Academic literature on the topic '950304 Conserving Intangible Cultural Heritage'

AbstractMusical instruments are central components of both the tangible and intangible heritage. However, discourse about music as intangible cultural heritage frequently overlooks the importance of instruments in conserving traditions inherited from the past and making live performance possible in the present, while curating instruments as tangible heritage often neglects their function for making music. This article explores two interrelated research questions about musical instruments as heritage. First, should instrument-crafting skills inherited from the past be sustained today, and, where industrial or mechanized manufacturing processes and the development of instruments is encouraged, what are the implications for sustaining music traditions? Second, given that instruments as crafted objects deteriorate over time, should instruments inherited from the past be displayed as objects, be restored to playing condition, or be updated and developed for contemporary use? To explore these questions, I take three case studies that juxtapose musical instruments from opposite sides of the world and from societies with very different philosophical and ideological approaches. The three case studies are Britain’s piano heritage, traditional Korean instruments (kugakki) in the Republic of Korea/South Korea, and “national” instruments (minjok akki) in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea/North Korea. Based on fieldwork, ethnography, and collecting and curating work, my choice of case studies allows me to look at both the country I call home (Britain) and the region where I have researched matters musical for 40 years (the Korean peninsula). But the case studies also demonstrate that there is no single answer to questions about the role of musical instruments when (and if) instruments are recognized as both tangible and intangible heritage.

Background of the study: Documentation is an imperative initiative in safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) to consolidate and nurture appreciation that is intact to culture and heritage within a society. However, many countries in the world still give less attention to documenting heritage systematically. Purpose: This study aims to achieve a greater exposure of Institutional Memory’s in Malaysia play a role in preserving and conserving heritage information on Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) through the documentation strategy of Mak Yong’s performing art collection. Method: This study adopted a case study approach by pertaining qualitative research method. Qualitative data were gathered through content analyses towards 521 of Mak Yong’s performing art collection were carried out in three (3) Malaysia Institutional Memory. Findings: The study found that the lack of Mak Yong’s collection in institutional memories is contributed to some elements that require detailed documentation such as characters, spectacle, diction, and sound. Conclusion: safeguarding of ICH through preservation and conservation of Mak Yong’s information collection that still needs to be improved by considering the consolidation of integrated institutional memory’s roles and ongoing implementation of documentation strategy program of heritage information.

Heritage represents irreplaceable resources for the tourism industry so conservation is a vital component of their management. Throughout the world, the tourism industry has been an economic generator including conserving the heritage sites. Today, tourism has been considered to have greater socio economic values. Thus Pashupatinath area, with its rich cultural heritage, has great potential to be tapped through cultural heritage tourism. Pashupatinath area is known for its rich cultural heritage, but lack of proper tourism guidelines in the areas has not been able to showcase its potential. Thus, the paper tries to bring the importance of heritage tourism in the core area of Pashupatinath and its vicinity into limelight. The paper addresses the need of improvement in management, information and development in infrastructure. Moreover it covers the approach of conservation of tangible and intangible cultural heritage. This article examines the significance and value of Pashupatinath area as a cultural heritage tourism destination. This research identifies numerous issues related to cultural heritage tourism management in Pashupatinath area and its cultural heritage tourism products, coordination among stakeholders and interpretation. It explores the current management situation of Pashupati area and provides the suggestion for the betterment of cultural heritage tourism in Pashupatinath area. The paper helps to relate the tourism industry with the economic growth of Pashupatinath area.

Heritage represents irreplaceable resources for the tourism industry so conservation is a vital component of their management. Throughout the world, the tourism industry has been an economic generator including conserving the heritage sites. Today, tourism has been considered to have greater socio economic values. Thus Pashupatinath area, with its rich cultural heritage, has great potential to be tapped through cultural heritage tourism. Pashupatinath area is known for its rich cultural heritage, but lack of proper tourism guidelines in the areas has not been able to showcase its potential. Thus, the paper tries to bring the importance of heritage tourism in the core area of Pashupatinath and its vicinity into limelight. The paper addresses the need of improvement in management, information and development in infrastructure. Moreover it covers the approach of conservation of tangible and intangible cultural heritage. This article examines the significance and value of Pashupatinath area as a cultural heritage tourism destination. This research identifies numerous issues related to cultural heritage tourism management in Pashupatinath area and its cultural heritage tourism products, coordination among stakeholders and interpretation. It explores the current management situation of Pashupati area and provides the suggestion for the betterment of cultural heritage tourism in Pashupatinath area. The paper helps to relate the tourism industry with the economic growth of Pashupatinath area.

