Intangible Heritage as a Non-Relocatable Asset

Digital modernity has made mid-level cultural production commonplace: images, texts, videos, translations become infinitely reproducible at a marginal cost near zero. Mechanically, the unit value of reproducible cultural goods collapses, while whatever cannot be reproduced sees its relative value rise. A patron saint's festival in its own village, a craft learned by following a master for ten years, an alphorn played on one particular alp: all of this can be imitated by AI, but imitation does not replace experience. It is this polarization of the cultural market that turns Valais's intangible heritage into an asset whose value climbs at the very moment generic production is losing its own. The canton appears on the UNESCO Representative List through several direct entries: traditional irrigation and the bisses (December 2023), the alpine season (2023), mountaineering (2019, a joint French-Italian-Swiss nomination), yodeling (2025). This heritage is no longer merely preserved: it is documented, promoted, and passed on, paradoxically with the same digital tools that threaten regional languages. Absent an active policy, the risk is Disneyfication: folklore as a display case, in place of living culture as an actor.