University of Heidelberg

Presentation

"Krishna and the plaster cast. A transcultural perspective on material culture translation in the case of the reproduction of Angkor Vat, Cambodia"

Angkor Vat temple from the 12th c. in Cambodia is the largest religious stone monument in the world. Despite its massive architectural structure in situ, Angkor Vat is one of the most “travelled” objects in Southeast Asia through its reproduction in models and moulds. This phenomenon is tightly linked with the modern notion of national building, the invention of the concept of cultural heritage and the increasingly commercialised cultures of display. In the 19th and early 20th century, Angkor Vat served not only as a model for the initiation of Thai nationalism inside the Bangkok Royal Palace but became the most important monument and archaeological fetish in the French mission civilisatrice of the Indo-Chinese Protectorate: its surface was copied via the technique of moulding and transferred for scientific study and display inside the new-found Parisian Musée Indochinois and after being partially reconstructed for earlier World Exhibitions, it reached its most spectacular transcultural translation in the 1:1-scale model for the state-propagandistic Colonial Exhibition in Paris in 1931. Apart from these state-run instrumentalisations, Angkor Vat serves ever since as an object of vernacular reproduction in Cambodia itself: its rebuilt model in small scale can not only be seen today in local artistic workshops and tourist hotels but also in cremation ceremonies of the local Buddhist community.
This paper aims to formulate a transcultural perspective on material culture translation, with a focus on plaster casts. It uses the case-study of the different forms of reproductions of the Angkor Vat temple in Cambodia to analyse material flows between political representations, religious practise, scientific display, vernacular art production and touristic consumption.

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