Sound recordings and cultural heritage: the Fonck Museum,the Felbermayer collection,and its relevance to contemporary Easter Island culture

Sound recording plays a prominent role in cultural heritage work in the Pacific region, supported by sound archives and institutional collections that serve to preserve this intangible cultural heritage. While it has long been a standard practice for field recordings to be lodged in institutions of learning, recent developments in Pacific research have emphasised the ethical and social benefits that can result from the repatriation of sound recordings to their communities of origin, and from the development of field recording practices in which cultural stakeholders are more directly involved. Meanwhile, the digitisation of historical sound recordings and the use of digital domains for dissemination have become matters of theoretical and methodological inquiry in their own right. This article seeks to contribute to the discourse surrounding the repatriation of historical field recordings through the presentation of findings from a recent Chilean government-funded digitisation and repatriation project involving previously undocumented recordings of Easter Island (Rapanui) music from the Fonck Museum, Viña del Mar. It will explain the circumstances under which the project developed, the strategies pursued in bringing it to fruition, and the reception of the project by the Rapanui community.     

A cultural justice approach to popular music heritage in deindustrialising cities

ABSTRACT

Deindustrialisation contributes to significant transformations for local communities, including rising unemployment, poverty and urban decay. Following the ‘creative city’ phenomenon in cultural policy, deindustrialising cities across the globe have increasingly turned to arts, culture and heritage as strategies for economic diversification and urban renewal. This article considers the potential role that popular music heritage might play in revitalising cities grappling with industrial decline. Specifically, we outline how a ‘cultural justice approach’ can be used within critical heritage studies to assess the benefits and drawbacks of such heritage initiatives. Reflecting on examples from three deindustrialising cities – Wollongong, Australia; Detroit, USA; and Birmingham, UK – we analyse how popular music heritage can produce cultural justice outcomes in three key ways: practices of collection, preservation and archiving; curation, storytelling and heritage interpretation; and mobilising communities for collective action.     

From Coombs to Crean: popular music and cultural policy in Australia

The many bodies administering Australian arts activity were incorporated within the Australia Council, established in 1973 by the Whitlam Labor Government to oversee Commonwealth arts policy under the direction of H.C. ‘Nugget’ Coombs. This article takes the establishment of the Australia Council as a starting point in tracing changing attitudes towards the practices and funding of popular music in Australia and accompanying policy discourses. This includes consideration of how funding models reinforce understandings of ‘high’ and ‘low’ art forms, the ‘cultural’/‘creative’ industries debates, and their effects upon local popular music policy. This article discusses the history of local music content debates as a central instrument of popular music policy and examines the implications for cultural nationalism in light of a recent series of media and cultural reports into industries and funding bodies. In documenting a broad shift from cultural to industrial policy narratives, the article examines a central question: What does the ‘national’ now mean in contemporary music and the rapid evolution of digital media technologies?     

Creating twenty-first century Korean bodies: public movement education practice,cultural policy and therapeutic ethos

This article focuses on the public movement education practices of a group of middle-class, Korean dance instructors at the Korea Laban Movement Institute (KLMI), a recently established civil institution in Seoul, South Korea. The KLMI classes promote self-directed and well-rounded Korean bodies through student-centered and egalitarian movement instruction. In recent years, these classes received public funds from the culture and arts foundations supported by the state’s cultural policies, as well as attention from Korean public media. This research introduces the public movement education practices that have aligned well with the state’s early twenty-first century cultural policies by making culture and arts education more accessible to the average Korean. In addition, the study shows the broader impact of KLMI’s public movement education practices, which have merged into the political and social landscapes of contemporary South Korea.     

Sustaining popular music’s material culture in community archives and museums

This article examines the challenges of sustainability faced by community archives and museums that are concerned with the preservation and display of the material culture of popular music’s recent past. The sustainability of grassroots sites of popular music heritage is of great concern due to their role in making accessible cultural artefacts that have limited representation in the collections of more prestigious institutions. Drawing on three sites that have ceased operation – Jazz Museum Bix Eiben Hamburg, Mutant Sounds and Holy Warbles – the article highlights difficulties faced by the founders and volunteers of physical and online archives in sustaining their ‘do-it-yourself’ heritage practices in the medium- to long-term.     

