Territorial museification: fundamentals of a concept

Abstract

The word “museification” has been used in the reflections of various disciplinary fields. It is a concept that has been little discussed and lacks epistemological clarity. Thus, this article presents a conceptual approach dedicated to understanding the process of museification, seeking a basis to formulate its definition and to enable territorial analysis. This was a qualitative research, with a case study in which eight processes of museification, identified in the conceptual foundation, are used in the analysis of the Caravaggio Circuit (Santa Teresa, ES, Brazil). The result demonstrates the true link between the museification of the territory and the cultural itineraries.

Keywords:
Museification; Territory; Territorial museification; Cultural itinerary; Cultural circuit

Resumo

A palavra “museificação” tem sido utilizada em reflexões de diversos campos disciplinares. Trata-se de concepção ainda pouco discutida, carente de clareza epistemológica. Assim, este artigo apresenta uma abordagem conceitual dedicada ao entendimento do processo de museificação, buscando embasamento para formular sua definição e viabilizar análises territoriais. Configura-se como pesquisa qualitativa, com estudo de caso no qual oito processos próprios da museificação, identificados na fundamentação conceitual, são usados na análise do Circuito Caravaggio (Santa Teresa, ES, Brasil). O resultado demonstra a vinculação real entre a museificação do território e os roteiros culturais.

Palavras-chave:
Museificação; Território; Museificação territorial; Roteiro cultural; Circuito cultural

Introduction

On the subject of revitalizing historical territories, tourism is generally understood as a miraculous solution for problems arising from either abandonment or disuse. Since the end of the twentieth century, warnings have been issued regarding the dangers of this activity, aiming to demonstrate its possible reverse effects: the death of territories, when, inserted into the cultural tourism industry, they are transformed into open-air museums. This process has been identified by a number of scholars by the term museification (JEUDY, 2005; CHOAY, 2010).

For the term territorial museification, however, there is still a limited understanding or a lack of explanation. It is believed that this condition has resulted from a dearth of interpretation focused on its specificities. Based on this premise, we have sought to provide the phenomenon with a totalizing definition, based on scientific studies. However, the intention herein is not to conclude the exercise of conceptualization, but rather to formulate a critical, theoretical and historical approach, aiming to provide a contribution to planning linked to self-sustainable local development.

Territory is taken as a category of study, and its conceptualization is exposed in such a manner as to configure a thematic duo with the word “museification” and, thus, establish the definition of territorial museification. First of all, however, the difference needs to be established between the terms museification and musealization, which are often presented as synonyms. The intention is to indicate exactly the opposite, i.e., their distinctive characters.

According to Marín and Del Cairo (2013), musealization is an epistemologically established term, understood as the act of inserting a certain object into a museological institution. This denotation, however, differs from the central term of the proposed approach, since it recognizes the manifestation of museification processes in the most varied contexts, without necessarily being restricting to a political-institutional activity.

With further reference to the tourist activity, it is not difficult to identify, in contemporaneity, itineraries, routes, circuits, pathways - terms that very often present the same meaning - when visiting locations around the world. Most of them are designed to facilitate the knowledge of specific attributes within a context in which the scarcity of time seems to take over social life. Increasingly valued throughout the entire world, part of these itineraries is established through a cultural aspect, integrating goods from a great diversity of natures, whether material or cognitive.

The possible link between museification and cultural itineraries has instigated the analysis presented herein. Therefore, its main objective is to understand the phenomenon of territorial museification in the light of a cultural itinerary. In this perspective, taking the museification processes identified in the conceptual foundation as a starting point, we set out to study the case of the Caravaggio Circuit, in Santa Teresa, in the state of Espírito Santo, Brazil. Created by the private sector in 2008, and subsequently administered in partnership with public authorities, the main theme presented by this itinerary is the remnant culture of the Italian immigrants who colonized the territory under focus. This heritage has been explored by tourism through the itinerary, which is particularly outstanding amongst others that have been linked to this same historical narrative in Espírito Santo. Totaling approximately 14 km, the Caravaggio Circuit contains 23 attractions of diverse natures (cultural, natural and commercial), mostly located along the road that connects the city of Santa Teresa to the Chapel of Caravaggio, situated on the slope of the valley of the same name.

