Agria 40. (Az Egri Múzeum Évkönyve - Annales Musei Agriensis, 2004)

Fejős Zoltán: Hagyományemlék?

Zoltán Fejős Souvenirs of Traditions? In the contemporary context of cultural tourism, the old question of tourists' souvenirs gains new aspects. Cultural products consumed by tourists can summarise by the category of heritage. Tourism and heritage production as well as consumption have close connections to each other. As part of the "heritage industry", whole series of different objects related to crafts and "traditions" serve international and home country travellers' need for authenticity. Tourist souvenirs however are mass-produced and serial products that scholars usually see as degraded cultural goods because they substantially differ from traditional art forms. Instead, it's worth seeing travel memorials as part of the large field called tourist art where creative actors constantly change. Since the souvenir is materiel production of intercultural contacts, it raises the question of how can artists be influenced to make new art forms instead of overused stereotypes while serving contemporary masses of tourists. Efforts of making and popularising new souvenirs of a particular place however confront the mass availability of well-known, popular symbols of the specific country, region, city or people. So, the question is still hard to answer: tourist artists should continue making or even repeating traditionally known art forms, or, they would better invent new artefacts that would probably have less connections to local crafts then it would tourists prefer based upon their previous knowledge - something is partial and does not consider the changes of any tradition. 405