(Non)innovation: The Engine of Innovation in Intangible Cultural Heritage

The article proposes a study on the concept of (non)innovation during the Ceaușescu era, particularly in the period of maximal ostracism of any form of freedom – the 1980s. In a manner that can be described as cynical, innovation was coordinated by a resistance group that manifested covertly. This concealed breath of innovation of the time has gradually become the intangible cultural heritage of our society.

The journey into the (non)innovation of the architectural field in Romania during 1980’s becomes like a negotiation with history: a decade where absurdity became normal. The mirror image between the following binary opposites: construction-acceptance and secrecy-dreaming shows how they were combined in the cultural society of the time. On one hand, the construction of the most important Ceaușescu-era buildings (construction), together with the ostracization of the creative flow (acceptance) become the description of the cultural heritage in which Romanian society finds itself. On the other hand, the article brings into discussion a surprising contribution of resistance that lived in the cultural suburbs (secrecy) and that, through subtle manifestations and architecture competitions, emulated its creative flow (dreaming). Therefore, this period gave birth to a complex diodic space of cohabitation of a hidden intangible cultural heritage – innovation, infiltrated into a rigorous cadence of the built heritage – (non)innovation.

It can be asserted that the 1980s saw the true apotheosis of cultural resistance, whose echo emanates even today. Having learned to express itself through an artistic lexicon organized in successive and dense layers with subtle hidden messages, the cultural landscape will, after the Tf moment (the 1989 revolution), acquire introspective dimensions for instance palimpsest idea, by explorations of individual or collective traumas. Ways in which party-guided (non)innovations became the engine for generating hidden innovation will be examined. By highlighting these cause-effect binomial links, an innovative direction for understanding intangible cultural heritage is opened.