Apart from the introduction, the article is structured into 4 main sections. Section 1 presents a conceptual approach to the term museification, and from this, Section 2, highlights eight processes specific to the phenomenon. In Section 3, such processes, which constitute explanatory hypotheses, form the starting point for analyzing the Caravaggio Circuit. Finally, Section 4 underscores the conclusions reached by the analysis, whereby the main conclusion consists of recognizing the transformation of territorial elements into museum objects.

1. Museification and its multiple approaches

For Pinheiro and Duarte (2008), museification may be described as a process that crystallizes monuments, indicating that the urban elements destined for contemplation suffer crystallization due to a possible disarticulation with reality. Along the same lines, Jacques (2008) considers museification as a transformation of the city into a museum, which causes urban space to be frozen, generated by the postmodern condition of conferring importance onto existing cultures. In contemporaneity, an exacerbation of this concern may be observed, which calls for the petrification of the city, particularly its historic centers. For Jacques, museification is one of the facets of the show-city and, often, its implementation marks the beginning of a spectacularization process. Thus, the city is understood as a commodity, a brand that stands out amongst the rest.

From the perspective of this same author, the museification process is inserted into a niche of transformations that, paradoxically, has as a premise a static conception of the city. To illustrate this perspective, a counterpoint is made between the Japanese conception of heritage, in which traditions are kept alive, because they are present in everyday life, and the European situation, from the viewpoint of the recurrence of preservationist actions. In this circumstance, the author approaches the patrimonial issue to museification and uses the term patrimonialization as a synonym (JACQUES, 2008; JACQUES apud JEUDY, 2005).

In a study on state initiatives to build collective memory in Colombia, Marín and Del Cairo (2013, p. 76) also exemplify museification processes, which they conceived as a means of building, legitimizing and reducing collective memory, referring, in summary, to the actions of institutions with the objective of “selecting and confining an 'object'”² based on “logics and rhetoric that 'petrify' [their] historical and cultural meanings”. The target of these actions, exercised within a state, community or society, may be natural, cultural, as well as individuals or communities.

This process removes the artifact from its context and its historical references, transforming it into “exotic reminiscences of the past”, an action that mummifies the object, to safeguard certain perceptions of the past and the future that one wishes to expose (MARÍN; DEL CAIRO, 2013, p. 77). Thus, the objects are transformed into something exotic and their history is removed from them, with a view to making them functional, which is supported by a specific logic of collective memory. For the same authors, museification is instrumental in musealization, understood here as the activity belonging to museums, with the function of contextualizing a cultural object.

By omitting the contextual references of the object, museification aestheticizes it, exposing it as “well designed”, to the point of fascinating the viewer. In Colombia, Marín and Del Cairo (2013) affirmed that this process neutralizes the discourses in relation to the national policy for the preservation of memory, which may occur on both local and regional levels. Furthermore, museification inhibits inquiries regarding the target groups of such policies. According to the same authors, museification is recent and may occur in the most varied of manners, “essentializing” communities, i.e., creating an image around it that conceals contradictions, and/or “moralizing” objects. Moreover, they also consider that obtaining a deeper understanding regarding the types of museification is a key process for understanding the manners with which to elaborate collective memory.

In a study on strategies for safeguarding industrial remnants, Silva (2009) indicated that museification is widely used in projects involving cultural heritage. He revealed that historians, museologists and architects have used this term in discussions on heritage with a certain frequency. To exemplify, he recalls a speech by the architect Pedro Bandeira (2003) regarding the project “Competition of ideas for the rehabilitation of Rua da Sofia”, in Coimbra, Portugal: “Today, we read a tendency to museificate/mummify this same heritage, almost always with the expectation of selling it on a tourist postcard ”.

