Seventeenth International Conference on the Inclusive Museum

Abstract

The paper considers a change in the function and importance of traditional material culture in the post-rural region of Polish Spisz (southern Poland). Older, usually wooden handicrafts related to farming (carts, cart wheels, ploughs, harrows, troughs, benches, etc.) have already lost their original functions in the highly modernized environment and now are used as historical objects exhibited: hung on the walls of new buildings or placed in one’s garden by the house. At the same time, they become part of a wider project of garden aesthetics by being placed alongside popular elements such as flower beds, water features, plastic or plaster garden gnomes and farm animals, which serve as mementos of a bygone culture. The museum-like open-air exhibitions of these material artefacts also suggest that the nature of cultural memory has changed from ‘true memory’ (unreflective, authoritative) into ‘historical memory’ (reflective, discoursive). They become part of displays of memory and cultural heritage that expresses the transvaluation of the obsolete. As unique material mythemes, they form a tale connecting the cultural past with the present, a narration that is understandable for its inheritors, and quality objects that are included in cultural change and thus uphold a feeling of homefulness. This makes the entire process of cultural modernisation, from which the discussed material elements of traditional folk culture have not been totally removed, relatively gentle and gradual.