Assembling Alternative Futures for Heritage

“为遗产构建替代未来”（AAFH）是一个跨学科的研究项目，旨在建立一个广泛的、国际的、跨部门的比较框架，从最广泛的意义上理解“遗产”。虽然遗产往往被严格定义，但可以说，所有以濒危、关心未来或涉及过去的概念为基础的实践领域都可以被认为是遗产工作的形式。此外，“自然”和“文化”遗产以及“非物质”和“物质”遗产往往被彼此孤立对待，而事实上，这些领域之间的区别往往难以维持。因此，本研究项目将探索遗产在广泛的领域内“组装”的过程和实践，这些领域通常没有被概念化为遗产的形式，并考虑每个领域中涉及的未来创造的替代实践和过程可能会影响文化遗产指定、保护和管理的更传统方面的方式。它将通过调查和提供一系列不同遗产领域之间和之间的知识交流机会来实现这一目标。因此，该研究计划旨在促进21世纪不同遗产“产业”与公众之间更民主、更知情的对话，并为制定新政策做出贡献，以促进更创新、共享、有弹性和可持续的遗产保护方法。活动将在四个工作包中进行，每个工作包都将几个具有共同目标或共同实践的遗产领域结合在一起，但通常没有以比较的角度考虑，以检查每个领域在面对未来威胁时利用过去来为未来提供资源的方式。该计划将考虑的领域分为四个主题：“为不确定的未来做准备”（WP1），调查未来核废料处置地点的选择，从地球到外层空间的信息传递以及世界遗产指定和管理的实践；“管理自然/文化边缘地带”（WP2），探讨景观恢复计划与管理已建文物的损毁之间的协同作用；“收藏丰富”（WP3），检查家庭和中小型博物馆的丢弃和保存；以及“保护多样性”（WP4），以比较在土著景观管理、种子库、植物标本馆和冷冻动物园中评估和管理生物和文化多样性的方式。在这些WPs中，研究人员将进行实地考察，以了解在每个领域中进行的实践和过程，并提出可能在其他领域创造性地重新部署的方法。研究方法将主要利用视觉和物质人种学的形式，但也包括文献研究、创造性艺术实践、电影制作、跨部门知识交流活动和展览实验。除了这些针对世界环境规划署的活动外，我们还将开展一系列跨领域的活动，通过知识交流活动、学术研讨会和展览，共同创造新知识。我们将与来自不同传统和非传统遗产领域的18个非学术伙伴组织合作。我们的工作由一个受人尊敬的顾问委员会指导，该委员会由我们的一些合作伙伴组织的高级代表组成，代表了一系列不同的实践领域，以确保我们的研究在从业者和政策制定者中产生广泛的影响。

Assembling Alternative Futures for Heritage (AAFH) is an interdisciplinary research programme which aims to develop a broad, international and cross-sectoral comparative framework for understanding 'heritage' in its most expansive sense. While heritage has tended to be strictly defined, it is possible to argue that all areas of practice that are informed by notions of endangerment, caring for the future, or which involve the 'presencing' of the past, might be considered to be forms of heritage work. Further, 'natural' and 'cultural' and 'intangible' and 'tangible' heritage have tended to be treated in isolation from one another, when, in fact, the distinction between these realms is often difficult to maintain. Accordingly, this research programme will explore the processes and practices by which heritage is 'assembled' within a broad range of fields which have typically not been conceptualised as forms of heritage, and consider the ways in which the alternative practices and processes of future-making involved in each might inform more conventional aspects of cultural heritage designation, care and management. It will do this through investigating and providing opportunities for knowledge exchange between and across a series of different heritage domains. In so doing, the research programme aims to facilitate a more democratic and informed dialogue between and across various heritage 'industries' and their publics in the twenty-first century, and to contribute to the development of new policies which promote more innovative, shared, resilient and sustainable approaches to heritage conservation. Activities will take place across four work packages, each of which draws together several heritage domains that share common objectives or common practices, but which have not generally been considered in comparative perspective, to examine the ways in which each domain draws on the past to resource the future in the face of future threat. The collection of domains to be considered by the programme are organised under four broad themes: "preparing for uncertain futures" (WP1), to investigate the selection of sites for future disposal of nuclear waste, the transmission of messages from earth into outer space and practices of world heritage designation and management; "managing nature/culture borderlands" (WP2), to explore synergies between landscape rewilding initiatives and the management of ruination in built heritage; "curating profusion" (WP3), to examine discarding and keeping for posterity in households and small-to-medium-sized museums; and "conserving diversity" (WP4), to compare ways of valuing and managing biological and cultural diversity in indigenous landscape management, seed banks, herbaria and frozen zoos.Within these WPs, researchers will undertake fieldwork to understand the practices and processes which are undertaken within each domain, and to suggest ways in which they might be creatively re-deployed in others. Research methods will principally draw on forms of visual and material ethnography, but also incorporate documentary research, creative artistic practice, film making, trans-sectoral knowledge exchange events and exhibitionary experiments. In addition to these WP-specific activities, we will engage in a number of cross-cutting, programme-wide activities which are concerned with co-creating new knowledge through knowledge exchange events, academic symposia and exhibitions. We will work with 18 non-academic partner organisations drawn from across various conventional and unconventional heritage domains. We are guided in our work by an esteemed advisory board drawn from senior representatives of a number of our partner organisations, representing a range of different fields of practice, to ensure our research has wide impact amongst practitioners and policy makers.