Silva (2009) assesses museification as a manner of safeguarding heritage, which acquires different perspectives over time and according to places. It is an option to intervene by crystallizing images, which generate icons, but do not always revitalize the space. This process is generally related to other programmatic content, such as museology, in which it is understood as an impediment to the degradation of cultural goods. Associated with other programs, such as urban requalification, museification does not normally occur in isolation, as indicated by the same author.

Guilhotti (1992) discussed museification in her study on the representations of colonial America through images. She analyzed a pictorial representation by Van Kessel, entitled America³, dated 1666 and was part of a set of works in a style, common at the time, conceived as an allegory from all parts of the world - in this case, that of the recently discovered continent. According to her description, the work brings together both exotic and European elements, a broad presentation of life in America, with its flora, fauna, human beings, young and old, ways of life and objects of use. The representation, continues Guilhotti (1992), is created with the aim of cataloging the elements and may be associated with a crystallization of the American continent, with the purpose of achieving a complete representation, as if it were possible to recognize its totality. For the author, Van Kessel's work is a museificated image of the “New World” in its entirety, allegorically represented within a cabinet of curiosities.

Agamben (2005), in turn, identified a kind of worldly museification, realizing that everything may become a museum object. This condition occurs when a given object, with a wide variety of characteristics, loses its functionality. From the viewpoint of this author, a museum cannot be restricted to a physical space, since it is possible to reach across a city and even a region, if we consider places safeguarded by cultural heritage institutions.

Choay (2010, p. 44) revealed a possible origin for the current trend of museification: “We have actually seen that 'antiquities', once promoted to 'historic monuments', become the object of institutional protection, which tends towards museification and which is now globally transferred into 'heritage' ”. In her view, there are at least two aspects that may explain the phenomenon: mass culture and the commercialization of built heritage. Choay clarifies that the first aspect concerns the use of cultural goods with an economic bias, causing “immediate cultural satisfaction” (p. 44), which, however, proves to be dissociated from the essence and even the intrinsic intention to the good, thereby promoting a superficial experience between people and history. In the second aspect, the emphasis is on the worldilization of heritage assets, above all, by the political class, which has transformed the historic value of assets into items of money. There is no limit to this search, nor is there concern regarding the superficiality of the experience, as long as visitors to the demarcated places contribute financially. Hence, the author highlights, a wide diversity of practices emerge, which do not envisage any damage to the truth and that, flagrantly, produce false histories. An example in this sense comes from China, where the Old Town of Lijiang, completely destroyed by an earthquake, was rebuilt with original features and emptied of the native inhabitants, transforming it into a veritable “open air museum”, with the single objective of raising money from tourism (CHOAY, 2010).

Uriarte (2012) discussed museification in a study on Pelourinho, in Salvador, in the state of Bahia. She considers that when transformed into a typical “place of memory”, which results in it becoming frozen, the place is then an example of a museificated space. This freezing results from an obsession for preserving past productions or, as Choay (2010) identified, for a patrimonial inflation that motivates the emergence of places said to be “of memory”, “frozen”, “petrified”. As explained by Uriarte (2012), this freezing is related to the origins of the place and, in the case of Pelourinho, to the colonial past, the Baroque style and Portuguese culture. It results from the selection, by the patrimonial bodies, of styles and practices, amongst other aspects, considered as inheritances from a past time, and from a disregard of the present, of its problems and the consequent decontextualization of places available to external consumers, tourists in search of cultural attraction.

Desvallées and Mairesse (2013) understand museification as a neologism, a derivation of the word “musealization”, commonly conceived as the transformation of something into a museum. Thus, it may include a living center and even a natural site. In these cases, however, the word “patrimonialization” is better applied, which represents the preservation of a place or object in a museum, despite being outside the museological context.

In Choay (2001), museification is conceived as a process resulting from a vision formulated in a temporality associated with the first trips to Europe in search of antiquities. According to the author, museification comes from a historical perspective of the city's “museal role”, understood by scientists, travelers and aesthetes as a work of art, to be safeguarded as much as art objects are within the museum. The author warns of the fact that the city, “becoming historic, [...] loses its historicity” (CHOAY, 2001, p. 191).

