Journal of the Institute of Conservation

ISSN: 1945-5224 (Print) 1945-5232 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcon20

Ephemeral Monuments: History and Conservation

of Installation Art

Jack McConchie & Melanie Rolfe

To cite this article: Jack McConchie & Melanie Rolfe (2016) Ephemeral Monuments: History
and Conservation of Installation Art, Journal of the Institute of Conservation, 39:1, 70-72, DOI:
10.1080/19455224.2015.1104142

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19455224.2015.1104142

Accepted author version posted online: 08

Oct 2015.
Published online: 24 Mar 2016.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 9

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rcon20

Download by: [University of California, San Diego] Date: 04 April 2016, At: 05:49
 Journal of the Institute of Conservation, 2016
Vol. 39, No. 1, 70 –72, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19455224.2015.1104142
BOOK REVIEW
Jack McConchie and Melanie Rolfe review
Ephemeral Monuments: History and Conservation of
Installation Art, edited by Barbara Ferriani and
Marina Pugliese, Los Angeles, Getty Conservation
Institute, 2013, 280 pp., $50.00 (paperback). ISBN
978-1-60606-134-3
Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 05:49 04 April 2016
This book is the first English language translation of
the 2009 Italian publication Monumenti effemeri:
Storia e conversazione delle installazione by Barbara Fer-
riani and Marina Pugliese. The translation and publi-
cation of this work has been undertaken by the Getty
Conservation Institute as part of their Modern and
Contemporary Art Research Initiative, a component
of which is the dissemination of important conserva-
tion literature. There is no one translator credited and
the editors thank ‘all those who have worked on the
translation and editing of the edition for their untir-
ing efforts’ and the first thing to be said is that at no
point does the book feel like it was first written in
another language.
In this aspect and in its original conception this
book is a collaborative effort, although the two
editors also contribute the longest sections of the
book. It was published as a result of the Italian
project DIC—Documentare Insallazione Complesse
(Documenting Complex Installations), a collabor-
ation between museums in Milan and Rome and the
first official collaboration between Italian museums
on the conservation of this type of contemporary
art. The project took place between 2006 and 2008
and was co-ordinated by this book’s editors, Marina
Pugliese, art historian and director of the Museo del
Novecento, Milan1 and Barbara Ferriani, conservator
of contemporary art. The working team was com-
prised of art historians (Alessandro Barbuto,
Iolanda Ratti), conservators-restorers (Fabiana
Cangia, Rafaela Trevisan) and an architect (Carlo
Birozzi). The cross-disciplinary make-up of the
authorial team reflects the fact that co-operation
between disciplines, stakeholders and institutional
roles is often key in the perpetuation of installation
artworks.
The authors relate how the DIC project was set up
in the wake of Inside Installations, the European
initiative co-ordinated by the Netherlands Institute
for Cultural Heritage (ICN) which ran from 2004 to
2007. The book Inside Installations—Theory and Practice
in the Care of Complex Artworks was published in 2011.2
Ferriani and Pugliese acknowledge that the DIC was
set up as no Italian museums had been involved in
the Inside Installations project and they felt they
could benefit from a similar platform for the exchange
of experience and knowledge. As they explain, the
DIC received no financial support and so documen-
tation involving sophisticated apparatus as per
some of the systems considered as part of Inside
Installations was out of the question and they
instead focussed on testing ‘a simple and easy to
use method’ by applying the same criteria for docu-
mentation across a number of artworks chosen to
present different sorts of challenges. These documen-
tation case studies form Part II—the shorter half—of
the book.
There is a slightly patriotic feel to the book—the
editors state in their preface that in this revised
edition they have ‘ . . . expanded on those sections
related to the contributions of Italian artists to the
history of artistic environments and installation’ as
their research had led them to realize that . . . the
Italian contribution to the history of installations has
never really been fully recognized on an international
level’. However the book is in no way peripheral to
the development of thinking around the custodian-
ship of this type of artwork and contains much that
is additional or complementary to that found in the
Inside Installations book. In particular the first two
essays, by Pugliese and Ferriani respectively, are
especially useful in setting the whole business of con-
