UNESCO

I am reading what historians have got to say about the future. Robin G. Collingwood (1956: 54) famously stated that

“The historian’s business is to know the past, not to know the future, and whenever historians claim to be able to determine the future in advance of its happening we may know with certainty that something has gone wrong with their fundamental conception of history.”

Behind this pessimism appears to be a rather narrow view of historians’ working methods, as Collingwood expressed elsewhere:

“We cannot know the future, just because the future has not happened and therefore cannot leave its traces in the present. The historian who tries to forecast the future is like a tracker anxiously peering at a muddy road in order to descry the footsteps of the next person who is going to pass that way.” (Collingwood 2009: 247-8)

But as a matter of fact, the past is not happening now either but exactly as the name suggests: past. The present contains clues of both past and future deserving to be studied, analyzed and interpreted in equal measure, says David Staley:

“We gain access to the future through a similar means by which we gain access to the past: indirectly, through an examination of evidence. […] Like evidence of the past, evidence of the future makes some future state or condition evident. If we wish to inquire into the future, we have little choice but to examine objects and processes that exist in the present, for all evidence—of both past and future—resides in the present.” (Staley 2007: 58)

Past and future are both equally material and elusive, real and imagined. Indeed, they are not polar opposites but closely connected. In the end, I am with Zoltán Simon who recently reminded his fellow historians that

“history – the very possibility of history – begins with the formulation of a vision of the future, that is, with the postulation of a future different from the present and the past.” (Simon 2018: 198)

References

Collingwood, Robin G. (1994) The Idea of History [1946]. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

Collingwood, Robin G. (2009) Oswald Spengler and the Theory of Historical Cycles [1927]. In: A. Budd (ed.) The Modern Historiography Reader. Western Sources, pp. 245-250. London and New York: Routledge.

Simon, Zoltán B. (2018) History Begins in the Future. On Historical Sensibility in the Age of Technology. In: S. Helgesson and J. Svenungsson (eds) The Ethos of History: Time and Responsibility, pp. 192-209. Oxford and New York: Berghahn.

Staley, David J. (2007) History and Future. Using Historical Thinking to Imagine the Future. Plymouth: Lexington.

A new issue of the International Journal of Heritage Studies is dedicated to Anticipating Loss: Rethinking Endangerment in Heritage Futures (all accessible in open access).

From the introduction of the co-editors:

“Heritage relies, to a large extent, on notions of endangerment and consequential attempts to arrest or reverse processes of loss and change. The papers in this special issue engage critically with this underlying orientation…”

In addition to Sarah May, the authors include Caitlin DeSilvey, Rodney Harrison, Trinidad Rico, Nadia Bartolini, Esther Breithoff, Jennie Morgan, Sharon Macdonald, and Þóra Pétursdóttir.

Cornelius Holtorf presented a talk on “Applied heritage and the need to increase ‘futures literacy’ in the heritage sector” for ca 15 international heritage specialists attending a JPI-CH expert meeting on Heritage Management in Dynamic Environments held at the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands in Amersfoort, Netherlands (9 October 2019).

Cornelius Holtorf and Anders Högberg took active part in a meeting at middle management level at SKB in Stockholm discussing current and future collaborations concerning the preservation of records, knowledge and memory of nuclear waste (25 October 2019).

Cornelius Holtorf discussed future collaboration with Maja Heuer who is developing a new World Heritage Museum for Blekinge Museum, Karlskrona (4 November 2019).

Cornelius Holtorf attended the meeting of the World Heritage Council for the World Heritage site Agricultural Landscape of Southern Öland, in Mörbylånga (8 November 2019).

Cornelius Holtorf participated in a 6-day course on “Perspectives on collaboration – on the roles of academia in society” in Lund, Växjö and Linköping (November – December 2019).

Cornelius Holtorf taught 13 students in the Graduate Studies Programme in Antiquity Studies at the University of Basel, Switzerland. He had responsibility for half of the Research Seminar Course on “‘Cultural Heritage’ in Antiquity Studies”. The intensive 2-day workshop entitled “Das Kulturerbe und wie es uns in der Zukunft von Vorteil sein kann” (Cultural heritage and how it can be of use to us in the future) contained elements of text-based seminar discussion, lecture with discussion, structured futures workshop and open group discussion (18/19 November 2019).

Annalisa Bolin gave a talk entitled “Material Mediation: Heritage Politics Across Rwanda’s Borders” for the Critical Heritage Studies Network at Stockholm University (21 November 2019).

Cornelius Holtorf chaired a panel discussion with 5 experts on the significance of research in museum archaeology during an audience of ca 35 attending the Annual Meeting of the Swedish Association of Museum Archaeology (M-Ark) in Kalmar (28 November 2019).

Cornelius Holtorf chaired the second project workshop of the “Memory Across Generations” project dedicated to culture heritage, held at the National Archives of Sweden, Stockholm (29 November 2019). Claudio Pescatore contributed actively and acted as Secretary.