Jeudy (2005, p. 40) believes that, favoring the defense of heterogeneity, there exists a movement for the preservation of cultural identities that generates the museification of what is alive. Preservationist strategies are aimed at safeguarding ethnic groups, with a discourse against the extinction of cultural differences: “As a fluctuating value that responds to the needs of fashion, ethnicity remains a stable reference, since it is the basic condition of the museification of cultures”. Understood as cultural objects, ethnic groups, natural environments, amongst others, are the targets of preservation policies - in fact, areas have been demarcated, thereby becoming reserves.

Barbosa (2006) explicates museification through valorizing the image of cities, generally based on their cultural attributes, in search of capital production. In this manner, he associates contemporary urban interventions in areas recognized as being historical and cultural with a pure “remake of the landscape”, attempts to reconstruct particularities made explicit through the creation of cultural corridors, remodeling facades and neighborhoods, “stylized with colors and shapes from the past”, producing a “bucolic (and retro) feeling” (BARBOSA, 2006, p. 129). The author stresses that museification almost always occurs when these investments benefit tourists, an external public eager to consume culture, rather than value local roots and their population. For Barbosa, the areas recognized as cultural heritage present a gentrification process to the extent that they begin to serve as a pretext for the expulsion of residents, with the aim of providing the safeguarded places with new uses. Citing the Brazilian case of Pelourinho, he recalls that the intervention was justified by the perspective of promoting urban quality, although it has been responsible for the expulsion of around 90% of the local population.

Rubino and Grinover (2009) brought together texts by the architect, Lina Bo Bardi, in which she exposed a possible association of the increase in the quantity of preserved goods with a process of museification and with a need, through obsessive safeguarding, for reminiscences of the past to be considered as belonging to a historical present. For Bo Bardi, the past no longer exists; what exists is what comes from it, what demands to be chosen, amongst the inheritances, what is able to serve the current generation. Thus, states the Italian architect, "what you have to save: or rather, not save, preserve - are certain characteristics of a time that still belongs to humanity" (BO BARDI apud RUBINO; GRINOVER, 2009, p. 170).

In turn, Geraldes (2006) discussed museification when questioning the promotion of cultural heritage in contemporary times. By denouncing the distancing of cultural goods from everyday practices, he linked this process to a lack of understanding the associative ties between culture and social practices. On the contrary, through his analysis, culture has been understood in association with leisure practices. Understood in this light, cultural heritage corroborates urban actions that transform it into an “object of consumption”, which only acquires meaning within the marketing processes of the cultural industry. It is from this thought that, in the author's view, museification originates.

Lastly, with an understanding that “excessive preservation orders on historic buildings, turns the entire city into a museum”, museification is conceptualized by Vaz (2007, p. 39) as being part of an ensemble of concepts formulated as a result of criticisms towards interventions carried out in the territory, in a context of revising the modern project and seeking economic development in the city by valorizing cultural particularities.

2. Territorial museification

Having exposed the approaches related to museification, it is therefore possible to verify that it is a term of semantic diffusion, derived from a divergent, though not exclusive, concept, because the phenomenon is explored in several disciplinary fields. The existence is therefore recognized of opposing approaches, in addition to others that, due to a lack of information, bring no clarity to the concept. Thus, it is necessary to construct the phenomenon conceptually, considering the various points drawn up by the authors mentioned. However, rather than exhaust discussion on the theme, our intention herein is to expose a possible approach. Below, we highlight eight explanatory hypotheses, which define the phenomenon and enable an understanding of its causes and effects.

The proposal is to understand that museification:

1. Is the non-institutional transformation of an object into a museum and, thus, follows the same logic as a museum in exposing elements intended for contemplation, admiration and knowledge;

2. May be observed in several objects - material and immaterial - from a simple building to a city or, even, an entire region, rural and/or urban. It may similarly be noted in ontological discourse, rhetoric, ideas, groups of people or communities.

3. Removes the object from its historical, social and cultural contexts, thereby giving rise to a reduction of the senses and making them become functional based on a specific logic.

