VIRTUAL: Prague Heritages

Abstract

This study explores the formative transformations of religious ceremonies in the sense of urban cultural history by analysing connections between tangible art subjects and intangible cultural presentations. With a focus on the temporality of funeral installations, which represents the process of altering architectural spaces into abstract realms where psychological relationships are mapped physically, the research explores conceptual performances of death and divinity that functions as a symbolic continuity of collective life. Taking the Monga cultural circle in Taipei as an interface, I observe transformations in ritual presentations, demonstrating the local-developed Buddhism in terms of colonial hybridity and its cultural perpetuity in contemporary practices. The development of ritual forms is phenomenological, along with the functions of healing and reshaping social unity. However, the portability and ephemerality of these objects have been a problem in preserving their contexts. Describing this type of heritage involves procedural complexity, not only about an object’s material functions but also its ability to deconstruct everyday life by temporarily defunctioning architectural spaces or urban landscapes in daily order. With an engagement in the idea of ‘art’ in terms of cultural heritage, this study reexamines the conservation and interpretation of ritual objects, such as hell scrolls, embroideries and textiles, which are often barely treated as a category of ‘visual art’ in institutional practices. By exploring conservation methods beyond the art-historical paradox that grounds modern aesthetics as a visual-centralised technique, cases in this research demonstrate the possibility of embodying aesthetic value in a composite environment for re-engaging in a city’s past and present.