THE RETURN OF THE SOCIAL

This article is concerned with the social exclusion agenda in contemporary French cultural policy, exploring the relevance of aspects of postcolonial theory to an understanding of that agenda. The tensions involved in recent attempts to evolve policies addressing interculturalism, integration and “emergent” cultures (such as hip‐hop) while also staying true to the French republican tradition of universalism are illuminated by France’s problematic relationship with its colonial past. They are also shown to be related to a wider movement of post‐industrial, postmodern experimentation with aesthetic forms, from video and computer art to street arts, free parties and electronic dance music.     

Reviving Community Spirit: Furthering the Sustainable, Historical and Economic Role of Fish Weirs and Traps

Stone wall fish weirs and traps were once an important means for inland and coastal communities to catch fish. In many places the weirs and traps have been left to deteriorate and other more productive but less sustainable practices have taken their place. It was considered that they have fulfilled their historical and economic role and it was the loss of community spirit that has contributed to their decline. A recent survey in Yap, Federated States of Micronesia found a diverse and extensive number of fish weirs and traps, and a community keen to restore and reinvigorate their associated cultural practices and community spirit. The paper draws on comparative data from other places of the world to investigate weirs and traps, and to see if a similar revival could be observed. Of importance was a need to highlight the value of pursuing this type of research for contemporary communities and maritime archaeological practitioners in the current international management framework for underwater cultural heritage.     

The creation of a Ministry of Culture: towards the definition and implementation of a comprehensive cultural policy in Peru

In June 2010, a Ministry of Culture was created in Peru, raising many questions regarding the ability of this new administrative structure to effectively implement a comprehensive cultural policy, which has been lacking so far, for the Peruvian State has based its previous policies almost exclusively on the preservation of cultural heritage. The Ministry inherits the flaws of the National Institute of Culture, and must address various challenges: the improvement of heritage management; the inclusion of indigenous populations in a never established national identity; a renewed scheme of promotion of the arts and incentives to cultural industries. The article discusses possible policy options for the new ministry, evidences the needs for a renovation of bureaucratic culture within the ministry, for clarification in the objectives set to the Ministry and for more comprehensive data about cultural practices in Peru.     

The creation of cultural policy in the media: a field research of cultural discourses in Germany

In Germany, cultural policy is formally made on the level of municipalities, the Länder (federal states) and the federal government. With approximately eight billion Euros per year, they finance a large percentage of cultural and arts activities: music, theater, dance, museums, libraries, film and the preservation of sites of historic interest. The federal government sets the legal framework in which art can be produced and distributed, and finances it indirectly through tax reductions (VAT reduction), copy right laws, and special health insurance and retirement arrangements for artists (Künstlersozialkasse). Within this institutionalized legal and governmental setting, the discursive dimension of politics is often forgotten, particularly when policy creation is being discussed. This article focuses on the discursive dimensions of politics within the field of classical and contemporary music and offers a discourse analysis of mass media coverage to investigate policy‐making.     

The sound of yesteryear on display: a rethinking of nostalgia as a strategy for exhibiting pop/rock heritage

The increasing presentation of popular music culture as heritage is manifested in the recent proliferation of museums of pop/rock culture. This calls for an examination of the current practices of disseminating pop/rock heritage through exhibitions. Two trends have been identified and criticised by previous commentators: first, the prominence of nostalgia in exhibition narratives and second, that exhibitions of popular music tend to display ancillary objects rather than music itself. This article offers a rethinking of nostalgia as a strategy for disseminating pop/rock heritage and explores the potential of music as a trigger for nostalgic experiences in exhibitions. While agreeing with much of the critique levelled at the nostalgic approach to pop/rock culture, we suggest that with a more nuanced conception of reflective nostalgia, the affective appeal of the nostalgic approach can be harnessed without giving in to glamourised oversimplifications of the past. Further, we suggest that mediated memories can form the basis of nostalgic feelings and thus enable the nostalgic approach to span the generational gap and engage visitors who do not have a lived experience of pop/rock heritage. We will illustrate this by contrasting our approach to that taken at ABBA The Museum.     