4. Crystallizes, petrifies, freezes the object, in the sense of causing a paralysis, to the extent that it prevents common changes throughout the natural historical course, in favor of preserving the symbolic order.

5. Does not generally occur in isolation; it arises through political, cultural or social actions, explained by a contemporary tendency to value preexisting cultures: as in an institution of a museum, the elements, previously obsolete, gain “heritage” status, when identified as inheritances to be safeguarded.

6. Is a worldilized event, which may be linked to the promotion of economic development, through the creation of cultural environments that have generated a competition network to attract tourists.

7. Frequently excludes users to make room for an audience of visitors, when it does not limit the lives of those involved to a reason for being within the logic of “putting on a show”, withdrawing them from the unfolding of everyday life, as if they were in a show.

8. Generates icons: as in a museum, objects, which are there due to obsolescence, become utilitarian once again, when they become relics, in an artificial symbolic order.

However, despite the multiple forms of its manifestation, its similarity with the development of museums stands out as the prevailing aspect. A museificated territory does not become a museological institution (MARÍN; DEL CAIRO, 2013), it does not receive the name of a museum nor is it seen as such by its agents, but, it implicitly follows the same logic. Indeed, the term “museification” has a deep connection with the word “musealization”, which is directly linked to the actions of the museological institution. The difference between “musea-lization” and “musei-fication”, explains Desvallées and Mairesse (2013), is in its use: in the first, the character is institutional, while the second, derived from it, configures a pejorative neologism.

The present study, added to Costa's view of territory (2010), proposes a conceptualization related to territorial museification, to be constituted as a basis for empirical studies. To understand museification as a problem that affects a space permeated by social relations, the activities of which are conducted and mediated by some control, is undoubtedly, also to understand it through the territory.

Adopted as a reference for producing what is declared as territorial museification, Costa’s concept (2010) for territory is broad, with varied scales and dimensions, unlike the perspectives that propose to study only one of its scales, such as that which analyzes the territory as a nation-State. Understanding it from the multiscale and multidimensional aspects, however, does not imply suppressing local contexts and individualizing temporal aspects of a space. The historicity and geography of the territory are also significant within its understanding.

Costa (2010, p. 16) explains that this relational view considers territorialization as “the process of domination (political-economic) and/or appropriation (symbolic-cultural) of space by human groups”. He considers that the second is the dimension presented by a cultural identity, built by the society with which it is inhabited, while the first is perceived through the physical, the concrete, as a dimension endowed with a disciplinary character, the control of a political-economic order exercised by a particular group. As a result, in the author's view, power is an essential item in the analysis of territoriality. Territorialization is extremely relevant for formulating the museification phenomenon. In truth, the key to analyzing it lies in the discrepancy observed between the dimensions of dominance and appropriation, which, as revealed below, lies in the strength of political and economic domination in/of the territories.

In this manner, museificated territorialization is that which, by means of dominance, removes the previous social life, through political and economic control. The territory ceases to present the complex relations of appropriation, its originality, becoming a simulacrum. Thus, there is an accessible territory, aimed at visitation, integrating elements selected to be exhibited, transformed into heritage-capital, directed towards an “eternal preservation”, for being representative of a society. “Eternal preservation” is perhaps the “petrifying” aspect mentioned by most authors who discuss museification, such as Jeudy (2005), Choay (2010) and Jacques (2008).

In summary, museificating territory results from a territorialization operated by the economic and political domain, with a tendency to eliminate all territoriality arising from a symbolic appropriation. Such a domain is processed through actions that transform the territory into museum territory, functionalizing its elements, in order to create an “environment” for appreciation. This situation is established through control exercised by the museificating agents, through which the territory is ultimately displaced from the time lived, from the quotidian, from the common.

3. The Caravaggio Circuit

The Caravaggio Circuit will be analyzed as in experiments, in which the theory is applied to a concrete object. It seeks to observe the process of territorial museification through actions that have transformed the circuit into museum-territory. For this, the eight explanatory hypotheses of museification mentioned above are placed within the analysis. The intention is to recognize the existence of diversification in the occurrences of the phenomenon and its tangible and intangible expressions.