Heritage preservation has commonly focused on conserving or restoring material heritage. Technical projects are its most common tool and there is often a top-down approach to the interventions carried out. This situation frequently leads to a change in the production logic that gave rise to the architecture which they are supposed to be preserving and an expansion of urban sceneries, while causing the loss of local values ??and cultural traditions. An integrated approach is needed, one which seeks to preserve not only the material heritage, but also its intangible supports, thus relating the preservation of the built ensembles to that of traditional techniques, knowledge, and construction processes.

Nowadays, heritage conservators are required to have not only a wide variety of technical but also social and human skills. The shift from a material-based conservation to an approach that focuses on subjects instead of objects (Muñoz Viñas, 2005, p. 147) is a structural approach in contemporary theories of conservation. This tendency towards subjectivity created many possibilities by exposing the multiple perspectives that surround a conservation object. At the same time, it made very clear that conservation objects are contextual and contingent (Clavir, 2009, p. 141). This dichotomy between the tangible and intangible features of a conservation object, however, has been successively overlooked in most conservation endeavours. Prior to the conservation decision-making, institutions usually identified the main stakeholders, with publics and communities being part of that sphere together with owners, artists, and conservators, among others. The decision-making process, however, does not engage with communities in practice. This situation is very problematic for the conservation of cultural heritage objects in general, but it becomes truly hazardous for the preservation of cultural heritage with strong intangible features, such as social artistic practices, ethnographic objects, public art, participatory or performance art or even built heritage, which necessarily involves strong cooperation with communities and artists. After all, to whom are conservators preserving cultural heritage? What is the purpose of conserving cultural heritage for “future generations” if “present generations” are not called to decide in that process? This paper attempts to reflect upon these questions through histories around two buildings in Lisbon that had relevant roles during the Portuguese dictatorship (1933-1974).

Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh has a recorded history of over 400 years, dating back to the Mughal and pre-Mughal era. A large part of the city's rich cultural heritage; both tangible and intangible, lie in the historic core known as Old Dhaka. There are several traditional neighborhoods with close-knit communities that date back two to three centuries. The communities are rich in social capital gained over successive generations of close social network. Based on this strength, a heritage management system has been developed by informal community bodies in Old Dhaka. Old Dhaka's rich cultural heritage deserves to be conserved for the historical continuity of the city. Unfortunately, the top-down conservation efforts undertaken by the Government are highly bureaucratic and have not been effective in conserving the cultural heritage in most cases. This paper explores the importance of local participatory approach of heritage management in the context of Old Dhaka with a focus on the relationship between social capital and informal heritage management in traditional communities. It also explores the key features that generally make the informal heritage management system more effective than the formal approach. Finally, it recommends an appropriate conservation approach to save the cultural heritage of Old Dhaka where there is a balance between intervention by authorities and continuity of local community involvement.

This research studies the traces of an ancestral textile produced in karkhanehs (workspaces) located in the historical city of Yazd, Iran. The case study undertaken here demonstrates how an intangible heritage of textile weaving through generations of families in Yazd, Iran, interrelates with tangible vernacular architecture and tourism at three different scales: (i) in everyday life in karkhanehs at home, (ii) in the neighborhoods, and (iii) the UNESCO World Heritage city of Yazd. The three scales related to the enactment of this vernacular handicraft are examined using architectural methods to examine structures ranging from 90 to 600 years in age. This was complemented by discussions with local weavers and residents, as well as direct observation in domiciles, neighborhoods, and the city. Actor-Network Theory helped to trace the networks of actors and relationships between the tangible built architectural heritage and intangible cultural practices of weaving, showing how different genders, ages, worldviews (beliefs) and practices came together to produce this heritage textile. Actor-Network Theory also helped to study the relationships between economy, culture, society and tourism, with respect to the evolution and transformations of the historic urban dwellings, vernacular architecture and vernacular weaving handicrafts through the three scales examined. Implications for sustaining and conserving this ancestral tradition of textile weaving and managing tourism’s positive as well as disruptive influences on cultural heritage conservation are discussed.

