Konservatorns kropp Betydelsen av sinnesförnimmelser och känslor vid arbetet med föremålen

Abstract

This master thesis is written at the Department of Conservation at the University of Gothenburg, Master Programme in Conservation. Author is Caroline Owman and the tutor is Dr Bosse Lagerqvist. The topic for the thesis is a study of the senses and emotions a person experiences in contact with the environment. The purpose of the study is to highlight these feelings studying the conservator at work, and literature that in various ways focus on bodily experiences and the interpretation of them. The research objectives are to find ways to raise awareness of the feelings that accomplish everyday work, how to express them and to make use of them for example in the study of materialities and in the production of museum exhibitions. The investigation result was a conclusion that the work with cultural heritage objects evokes different feelings and that these senses and emotions affect the work and the person at work. The literature study shows that there is no literature on the subject, but that adjacent scientific fields to study the subject could be phenomenology, environmental psychology or posthumanism. The content of the documentation is governed by phenomeno-logical theory. The methods used are diary entries written by conservators, observation of conservators at work and literature studies. The literature study and the empirical studies have inspired each other in the attempt to get an insight into what the person experiences, how this can be expressed and how to analyse and understand the different levels of perceptions.