Beyond Presentism: Heritage and the Temporality of Things Heritage and the Temporality of Things

Torgeir Rinke Bangstad

doi:10.16995/ee.1443

Abstract

Heritage is often seen as a symptom of a temporally disjointed and all-pervasive present which shapes the pasts it requires to make up for the failures of linear, modern and progressive history. As a consequence, the pasts in heritage are often regarded as the result of unidirectional processes of attributing value to largely compliant materials. This article explores the constitutive role of materials in different stages of heritage-making and stress the specific material memory of buildings as central in the negotiation of temporalities in conservation practice. The notion of material memory allows for a closer consideration of both the unsolicited material effects of past events that is part of the historical fabric of buildings, as well as their ongoing transformation exceeding any one unitary and neatly contained historical present.

Highlights

Heritage is often seen as a symptom of a temporally disjointed and all-pervasive present which shapes the pasts it requires to make up for the failures of linear, modern and progressive history
The popular interest in heritage was pathologized as an obsession; a projection screen for melancholy and a Torgeir Rinke Bangstad 2019: Beyond Presentism: Heritage and the Temporality of Things
Within the abstract category of heritage, we find practices that engage with radically different timescales of preservation and disparate materials ranging from the long-term agrobiodiversity preservation in secure seed vaults, to short-term tasks of stabilizing quickly deteriorating latex sculptures in modern art museums (Domínguez Rubio 2014; Harrison 2017)

Summary

Introduction

Heritage is often seen as a symptom of a temporally disjointed and all-pervasive present which shapes the pasts it requires to make up for the failures of linear, modern and progressive history. The economic, environmental, and social insecurities of our age imply that the future is no longer perceived as a bright horizon, but instead constitutes an “imminent threat” (Hartog 2015: 16) In this crisis of historical time, the present is seen as all-encompassing: “We cannot see beyond it. The crisis of linear, historical time, jams the present between ersatz memory, between a tradition “[...] from which we would be forever separated [...]” (Nora 2002: 5), and a future which is “[...] reintroduced negatively, through our concern with preservation” (Hartog in Tamm & Olivier 2019: 14) It is the alleged, omnipresent and temporally unmoored present, which yields the predominant concern with commemoration and preservation. Heritage is dictated by the needs of the present (Burch 2005: 212–213) and, at the end of the day, it has “very little to do with the past” (Harrison 2015: 35)

Objectives

Conclusion