Heritage Trail: Langtang, Nepal (Recently Closed)
In partnership with Drs. Emma Waterton and Hayley Saul, from Western Sydney University and the University of York, FIRE, completed a series of three shelters or small huts that include interactive information portals along the last seven-mile stretch of the Langtang hiking trail in the Langtang Valley. In addition to being a shelter on a remote mountain valley trail, each hut also contains an iPad featuring videos of local elders sharing legends passed down through the centuries. Written translations of the videos are available in nine different languages on the program’s official website, and audio translations are available in two local languages on the tablet. Attached to the iPad is also a Circle of Emotion questionnaire.
The foundations of these shelters are five feet below ground level. This provides additional protection from the weather. They can also shelter 20 or more people in an emergency. The locations were chosen based on the historical geography of the landscape and proximity to the origin of legends. They were strategically placed where other shelters do not exist to offer additional support on an isolated part of the trial when possible. Hanging inside the shelters is a signboard with a summary of the stories and project and an iPad. In addition to helping preserve the threatened cultural traditions of Langtang it functions as a refuge from the sun and weather.
The Langtang Heritage Trail sprang from a conversation initiated by a member of the Langtangpa community with Hayley and Emma on the morning of 25th April, 2015. The idea was to document the rich oral histories that weave narratives through the mountainous Himalayas and generate a repository of local knowledge about the landscape. And then the earthquake happened a few hours later. They remained committed to working together with the community to co-design a small exhibition that shared these stories with visitors to the valley in a way that was culturally suitable for the community. Hayley and Emma joined forces with FIRE in 2017 to make this promise a reality. FIRE’s role was to secure the land, manage the construction of the building, facilitate community discussions, cooperation, and feedback, and write, film, edit, assemble, and translate the videos.
The questionnaire aspect of this project is only available on the tablet in Langtang. It is a serious of question that take about 15-20 minutes that are intended t be completed after a viewer has watched the videos. It is apart of The sacred valley of Langtang, Nepal: landscape of risk, precarity and affect research project. The aim of the project, is to explore how disasters have shaped heritage in the valley, how these heritage practices mediate feelings of security, risk and care, and how cultural flourishing is enmeshed with histories of precarity.
Participants are asked to take a short digital survey administered through an ‘app’ called Circles of Emotion. The survey invites them to respond to places in the valley according to four classes of emotion: bright, heavy, sombre and quiet. Each class is divided into seven emotional prompt words, e.g., hopeful, loving, happy etc., (for bright), thoughtful, caring, humble etc., (for quiet). They are asked to rate their feelings against these prompts on a rating scale of 1-10. Upon completion of the survey, a Circle of Emotion is produced that maps the overall intensity and complexity of the emotional responses to the place and its stories.
It is intended that this research will map culturally-specific notions of risk, care, security and precarity spatially, through their association with places and articulation through stories. By systematically recording emotional responses to place in the valley, with both members of the community and visitors, it will be possible to map the affective landscape. This could be used to support generational knowledge-transfer within the community, and will be made available after completion of the research.
