Publicomos

Notice (permalien)

Réf.

41578

Type

conference item

Titre

Recuperating ruins, re-inscribing identity: Royal citadels and state mosques in re-‘heritagization’ projects in Melaka, Palembang and Makassar.

Langues

English

Auteurs

Bin Tajudeen, Imran

Date

2008

Pages

14 p.

Titre de conférence

16th ICOMOS General Assembly and International Symposium: ‘Finding the spirit of place – between the tangible and the intangible’

Lieu de conférence

Québec, Canada

Date de conférence

29 sept – 4 oct 2008

Mots-clés

ports / identity / archaeological heritage / historic monuments / spirit of place / conservation of cultural heritage / archaeological sites / historic buildings / intangible heritage / memory / historic towns

Pays mentionnés

Indonesia

Monuments et sites

Melaka, Palembang and Makassar, Indonesia

Résumé en anglais

Melaka, Palembang and Makassar are historic port-polities in Malaya, Sumatra and Sulawesiin the Nusantara region, or the Austronesian portion of Southeast Asia, which reached their apogee in the 15th to 18th centuries. Their monumental cores were expunged, partially or completely, and appropriated or abandoned during the period of European colonial conquest and rule. This paper will review and compare the attempts since the late 20th century to recuperate these ruins or altered sites. Architectural and cultural projects have been implemented on these sites and monuments that seek to reinscribe their spirit of place with contemporary historical signification or valorization. Such reinscriptions involve aligning both tangible and intangible heritage to conceptions of local identity that are being promoted for specific reasons. In particular, restorations or new constructions of state mosques replicate and accentuate what are perceived to be distinctive ‘local’ styles or forms, while the ubiquitous combination of open-air replica museums, ethnographic exhibits and cultural festivals in former royal citadels is primarily geared towards the prominent display of cultural symbols. These strategies reveal contemporary understandings of, and the endeavors to celebrate or recreate, ‘local cultural legacies’ which (re)shape the spirit of place of historically significant sites. Local authorities and sources of funding often decide what gets emphasized as ‘memory of place’, what is protected or altered, and therefore how spirit of place is manipulated. Thus, while the projects to valorize heritage sites are often initiated by cultural activists, they become inevitably altered by the priorities ofcultural tourism and political-economic considerations of regional identity. As such, the re-inscription of recovered heritage sites and artifacts – the process of re-‘heritagization’ – are shown to be determined by larger forces which prioritize the utility of heritage in revenue generation and, ultimately, the transmission and projection of accentuated conceptions of identity.

Document joint

80-1X7o-143.pdf

Licence

Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (BY-NC-ND)