Historicizing Heritage

The melting ice globe records the change from tangible to intangible. I’m interested in the material components of what is called ‘intangible' cultural heritage, the elemental stuff that comprises heritage. As that substance erodes, what are the concomitant impacts upon identity? What kind of world is left to be inherited?...

I’m interested in the process from tangible to intangible (e.g. the melting ice globe). And further, what happens when the intangible is forgotten or ignored? How that shift gets storied; who gets to tell that story; and how the losses might be mediated or remembered. As an early modernist, I think about how restoring past interactions with ice can productively intervene in ecological presents… What does the fraught embrace of ice afford? Who are its allies? … How does one safely navigate a slippery world?

Reading centuries-old texts will not save vanishing ice and snow, whether we're talking about big globes [planets] or small [theaters]. But at a time in which popular climate studies obsess over ends – there’s a bunch of books about ends of the world, ends of ice, the end of the planet headed for meltdown, the world after or without ice – the perilous yet playful doings of early modern cold assist in counter-apocalyptic thinking.