What is the scopeII mission ?
What is a historical monument? What is it consisted of? Isn’t a site inseparably connected with a story, which is absolutely needed for its meaning? And what, if not only one culture has one story, but several cultures have their own stories about the same historical object?
Long time cultural inheritance was only understood as monuments, which outlasted the change of time as static and constant objects. These monuments had to tell - in the sense of 'modernity' - only one generally accepted history. That dominant culture ('Leitkultur') substituted all other cultures (and subcultures). The contemporary scientific debate questions this thinking increasingly. Particularly cultural studies explore cultures off the mainstream. The definition of culture changes in this postmodern interpretation dramatically: from homogeneity to heterogeneity, from object to process, from text to context.
The large pyramid of Teotihuacan in Mexico is part of UNESCO world cultural heritage. Neither we know anything about its founders, nor about its original function. The Aztecs, who rediscovered it and used this place for themselves, called the monument "sun pyramid" and gave it a new meaning. - They told a new history - they set a new context.
The old town of Jerusalem is part of UNESCO world cultural heritage. One accumulation of monuments, but MORE than only one meaning about it. Jews, Christians and Muslims occupy it with their own stories. - Each of them tells a new story – each of them sets different contexts.
scopeII takes this shifting from "object" (which stands for itself) to "narration" as starting position and sends a circle of interdisciplinary scientist on discovery travel. Where they will arrive, is open, but you can take it for sure, that they will develop possible scenarios, how our society can manage these new requirements.
Raising, seizing, receiving, investigating and telling cultural heritage get new possibilities by the digital revolution of the Creative Industries. This particularly applies completely to immaterial cultural inheritance. Most of the cultures of our world, like the Aboriginies in Australia, transmitted their cultural inheritance only oraly. In the development of an own language, in rites, myths, music, etc. this kind of cultural inheritance is an immaterial, active process. Neither this process has finished yet nor can be finished ever because of the dynamic nature of cultures and the developing of new subcultures (e.g. web communities), which will produce new inheritance.
scopeII lets meet experts from all over the world and from different disciplines in order to find strategies and scenarios by interactive discourse with interested attendees and to open new possibilities for sciences, policy and economy.
scopeII particularly is a conference for institutions concerning science politics, knowledge management and grant programs, further for university and research institutes, museums, collections, libraries and archives. Within the commercial range it concerns enterprises, which have to do in the broadest sense with tourism and exhibition concepts.
scopeII "Sites & Subjects, Narrating Heritage" is an up-to-date Think Tank, in which science and Creative Industries give input to each other and develop new trends.
What is the SCOPE conferences mission ?
SCOPE is a series of conferences that tries to join different disciplinaries on one topic and highlights the impact of all those thinkings on the issue.
At scope, international speakers from diverse fields as for example humanities, computer science, design, entertainment and economics present projects and visions that contribute to the evolution of best practices and its uses in the next decades.
