The Heritage Re-Use Project: Recycling Artistic Symbols and Folklore for Community-Building
Kathleen Adams's cultural reuse projects entails examining the mining of heritage and artistic symbols to address contemporary political issues threatening to undermine communities in Indonesia and in the United States. Her recent book Art as Politics: Re-crafting Identities, Tourism and Power in Tana Toraja, Indonesia (2006, Univ. of Hawaii Press) has several chapters that explore how Toraja carvers in Sulawesi are currently re-conceptualizing older carving symbols to address the need to build community and harmony in an era of inter-religious and inter-ethnic strife. The book also examines certain dynamics of adaptive cultural re-use, looking in particular at how ancestral Toraja arts were re-framed in the heyday of tourism (1980s-1990s) and more recently in post-touristic times. Likewise, my work on the Indonesian island of Alor explores how various Alorese individuals have mined heritage for new purposes, in efforts to gain access to resources that generally by-pass this out-of-the-way place. For more information about the book:

http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/cart/shopcore/?db_name=uhpress&page=shop/flypage&product_id=4431

In another project in San Juan Capistrano, CA, she is currently examining the ways in which icons and lore associated with the town's historic swallow-drawing Mission are currently being invoked, recycled and re-worked by various local constituencies to speak to newer issues and challenges to the community.

For more information, email Kathleen Adams at kadams@luc.edu.