UNESCO

Chair on Heritage Futures

Embracing Change

2024-04-18

I presented a keynote lecture entitled “Embracing Change: Cultural Heritage and Regeneration” for the 2024 International Forum on Cultural Heritage: Sustainability and Resilience hosted by the Asian Network of Industrial Heritage in Taiwan.

The event was part of the 2024 International Day of Monuments and Sites on 18 April, this year dedicated to the theme “Disasters and Conflicts through the Lens of the Venice Charter”. The forum aimed to explore sustainable practices and the resilience and adaptability of cultural heritage in the face of contemporary challenges.

The audience comprised 55 participants on site and additional 70 participating online via Facebook on Youtube.

My talk in the session on Sustainability and Futures focused on the following issues:

“Disasters and conflicts are the outcome of societal failures to take sufficient precautions, respond adequately to emerging events, or behave appropriately peacefully towards each other. Their impact is perceived as worse if acceptance of change is low. I argue that all this can be improved by an updated perception of (world) cultural heritage that is based on concepts of renewal and regeneration rather than conservation and restoration, as it is, for example, still advocated in the 1964 Venice Charter. Narratives of change over time, exemplified by ever-changing cultural heritage, are likely able to improve resilience and preparedness for transformations in future societies. They can also facilitate a new more pan-human or indeed post-human understanding of our shared world. As Tim Ingold (2024) wrote recently, cultural heritage should not be seen as an inheritance to be transmitted from one generation to the next but as a living and perduring process of continuous renewal generating social life under varying circumstances over time.“

International Day of Monuments and Sites

2021-04-18

18 April is the International Day of Monuments and Sites, coordinated by ICOMOS. This year the theme is “Complex Pasts – Diverse Futures”.

Our UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures participates in the International Programme, representing Sweden, with a digital exhibition entitled Balloon Head: Iran’s Constitutional Revolution Reconfigured and curated by Leila Papoli-Yazdi.

Focusing on Iran’s Mashrouteh (Constitutional) Revolution, Ali Roustaeeyanfard’s paintings reconfigure historical photographs of complex historic events and processes at the beginning of the 20th century.

By adding colourful anachronistic details to the original motifs of the photographs his work depicts unimagined futures and the need to re-narrate the past in every present. The paintings illustrate that there are unexpected and diverse futures, both of the past and of the tangible heritage that reminds us of the past in the present. Roustaeeyanfard’s hope is to revive the forgotten heritage and history of voiceless people in order to fulfil their original dream of achieving freedom and progress through the Revolution.