Between white noise and sinus tone – originals, quotes and their re-use
A sound installation created by Gerald Neumeister
Feel free to skip through 13 tracks.
On Thursday, 28 September, and Friday, 29 September 2006, the scope II conference Sites & Subjects. Narrating Heritage took place at the Austrian National Library in Vienna.
An impressive list of international speakers from the fields of postcolonial studies, cultural studies, political science and anthropology, museums, planning, architecture and urban studies met in Austria to discuss the implications of recent developments concerning questions of cultural heritage.
On Thursday, 28 September, and Friday, 29 September 2006, the scope II conference Sites & Subjects. Narrating Heritage took place at the Austrian National Library in Vienna.
An impressive list of international speakers from the fields of postcolonial studies, cultural studies, political science and anthropology, museums, planning, architecture and urban studies met in Austria to discuss the implications of recent developments concerning questions of cultural heritage. A cause for starting this debate, but far not the only one, is the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Heritage, which came into force early 2006 and will be joined by Austria next year. Another cause was a study completed by uma in May 2006 and commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Education, Research and Culture which dealt with the question of recording and preserving of cultural heritage in Austria in relation to cultural and social sciences. Therefore it seemed appropriate to go on discussing this highly important topic in Austria and including international voices.
Thursday
The conference’s keynote speaker was Homi K. Bhabha, one of the most important theorists of postcolonial studies and professor for the humanities at Harvard University. In his lecture, he focused on notions like ambivalence, heritage choice and dis-possessing heritage to be able to leave the usual functions of cultural heritage, i.e. claiming identity and constructing continuity. He tried to stress the ethics of cultural transmission, which leads to a combination of cultural and political issues and, finally, to the notion of global citizenship.
The second lecture in the starting session, Narrating Heritage, was by Monika Mokre of the Institute for European Integration Research in Vienna, who talked about cultural heritage in spite of everything, and why it might be a suitable decision to use the notion of cultural heritage without all the ideological weight attached to it. And at the end of this session, Peter Weibel of the Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe brought the metaphor of Noah’s Ark into the debate to visualize recent problems of preserving cultural, especially digital heritage.
Thursday afternoon the Museum as a Site of Narration session started with the lecture of Ulrike Vedder of the Center of Literature and Cultural Research in Berlin, talking about the museum and death and reflecting on the narration of animation and mortification of objects in the museum. After her, Churchill Madikida from Johannesburg’s Constitution Hill complex presented his museum’s approach as one of an institution without any collection, relying on former prisoners at Apartheid times to produce exhibitions. Gail Durbin from the Victoria & Albert Museum in London presented the museum’s web strategy, heavily based on participation and visitor involvement to show how cultural institutions are able to include visitor expertise into their work. And finally, HG Merz, exhibition architect from Stuttgart, presented examples of his highly diverse work to explain how to address users by means of material museum objects.
After a long conference day rich of deep discussions, the speakers and attendees met at an evening event at the Wittgenstein House in Vienna.
Friday
In the morning of the second conference day, the City as a Site of Narration session was set. The first speaker, Felipe Hérnandez from Liverpool University, talked on the highly questionable dichotomy between the formal and the informal to discuss structure and history of Latin American cities, introducing the notion of transculturation. After that, Margaret Crawford from Harvard University presented her and her student’s work in the city of Chelsea, Massachusetts, near Boston, dealing with the question of everyday urbanism, based discussion with locals instead of a masterplan approach. Rahul Mehrotra, architect in Bombay and professor in Ann Arbor, continued this with his lecture on preservation work in the Fort District in the city of Bombay, focusing on the notion of cultural significance.
The final conference session, Continuing Narration on Friday afternoon, tried to combine a view on the work of three Austrian cultural researchers with their wrap-up of the conference’s previous three sessions. Adelheid Pichler from the Commission of Social Anthropology in Vienna with her colleagues Fernand Kreff and Johanna Riegler tried to connect the contributions of Bhabha, Mokre and Weibel, focusing on the question if the notion of cultural heritage is able to keep any meaning if it is defined as broad as the new UNESCO convention tries to do. Monika Sommer-Sieghart from the Wien Museum presented an exhibition of her institution on worker migration and the questions that arose during this work. And Elke Krasny contrasted her work on memories connected to city streets with the urban studies approaches of the city session.
