Where contemporary art and contemporary music preservation practices meet: The case of Salt Itinerary

Abstract

This paper reflects on the continuity of Salt Itinerary, a born-digital musical work that crosses boundaries between music, theatre, and the visual arts, created by Portuguese poet, performer, and composer Miguel Azguime (b. 1960). Several composers and interpreters have pointed out the importance of documentation in the preservation of contemporary music when they experience difficulties while performing the prescribed actions in the score without a description of the results to be achieved along with the composer's intentions. Therefore, a methodological approach was developed which combines prescriptive and descriptive documentation as a main component in the preservation strategy for contemporary musical works. This paper analyses and discusses whether and how this methodology can be applied to the field of contemporary art preservation. It also raises the question of who is responsible for producing and storing this documentation for works of art that exist only outside the museum realm.