The Galle Fort of Sri Lanka was inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 1988 by UNESCO on the basis of criterion (iv) of the outstanding universal value (OUV), which places clear emphasis on the physical exceptionality of the site. Its living, intangible heritage is only given partial recognition in the definition of cultural and universal significance of the place. At present, the living heritage of Galle Fort is a forgotten and neglected entity. Emerging theories on heritage discourse recognize that the OUV of living heritage sites are in a state of evolution and transformation and is not a, fixed notion that remains unchanged in time and place. This aspect requires frequent exploration in order to determine necessary improvements to be made to conservation and management strategies. The article focuses on heritage values attached to Galle Fort by its living community. In-depth interviews with a cross section of the community disclosed that the residents of Galle Fort lay greater emphasis on the social value of the place. They have pronounced concerns on the risks posed to the social value by commercial and tourism gentrification taking place. The study raises awareness of the importance of the residents’ values in informing, guiding, managing and conserving the cultural significance and OUV of Galle Fort for posterity.

The folklore of intangible cultural heritage (FICH) is mainly expressed in folkloric activities, which include traditional festivals, living customs, production practices, folk beliefs, life rituals and folk costumes. The more reasonable and efficient ways to achieve conservation and transmission of FICH have become an urgent problem to be solved. Landscape presentation offers a potential method to address that by excavating the landscape characteristics of FICH based on its in-depth connotation and development history. This study aims to explore the cultural connotation of the FICH and extract the elements of landscape design, thus presenting and expressing the FICH using landscape as a carrier, to achieve the conservation and inheritance of the FICH. This research took the Taishun Hundred-family Feast culture, one of FICH in Sankui Town, Taishun County, China, as the study case, and extracted the landscape design elements in FICH after its content excavation and conducted presentation with cultural objectification, landscape narrative and contextualization. The results showed that the Hundred-family Feast culture contains rich landscape genes which can be divided into the ritual culture, food culture, festival culture and spiritual culture. Some of the elements in the Hundred-family Feast culture in terms of patterns, forms and colours for the content of activities, material carriers and spiritual places were also extracted for the landscape presentation. According to the different types and places of the Hundred-family Feast culture activities, the centre of Sankui Town is divided into four landscape thematic areas, namely the Hundred-family Feast cultural entrance experience zone, the food culture experience zone, ritual culture experience zone, and activity performance experience zone. The landscape element and spatial carriers were designed and illustrated for conserving and recovering the Hundred-family Feast culture, respectively. This study innovatively analyses the FICH from the perspective of the characteristics and constituent elements of the landscape and establishes a more reasonable framework system for the method of landscape presentation of the FICH in a structured and comprehensive manner. It enriches the theoretical system of intangible cultural heritage protection and its inheritance via landscape presentation methods for folklore activities.

East Asian lacquer (urushi) is a natural, thermosetting polymer, characterised by its durability and gloss. Prolonged exposure to light, however, causes photodegradation, which initiates microcracking in the surface layers. Accumulation of dirt, grease, or non-original materials, such as varnishes applied during attempted restoration, contributes to deterioration of the lacquer’s appearance through discolouration. This build up must be removed in order to conserve affected pieces, and the potential use of solvents to achieve this aim is investigated here. This work presents a review of the chemistry of this unique material, and the distinction between different East Asian lacquers is investigated. Valuable, rare lacquer samples could not be taken from naturally aged museum pieces in order to investigate the applicability of solvents in cleaning conservation processes, and so the damage featured on the models used was recreated artificially. The advantages and limitations of such an approach are assessed in terms of the practical value of the resulting samples as credible models compared to the naturally aged material. In free film studies, solubility parameters were determined for a range of lacquers, and the morphological changes that result from solvent exposure are also investigated to determine potential ‘safe’ solvents for conservation cleaning. These studies show that most solvents are damaging to photodegraded lacquers to some extent, and the possible risks must be assessed against the need for removal of a damaging layer. The findings reported here have implications for the choice of solvents used in conservation cleaning, but other solvent properties and behaviours must be considered along with these data when identifying the least damaging, yet effective solvents.