: Mrs. Kühlem, as an archaeologist you actually study past cultures. Right now, however, you are interested in the future: In Tuvalu you help people preserve their cultural heritage digitally before it disappears. Should we expect that the culture of entire nations will in the future exist only in digital form?
Annette Kühlem: The question is, of course, how near the future is. But yes, for Tuvalu this is already a realistic scenario in light of climate change. Since the country lies only a few meters above sea level, it is particularly vulnerable. And especially on the Pacific islands, a land-based inheritance of history, mythologies, and the people’s sense of self is tied to the land. In short: their identity.
: How can Tuvalu’s culture be imagined?
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Kühlem: “There isn’t one single culture in Tuvalu. The nation is a product of colonialism. The name itself means ‘eight islands’, even though today nine belong to it. Each island has very individual manifestations of cultural identities. This should be respected and not lumped together. Moreover, we must be careful not to approach with our German understanding of culture. How Tuvaluan culture is defined is decided by the Tuvaluans.”
In the Interview: Annette Kühlem
is born in 1981 and is an archaeologist. She has a particular interest in ecosystem research, human-environment relationships and Pacific islands.
: With the aim of finding a way to preserve its own culture, Tuvalu turned to the United Nations. How did the collaboration with the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) come about?
Kühlem: We responded to Tuvalu’s request, and a collaboration with Tuvalu’s Ministry of Culture and the Rising Nations Initiative, which advocates for the interests of Pacific island states, emerged. Together it gave rise to the idea of a digital repository – a scientific database for Tuvalu’s cultural heritage. Our main task is to support the digital infrastructure. But we are also interested in archaeological data, and we conduct excavations, especially because the knowledge gap for Tuvalu is enormous.
: Why was digitization chosen as the method to protect the cultural heritage?
Kühlem: As sad as it is, much will not be physically preserved. Digitization captures landscapes, places or objects in their complete cultural context. Recording the precise location of objects has a high cultural value. You cannot load them onto a cargo ship and take them elsewhere. In that sense, things are removed from their context and, in a way, devalued.
: How do you proceed with the digitization?
Kühlem: For archaeological sites, for example, we create digital 3D models so that information about specific sites remains accessible. This is linked with traditional knowledge from interviews with local knowledge holders. Many of the residents themselves document a lot; they decide what to preserve and what not. To facilitate this, each island received a documentation kit with tablets and microphones, and people learn documentation techniques in workshops.
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: Are there also more elaborate documentaries?
Kühlem: We are in touch with various cooperation partners to document, for example, dances using motion-capture technology. Dances in Polynesian society often serve as knowledge transfer and convey myths and stories through gestures and song. The technology is familiar from the gaming sector: A dancer wears a suit that digitally records gestures and body movement.
: And the database itself, who designs it?
Kühlem: We are building it together with the island communities. We collaborate with a software company and, over the last two months, have worked with the individual island groups to outline how they want the database to be defined. Which metadata and categories are important.
: What has come out of this?
Kühlem: A lot revolves around copyright. Information or knowledge is strongly linked to specific clans, families, or individuals. It’s about who owns information and who is entitled to share it. In this context there is the so-called secret knowledge. That is not supposed to be shared at all. In the technical implementation, only a particular family or person has the administrator rights for the part of the database.
: What can you imagine as secret knowledge?
Kühlem: A striking example for me was the making of canoes and the races in which groups from different islands compete against each other. The winning group immediately destroys its canoe: no one else should be able to see the canoe’s technical specifications, what made it so fast and maneuverable. This knowledge is reserved for that one group.
: What else do Tuvaluans want to preserve besides secret knowledge?
Kühlem: It’s very much about tangible techniques. For example fishing or gardening. These are aspects that were vital for generations for survival. Today, local experts often have no one left to pass the knowledge on to.
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: The question of preserving cultural heritage, then, is at least as much a matter for generations to come?
Kühlem: Definitely. No one says: now we have everything as a 3D model, so we can go. Still, many young people have already left the outer islands. Not necessarily because they think Tuvalu will become uninhabitable in the next decades. That’s more of an external narrative. But for many it’s about better future prospects, including education and jobs. Only: for a young person living in Brisbane today, for example, the cultivation of swamp taro – an important local staple – is simply no longer relevant.
: But doesn’t culture also need to be lived in order to continue to exist?
Kühlem: Of course a digital culture is not the same as a lived one. But the repository provides a platform for exchange – including for people who have emigrated and live in the diaspora. If, for instance, someone from the Brisbane community wants to pass on a particular dance to their children, that person can draw on the database. After all, culture is constantly evolving. That means this project is never really finished – even if the pilot phase runs only until the end of 2026. By then the structure should be in place. If someone composes a song in 2035, it can simply be added to the database.
