Continuing our exploration of terms we think with, we would like to further problematize the contemporary notion of preservation. In the Merriam Webster Dictionary, preservation is “the activity or process of keeping something valued alive, intact, or free from damage or decay” the term can refer to heritage, mathematics and computer science, arts, and nature.

However, as we are unpacking the cross-pollination of environmental destruction through human impact, and the problematics within the construction of our current cultural system, we would like to explore the paradox within the very concept of preservation. The term is predominantly received as a positive effort to reconstruct or stabilize an ecosystem, species or an architectural monument back to its “natural” or original state. In the cultural context, this often refers to objects and art pieces within institutional collections, or archaeological sites, very much related to art conservation and restoration. When simplifying the anticipated outcome, the two agencies behind the term are seemingly at odds. Within the methodology of natural preservation, the strongest agenda is the protection of the natural from human impact. In contrast, cultural preservation is predominantly based on the minimization or removal of natural impact on man made objects.

However, both contexts are quintessentially interested in the removal of any effect of temporality. Preservation is seen as an effort towards the future: yet in order to make an object expandable through time, we need to remove it from its own changeable materiality, as materials are bound to deconstruct and change with time. Preventing such changes through added layers, additions, deconstruction, or revolving contexts is a form of stabilization. A lived with or living place is reserved and preserved for the future, yet loses its very justification to exist within the present, its only agency a continuing existence as a reminder of the past.

Which moment in time is chosen to be preserved, and by whom? Who’s past, present and future are we preserving? How can we move from discourses on preservation to one about adaptation and collective survival?