Aga Wielocha

Aga Wielocha, 2021. Photo Cesar Delgado Martin.
Born	Warsaw, Poland

Aga Wielocha is a researcher and collection care professional specialised in contemporary art.

She is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the research project Activating Fluxus in the Institute Materiality in Art and Culture, Bern Academy of the Arts (BFH). Previously, she worked as a Conservator in M+ Museum of Visual Culture in Hong Kong, where she was designing documentation strategies to support efficient care of growing collections of visual art, design, architecture and moving image.

She holds a PhD from the University of Amsterdam (2021). Her doctoral research, titled Collecting archives of objects and stories: On the lives and futures of contemporary art at the museum carried out within the program New Approaches in the Conservation of Contemporary Art (NACCA), situated at the crossroads of art history and theory, conservation, museology and heritage studies, was focused on the lives and futures of contemporary art in institutional collections, particularly on works which are variable and unfold over time.

Her general research interests lie in mechanisms and processes of institutional collecting with the focus on processual, contemporary art formats, such as art projects, participatory art and performance and she regularly lectures, gives presentations, and writes on this topic.

Prior to her doctorate studies, she served as a conservator at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Poland. She holds a Master’s degree in Conservation and Restoration of Works of Art from the Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw, Poland. [1]

In 2024 (April–July), she was awarded a guest scholarship at the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles for a project investigating notions of ownership, guardianship and commons in relation to collecting and preserving contemporary art and alternative, networked, inclusive and participatory models of collecting.

Talks, Lectures and Conference Papers

• Art in Flux: Towards the Future of Conservation Brill Nuncius Seminar on the Material and Visual History of Science: Histories of Conservation Science and Scientific Conservation after WW II. Utrecht, the Netherlands [2023]

• Activation in/as Conservation Practice Impromptu meeting at the 20th ICOM-CC Triennial Conference, Valencia, Spain [2023]

• Shaping Institutional Strategies for Collecting Media Art at M+ Hong Kong / New Media Museums Colloquium: Collecting and Preserving Media Arts, Olomouc, Czechia [2022]

• Evolving concepts of care and prevention for contemporary art collections in contemporary institutions. Online symposium Contemporary Art Conservation Revisited: 20 years later / Bern Academy of the Arts, Switzerland; [co-presented with Christel Pesme] [2022]

• What About Bob? Shaping Institutional Approaches through Research and Practice / Conference ‘Past/Present: Collecting, Exhibiting and Conserving Contemporary Art in Asia’, Taoyuan Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan [co-presented with D. Smith] [2022]

• Readymade of the digital epoch: the (im)possible futures of Shirley Tse’s Negotiated Differences. Symposium TechFocus IV: Caring for 3D-printed Art organised by AIC Electronic Media Group [co-presented with A. Guarascio and O. Chow][2021]

• In Search of Sustainable Care for Digital Art: Establishing Networks, Enhancing Collaboration and Shifting from Ownership to Commons. Contemporary Art/Electronic Media Joint Session of AIC 2021 Annual Meeting, panel co-presented with Annet Dekker and Marina Valle Noronha[2021]

• New Art and New Ways of Institutional Collecting: From Possession to Partnership / Contemporary Art and Electronic Media Joint Session of AIC 2021 Annual Meeting [2021]

• Collecting Archives of Objects and Stories: On the lives and futures of contemporary art at the museum / NICAS (The Netherlands Institute for Conservation+Art+Science) Colloquim Online [2021]

• A Fat, Juicy File of Web Art: Net Art in the Museum and New Ways of Collecting / MAPS 2020: THE DEAD WEB – THE END, Will the Internet end soon?, Ludwig Museum, Budapest, Hungary [2020]

Writings and other Forms

Scholarly articles:

• "Instilling Liveliness: Archives of Neo-Avant-Garde Art as Sites of Activation.” Journal of the Institute of Conservation 47, no. 2 (2024): 166–82

• "Against Dissociation: Documentation as the Object of Care.” MAP - Media | Archive | Performance 14 (2024).

• “Collections of (An)Archives: Towards a New Perspective on Institutional Collecting of Contemporary Art and the Object of Conservation.” in: Conservation of Contemporary Art: Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Practice, edited by Renée van de Vall and Vivian van Saaze, 9:259–79. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2024.

• “Art Objects As Documents and the Distributed Identity of Contemporary Artworks.” ArtMatters International Journal of Technical Art History, no. Special Issue #1: 106–13, 2021

• "The Artist Interview as a Platform For Negotiating An Artwork’s Possible Futures", Art & Documentation, no. 17 (2018): 31–45.

• "Museum Collection in a Public Space" in: S. Sunara, A. Thorn (eds.) Conservation of Sculpture Parks, London: Archetype, 2018.

• "El registro de los vínculos entre el museo y el artista y su impacto en el ámbito de la conservación y restauración", in: 18ª Jornada de Conservación de Arte Contemporáneo, postprints, Madrid 2017. (Spanish)

• "Preserving the Open Form. The Oskar and Zofia Hansen House in Szumin: Between architecture and contemporary art" in: Saving the Now, preprints of the International Committee of Conservation (IIC) 2016 Los Angeles Congress. Special issue of Studies in Conservation, Vol. 61 (2016). [co-autored with A. Kędziorek]

• "Between curator and the artist: a problem of authority" in: E. Hermens, F. Robertson (eds) Authenticity in transition. Changing practices in contemporary art making and conservation, London 2016

Other writings:

• “Call It Something Else: Something Else Press, Inc. (1963-1974)” at Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid", Activating Fluxus project website, 2023

• "Activating Fluxus: In and Out of the Archive", Archives Ecart, 2023

• "Ecart as Fluxus: Get Inspired and Inspire", Activating Fluxus project website, 2022

Other forms:

• Radio Fluxus: Stories from the Fluxus Archives is a podcast series which invites scholars, artists, curators, conservators and other art researchers and practitioners to share their stories about one Fluxus artwork, along with their views on its use and activation. This podcast is part of the research project Activating Fluxus located at Bern University of the Arts and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Organised symposia and research projects

• Collecting and Preserving Research-based and Archive-based Art Projects, online (M+ Museum Hong Kong), Feb-Apr 2022. Research project, and a series of six internal seminars for M+ Museum staff with invited guests (Cornelia Sollfrank, Claire Bishop, Patricia Falcao, Sarah Haylett, Martina Haidvogl, Aymeric Mansoux, Julie Boschat Thorez, Anna Schäffler) curated by Dušan Barok. In collaboration with David Smith.

• Activating Fluxus: In and Out of the Archive, May 2023, Fondazione Bonotto, Molvena, Italy. Hybrid symposium focused on the notion of the archive and considerations of the archival space as a potential site for activating works created since the 1960s with a particular focus on Fluxus.

Links

• Academia.edu
• Profile on BFH
• NACCA
• Twitter
• https://post.lurk.org/@aga w (Mastodon)