Immaterial Resistance: Preserving the Living, Tensing the Museal

Since the days of the historical avant-gardes, museums have been challenged by a panoply of practices that strained their structures and objectives. Proposals based on unconventional materialities, inframince works, performances, dances, objets trouvés, etc. seemed to offer forms of resistance to the processes of reification inherent to the act of collecting art. Over the last 25 years, institutions worldwide have made considerable efforts to develop practices and protocols enabling them to incorporate immaterial works – performances, choreographies, instructions, conceptual proposals, etc. – into their collections and programmes. The normalization of the live arts on the international circuit has prompted reflection on the need for museums to update their practices of preservation, exhibition and mediation. Each institution, within its cultural context, must grapple with different institutional challenges and political agendas. Despite some previous efforts, in the Spanish context—and specifically in the Canary Islands—an in-depth reflection on these issues remains largely pending. ‘Intangible Resistance’ aims to bring together professionals, practitioners and researchers from different fields and geographical contexts with the aim of comparing experiences and engaging in dialogue from which to build a solid basis for a necessary institutional transformation. What are the main challenges that the concept of ‘the living’ poses for museums and contemporary art centres? What transformations must these institutions undertake in order to respond to these challenges? To what extent are museums themselves becoming living organisms, and how can they generate a performative memory of their programmes? What archival practices might institutions draw upon in their efforts to incorporate the immaterial?

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