This practice-based thesis presents the results of experimental research devoted to ethnic tourism among the Kayan minority and has involved the interconnection of artistic and anthropological languages. Known worldwide for the traditional female custom of wearing a long coiled brass necklace aimed at causing a considerable extension to the neck, the Kayan are a Tibeto-Burman ethnic group originally from Burma. Due to the prolonged civil war in their own homeland, a large number of Kayan recently fled from Burma to refuge in neighbouring Thailand. Here, over the past years, in response to the “incisive” tourism policy promoted by the Thai government in the northern areas of the country, some families, abandoning the refugee camps where they were hosted, have been resettled in several new villages open to tourists, on payment of a modest entrance fee. Here the Kayan, their culture and their daily life, have been transformed into an authentic tourist attraction capable of drawing about 10,000 visitors a year. Founded on a strictly “visual media primitivist” approach and inspired by its peculiar aesthetics – as systematically presented in the first, theoretical, section of the thesis –, the enquiry involves a multimedia perspective. In such a context, analogue photography and filmmaking, creative writing and sound composition have been combined to give concrete shape to an original artwork firmly grounded in ethnographic practice. The choice, far from being a solely arbitrary and subjective option, has indeed been motivated by the critical employment of specific theoretical assumptions of some of the most recent streams of anthropology and epistemology of the human sciences. The multidisciplinary methodology adopted to develop the research, as well as the multifaceted language employed to display its results, represent an innovative and experimental way of approaching the complex theme of cultural identity in present-day Asian contexts, as well as of highlighting the most aesthetic and philosophic implications connected to the revival of analogue vintage media in contemporary artistic practice.

Le témoin, le témoignage et la transmission constituent le centre des réflexions sur l’écriture de la Shoah, de sorte que toute œuvre qui rend ces notions moins opérationnelles se trouve classée dans les marges. Ce travail propose de changer de perspective en se concentrant sur ces marges et en supposant la présence d’un modèle mémoriel alternatif. Il s’appuie sur un corpus littéraire et plastique qui actualise le sujet de la Shoah grâce aux objets et propose d’examiner leur capacité de résonner à l’intérieur d’une œuvre concrète et dans l’ensemble de la création, de relever leur potentiel combinatoire et de voir comment s’articule leur absence. Se pose également la question de l’inscription de la photographie analogique dans les textes : à la fois objet et image, elle apparaît comme un élément constitutif de l’intrigue et permet de rappeler les disparus dans un contexte post-événementiel, sans toutefois accroître la visibilité et l’accessibilité du passé. Le caractère opaque et intègre des objets présents dans la création sur la Shoah les dote d’une valeur autonome et conduit à une réévaluation des rapports entre le personnage-témoin, le narrateur et le lecteur. Dans ce modèle, la présence du témoin n’est pas déterminante pour l’évocation du passé : c’est un personnage de la quête menée par le narrateur. Ce dernier revêt le rôle d’archéologue : il explore son présent, repère des résidus du passé, les décrit et tente de les interpréter, sans jamais aboutir à un récit cohérent. La création s’ouvre ainsi à un troisième acteur de la mémoire : elle émancipe le lecteur en l’invitant à formuler le sujet de l’œuvre et à devenir un véritable acteur du modèle archéologique. / Reflections upon Holocaust writings are centred on the witness, his testimony and its transmission, such that any work that makes these notions less applicable is shifted to the margins. This thesis suggests a change of viewpoint by focusing on these margins and by presuming the existence of an alternative memory model. It studies literary and visual works that unravel the Holocaust theme through objects and proposes to examine their ability to echo in a specific piece as well as in the creative production as a whole, to point out their combinatory capacity and to observe how their absence manifests itself. Analog photographs included in the narrative raise particular questions: being objects and pictures at the same time, they represent key elements of the plot, and although they bring the lost people into the post-event context, they do not enhance the visibility and the accessibility of the past. Their opaque and solid nature provides them with an independent value and imposes a reassessment of the relationship between the witness, the narrator and the reader. Within this model the presence of a witness is not essential for the recollection of the past: he is a character of the narrator’s quest. The latter assumes the role of an archaeologist exploring his present, discovering the remnants of the past, describing them and trying to interpret them, his attempts, however, never amounting to a coherent story. Thus the creative production reveals a third agent of the memory: it urges the reader’s emancipation challenging him to construct the subject matter and to become a true protagonist of the archaeological model.