Chloé FROMMER
(Otherwise, Bend, USA)
Abstract:
Inasmuch as monuments pose as sites of national representation, symbolic value therein is inherently contested and resituated by enactments of intangible heritage oriented kinetically to the future by tertiary technologies – such as audiovisual recording devices. The short docudrama Extending Sweetness reveals this potential, fluid and speculative temporality of an intangible heritage (song, dance, ritual) that is enacted apart from the solid, tangible heritage of a celebrated geomorphic cave monument. As national monuments may provoke both ambivalence and active reclamation projects among local communities and nationals themselves, it is important that cultural resource managers, gate-keepers and archeologists explore the virtual and kinetic potential of enacting intangible heritage with local communities. Our film does this by working with contemporary rainmakers and in the the figuration of their spirit-helpers and relatives currently exiled from Zimbabwe’s National Dombashawa Rainmaking Cave Monument (managed by the National Museums and Monuments in Zimbabwe).