Meriç Öner: Saving/s? | Acts of Preserving

SAVING/S? is a long-term research into nurturing resources across disciplines, including cooking, architecture and finance. It identifies diverse production methods, from pickling vegetables and making adobe bricks to generating blockchains, as a collection of skills. The research catalogs the tools, technologies and communities inherent in these processes. The first chapter of SAVING/S?, entitled "Acts of Preserving", explores different practices of preserving cultural heritage, food, wealth, nature, artworks, data and memories.

Preservation is the process of protecting something from damage, decay, or destruction. It requires and uses specific methods and skills. Depending on the different areas to which it applies, it also involves means of gaining control, providing security, and enabling longevity. Most acts of preservation are rooted in carrying objects from the past into the future, thus extending their expected lifespan. Including monumental buildings and works of art, these practices create added value where time is the main marketable element. Few preservation techniques are integral to seasonalities, as in the case of fermented foods. Between such two temporalities, the meanings of ‘new’ and ‘old,’ or ‘fresh’ and ‘stale,’ tend to constantly shift across the diagram. However, in other examples, such as in wealth and data preservation, the measures introduced tend to extend well beyond the mortality of the individual. Then the implications of use, circulation, and finitude are broken, and preservation becomes an act of self-protection.

In a series of conversations with economists, ecologists, architects, cooks, biologists, behavioral scientists, and the like, Meriç Öner will inquire what triggers preservation. What are the needs, expectations, and desires that drive action? What are they trying to avoid or achieve? How do they differ in what concerns the identification of new values and/or life cycles? Will they really work in the future as they have been projected from the past?