In 1977, the International Cultural Centre (ICC) invited Gordon Matta-Clark (1943–1978) to realize a project in an empty office building opposite the Steen in Antwerp. The work Office Baroque, made by the artist for this occasion, is intended as ‘a walkthrough a panoramic arabesque’ marked by performance art’s engagement with urban space and social dissent. Taking Matta-Clark’s structural cut as a conceptual and methodological starting point and promoted by the FNRS Contact Group ‘Museums and Contemporary Art’, the conference will bring together scholars in visual arts, as well as museum directors, archivists and curators to discuss from comparative and multidisciplinary perspectives the manifold relationships between public and performative practices with regard to the process of musealization by contemporary art institutions. How can a live and ephemeral action, originally conceived for the public space, become the object of a cultural institutionalization? Once included in the collection of an art museum, in what form is the performance preserved, exhibited and perceived? Is it a matter of ‘replaying’ it occasionally in the public space from the documentation associated with it (photographs, films, protocols, notes, etc.), which the museum itself has sought to perpetuate? Do the documents carry an aesthetic value? Is the musealization of performative and public art always governed by an intent of materialization? What status should we give to objects that are sometimes assimilated to ‘relics’, sometimes to genuine art creations? 

These questions, which deal with both reenactment practices and the controversial aspect of collecting and archiving live or immaterial forms of art, do not exhaust the critical and the theoretical overview of the subject. The scholarly presentations given by Mélanie Boucher(UQO), Éric Mangion (Villa Arson, Nice), Johan Pas (AP School of Arts, Antwerp), Annalisa Rimmaudo (MNAM – Centre Pompidou) and Pierre-Olivier Rollin (BPS22, Charleroi) will discuss a number of seminal case studies on the issue by underlining that there are as many performative works in the public space as there are ways of exhibiting and perpetuating them in the museum space. 

The conference is conceived and organized by Julie Bawin (ULiège) and Maria Elena Minuto (ULiège; KU Leuven) in collaboration with the The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC): « Des nouveau usages des collections dans les musées d’art ».