High latencies #5
Fernando Domínguez Rubio

Fernando Domínguez Rubio is a sociologist and the author of Still Life: Ecologies of the Modern Imagination at the Art Museum, in which he offers an innovative and enlightening look at the conservation of contemporary art. By exploring the invisible spaces at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York (and, by extension, many other art institutions), his research shows us that the works we contemplate as eternal are actually on the edge of disappearance, subject to ongoing processes of decay, modification, and decision-making. He thus draws attention to the tensions between matter, time, fragility and cultural value that permeate everyday life in the modern museum.

In this podcast, we talk to Fernando Domínguez Rubio about the ecologies of care that fuel this fiction of artistic stability—a network of infrastructures, climate technologies, conservation laboratories and underground storage facilities, as well as the largely invisible workers whose labour is usually left out of the traditional narrative of art, even though it is pivotal. We talk about this constant struggle against entropy, reflecting on the physical and human resources devoted to it, but also on the ethical, political, and economic implications of trying to slow down the passage of time. Because the way Domínguez Rubio sees it, the museum is much more than a space for contemplation and a collective archive: it is a political and cultural technology aimed at freezing time, ordering the world, and determining what is worthy of conservation. We talk to Fernando Domínguez Rubio about regimes of objecthood, about storage facilities, memory, and greenhouses, about uniqueness, and about other ways of holding onto things.

Sounds:

Nox Sound, ‘Foley Object Wood Basket Creaks Stereo’
Paulw2k, ‘Hand Sawing’
Duisterwho, ‘Crunchy breaking wood – crushing dry tree bark’
Nox Sound, ‘Foley Wood Saw Sequence Mono’
Nox Sound, ‘Foley natural wood barks crush mono’
Samuel Gremaud, ‘HANDSAW – 2’
Larryblag, ‘Handsawing Wood’
Walthamstow Walker, ‘Some Woodwork Tools’
Samuel Gremaud, ‘HANDSAW – 1’
SoundsLikeYukon, ‘Hand Saw with Exertion’
Drelliott0net, ‘2015-04-11 Svínafellsjökull pond’
Newlocknew, ‘ROCKMvmt_Stones Roll Down A Small Steep Rocky Slope 1_EM’

With the support

_{Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.}