serving contemporary art in context.
Pugliese’s essay ‘A Medium in Evolution—A Criti-
cal History of Installations’ is the longest single
section of the book and the one, as reviewers, we per-
sonally found most enlightening. She presents a
history or rather a ‘possible geneaology’ of the devel-
opment of installation art beginning with the investi-
gations of the European Avant-garde of the 1920s and
1930s up to the present day. Installations ‘developed
from environments and artist led exhibition events’
and in the 1960s a ‘conceptual transition took place
. . . from the installation as the setting up of an exhibi-
tion, to the installation as a particular type of work of
art’. Today we have ‘a medium in evolution’ and one
which is ideal ‘for representing directly and effi-
ciently the essence of contemporaneity and its impli-
 Book review
cations at a political, religious and social level’. Pugli-
ese talks of the difficulties of defining the fundamen-
tal characteristics of installations and deals with this
by choosing four works to explore in-depth each of
‘the specific peculiarities’ she associates with the
medium; space (Gregor Schneider Totes Haus Ur
2001), material (Thomas Hirschorn The Bridge 2000),
time (Ilya Kabakov The Toilet 1992) and experience
(Olafur Eliasson The Weather Project 2003). Pugliese
concludes with an assessment of the value and sig-
nificance of installation art, describing how installa-
tions share with their:
‘ . . . traditional counterpart the monument . . . the
capacity to communicate with the public . . . As para-
digms of contemporary existence installations are the
ideal medium for representing its complexity and its
Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 05:49 04 April 2016
social and political questions but also its identity, its
aesthetics and its trends. In contrast to classical
monuments they are the ephemeral monuments of a
society that is too complex and distracted to be able
to share a common memory for any significant
length of time.’
Pugliese’s outline of the development of installa-
tion art is well illustrated with photographs of all
the works cited and the examples explored in more
depth are powerful works by important artists.
After reading this essay, as reviewers we had a
fuller appreciation of installations as an art form
and had gained an insight into how artists may be
exploring the medium of installation itself as well as
the particular themes of the work. This is an added
dimension to what the artist may be trying to
achieve and so also to what we are trying to preserve.
Barbara Ferriani’s essay which follows, entitled
‘How to Pass on an Idea’, is a brief history of the
attempts by artists, galleries, institutions and conser-
vators to address how to re-display and preserve
these works after their initial realizations. Touching
on many of the dilemmas and coming to terms
involved in this, it is a great introduction to anyone
becoming involved in this area as to the thinking
and approaches that have gone before, including
the recent initiatives by conservation organizations.
As for the rest of the book, the notes and references
are extensive, pointing the reader to other articles
and websites that they should be aware of.
The next section of the book, ‘The Specificity of the
Video Installation’, is an admirably concise and com-
prehensive account by Iolanda Ratti of the area
coming to be known in conservation terms as ‘time
based media’. In terms of installations, not all instal-
lations incorporate time based media but all time
based media art is necessarily an installation with
some kind of dedicated or adapted space.
Previously in this publication time was discussed
as an element of installations, and parallels with the
theatre, cinema and performance drawn earlier are
Journal of the Institute of Conservation, Vol. 39 No. 1 March 2016
71
discussed more literally in this chapter. Ratti also
refers back to the installation being an ephemeral
medium and a medium in evolution, and shows
how the ‘concept of temporality’ is given a new per-
spective in installations which incorporate technol-
ogy which by its nature is forever in progress and
rendering equipment obsolete.
In an insightful and example-led history, Ratti attri-
butes the rise of video in art both to the rise of artistic
trends such as Fluxus and minimalism, but also to the
rise of technology outside the field of art, such as
mass communication media and experimental
cinema. Distinction is drawn between very early
works by Naim June Paik, where television displays
are corrupted through magnets, and works that
started to utilize the portable video camera,
whereby interactivity became a feasible component
of the video installation to create an ‘environment’.
Key early works are discussed such as Bruce
Nauman’s Live-Taped Video Corridor and Dan
Graham’s Present Continuous Past(s). In these
