Transmission and Transformation of Intangible Cultural Heritage – a relational-theoretical (re-)perspectivization

Abstract

The UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage 2003 not only brought the necessity of preserving intangible cultural heritage into the collective consciousness, but at the same time raises the question of maintaining the dynamic of this cultural heritage and thus the question of sustainable cultural development. In this context, intangible cultural heritage is often conceived as a stock of customs, representations, forms of expression, etc. that can be inventoried and identified as worthy of preservation, and that seems to be transmissible in the sense of a unidirectional transfer. Such a substantialist approach does not take into account that neither the intangible cultural heritage per se nor the practices that produce the intangible cultural heritage and their references can be presupposed as unchanging and inherently existing. In contrast, a relational-theoretical approach opens up the potential to view intangible cultural heritage as constantly in transformation and re-actualization. This essay attempts such a (re-)perspectivization by means of the Relational Reframe method and the example of the Bayreuth Festival.