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Abstract
Starting from the premise that display is pivotal for the preservation of installation art, this essay examines the increasing intersection of curating and conserving in this regard. Based on various modes of interpretation and contextualization, preservation practices become a constituting part of the artwork’s identity. This essay puts these procedures on display in order to make them available for analysis. The approach is based on my own practical experience of installing the works of German artist Anna Oppermann (1940-1993) since 2010. Beginning in the mid-1960s, her so-called ‘ensembles’ emerged in a cumulative and associative manner over a period of several years. Oppermann’s oeuvre is not only an outstanding case study for the challenges of preserving process-based art. As I argue, her ensemble method also provides a model for visualizing knowledge production in the course of processual preservation. And above all, the ensemble can contribute ontologically to the general understanding of preserved artworks in their multiplicity and as being in a state of constant creation.