Intangible Search, Searching the Intangible: The Project E.CH.I. and the Inventarisation of Intangible Cultural Heritage

The Interreg project “E.CH.I. Italo-Swiss Ethnographies for the Valorisation of Intangible Heritage†builds on the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Heritage (2003) which has been adopted in 2007 by Italy and in 2008 by Switzerland. In this project seven partner institutions from Italy and Switzerland coped with the challenges of identifying and documenting intangible cultural expressions in the border area between these two countries. In order to create a common denominator in the methodological approach a series of workshops have been organized, which were dedicated to audio and video techniques but also to techniques of documentation. Furthermore, as another important instrument of standardization an internet-based inventory has been developed, in which all documentations produced by the project partners have been catalogued. The inventory, which counted 242 documentations in June 2013 and which is the main result of the project, can be viewed online under the name “Intangible Search†. This article focuses on the insights gathered during the project E.CH.I. and the development of such a common inventory.