Publicomos

Notice (permalien)

Réf.

42811

Type

conference item

Titre

Heritage as the democracy of the dead, the living and the unborn : the role of dialogue with monuments in integrating commonalities

Langues

English

Auteurs

Ganiatsas, Vassilis

Lieu de publication

Charenton-le-Pont

Pays de publication

France

Maison d'édition

ICOMOS

Date

2018

Titre de conférence

ICOMOS 19th General Assembly and Scientific Symposium "Heritage and Democracy"

Lieu de conférence

New Delhi, India

Date de conférence

13-14th December 2017

Mots-clés

cultural heritage / development / dialogue / democracy / conservation / stakeholders / compatibility / sustainability / urban areas / town and country planning / economic aspects / social aspects / prevention of deterioration / sustainable development / customs and traditions / common heritage / multiculturalism

Résumé en anglais

Heritage predates conditions and finally forms our cultural life, while we constantly reframe itin changing urban contexts. In this diachronic, dynamic cultural process of conservation and development, a diversity of stakeholders invests different sets of values, establish different cultural significances and envisage different futures for their heritage. Yet, heritage is common to all in both; its spatial dimension, as it occupies the common public space ofall stakeholders, and in its temporal/ historical dimension, as it equally pervades their shared history and memory. We could add to G.K. Chesterton’s phrase “Tradition is the democracy of the dead. It means giving a vote to our ancestors”, that heritage, as tradition, is also the democracy of giving a vote to our unborn descendants.What is urgently needed in order to accommodate this growing diversity of involved stakeholders of heritage at any one time, but also at different times involving past, present and future generations of stakeholders is an active dialogue centred upon the monuments themselves and their emitted cultural significance.This shift of the point of view from the dialogue between stakeholders to a dialogue of all of them with the monuments, could establish the latter as valid interlocutors in setting, according to their idiosyncrasies, the criteria of their compatibility, capacity and potential vis a vis urban development. Such a dialogue with monuments could then safeguard sustainability of both, heritage and development alike. Monuments as active agents can make a claim for a democratic dialogical process that alone could establish their common sense on a common ground and conflate conservation and sustainable development in one place. Dialogue, the prime characteristic of democracy, should be the prime means towards unfolding this potential of monuments for spatial and temporal mediation in establishing a common ground of shared cultural significance in multi-cultural urban environments.

Document joint

28._ICOA_1581_Ganiatsas_SM.pdf

Licence

Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike (BY-NC-SA)