In conjunction with Suzanne Lacy: Birlikte/Togæther, organised by Sabancı University Sakıp Sabancı Museum with the support of the Sabancı Foundation, the online talk series Performance Talks: Strategies of Keeping It Live, taking place on 24 February and 5 March, reconsiders performance art’s presence within museum collections through the lenses of vitality, time, and care.

Moderated by Osman Serhat Karaman, the series welcomes two leading scholars in the field, Hélia Marçal (University College London) and Hanna Hölling (Bern University of the Arts). In their talks, Marçal and Hölling propose a shift away from understanding performance as a completed, stabilised archival record. Instead, they frame it as a mode of existence sustained through transmission and re-enactment, circulating between bodies, documents, and institutions, transforming over time, and gaining continuity through practices of care.

The talks will be conducted in English and are open to all participants free of charge. Registration can be completed through the Sakıp Sabancı Museum’s website.

About the speakers:

Hélia Marçal is a scholar whose current research interests are positioned within feminist new materialisms, material histories of activist artworks, ethics and performativity of cultural heritage, the conservation of time-based media and performance art, and both the materiality of contemporary art and the ways it is positioned and negotiated by museum, heritage, and conservation practices. Hélia currently serves as Associate Professor in History of Art, Materials and Technology at the University College London.

Hanna B. Hölling, is a scholar, educator, and author whose work reimagines conservation as a dynamic, transformative, and politically engaged practice, revealing its generative potential for change, renewal, and new forms of knowledge. Trained as both a conservator (MA) and an art historian (PhD), her research, publications, and teaching engage with material culture studies, the history and theory of conservation, and postwar and contemporary art. She currently leads Swiss Research Council–funded projects: Critical Conservation (2025–30), Natureculture Lab (2025-), Activating Fluxus (2022–26), and Performance: Conservation, Materiality, Knowledge (2020–25).