Max Planck Institute for the History of Science Hosts Public Lecture on Critical Heritage Practice

The Berlin-based Max Planck Institute for the History of Science will host a virtual public lecture titled “Critical Heritage Practice: Preferred Futures, Uncertain Presents and Speculative Pasts” on September 7, 2021.

The lecture is part of the 2021 Methods Intensive Master Class at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science and open to all.

The presentation, by Dean Sully of University College London, will provide a practice-based account of heritage conservation as a set of research methods that contribute to broader debates about the past and concerns about our futures. It will explore the principles of the conservation discipline within a framing of colonialism and the need for additional methodological tools that go beyond the technical ability of heritage to merely present something of the past to be experienced in the present.

In addition to the opportunities provided by conservation’s forensic encounter with the vestigial remains of the past, this will consider the implications of prioritizing either materials, values, or people in heritage conservation policy and practice. Decolonizing, transculturalism, and post-humanism will be presented as tools to challenge the Authorized Heritage Discourse. The potential of critical speculative methods will be presented as ways to highlight the (un)certainty of authorizing knowledge production in providing stories of the past and the future.

Two heritage projects will be discussed as examples of the application of decolonizing, transcultural, critical heritage, and post-humanist practice in the conservation of heritage places and objects. The case studies will form the focus of two subsequent workshops:

• Workshop 1 (Decolonizing One Discipline at a Time, Starting with Heritage Conservation): decolonizing and transcultural methods will be highlighted in a heritage conservation project: Hinemihi, the wharenui at Clandon Park, UK/Te Wairoa, Aotearoa (New Zealand).

• Workshop 2 (Role of Creative Practice in Heritage Process: Speculative Pasts from Certain Futures. Past, Present and Future, Which Comes First?): critical heritage and post-humanist methods will be discussed in relation to a critical speculative design project: “Objects of the Misanthropocene, Insouciant Artefacts from the Museums of Beyond.”

Space is limited for Workshops 1 & 2. Those interested in admission to the workshop, should fill out and email this form to [email protected] by August 26, 2021. Successful registrants will receive a link to relevant readings.