Vulgarising Angkor
Why heritage must not be turned into digital commodities
TO WHAT extent can cultural heritage be digitised and commodified? In a clumsy partnership, clearly not a partnership of equals, the government of the Kingdom of Cambodia, the authority that looks after the world heritage site of Angkor, and the internet company Google, are answering this question. Their answers are disturbing and the implications of their mission call for a quick and decisive response to halt their work.
The site is called the ‘park’ of Angkor, which includes the world-famous Angkor Wat but also many other temple complexes in an area that was the core of the Khmer empire from around 800 to 1330 of the common era. It is enormous, with a core area of around 200 square kilometres and during the classic period encompassed a dense population that lived and worked in around a thousand square kilometres.
The mission — apparently an agreement between the government of Cambodia, the supervisory authority (called Apsara, after its French acronym), and Google — is to “grant users an upclose view of Angkor, through Google’s Street View project”, which is how it is described by Google Maps, one of the internet company’s main websites.
Judging from the available reportage, the internet company Google has achieved this partly by using what it calls ‘street view’ (wherein a jeep fitted with some sophisticated camera and other electronics drives through roads to provide images of what Google Maps shows) and partly by teams that walked around the core Angkor park area using smaller but no less sophisticated imaging electronics.
For a company in the internet business, Google has become adept at misrepresenting its interpretation of the world by invoking what are presented as demands of the users of Google’s services. The company has said: “We want to make sure that we have the ability to share all these places with users all over the world.”
The company Google may have the ability, but who has asked for this invasion of a cultural space, and on whose terms? The Angkor ‘park’, or core area, is widely acknowledged as being the heritage not only of Cambodia and South-East Asia but also of the world. For at least some portion of the thousands of visitors and tourists who visit the site every week, the act of setting foot in those ancient places and examining, with the naked eye and curious mind, the stones and reliefs, long galleries and lofty towers, fulfils a kind of pilgrimage.
But, in the name of facilitating ‘access’, in the name of ‘sharing’ and ‘exploring’ Google has been permitted to vulgarise the sacred that is Angkor. It has been allowed to rent for rank commercial advantage part of the shared memory of a site that is the heritage of humankind. Google is a company, like tens of thousands of others, and will choose a strategy to further its advantage. But for the government of the Kingdom of Cambodia and the Apsara authority to have permitted a commercial entity to do so is a grave error. There are some actions never to be entertained for the sake of shortterm rent and the digitisation of Angkor by Google is undoubtedly one of them.
The danger of this dreadfully ill-advised mission extends to every one of the 981 sites and places on the Unesco World Heritage List (759 cultural, 193 natural and 29 mixed sites) in 160 countries. Because of the Angkor precedent, each of these is very likely to be approached by the internet company Google and offered the bait of universal access — via cellphone, maps, social media and what-have-you — to each site’s features being guaranteed by Google’s enormous reach.
The result of such a monstrous plan will be to turn over the most commonly found, and most familiar and well-loved, representations of a country’s cultural heritage to a private company that is not accountable in any way to that country’s citizens and organs of governance, and which scoffs at sovereignty in the name of fostering digital democracy.
The lame explanation for this cultural hijacking, as proferred by Google. is that its mission concerns “Cambodia sharing its culture with the rest of the world”, which is a cynical travesty of what has actually taken place. None of the more than 100,000 ordinary residents who live inside the Angkor area — and who eke out simple livelihoods based on cultivation, the fashioning of small crafts and lending their labour to maintain the area — are partners of this mission nor were they consulted about their willingness to ‘share’ their cultural inheritance in this way.
To reverse this abominable precedent, Cambodia’s Ministry of Tourism and the Apsara authority must nullify the agreement with Google, impound the photographic and other material collected and forbid its digital propagation. The heritage of the world is not a common stock exchange. The author is an expert on intangible cultural heritage with UNESCO and studies agricultural transformation in South Asia