Implemented in the municipality of Santa Teresa, the Caravaggio Circuit (Figure 1) was founded in 2008, with a proposal to integrate the enterprises located along the Caravaggio road. In 2012, it was restructured, with the creation of a new guide map. It is coordinated through an association that brings together the enterprises, the local Municipal Council and the Support Service for Micro and Small Companies (known as Sebrae). Through an agreement, since 2012, the latter two have provided assistance for the circuit enterprises to develop and in the organization of events such as courses, lectures and consultancies.

Figure 1
Section of the map for the Caravaggio Circuit

Although the circuit is open for visits on a daily basis, most visits take place at the weekends (SANTA TERESA, 2016b). There is a total of 23 attractions, added to the Caravaggio Valley, where there are buildings erected by immigrants, established there during the nineteenth century, and the production of their descendants. The valley constitutes the element that provides all these attractions; there, the circuit is established and developed. The name of the circuit clarifies this proposition, by making direct reference to its name. The name was given to the valley, and, consequently, to the itinerary, due to the Church of Our Lady of Caravaggio, built in 1912 by Italian immigrants (SANTA TERESA, 2016b).

3.1. Conceptual experimentation

1. Museification is the non-institutional transformation of an object into a museum and, thus, follows the same logic as a museum in exposing elements intended for contemplation, admiration and knowledge.

This first explanatory hypothesis regarding museification reveals information concerning the process of territorialization experienced by Santa Teresa in relation to the Caravaggio Circuit. Although, at its foundation, it was not instituted as a museum, there are basic reasons that allow it to affirm its transformation into museum territory, when it assumes the same structuring logic as museums. It is generally observed that its elements follow a specific order, which may be compared to museum objects and that are primarily intended for cultural consumption.

When analyzing the circuit map, an equivalence with museological typology becomes clearer: visitors are invited to walk along a pathway, where they may contemplate, admire and/or get to know sequentially arranged elements. Thus, the circuit works as a museum when it associates its route with the corridors or rooms of a museum installed in a building where the attractions and relics are also located. The importance given to the numbered elements, however, does not identify the circuit territory in its entirety. The representation highlights the attractions. However, in the brochure (Figure 1), this territory is considered a “scenario”, in which case the entire territory has the role of a “backdrop” to the attractions presented.

2. Museification may be observed in several objects - material and immaterial - from a simple building to a city or, even, an entire region, rural and/or urban. It may similarly be noted in ontological discourse, rhetoric, ideas, groups of people or communities.

When analyzing this condition of territorial museification, the Caravaggio Circuit itself is the object of the phenomenon. It figures as a large open-air museum, attended by visitors, from start to finish, with the aim of knowing what it contains. Once in Santa Teresa, tourists seek to discover what is in the Caravaggio Valley, what this museum-territory brings together. Indeed, it is not only the circuit been museificated, but also its elements: the buildings, the marketed products and the landscape are the attractions of this museum-territory, constituting objects placed before a public willing to be inquired of.

The owners/managers of these elements are ultimately observed in a similar manner, which is rather impressive, since, as is known, most of them are descendants of immigrants, considered, therefore, as those holding the culture of their ancestors. The rhetoric that surrounds the Caravaggio Valley is museificated, since it is hugely promoted as a stronghold of the culture transmitted by immigrants, when, in reality, there seems to be a forced process of scenarization, which is deceiving, by forging a “reality”. This process may be identified in several elements explored along the itinerary, starting with the insertion of ornamentation on the buildings and signposts along the circuit, like the lambrequins (Figure 2) - cut-out wooden structures, typical of the architecture produced by Italian immigrants in Espírito Santo (POSENATO, 1997). However, throughout the circuit, no remaining buildings are observed in which the presence of this element is verified. Therefore, there is an intention to highlight the local history, through the creation of scenarios linked to the culture of immigrants, even if by the equivocal manipulation - as in the example given, by the displacement of technical-constructive knowledge to the sphere of aesthetic distraction.

