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EDITORIAL981
November 2011
The Nomad Conservator
When the computer gained a permanent place in our houses, teleworking or rather the home based work revolution started. But conservation is not one of those professions you can carry out from your computer at home, unless you are working in documentation. On the contrary, conservation has always been work that needs to be done somewhere else. In modern times, this phenomena has reached a dimension never seen before.
We often complain about the problems of modern times. We don’t have major revolutions or world wars but things are changing more than we care to notice. It has never been easier or cheaper to travel, just as it seems that it has never been more difficult to hold on to a job. Mobility is the word of reference nowadays. Long-term contracts are so difficult to get that we must consider them long gone. Short-term contracts, and/or freelancing, are here to stay and dictate our lives. It is now pretty common to be 35 to 40 years old and have spent the last 10 to 15 years going from project to project, either at academia, in the museum field or in the private sector. Nowadays, mobility is considered as a necessary requirement for the modern work market. In conservation we may contemplate three main types of mobility: micro-mobility, when you move inside the region where you live; macro-mobility, when you move continually around your country, which means not going home very often; and inter-mobility, when you move to another country either permanently or for long-term periods (2-5 years). Mobility is great! It allows you to travel, see the world, and if you don’t like something you can always move on to your next target. But it also does not allow you to plan your future, know where you will be living in a few years time, create roots in your community or raise a family, basically it doesn’t let you settle down. This is the true nature of conservation: to go “in situ”, where you are needed, although you might say it has now turned into “to go anywhere you get the chance to”. The whole initial concept is very attractive, to search for a better place, to always move for the better, but when better is not available and you need to move on because your last work or project is just finishing, then it turns into a matter of survival. This may be seen as a sign of present times and not as a major problem. As a factor that is shaping the actual generation of conservator-restorers and that will probably change the way that conservation is done, I believe it deserves some reflection. Rui Bordalo, Executive Editor
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