SeSSiOn 1 - AHTeR

OPENING
Chairman of the Symposium
Benajmin Mouton
Honorary President of ICOMOS France
mouton.benjamin@wanadoo.fr
It is a great honour for me to preside over the Scientific Committee of the Symposium of this General Assembly.
Having participated in many General Assemblies of ICOMOS and the symposia that accompanied them, I
do measure the honour that is indeed conferred upon me and the team that has worked on the programme
that you will be having in the coming days. I would like to recall the importance and influence of our organisation
worldwide for the conservation, preservation and reuse of heritage. I will also add that we will not
remain on intellectual grounds only. Our objective is actually to be as concrete and pragmatic as possible in
our conclusions in order to be able to offer tools.
The Symposium of the ICOMOS 17th General Assembly is directly in extension of the scientific works that
ICOMOS has produced, with a great variety of reference texts, declarations and charters having dealt with the
relationship between heritage and society and its future.
These events first delved/went into the notion of heritage, namely in Moscow in 1978, and going back to
the first international Congress of architects and technicians of historical monuments held in Paris in 1957,
which was in a way where ICOMOS originated from. The outgoing President Mr Raymond Lemaire was already
emphasizing “the enlargement of the concept of heritage and historical monuments extending to works of
culture which are the product of everyday life”.
In 2002 in Madrid, the reflection was extended to intangible heritage, and I quote once again: “cultural heritage
in its tangible and intangible dimension is the main vehicle of cultural diversity at a national and international
scale”.
In 2008 in Québec , “the spirit of the place gives a richer, wider, more dynamic and inclusive vision of cultural
heritage”.
It is thus that in more than 30 years the definition of heritage has expanded on the basis of the founding and
fundamental Historic Monument, onto including values of memory, cultural identity and tangible expression
of civilisations.
Now, with this new cultural and social dimension, further works of ICOMOS have naturally dealt with questions
of development and society.
In Sofia in 1996, under the title “Heritage and social changes”, the relationship of heritage with the local populations
has brought to the fore new notions, such as “social ecology” and the notions of ownership of heritage
by the inhabitants, which is to say giving heritage back to the inhabitants.
In 1999 in Mexico, dealing with the relationship between heritage and sustainable development, Michael
Petzet emphasizes the necessity of a harmony between “ecological, socio-political, economic and cultural
objectives, in order to free from its isolation the policy and practice of heritage conservation.”
But the global society has been evolving and changes very quickly. It has witnessed in-depth changes. “Globalisation”
is expressed more and more progressively in terms of “standardisation” and “uniformisation”, and
engenders physical, economic, social disequilibria, as well as deep, violent reactions of rejection.
Primo Levi used to say that development is a boat with more castaways than actual passengers.
Already in 1952, before the UNESCO, at this very place, Claude Levi-Strass criticised “the movement which
takes humanity towards a civilisation that is global and destructive... of its uniqueness, its aesthetic, spiritual
values which give its price to life...” (Race and History).
He stressed “the necessity to preserve the diversity of cultures in a world threatened by monotony and
uniformity...”
Since the 1960’s, Françoise Choay calls for a “fight to pursue the invention of spiritual and material specificities
which make up the richness of humanity.”
And going beyond the stage of the safeguard of cultural diversity, she affirmed that “the only true problem to
9
Le patrimoine, moteur de déveLoppement
Heritage, driver of deveLopment