The Spectacle of the Sacred: Intangible Cultural Heritage and Visual Governance in China

ZHANG Haimin, LI Runze, REN Hairui

Abstract

This paper investigates the transformation of China’s ICH through a visual governance lens, finding a tripartite field of tension between state, market and community. With the Wuwei Lantern Festival as the example, mainly the Balifish Lantern and Dougang Board Dragon Lantern in Wuwei County. The research shows that the parametric discipline of state power and the impoverished semiotic discourse of market forces together lead to the reduction of living ritual into spectacle, forming a paradoxical situation of “preserving the appearance but erasing the spirit”. On the contrary, it also highlights the resilience of communities – specifically how local artists embody their own topological resistance through embodied knowledge and adaptive actions. It is ultimately posited that good safeguarding necessitates collaborative governance to generate “cultural folds,” or institutional spaces of negotiation, to facilitate cultural reproduction from a community perspective in the face of spectacle-making.

Keywords

Intangible cultural heritageVisual governanceCultural resilienceSpectacleCultural folds

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