Crafting heritage: artisans and the making of Indigenous heritage in contemporary Taiwan

Since the 1990s, Indigenous groups in Taiwan have been increasingly engaged in retrieving and reviving cultural practices that are considered ‘traditional’ and markers of Indigenous identities. This article takes such recent and ongoing revival of cultural practices and connected material culture amongst Taiwanese Indigenous groups as the departure point to argue that the idea of a ‘contemporary Indigenous heritage’ is constructed (notably by Indigenous artists and artisans) through the conflation of ‘tradition’, ‘value’, ‘authenticity’ and ‘indigeneity’, as well as creativity and innovation. In the article, I endeavour to explain this process. To this end, I identify and illustrate a set of strategies and discourses through which Indigenous artists and artisans in Taiwan construct their work as both ‘Indigenous’ and ‘heritage’. I suggest that such strategies and discourses revolve around the following: (i) materiality, (ii) visual display and performance, (iii) Indigenous cultural research and (iv) knowledge transmission. Building on the Taiwanese case study, this article furthers scholarly enquiries into the making of heritage by generating an enhanced understanding of the role of artists and artisans in the creation, renewal, authentication and transmission of ‘Indigenous heritage’.     

Tradisi and Turisme: Music,Dance, and Cultural Transformation at the Ubud Palace,Bali, Indonesia

This article investigates relationships between music and place through analysis of performances for tourists at a prominent site, Puri Saren Agung (the Ubud Palace) in the Balinese village of Ubud. These performances are representative of ways in which Balinese traditional cultural representation is transformed when it is packaged for tourist consumption. Through a number of readings of the palace, potential meanings for music are shown to be dependent on the past and present identities of this site. This is heightened by a view of changes in the palace's status and uses as a metaphor for ongoing developments in Balinese music and dance, and thus of ways in which tourism has been, and continues to be, a force in Balinese cultural production.     

Composing Connections between Continents: Tracing the History of Australia’s Engagement with Antarctica through Music

This article explores the history of Australia’s engagement with Antarctica through music, from the earliest songs and an opera created by the first Australian explorers to Antarctica, to the popular Antarctic-related classical music of Australian composer Nigel Westlake and the soundscape-based compositions of Australia-based sound artists Philip Samartzis and Lawrence English. Drawing on the field of musicology, but also the scholarly turn to the senses as part of the broadening reach of cultural history, the article argues that Australia’s musical engagement with Antarctica constitutes a significant, though understudied, aspect of our aural heritage. Further, deeper and critical appreciation of this music as cultural and aural heritage enhances our ability to reflect on the full extent of Australia’s relationship with, and contribution to knowledge about, its ‘Great Frozen Neighbour’ and its identity as a ‘gateway’ to the Antarctic region.     

CONSUMER PERCEPTIONS OF SPONSORSHIP IN THE ARTS

This article investigates consumers’ perceptions of three types of sponsors that play a role in backing financially Canadian artistic and cultural organisations: government ministries (or departments), Crown corporations and private companies. In addition to the type of sponsor and the nature of the sponsorship (philanthropic or commercial), the perceived congruence between the sponsor and the sponsored event (strong as opposed to weak), and the form of arts and cultural events (high art versus popular art and performing arts versus heritage arts) are explored in an experimental setting combining within‐subjects and between‐subjects factors. The main hypothesis of this research was that consumers’ perceptions are not the same when it comes to the different kinds of sponsors that evolve in the cultural and art fields. As the researchers explored this issue, they observed that significant differences do exist. It is believed that the rich findings of this study will be useful to civil servants.     

