Category:Intangible heritage

UNESCO defines the intangible culture as practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills that communities recognize as part of their cultural heritage. This intangible cultural heritage, transmitted from generation to generation, is constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their environment, their interaction with nature and their history, and provides them with a sense of identity and continuity, thus promoting respect for cultural diversity and human creativity.

In Slovenia it is usually divided in the following areas:

oral traditions and folk literature (e.g. storytelling)
performances and presentations (theatre e.g. Škofja Loka Passion Play, singing, instrumental music)
customs and habits (seasonal customs e.g. Kurentovanje or Mardi Gras at Cerknica)
knowledge and practices concerning the environment
traditional craftsmanship (e.g. lacemaking from Idrija, traditional salt making)
cultural environment

Its safeguarding is based on the UNESCO Convention (2003) and the state law on natural and cultural heritage (2008) and is coordinated by the Slovene Ethnographic Museum.

Currently the national register lists over 60 items of Slovene intangible heritage (among them the Škofja Loka Passion Play, the Laufarija in Cerkno) and the procession of the Kurent - Korant.

Domestic Research Society

The Domestic Research Society (DRS) was established in 2004 by visual artists Alenka Pirman and Damijan Kracina, and art historian Jani Pirnat. Under the motto "nothing of that which is domestic is alien to us" the society documents, collects, researches and presents domestic phenomena as installations, exhibitions or web projects related to the field of culture, art, science, conservation, and education.

Alongside an ongoing spoken Slovenian open online dictionary Razvezani jezik - The Unleashed Tongue, launched in 2004, the team has conceived several engaging visual arts projects, the Word for Word, Without Words, an interdisciplinary exhibition in City Art Gallery Ljubljana, or the most recent Animal Dance Macabre that commemorates the animals in the World War One.

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Cerkno Museum

The Cerkno Museum was established by Idrija Municipal Museum in 1978 as a branch museum about the NOB (National Liberation Struggle). Today this institution is the only one that studies the rich heritage of the Cerkno region in an integral way.

In 2006, on the 50th anniversary of the revival of the Cerkljanska Laufarija, a new permanent exhibition entitled Pust is to Blame! - A Story about the Cerkno Laufarija was put on display. The Cerkno laufarji are among the most famous carnival figures in Slovenia, whose wooden masks called larfa are cut from the wood of the linden tree.

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