Event: WEDS TALKS: More-than-Human Critical Heritage Conservation

ABSTACT: This talk will present two speculative archaeological conservation projects currently underway at the Getty: Conservation Object as a Matter of Concern: “ ‘Ayn Ghazal in a Future World”, and ‘Museum Objects in This Future World’. The relevance of these playful projects will be discussed in relation to a current book project 'Beyond Just-Human: Critical Approaches to Heritage Conservation Practice'.

BIO: Dean's current research aims to re-situate heritage practice, from maintaining the metastable authenticity of heritage places and objects towards co-curating ecosociologically-constituted multispecies worlds. It looks to move beyond concepts that continue to privilege human agencies that sustain inequalities, towards a pluriversity of affective ecosociological potentialities of (post)human and nonhuman matter. This is addressed via transarticulating sympoietic framing that brings creative practice and heritage processes into flux through experimental science-art worldings. This enables a heritage conservation that addresses the social issues of the present in making more-liveable more-than-human worlds by making common cause with other human, non-human, and non-living actors.