The American artist and philosopher Jonathon Keats has been creating an ingenious little camera that documents the flow and passage of time over a century or a millennium. It is a simple device that involves black paper gradually bleaching in response to the light let in through a pinhole and thus producing something like a single-frame movie.

Keats explains:

“Anything that stays in place will look sharp. Anything moving quickly, like cars and people, won’t show up at all. And anything that changes slowly, like a growing tree, will be ghostly. You’ll also be able to see bigger changes, like the ghost of a house that’s been knocked down haunting the apartment building that takes its place.”

There are many reasons why this camera may not work but the camera is cheap to build and an exhibition of each camera’s picture is already set to be opened in 3015 at the Art Museums of Arizona State University. Keats knows that “[m]ost likely it will take multiple attempts, spanning tens of thousands of years, to get the exposure right.” But this prospect does not daunt him:

“The ongoing iterative process of trying to perfect this technology can provide countless generations with a sense of connection and collective purpose.”

On 21 November 2019 we welcomed to Kalmar four delegates from the National University of Cultural Heritage KNUCH in Korea. They were on an official visit to Sweden and spent one day in Kalmar to investigate joint areas for co-operation between our UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures and their UNESCO Chair on Capacity-Building for the Preservation and Restoration of the Asia-Pacific Cultural Heritage. Participants included

• Prof. Soochul KIM (Department of Conservation Science/research focusing on wooden material conservation)
• Prof. Youngjae KIM (Department of Conservation and Restoration/major in architecture and urbanism/holder of UNESCO Chair on Capacity-Building for the Preservation and Restoration of the Asia-Pacific Cultural Heritage)
• Mr. Kihong LEE (KNUCH administrative staff in the Academic Affairs Department)
• Mr. Seungtae NAM (KNUCH administrative staff, in charge international exchange and cooperation)

Prof. Soochul KIM, Mr. Seungtae NAM, Helena Rydén, Assistant to the UNESCO Chair at LNU, Cornelius Holtorf, Professor of Archaeology, UNESCO Chair holder at LNU, Prof. Youngjae KIM holder of UNESCO Chair at KNUCH and Mr. Kihong LEE

Prof. Anders Högberg, UNESCO Chair at LNU, participated by link from South Africa. Bodil Petersson, Associate Professor in Archaeology gave a presentation on our “Cultural Heritage in Present and Future Societies” Degree Programme.
Linda Liedström from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities gave an introducution to internationalisation and student exchange.

The delegation also visited Kalmar County Museum.

Our second progress report, period: 09/2018-08/2019 , made by the entire team over our second year of activities!

Progress Report 09/2018-08/2019

Over its first two years, the UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures at Linnaeus University has been engaging in an extensive programme of national and international collaboration in research and training. We presented our work and agenda on many occasions in Sweden and around the world. We established contacts to various programmes and activities in UNESCO, to the Swedish Delegation to UNESCO, the Swedish UNESCO Commission, and began collaboration with other UNESCO Chairs in Sweden and internationally. Over the past year we co-organized two large events in Stockholm and in Amsterdam. In this report, we document the progress made by the entire team over our second year of activities.

Conference Report of the ICOMOS University Forum “Thinking and Planning the Future in Heritage Management” in Amsterdam, 11-14 June 2019.

View the report 

Download the Report

The UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures at Linnaeus University, in collaboration with the Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture (AHM), ICOMOS International, ICOMOS Netherlands, and the City of Amsterdam, organized an ICOMOS University Forum held in Amsterdam, Netherlands, 11-14 June 2019. The Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture (AHM) of the University of Amsterdam (UvA) hosted the meeting, which aimed at promoting thinking and planning the future in heritage management.

Thinking and Planning the Future in Heritage Management, Amstedam 11-14 June 2019

The main questions that were discussed during the meeting were:
• How do we perceive of the future?
• Which future and future generations do heritage professionals work for?
• What heritage will be needed in the future (and how do we know)?
• How can we build capacity in future thinking among heritage professionals worldwide?

The conference participants included scholars and heritage managers, both young and established, from different parts of the world. All in all, the ICOMOS University Forum brought together about 50 global heritage specialists from academia and professional practice, representing not only many European countries but also Australia, Brazil, China, India, Korea, Mexico, Nigeria, Singapore, Syria, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey and the USA. During the meeting, participants enriched the discussion with their multicultural and multidisciplinary expertise.

For the first time, Sweden has adopted a World Heritage Strategy, for 2020-2030 (not available in English yet). Earlier this year, the UNESCO Chair on Heritage Futures had submitted comments on a draft text.

The Strategy emphasises that the underlying idea and aim of World Heritage is the promotion of peace, international collaboration and human rights, and that all who work with World Heritage need to keep this in mind in everything they do. The Strategy also states that additional capacity needs to be built in understanding how World Heritage can contribute to societal development and to reaching the Sustainable Development Goals.

Background information is provided by the Swedish National Commission for UNESCO (in Swedish): https://www.unesco.se/sveriges-forsta-varldsarvsstrategi-ska-starka-de-svenska-varldsarven/