From the spirit to the letter of the charters : mind the gap for the future

Since the 1960’s and the foundation of ICOMOS, charters have been considered as a sort of conservation gospel. In this presentation, we would like to question this fact, in the light of the very particular production and reception conditions of the documents. What may be perceived as a mostly provocative approach seems to us a constructive basis for future reflections.

When we read and use charters – in this presentation, we will mainly focus on the Venice Charter, the Nara document and the Riga Charter – , we forget too often that they have been written by human beings, sometimes very tired, in a hurry, and even arguing with each other. The study of the archival material related to the writing of the Venice Charter and the Nara document very clearly illustrates that these documents are rather a conceptual “bricolage” than indisputable normative texts as if they had been written by lawyers. In the case of the Venice Charter, the archive as well as the records of Raymond M. Lemaire, Paul Philippot or Gertrud Tripp make clear that the document has been written at the last moment and adopted too rapidly by an assembly too glad to finally have a updated version of the Athens charter. As a consequence, only a few years later, Raymond Lemaire and Piero Gazzola already questioned the validity of the new text in the light of the extension of heritage debates to the city centers. On the other hand, the fact that a French and an English version of the Nara document were written in parallel by Raymond M. Lemaire and Herb Stovel in 1994 has had immediate consequences on the content and the formulation of the text, which logically left both of them unsatisfied with the result.

Even so, the Venice charter and the Nara document still have force of law today. Yet, besides the particular circumstances of their writing, we must keep in mind that these texts answered specific questions, closely linked to the context: a critical answer to postwar reconstruction for the first, and apparently opposed visions of authenticity between East and West for the second. As far as the Riga charter is concerned, the influence of the delicate context of the Eastern bloc collapse is evident. For this reason, using such documents today requires at least a critical reading, going back to the spirit beyond the text. Our presentation will illustrate ad absurdum, through recent case studies, how a cynical reading of such documents can lead to interventions dangerously in conflict with this spirit and the fundamental ideals of conservation philosophy. In the era of late capitalism and heritage globalization, are we allowed to forget the conditions and the context in which our doctrinal documents have been written to justify anything and everything and to meet, for example, the “tourist gaze”, the “nouveaux riches” taste or the architect’s egomania? Do architects really want to know what the writers of the Venice charter’s article 9 meant by the “contemporary stamp”? What are the limits of the tolerance towards reconstruction first expressed by the Nara document, and a few years later, the charter of Riga? So many questions that ICOMOS must face if it wants to pursue its guiding mission in a mostly financial world.