秦始皇帝陵文化遗产安全影响因素及价值传播分析

随着"秦始皇帝陵博物院·丽山园"正式对外开放,管理者面临着多重的管理压力,为此以秦始皇帝陵文化遗产地的实际出发,将影响文化遗产管理的安全因素从地理尺度上划分为的遗产地尺度、遗址尺度和文物尺度,着重以这三个尺度为出发点分析了安全监控、遗址风貌、气候环境、人为活动等影响因素,并就如何更好地开展大遗址的文化价值传播提出了自己的见解。     

Performing identities: music and dance in the Irishcommunities of Coventry and Liverpool

This article will examine how British-born second- and third-generation Irish people use Irish music and dance in the production of an Irish cultural identity. The article draws on research undertaken with members of the Irish communities in the English cities of Coventry and Liverpool. The research was conducted with music and dance practitioners in Liverpool who strongly identify as Irish and also with schoolchildren in Coventry whose parents or grandparents were born in Ireland. The paper first explores the comments of the Liverpool respondents and points to how music and dance can offer a space in which different generations can mark out their affiliation or embody their Irishness. Secondly, the paper considers interview work with schoolchildren in Coventry, concentrating on their responses as listeners to Irish traditional music. Their comments point to the capacity of this music to resonate with multiple, even conflicting, productions of Irishness. The comments of all the respondents raise key debates about authenticity and the construction of identity.     

Networked practices of intangible urban heritage: the changing public role of Dutch heritage professionals

This study examines the changing roles of heritage professionals by focusing on the participatory practices of intangible urban heritage. Developments towards democratisation in the heritage sector led to a growing expectation that heritage professionals would work with local publics. This democratisation is manifested in (1) the use of digital media for grassroots heritage practices, (2) the broader scope of what is defined as heritage, and (3) a focus on communities in UNESCO’s Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. Heritage professionals are thus challenged to develop inclusive heritage practices, particularly in cities, which are characterised by a dynamic nature and cultural diversity. In this article, I analyse how urban heritage organisations and professionals have responded to these developments. Drawing on interviews and a qualitative content analysis of these organisations’ policy documents, I examine the ways in which heritage professionals reconsider their public role through what I define as networked practices of intangible heritage. This concept captures the networked structure in which heritage professionals increasingly work, and also demonstrates how heritage is given meaning through public practices that take place in both the physical and virtual realms of contemporary cities.     

Aspects of Archaeological Heritage in the Cultural Landscapes of Western Anatolia

Throughout the course of time, environments built within landscapes have been transformed into conserved archaeological heritage sites through natural, but mostly anthropogenic, forces. Today, cultural heritage is the product of visual and spatial features of architectural material and landscapes created through conservation, but also through social and economical needs and interests. In Western Anatolia, archaeological heritage sites with ecologically rich areas, countryside, coastlines and seascapes are the most essential visual, spatial and structural features of cultural (historical) landscapes. Moreover, western Anatolian landscapes have retained their authentic character regarding intangible cultural diversity, ecology, rural traditional systems and agricultural practices. However, rapid changes and developments due to urbanisation and mass tourism have made their impacts on cultural historical landscapes in recent years. In this paper, an attempt is made to explore the cultural heritage within the evolution of cultural archaeological landscapes in Western Anatolia and to propose a sustainable approach for development and conservation options for cultural heritage and their landscapes.     

Cultural effects of authenticity: contested heritage practices in China

In this study, I analyse how the Chinese Government imposes the concept of authenticity on local heritage practices in the process of heritage nomination, conservation and management. Rather than discussing authenticity as an objective criterion, I approach authentication as a social process in the heritage discourse that impacts on local cultural practice. Through illustrating two cases in China, I propose three cultural effects of authentication on local heritage practices, namely spatial separation, emotional banishment and value shifting. Moreover, the heritage practices in China have created space for dynamic negotiations between local and global value systems. When the concept of authenticity is imposed on local heritage practices by heritage agencies, local communities are not passive recipients; rather, they consume, contest and negotiate the concept of authenticity in various ways.