The conference showed that it is impossible to separate culture from politics, cultural from political rights, and that therefore the notion of citizenship and, in its broadest sense, global citizenship is central when it comes to cultural heritage and its meaning for individuals and groups. Cultural clashes are nothing but the spin-offs of political conflicts whose concrete base is hidden. On the other hand, it is important to see that political and social approaches are not possible anymore without including the cultural perspective.
The highly profound contributions and discussions of the scope II conference Sites & Subjects. Narrating Heritage make it necessary to produce a publication, including lectures and conclusions.
Elisabeth Scott, Participant: "It was so interesting. A very good discussion."
Homi K. Bhabha, Keynote Speaker: "This was a very rich and engaged discussion. SCOPE managed to bring together both practional and theory in a remarkable way. What particulary important was, for all of us, from whichever side of the heritage discussion and cultural discussion we came, SCOPE provided us with the bridge for crossing over, from our position, our territory, our terrain, to the territory of the others. And when you cross the bridge, you also change your mind."
Please take a look at our time table, now online. At program you will find a pdf file with a detailed agenda of the conference.
Gabriele Zuna-Kratky welcomes speakers and participants of scopeII. She studied Sociology and Education Science (main focus: Museum Education) at the University of Vienna, where she graduated with a PhD. Since 2000 she is Director of the Technical Museum in Vienna.
The latest change concerns the conference programme.
Scope warmly welcomes Churchill Madikida, who will present 'Mapping Memory – Former Prisoners Tell their Stories at Constitution Hill'. Mr. Madikida is replacing his colleague, Lauren Segal in 'Session 2: The Museum as a Site of Narration'.
Churchill Madikida, born in South Africa, is curator and artist at Constitution Hill, Johannesburg. He studied Fine Art at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa and has had many solo and group exhibitions in South Africa as well as in Senegal, USA, Germany, Norway, Sweden and France and won the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Visual Art in 2006. He trained in museum curation at the Musée National des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie, Paris, before becoming Collections and Exhibitions Curator of Constitution Hill Museum in Johannesburg.
We therefore welcome Monika Mokre the Deputy Director at the Institute for European Integration Research (EIF) at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Born in Graz, Austria, she studied Media and Communication Research and Political Science. Her main research areas are European Democracy and Public Sphere, Cultural Politics and Financing of the Arts, Media Politics and Gender Studies.
For further information, biography, publications and Monika’s scopeII presentation, please go to the Speakers link.
Last week we presented Gerald Neumeister, who interprets the topic of our conference musically. You can listen to a sample of his musical commission, “White Noise” on our website under Multimedia.
Tune in!
Go to 'speakers', there you get a short preview of them.
Get involved!
The WWTF (Vienna Science and Technology Fund) sponsors international students to take part in the conference.
WWTF strengthens excellent research in Vienna, which is able to improve Viennas position as a city for research and innovation.
The sponsoring includes tickets and accommodation. All you have to do: Write an application (bio & motive force) to info@scope.at
Elke Krasny is cultural theorist, artist, curator and author. She is teaching at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.
Monika Sommer-Sieghart teaches at several Austrian universities. She is assistance to the director of Wien Museum, Vienna, and co-founder of schnittpunkt.exhibition theory & practice, a discussion network on museums and exhibitions.
Both of them are speakers at Session 4: Continuing Narration.
Vienna is famous for its musical tradition. But apart from its strong connection to the past, Vienna can bost of many innovative contemporary musicians and composers. SCOPE is proud to introduce a musical journey through history, commissioned specifically for the scopeII conference.
Gerald Neumeister interpretes 'Narrating Heritage' musically. „The perception of compositions has changed and are still changing like the meaning of cultural sites has and does. Mozart at his time was avantgarde, today he is easy listening“, Gerald explains.
