DOI: 10.18848/1835-2014/cgp/a500 ISSN: 1835-2022

From Festival to Distributed Museum

Phan Thi Hue, Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao
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This article examines coastal festivals in Quang Ninh, Vietnam, as configurations in which inclusion operates without curatorial consolidation. Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic observation across five festivals, it identifies a distributed field where ritual sequences, symbolic forms, and temporal references recur without being integrated into a unified system. In practice, similar ritual elements appear across communal houses, temples, and coastal sites, yet participants do not treat these instances as connected within a shared structure. What holds in one location does not organize what follows in another. Rather than producing coherence, these configurations remain recognizable through recurrence, adjacency, and spatial distribution across sites and cycles. Moments of alignment do emerge, particularly during processional movements and intensified ritual sequences, where elements begin to appear as if they belong together. These alignments, however, do not persist. They complete and release without extending into a stable configuration. The analysis shows that non-integration does not lead to fragmentation but constitutes a stable condition under which cultural forms continue to operate. To account for this, the article develops the concept of an “uncurated heritage assemblage,” in which multiple symbolic orders coexist without being subsumed into a singular representational frame. Inclusion is thus redefined as sustained coexistence without the necessity of curatorial integration.

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