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Explorations, Beyond Location: Rethinking Cultural Heritage in an Age of Global Flows

When Nefertiti gazes out from her vitrine in Berlin’s Neues Museum, where exactly is she looking? To Egypt, her place of origin? To the thousands of tourists snapping photos? Or perhaps to a future where questions of cultural heritage transcend our obsession with fixed locations? Her presence in Berlin has sparked decades of controversy, yet the very terms of this debate might be outdated in our era of global cultural flows.

For decades, debates about cultural heritage have been stuck in a geographical tug-of-war. Should the Parthenon Marbles return to Athens? Must Nefertiti go back to Cairo? These questions assume that cultural objects belong in specific places – that somewhere, somehow, there’s a “right” location that would resolve complex historical entanglements. This thinking reflects a certain “fetishism of place” – our tendency to bind cultural meaning to fixed geographical locations, even as global flows of people, media, and ideas increasingly challenge such static notions.

Consider Berlin’s Şehitlik Mosque. Is it a piece of Turkey transplanted to Neukölln, or is it creating something entirely new? Men drinking tea in its courtyard, are they preserving a static tradition – or are they actively crafting new forms of religious and cultural practice in a transnational space? Similarly, when manuscripts from Damascus, Baghdad, and Isfahan are digitized in the Qalamos Project, they don’t simply move from physical to digital space – they enter new networks of meaning and interpretation. These spaces exemplify what might be called “cosmopolitan realism” – the recognition that cultural practices and identities are increasingly shaped by global connections rather than local rootedness alone.

Our traditional vocabulary of cultural heritage – focused on ownership, location, and authenticity – emerged in a world of nation-states and fixed boundaries. But today’s cultural flows refuse to respect these neat categories. A Syrian artist in Berlin creates works that are simultaneously local and global. A digital archive in Germany makes Persian manuscripts accessible to scholars in Tehran and Texas alike. The stumbling stones (Stolpersteine) scattered through Berlin’s streets mark absences that connect multiple geographical points into networks of memory. These aren’t just isolated examples but indicators of a fundamental shift in how cultural heritage operates in contemporary society.

The implications are profound. Rather than asking where cultural heritage should be located, we might ask how it moves and transforms. Instead of treating cultural artifacts as fixed objects with single “homes,” we could recognize them as nodes in complex networks of meaning and memory. This shift requires new frameworks for preservation and interpretation that acknowledge the multiply-situated nature of cultural heritage in our interconnected world.

Take the Jewish Museum Berlin, which offers an unexpected model for this new approach. Rather than simply displaying artifacts, it creates spaces that make visitors physically experience displacement and disorientation. Through Daniel Libeskind’s architecture, the museum suggests that understanding cultural heritage might require us to leave behind our comfortable assumptions about place and belonging. The building itself becomes a metaphor for how cultural memory operates in a globalized world – through disruption, connection, and transformation rather than static preservation.

This doesn’t mean ignoring histories of colonialism or dismissing claims for restitution. Rather, it means recognizing that cultural heritage in our globalized world might need new frameworks altogether. Instead of asking “Where does this belong?” we might ask “What connections does this enable?” Instead of “Whose heritage is this?” we might consider “What conversations does this start?” These questions open up new possibilities for how we understand and engage with cultural heritage.

Back in the Neues Museum, Nefertiti’s gaze takes on new meaning. Perhaps she’s not looking in any single direction but rather witnessing how cultural heritage in the 21st century refuses to stay put – flowing across borders, spawning digital copies, generating new meanings, and creating unexpected connections. As global flows intensify, her presence in Berlin becomes less about ownership and more about the possibilities and challenges of cultural heritage in an interconnected world.

The challenge, then, isn’t simply to determine where objects belong, but to understand how they, and the practices they embody, help us navigate a world where meaning and memory flow in multiple directions at once. In this light, Berlin’s memory institutions become not just repositories of the past but laboratories for understanding how cultural heritage works in an age of global flows – sites where we can begin to imagine new ways of preserving and sharing culture that reflect our interconnected reality.


VM


OpenEdition schlägt Ihnen vor, diesen Beitrag wie folgt zu zitieren:
Victoria Mummelthei (12. November 2024). Explorations, Beyond Location: Rethinking Cultural Heritage in an Age of Global Flows. Keine Disziplin – No Discipline. Abgerufen am 27. März 2025 von https://doi.org/10.58079/13js5


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