Figure 2
The use of lambrequins on elements along the Caravaggio Circuit

3. Museification removes the object from its historical, social and cultural contexts, thereby giving rise to a reduction of the senses and making them become functional based on a specific logic.

This functionalization is presented, for example, with the removal or replacement of the facade cladding in order to expose the wattle and daub - a common constructive technique in buildings, found in Casa Lambert, an emblematic construction on the Caravaggio Circuit. This building is an icon of immigration in the state of Espírito Santo, which received a protection order as material heritage, in 1985, from the State Council for Culture. However, as indicated by Posenato (1997), immigrant architecture consists of five phases, namely, provisional, primitive, apogee, late and current constructions. The building in focus is considered an example of the second phase. Thus, in Santa Teresa there are buildings of the four variations in its territory, including the circuit itself, and not just those built in the primitive phase.

The reduction of sense, a process of territorial museification, occurs when an emblem - Casa Lambert - is understood as the original remnant of immigrant architecture, inspiring actions such as that practiced at Sítio Romanha, in which the external covering has been removed to expose the structure of wood and clay, in reference to the structure used in the Casa Lambert museum (Figure 3). In this condition, museification is clearly expressed, by providing functionality - the “logo” of immigration - as greater relevance than the historical truth.

Figure 3
Casa Lambert (left) and Sítio Romanha (middle and right)

4. Museification crystallizes, petrifies, freezes the object, in the sense of causing a paralysis, to the extent that it prevents common changes throughout the natural historical course, in favor of preserving the symbolic order.

Along the Caravaggio Circuit, petrification may be observed at macro and micro levels. With regards to the circuit itself, the macro, the Caravaggio Valley is forced to remain as it is, to safeguard its touristic value. Thus, there is an impediment to modifications similar to those that have occurred throughout the quotidian of the territory, which, as is known, has been permeated by different forces, the target of continuous changes, caused by a variety of causes, such as contemporary services and real estate expansion. In the case of museification, the result is the crystallization of the territory for the function of tourism and maintaining its order.

On a micro scale, the elements of the circuit are also targeted by the petrification process. Gradually, the functional multiplicity of the territory is replaced by the dominance of sectors linked to tourism. This process may be verified, for example, at Vinícola Tomazelli, an example of the immigrant architecture. Originally, this attraction was a place of residence - a mirror of past ways of life - and has been refunctionalized by trading on “typical” products of the place (Figure 4).

Figure 4
The interior of the house at Vinícola Tomazelli

5. Museification does not generally occur in isolation; it arises through political, cultural or social actions, explained by a contemporary tendency to value preexisting cultures: as in the institution of a museum, the elements, previously obsolete, gain “heritage” status, when identified as inheritances to be safeguarded.

The Caravaggio Circuit was created by the private sector. However, public institutions support the initiative, and public-private partnerships have been agreed. Within this context, in addition to museification, the production of the circuit has promoted scenarization, theatricalization, gentrification, amongst other urban processes recognized in historic cities in Brazil. In addition, along the circuit, museification has not occurred in isolation: it has integrated territorialization, which aims to serve the contemporary tourist market. With regards to the patrimonial status, it is possible to recognize this condition in several elements of the circuit. Many of the obsolete elements are viewed as true relics or heritage pieces, worthy of being exposed for the contemplation of all. Once the functionality is lost, over time, they become revalorized, according to the logic of the tourism enterprise.

A clear example of petrification in elements of the circuit is the aforementioned Casa Lambert. The loss of function seems to occur in association with an attempt to make it useful for the role of an immigrant museum. Just as old objects are housed and placed for onlookers to see, the house itself acquires the function of a work of art, an intrinsic condition to its heritage.

6. Museification is a worldilized event, which may be linked to the promotion of economic development, through the creation of cultural environments that have generated a competition network to attract tourists.

In worldilized logic, there are several strategies aimed at promoting tourism resources, in order to attract more and more visitors. One of them is advertising on social networks. The Caravaggio Circuit, the route responsible for making Santa Teresa a strong tourist attraction for visitors from all over the state of Espírito Santo, has been widely disseminated throughout these media, in which it is presented as a rich environment, bringing together nature, culture and fun in one territory.

