VIRTUAL: Prague Heritages

Abstract

Hundreds of wooden churches appear as early as 1630 in villages in the Carpathian Mountains. Today in the Slovak Republic sixty have survived the physical and social effects of World Wars, socialism, capitalism, and microclimate grasp upon their organic materiality. Serving Orthodox, Greek Catholic, or Roman Catholic communities, many have been declared National or UNESCO World Monuments. They feature prominently in tourist web sites, and with Slovak independence, have also become symbols of national identity. The sites and structures offer examples of entry to the corporeal turn in aesthetics and situatedness. From an architectural perspective, place is bequeathed as the churches differently establish atmosphere beyond mere object with specifics of affordances within topography, village location, landscape, processional paths, and care for grounds and cemeteries. The faiths have embellished the simple shells of logs often with elaborate murals and additions such as iconostases often executed by artists far removed from the local setting in support of their liturgies, which for some structures continues today. While these structures have garnered recognition as outstanding vernacular architecture, there has not been an approach to considering them through the aesthetics of embodiment. Rather than their aesthetic value or meaning deriving solely from objective distanced aesthetic, aesthetic engagement may be mapped across an index of holistic atmospheres via affect and specific embodiment, from the tourist’s gaze to the worshiper’s immersion in a state of saturated phenomena, establishing a further depth to their value as transcendent across time.