(IN)TANGIBLE HERITAGE(S)

Abstract

Like the ‘Song of the Sirens’ stories, personal experiences, conscious and unconscious embodied recordings can be “listened” during physical heritage tours. “Their imperfect songs that were only a song still to come” says Blanchot, Intangible words come to give voice and meaning to (in)tangible heritage(s). Consciousness comes through words. We see to verbalize and we verbalize to see again. We need words to gain certain consciousness. Minimal traces and signs of the city’s deterioration are activated by connecting, revealing and weaving new levels of historiography. Dissolving univocal and hierarchical narratives, words and images seek diversity and variety, forming new identities and ways of recording and experiencing history. The article analyses the importance of a multi-layered and pluralistic narrative for the city that can be achieved through new media using an example: embroidery Omonoia [e-monia], an open digital interactive map of Omonia (central historic square of Athens). The map, part of a research project, comes to expand the physical and digital experience by adding new narratives and experiences to existing tours. Historical, personal, literary, audio, photographic, cinematic, mainstream and also marginalized stories, weave an endless three-dimensional wandering collage. The purpose of the project is to highlight, update and promote the cultural heritage and modern culture through the diversity and plurality of each user experience. Spectator/traveler activates fragments/scraps that are scattered and invite each one to reconstruct its own interactive story and wandering experience. New narratorial voices make possible the constant fabrication and renovation of new public historical-social narratives and identities.