This disclosure aims to attract to Santa Teresa an audience of visitors who go to other cities in the state for purposes of tourism. Thus, it is not possible to affirm the existence of competition on a national level, nor, much less, worldwide. However, certainly, the itinerary competes on the market of tourist cities at the state level, being inserted, in any case, in a worldilized logic.

7. Museification frequently excludes users to make room for an audience of visitors, when it does not limit the lives of those involved to a reason for being within the logic of “putting on a show”, withdrawing them from the unfolding of everyday life, as if they were in a show.

At the Caravaggio Circuit, it is difficult to find people whose life takes place outside the logic of tourism. Even though most enterprises are coordinated by families, they are installed in their homes, adapted to the service they offer. In this case, we may already observe the beginning of “putting on a show”, when people present themselves to tourists as part of local history or as remnants of the past.

Tourists may also understand these people as a living heritage, involved, however, in a petrified rhetoric, the story of immigrants, their grandparents and parents. The discourses used to deal with the culture they harbor may be considered part of a theatricalization/show driven by the aim of enchanting the viewers and persuading them to consume the products on offer there.

One demonstration of the manner with which these families interact with the past is the display, on the walls, of photographs and old documents, as well as proof that their ancestors were indeed immigrants. They address these materials as pieces that, in association, would total the remaining culture, like museum pieces exposed to the public (Figure 5).

Figure 5
Displays of elements to prove their ancestry

8. Museification generates icons: as in a museum, objects, which are there due to obsolescence, become utilitarian once again, when they become relics, in an artificial symbolic order.

Specific to museification, this process is seen in different situations along the circuit. The formation of icons is seen through elements contained within the Caravaggio Valley, representing the history experienced in the municipality. All the remaining remnants express the past and are considered as local heritage by the inhabitants and visitors. Because they have survived, they are preserved as cultural heritage, even though they are not legally protected and even though they have been transformed into obsolete objects. These are not useful for the current common logic of producing the territory. As pieces, they gain functionality again, when they are appropriated by the tourist market and their relic value is expanded. Like relics, these pieces contribute to configure, increasingly, museification, as they are petrified, paralyzed, like a museum object.

4. Conclusion

Territorial museification is identified as a term that defines territorialization based on the political and economic domains, in which territorial elements are linked according to museological standards. Economic and political powers are imperative and develop following ideologies similar to those found in museums. Thus, it is believed, the term "museification" originates from the word "musealization", from the actual museological institution; the difference between the two is linked to the processes to which each refers: the first, to storing, exhibiting and transmitting historical and cultural values, while the second consists of a neologism of the first, used in critical theory and associated to deterritorializing processes.

With regard to the conceptual experimentation carried out at the Caravaggio Circuit, it is understood that analysis of the concept in a concrete object proves to be essential in order to understand the phenomenon, since it represents an essential phase in the construction of any conceptualization. The experiment consists in the analysis of each explanatory hypothesis of museification, through observing how the concrete object presents, albeit partially, the defining qualities of a museum-territory. In a diversity of circumstances linked to the Caravaggio Circuit, confirming examples of each of the eight statements relating to the phenomenon have been found.

In addition to confirming the explanatory hypotheses, a variety of factors have enabled us to consider that, in the analysis of museification, cultural itineraries are exemplary objects: they have a worldwide reach, undergo expansion in contemporaneity and possess an aggregating character of differentiated tourist strategies. Lastly, through the explanatory hypotheses, it is possible to recognize the transformation of territorial elements into museum objects, as evidenced by an experiment in the Caravaggio Circuit.

There are several questions that indicate the importance of future analyzes, all of which are linked to the conceptual formulation of territorial museification and to its experimentation in the Caravaggio Circuit. In view of the unfolding possibilities, a deeper approach should be taken in relation to the theme from the study exposed herein, with a view to the necessary sustainable permanence of the territories.

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Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  02 Oct 2020
• Date of issue
  2020

History

• Received
  23 Oct 2019
• Accepted
  22 July 2020