Therefore he creates a sound installation, which will be set up in the 'Engels Raum' of the Augustinertrakt. During the conference breaks people can walk in to this space, sit down and listen to a series of 20 minute sound loops which take you on a non chronological journey through musical history.
The famous Wittgensteinhaus is the venue of the scopeII gala evening.
The Wittgenstein House was built in the years 1926 to 1929 by architect Paul Engelmann and philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Ludwig Wittgenstein personally designed the building for his sister Margarethe Stonborough. The house soon became the centre of cultural life in Vienna. It was the meeting place for the adherents to the philosophical school known as “Vienna Circle”, whose founder was Wittgenstein himself.
In 1975, the building was bought by the Republic of Bulgaria and is now the Bulgarian Cultural Institute, which hosts a full programme of cultural events throughout the year. It has a concert hall and exhibition space.
The evening event is sponsored by the City of Vienna.
If you like debating on Cultural Heritage, join our blog community. A joint project of scopeII and innovatives-oesterreich.at. Your ideas and questions could be material for further discussion at the conference itself.
Our Website has got a new mulitmedia feature. On Multimedia you get in audiovisual touch with scopeII, where we offer free video footage to do with our conference. Including that of Key Note speaker Homi Bhabha’s world vision on cultural heritage.
If you would like the chance to attend an International conference on Cultural Heritage in Vienna for free, here is what you have to do.
Write to info@scope.at outlining what you are studying and where, your age and nationality.
Then, in no more than 100 of your own words describe the term “Cultural Heritage” or what it means to you.
The first ten of you to reply will get a free ticket to attend the entire conference including the gala dinner at Haus Wittgenstein in Vienna as conference reporters.
Your conference report will be published with credits on the scope website and your deposit returned to you in full on deliverance of your report.
Please note that only European students need apply and scope can not cover any expenses such as travel or accommodation cost.
HG Merz is an architect with offices in Stuttgart and Berlin, specialiced in museum and exhibition design and preservation and restructuring of historic buildings. Gedenkstätte Sachsenhausen and Militärhistorisches Museum Dresden are two of his most important projects.
He joins Session 2: The Museum as a Site of Narration.
There is just one week left until the Early Bird Registration deadline on Wednesday, 16 August 2006. So go to the Early Bird Registration on our website now and save 30%!
Ulrike Vedder is member of staff of the "Heritage, Inheritance, Heredity. Concepts of Tradition between Nature and Culture in History" project at the Literature Research Center (Zentrum für Literaturforschung) in Berlin.
She is lecturer at the University of Hamburg, Kiel, Zürich, Paderborn, and at the Technical University of Berlin. Her research topics are on concepts of tradition in nature and culture, cultural transformation of things, media and literature.
Vienna: scopeII presented Homi K. Bhabha in a press conference on Wednesday 12 July 2006, where he talked in detail to Austrian Journalists about the international conference “Sites & Subjects. Narrating Heritage”.
„The fact that the discussion on cultural heritage is happening in Austria is of a great significance because of the country's strategic, liminal position between the western and the eastern nations. Austria could be a bridge in this discussion.“ This was Harvard Professor Homi K. Bhabha's starting statement during the press conference, for which he flew in to Vienna, Austria, on Wednesday 12 July 2006 to Vienna, Austria.
Bhabha, born in India and one of the leading postcolonial theoretician in the world, was discussing as scopeII committee member and key note speaker the topic of the forthcoming conference.
Mehrotra has also been independently researching the city of Bombay and has written and lectured extensively on issues to do with architecture, conservation and urban planning in the city.
Mehrotra has taught at The National Singapore University, (1998) and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, (2000) where he is now an Associate Professor.
Homi K. Bhabha, committee member and key note speaker of scopeII will talk to Austrian and international journalists about the conference „Sites & Subjects. Narrating Heritage“, which will take place in Vienna from 28 to 29 September.
