagram illustrating how authenticity judgements exist on a continuum and are related to a perceived congruity
between embodied properties in a concrete object (solid points) and those considered significant or essential by the evaluator
(dashed points). Left: many significant properties are viewed as highly embodied translating into a perception of greater
overall congruity and authenticity. Right: many of the properties considered significant are not perceived to be well embodied
resulting in a perception of less overall congruity and authenticity. If viewers or audience members hold differing opinions
about either the work’s significant properties or the degree to which these are embodied or present in the concrete object,
debate about a manifestation’s authenticity may arise.

opinions about what the work’s significant properties
are, how significant they are, as well as the degree to
which these are embodied or present in the encoun-
tered object. New or conflicting directives from
artists – thereby engendering new artwork subtypes –
as well changes in a work’s wider contextual ecosys-
tem may also alter what properties an individual
regards as significant or their degree of significance.
Even if the formal properties embodied in a manifes-
tation remain unchanged, there may no longer be con-
sensus about their relative significance. And even
when a particular manifestation has been authorised
by the artist and is presented to the public as a particu-
lar work, an individual’s memory of the work or knowl-
edge of past displays or former appearances may
inflect what they perceive to be the constitutive prop-
erties of the work. Moreover, the significance afforded
to a particular property is intrinsically tied to the values
of the viewer or interpreter. For example, if they place
greater value on original material fabric – a prioritisa-
tion of artefactual value – they may regard it as a
highly significant property. Accordingly, their judge-
ment of authenticity will depend heavily on the
degree to which historic material fabric is – or is
believed to be – embodied in the concrete object at
hand. Therefore, the absence of a feature regarded
by an individual as significant may attenuate their
overall perception that what is encountered or experi-
enced is a full token instance of the work, even when it
is authorised.
This highlights the very real distinction between
authenticity – reformulated here as a degree of per-
ceived congruity between an abstract and concrete
object – and authorisation – understood as a status
conferral through the performatives of speech or text
acts made by the artist or the artist’s legal representa-
tives. Importantly, even if the tokening efficacy of a
manifestation is diminished by the absence of some
features regarded as significant or essential by some
audiences, we can see how links may be anchored
by the presence of other embodied features. This
may translate into a perception of a degree of corre-
spondence that challenges the common conceptualis-
ation of authenticity as a true/false status or quality.
Additionally, we can also see how individual authen-
ticity judgments may also be affected by presenting
evidence to audiences and creating space for dialogue
around the significance of various features, elements,
or properties. In this respect, an object or entity is safe-
guarded not by discovering and protecting its ‘true’
essence, but rather by investigating and documenting
how significances are negotiated and vary among
diverse audiences, in different settings, and through
time.
Conclusion
In this article, I have examined how the concept of
authenticity as it concerns the conservation of art-
works, as well as other cultural heritage items, is
10 B. CASTRIOTA
linked to the ontological distinction between abstract
entities or types and the various concrete objects
that may or may not be regarded as their instances
or tokens. Within this framework, authenticity in con-
servation theory can be reformulated as the degree
to which the things encountered and experienced by
audiences in time and space are viewed as tokens
of a work’s subtypes, and ultimately the work-as-
megatype, the conditions of which may not be entirely
consensual. In this light, we can see how one of the
aims of conservation is to facilitate a perceived corre-
spondence between a concrete object and the work
as an abstract entity. This may be achieved through
actions that make the encountered object or event
embody certain properties regarded as significant, as
well as through argumentation for why particular
embodied properties should be considered constitu-
tive of the work.
Instantiation – the discrete, concrete occurrence of
an abstract entity in time and space – may be per-
ceived differently across the various parts and proper-
ties of a work of art. The degree of instantiation of one
or more properties or elements of a work may inflect a
viewer’s recognition of the work’s overall, total instan-
tiation in the encountered object, event, or experience.
Moreover, the degree to which something is regarded
as an instance of an element, a property, or the work as
a whole may be modulated by the memory, knowl-
edge, and values of the viewer or interpreter. Instantia-
tion is typically conceived of as a process whereby a
work of art is made fully present in an isolated
episode of materialisation. Currie (1989, 5) defines an
instance as ‘all those concrete things that we come
into contact with when we experience a work of art’;
Davies (2013, 263) defines it as ‘an entity that makes
manifest to the receiver some or all of the properties
bearing upon its appreciation’. However, where and
when an instance of a work ends and begins is not
always a clear or a consensus judgement. This is
made particularly explicit by works of contemporary
art conceived outside of the white cube context,
which blend traditions and practices of making, and/
or which have diffused physical, digital, and social
boundaries and anatomies (see Castriota 2021b). The
degree to which a work as a whole is seen to be instan-
tiated or tokened thus depends upon the degree to
which those elements or properties regarded as consti-
tutive of the work are regarded as embodied or
present, which, in both cases, may be a matter of
interpretation and debate.
As a work of art enters the public sphere, the auth-
ority over what constitutes its significant properties
or identity becomes partially distributed. The textua-
lised directives created by or in consultation with
artists may function similarly to a script or musical
score to guide how a work is manifested, inform
future decision making around its perpetuation, as
well as the significance ascribed to certain properties.
However, a work’s significant properties may be
established and re-established over time, including
by parties other than the artist or their legal repre-
sentatives. In this respect, an artwork’s identity
might be better characterised as a continually nego-
tiated and therefore potentially plural impression of
significances that may differ from person to person
and over time as a work’s materialisations, contexts,
and viewerships change.
Notes
1. ‘Score compliance’ with respect to the authenticity of
contemporary artworks is discussed explicitly by van
de Vall (2015), although the term originates in
Languages of Art (Goodman 1968, 117; 186–187) and
is not common in the conservation literature.
2. Goodman’s distinctions are diagnoses of conventions
specific to European artistic traditions, which have
been propagated by Western cultural hegemony.
Goodman (1984, 140) noted, however, that such dis-
tinctions stem from ‘a tradition that might have
been different and may change’.
3. Levinson (1980, 21) differentiates between what he
terms implicit types and initiated types, the former
being abstract entities where ‘their existence is
implicitly granted when a general framework of possi-
bilities is given’ and the latter being those entities that
‘begin to exist only when they are initiated by an
intentional human act of some kind’. The explicit and
implicit subtypes I refer to here would all fall under
Levinson’s category of initiated types.
4. Writing about Tate’s role in stewarding this work, Laur-
enson and van Saaze (2014, 37) note that ‘Once this
practice ceases it will be necessary to work with the
artist to re-define it for a different social and historical
context’.
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to both of my thesis supervisors – Dominic
Paterson and Erma Hermens – for their guidance, and to
Hélia Marçal, Rebecca Gordon, Renée van de Vall, Zoë
Miller, and my anonymous peer reviewer, who each provided
invaluable feedback on various drafts of this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Funding
This research received funding from the European Union’s
Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under
the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 642892.
ORCID
Brian Castriota http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8495-8907
 VARIANTS OF CONCERN: AUTHENTICITY, CONSERVATION, AND THE TYPE-TOKEN DISTINCTION
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