The Art of Maintenance
Every day, the world is repaired. Actions are taken to maintain, restore and give new life not only to objects, but also to places and relations. In an era which promotes innovation, deterioration and dust are nevertheless everywhere. They invite us to think about what needs care.
In the 1970s, the American artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles carried out a major series of performances on the work of maintenance. Mop or dust cloth in hand, she cleaned in order to reveal the sum of tasks which make it possible for life to perpetuate itself, like the power relations which structure the division of these tasks in society. Fifty years later, the concept of maintenance remains as relevant as ever: urban infrastructure must be maintained, software updated, bodies cared for and ecosystems preserved. As the anthropologist Shannon Mattern points out, maintenance is now a part of numerous disciplines as a theoretical, ethical and methodological framework and as a political cause. Let us add that it can also be an aesthetic.
Repairing a broken appliance by oneself, conveying know-how or contributing to sharing communities fosters emancipation. Not everything must be saved, but that which has value deserves to be maintained.
Without limiting themselves to these topics, proposals could address the following:
- Environment: recycling, reusing, preserving ecosystems, fighting against extractivism;
- Architecture and development: restoring buildings, converting our heritage, salvaging materials, maintaining rather than developing the land;
- Work: rest, fallow periods, degrowth, the role of workers in the Global South in maintaining countries in the north, reproductive labour, care professions, solidarity and concern.
