Polycam and the Power of Heritage Registration in the Palm of Your Hand: UNESCO Strategy to Safeguard Memory in Ukraine War

Abstract

The conflict in Ukraine, which started on February 24, 2022, is the continuation of the process of Russian expansionism in this country, after the Euromaidan protests in the capital Kiev, with the consequent removal of the then pro-Russian president, Vyktor Yanukovych. But it differs from the conflicts that preceded it in recent decades, in other countries and contexts, such as Iraq (2003) and Syria (2011), regarding the actions promoted by UNESCO. In these, measures known and elaborated by the UN agency for Education, Science and Culture were in force in order to safeguard the cultural and heritage assets of a people and culture during large-scale warlike conflicts. These are: the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, The Hague (1954), the Convention on Measures to be Adopted to Prohibit the Import, Export and Unlawful Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, Paris (1970), the Convention for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, Paris (1972), the Recommendation concerning the International Exchange of Cultural Property, Nairobi (1976), the Declaration on the Responsibility of Present Generations for Future Generations, Paris (1997), the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, Paris (2003), the Charter for the Preservation of the Digital Heritage, Paris (2003), and the most recent, the Convention on Cultural Diversity, Paris (2005). However, there is a potential new horizon accessible to citizens of countries in conflict, in this case Ukraine, provided by the ongoing digital technological revolution, and also as an expression of soft power, to contribute to this invaluable effort. This is the Backup Ukraine project, created in partnership with the creative agency VICE, a branch of Virtue Worldwide, and Blue Shield Denmark, a group that helps protect global cultural heritage, under the umbrella of the Danish National Commission of UNESCO. Through the Polycam application, the user fills out an online form and has his location verified by GPS. From this, it becomes possible to digitize images or objects in augmented reality, from mosaics and public statues of cities like Kiev, Lviv and Kalynivka to scenes of everyday life, or traditions of collective memory, and share them on the platform's social network. With this, a resource is available that allows individuals to actively participate in the dissemination and preservation of goods and memories, a responsibility previously restricted to sectors of the States and transnational institutions, or specialized organizations. This resource was appropriated by the Ukrainians and has enabled the preservation, or survival, of both their country's cultural and heritage assets, and the particular memory of their own lives. Given this scenario, the work aims to: (1) contextualize the phenomenon of modern war between states (Waltz, 2004) and the perspective of just war (Walzer, 2003) in relation to this resource, as a response to aggression; (2) analyze in summary the different UNESCO conventions for the protection and safeguarding of heritage in times of conflict; (3) identify how the concepts of identity (Hall, 2015) and tradition (Hobsbawn and Ranger 1997) are triggered, recognizing how soft power (Nye 2005) is expressed in the Backup Ukraine project, in the wide dissemination and sharing of objects or memories, which reinforce the cultural values of humanity, in the face of the conflict in Eastern Europe.

The original version of this work was submitted at the “Thematic Symposium 2—Heritage and International Relations in times of conflict” at the IV Seminar of the National WG History and Cultural Heritage—Goiás (GO), October 10 to 13, 2022, with some subsequent modifications for the present publication.