Artists Statement
Abstract
‘Future Heritage’ will transform local heritage and knowledge for a sustainable, global society. The collaborative project is a cooperation between Ramallah Municipality, Palestine and Public Art Lab Berlin, Germany in the field of visual arts, handcrafts and technology. We will highlight cultural heritage in Palestine, which is disappearing and reproduce it in new forms and techniques to develop and promote it locally and internationally.
Transforming local identities in a networked world
The projects ‘Future Heritage’ bonds cultural traditions to global opportunities and Maker Culture to Craftsmanship. By focussing on everyday culture we define heritage not as an antiquity but rather as a living organism, which is open to access and reproduces itself each day in a constant change. Looking at the moment between the tangible and intangible heritage, we want to address the revelation of transformation and understand how heritage is delivered and thus manifested.
How can we actively and supportively design the process of cultural identity building in times transformation? And in which way can new forms of expressions and new technologies be embedded in the production and articulation of shared memories?
The artistic process will research around these issues through an additive method: Local communities (craftsmen/-women in the field of embroidery and pottery) will create together with German and Palestinian artists, designers and technologists new objects and patterns, which will be enhanced through new technologies. We will be using existing objects/patterns and understand them as traces to the past in order to embed them as fragments in a contemporary context to open windows to the future.
Traditional craft practices and designs will be integrated and disrupted by new methods of digitalisation (like 3Dscanning, projections) and digital fabrication (3Dprinting, laser cutting, knitting machines). By merging, multiplying and virtualising the existing forms of handcrafts and combining them through new media technologies we are aiming at collaboratively revitalising the notion of heritage, which can be reproduced and shaped beyond physical borders.
Innovative socio-cultural cooperation and sustainable local business
The project will build a socio-cultural cooperation model between artists, the local community and craftsmen & -women to re-create meaning and value of their culture and deepen the appreciation of crafts and materials.
Collaboratively in a 5-days workshop in Ramallah’s Community Art Centre participants will exchange their interdisciplinary contexts in order to explore the urban environments of Ramallah City and to discover narratives together with local citizen. These explorations will be brought together with the traditional physical objects and merged into hybrid new forms and objects in a curated design process. All collected information, such as 3D-Data files and programmes, will be publishedopen source in order to allow a long-term process.
The co-developed art projects will also include the economical perspective to ensure that new professions can emerge and support tourism. The co-developed products will be promoted on weekly markets in Ramallah and on the Maker Faire in Berlin. By buying the artistic products visitors support the long-term
perspective of the collaboration.
The project itself is innovative by combining and enhancing local crafts through new technologies, which provides potentials for new products and new markets. With local cultures at the heart we want to promote a sustainable transformation of heritage, thereby addressing issues like the revaluation of art within craft, the recuperation and actualisation of cultural traditions, explore the artistic potential of local businesses in networked societies and build bridges between global innovation and local needs.
- Jasmin Theresa Grimm, Public Art Lab, Berlin, Germany
- Sally Abu Bakr, Ramallah Municipality, Palestine
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