Gail Durbin is the Deputy Director of Learning and Interpretation at the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A), London, where she is currently responsible for the web. She has been at the Victoria & Albert Museum for about 12 years in various educational capacities from Head of the Schools Service to being a member of the Concept Team for the British Galleries.
Gail Durbin will take part in Cityscape - Conference Session Two
The essential functions of the Committee are to:
(i) identify, on the basis of nominations submitted by States Parties, cultural and natural properties of outstanding universal value which are to be protected under the Convention and to list those properties on the World Heritage List;
(ii) monitor the state of conservation of properties inscribed on the World Heritage List, in liaison with the States Parties; decide which properties included in the World Heritage List are to be inscribed on or removed from the List of World Heritage in Danger; and decide whether a property may be deleted from the World Heritage List;
and (iii) examine requests for International Assistance from the World Heritage Fund.
Heidemarie Uhl studied History and German Philology at Graz University, Austria. Since January 2001 she is Collaborator at the Commission for Culture Studies and History of Theater (Austrian Academy of Sciences)
Uhl is head of project of “Culture of Memory at the End of the 20th Century. Transformations of Social Memory on a Comparative European Scale”: The project concentrates on the transformation of Austrian memorial culture, especially focusing on the experience of war, National Socialism, and the Holocaust from 1945 to the present.
Heidemarie Uhl will partake in Cultural Heritage - Conference Session One
Margaret Crawford assigned as speaker at scopeII. She is Professor of Urban Design and Planning Theory at Harvard Graduate School of Design.
She received a BA from the University of California at Berkeley, a Graduate Diploma from the Architectural Association, and a PhD in Urban Planning from UCLA. Her research focuses on the evolution, uses and meanings of urban space. Her recent book Nansha Coastal City: Landscape and Urbanism in the Pearl River Delta was published in early 2006 and co-edited by Alan Berger.
Robert Temel is architectural critic and theoretician in Vienna as well as Chair of the Österreichische Gesellschaft für Architektur (ÖGFA, Austrian Architectural Society).
A central theme of his interest in the spatial environment is public space and its use – that was, among other things, the subject of the symposium ‘tempo..rar: Temporäre Nutzungen im Stadtraum’, which he organised in 2003 with Florian Haydn.
He is co-editor of "Temporary Urban Spaces", Basel, Boston, Berlin 2006.
The first session of the General Assembly of States Parties to the Convention will take place from 27 to 29 June 2006 at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, France.
During its first session, and in accordance with Articles 4.2 and 5.1 of the Intangible Heritage Convention, the General Assembly will adopt respectively its Rules of Procedure and will elect an Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage.
The Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage entered into force on 20 April 2006 for the thirty States who had deposited their instruments of ratification, acceptance or approval on or before 20 January 2006.
For all other States, it will enter into force three months after the deposit at UNESCO of their instrument of ratification, acceptance or approval.
www.unesco.org/culture/ich_convention/index.php
SCOPE has finalised the title of its conference. „Sites & Subjects. Narrating Heritage“ expresses the original mission of scopeII in a much better way.
The working title „Objects and their Stories. Exploring the Potential Future of Cultural Heritage“ was focusing too heavily on the objects themselves. „Sites & Subjects. Narrating Heritage“ reflects a more contemporary view, which on the one hand does not give objects that importance and on the other hand draws more attention to subject, narrative and context.
Robert Temel, comittee member of scopeII: „We have chosen „Sites & Subjects“, because it stears away from the idea of the objects as somehow fixed to a more diverse idea of what heritage is about - especially the notion of subjects and narration fit very well into our concept.“
The film Los Antiguos (The Ancient Ones) was funded and produced by UNESCO and will be shown at the Indigenous Film Festival in Pau together with other films by indigenous film makers and internationally renowned directors. The festival coincides with the first International Forum for United Indigenous Peoples to take place in Pau from 19 to 25 June.