examples the transition of the video monitor from
being an object to an element within a complex
system is highlighted. Works such as Peter
Campus’s Interface are discussed where the viewer
becomes an ‘active protagonist and an activator of
the device’ just by being present. Key works are dis-
cussed that deliberately subvert the use of time
such as Douglas Gordon’s 24 Hour Psycho and, in a
more extreme case 81 Years by Tobias Rehberger, a
piece which lasts for 81 years.
Having highlighted key works and properties, the
theoretical and practical considerations of conserva-
tion are put forward. We are encouraged to consider
what is the essence of these works, and what elements
of the technology would be considered components
of the ‘art’, by understanding which elements of the
system can be replaced without changing the funda-
mental meaning, and focussing on preserving an
idea rather than ‘obsessively conserving all the con-
stituent elements’. Practical considerations of conser-
vation include thoughts on documentation, and
provide an introduction into planning for the obsoles-
cence of equipment. An example of a piece is given,
Gary Hill’s Between Cinema and a Hard Place, where
the equipment is so unique to the piece that it has
to be considered that the work has a finite lifespan.
Tracing the technological advancements in audio
visual signals, a brief history of formats and carriers
is given and brief practical considerations of storage
are discussed, including considering the obsolescence
of playback equipment. Arriving at digital storage, it
is put forward how these files may be infinitely repro-
duced and how this raises questions over current
thoughts on authenticity. File storage conservation
is helpfully defined in terms of refreshment,
migration, emulation and encapsulation.
 72
Fabiana Cangia on the ‘Interview as Instrument’
and Rafaela Trevisan on ‘Documentation Techniques’
give equally brief but useful summaries of where we
are now with both these areas of conservation activity.
Cangia describes the interview with the artist or their
representative as ‘essential’ but is clear about the
limitations and pitfalls involved in the process. Trevi-
san gives an account of some of the ways conserva-
tors have been documenting installations including
high tech methods such as virtual reality (how we
document) and also touches on how we decide
what we document. She emphasizes how we need
to explore and question what we are doing when
we document, beginning by stating that while:
‘ . . . the systematic collection of information is an
essential prerequisite to any conservation intervention
Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 05:49 04 April 2016
of a complex installation . . . [such a work] transcends
the idea of “object” and finds its identity not only in
the physical artefact of which the work is constructed
but also in an invisible structure that governs its
meaning. [ . . . ] Consequently conservation [and by
extension conservation documentation] becomes a
decisive act and an interpretation.’
The introduction to the individual case studies
which form Part II of the book gives a good model
for what documenting a complex installation should
be, including parameters—authorial, historical, tech-
nical—and suggested headings for structuring the
information with content for each outlined. The case
studies themselves are quite short—information has
been extracted from the ‘complete and detailed dos-
siers’ produced and formed into a short narrative
divided into three sections. The first is concerned
McConchie and Rolfe
with tracing the history of the previous installations
of the work, the second captures the artists views
gleaned from interviews and other sources and the
last, entitled The Future of the Work, at once attempts
to describe guidelines for future realizations of the
work while at the same time ‘emphasizing open-
ended questions and in many cases considering how
the process-based or evolving nature of the work is
an essential constituent of its identity and must there-
fore be preserved’. The works described (by Matthew
Barney, Alexander Brodsky, Anselm Keifer, Mario
Merz, Rudolph Stingel and Franz West and Bill
Viola) provide a good overview of the challenges pre-
sented by these artworks to those charged with their
preservation and the variety of approaches that have
been taken. They also demonstrate how, like the art-
works themselves, these approaches are rarely defini-
tive but contingent and subject to change and review.
Notes
1. Novecento ¼ 1900s, twentieth century.
2. Tatja Scholte and Glenn Wharton, eds, Inside
Installations—Theory and Practice in the Care of
Complex Artworks (Amsterdam: Amsterdam Uni-
versity Press, 2011).
JACK MCCONCHIE
Time Based Media Conservator Tate
MELANIE ROLFE
Sculpture Conservator Tate
# 2016, Jack McConchie and Melanie Rolfe
Journal of the Institute of Conservation, Vol. 39 No. 1 March 2016