ABSTRACT
The Museum of Modern Art’s 2008 acquisition of the Silverman Fluxus Collection presented challenges to traditional museum frameworks due to Fluxus’s emphasis on ephemerality, process and indeterminacy. This chapter takes up the concept of translation, as a radical theoretical and practical framework, for approaching the stewardship and exhibition of Fluxus works. Drawing on the discussion of translation by Susan Bernofsky, the authors propose that translation embraces intervention, reinterpretation and subjectivity while respecting the artist’s intent, allowing institutions to navigate the fluid and experimental nature of these works. This framework is explored through three case studies. Dick Higgins’s The Flaming City (1961–62) illustrates the complexities of conserving intermedia art. The absence of a definitive reference print required research, digital restoration and reinterpretation. The cataloging system, namely Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records, was adapted to emphasize the relationships between these entities over the usual prioritizing of physical objects. Artworks incorporating cathode ray tube monitors by Nam June Paik and Shigeko Kubota demonstrate how conservation can be seen as translation, balancing material obsolescence, historical context, fidelity, inventiveness and sensitivity. The essay advocates for making explicit the active interpretative work of stewardship practices.