Los Antiguos is a 25-minute fiction film directed by two members of Bolivia's Thimane indigenous community, Boris Bani and Esteban Espejo. It tells the story of a young Thimane native who recalls his encounter with the mythical beings who own the animals, forest and water. The film has been produced within the framework of the UNESCO cross-sectoral programme ICT4ID (Information and Communication Technologies for Intercultural Dialogue).
She was founding Director of the ZOOM Children's Museum in Vienna. In her last years she focused especially on including new technologies successfully in museums. Claudia’s special strength is in developing visitor friendly museums that satisfy the needs of a community.
Claudia is involved as consultant in several Museums Projects and Exhibitions.
Questions are the starting point for any research and facilitate individual involvement.
Get involved by putting a question into the question box in the top left-hand corner. Doing that you will be connected to the website of innovatives-oesterreich.at. Log in and your question will be replied by experts and scientists.
The initiative "innovatives-oesterreich.at" aims at raising sympathy and understanding for the benefits of innovation, research and technology.
In his lectures and articles Weibel comments on contemporary art, media history, media theory, film, Video art and philosophy.
As theoretician and curator he pleads for a form of art and art history that includes history of technology and history of science.
In his function as a university professor and director of institutions like the Ars Electronica, Linz, the Institute for New Media in Frankfurt on the Main and the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe he influenced the European Scene of the so called Computer art through conferences, exhibitions and publications.
Lauren Segal confirmed her participation as new speaker at scope 2. She is specialized in the research and development of educational content and messaging strategies for large, multi-media projects. Lauren previously worked for CSVR (a leading NGO focused on human rights and reconciliation) for five years, creating media products aimed at popularizing research findings.
Lauren is currently Head of the Heritage, Education and Tourism programme on ‘Constitution Hill’ a key governmental inner-city regeneration project, developing a heritage site along side South Africa’s new Constitutional Court.
Further to the adoption of UNESCO’s Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity in November 2001, the General Assembly of the United Nations welcomed the Declaration and the main lines of the Action Plan and proclaimed 21 May as World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development (Resolution 57/249)
The Day will provide us with an opportunity to deepen understanding of the values of Cultural Diversity and to learn to “live together” better. This is why UNESCO appeals to the Member States as well as to all civil society to celebrate this World Day by involving as many actors and partners as possible.
http://portal.unesco.org/culture
"African Cultural Heritage, a Motor for Renaissance" is the theme of Africa Week to be held this year at UNESCO from 22 to 31 May within the framework of Africa Day (25 May). Participants in this year's event include Pierre Kipré, former Minister of National Education of Côte d'Ivoire, Doudou Diène, United Nations Special Rapporteur for Racism, Xenophobia and Discrimination and Elizabeth Wangari, Chief of the Africa Unit of the World Heritage Centre.
http://portal.unesco.org/culture
Until the conference of "Objects and their Stories" in September a newsletter will be published monthly. Keep in touch with news of scopeII and subscribe to our mailing list.
Projects in the fields of social, cultural and law sciences, dealing with phenomena of cultural memory - both tangible and intangible - can be submitted.
Art, culture, everyday life and cultural inheritance are terms, whose meaning are continuously negotiated within different ranges of the public. Thus those research projects are favorised, which bring up for discussion different and contraious views of transmission and reflection of culture - especially in the area of conflict between art and everyday life.
www.oeaw.ac.at/stipref/frame_jubel
Currently he is co-editing a book entitled: Rethinking the Informal City: Critical Perspectives from Latin America and is completing a book on contemporary Latin American architecture.
Thirty States have recently ratified the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Heritage, adopted in October 2003 by the UNESCO General Conference, allowing it to enter into force on 20 April 2006, that is three months after the 30th instrument of ratification has been deposited.
The professor of English and American Literature and Language at Harvard University was key note speaker at the UNESCO Forum on Higher Education, Research and Knowledge Colloquium on Research and Higher Education Policy, Paris, France in 2004.
In Location of Culture (1994), Bhabha uses concepts such as mimicry, interstice, hybridity, and liminality - all influenced by semiotics and Lacanian psychoanalysis - to argue that cultural production is always most productive where it is most ambivalent.