'Back to my roots': artifak and festivals in Vanuatu, Southwest Pacific

The production of artefacts in Vanuatu (artifak in Bislama, the Pidgin lingua franca used in the islands of the archipelago) takes place in a context of cultural revival as well as tourism. Central to the production of knowledge and art are notions of indigenised copyright (kopiraet), offering cultural as well as economic capital/value to producers and/or owners. While contemporary art in Vanuatu is restricted by customary copyright legislation, customary art production and performance are promoted by different aid and funding bodies. Customary arts feature festivals, entwined with both cultural revival as well as tourism, and held at regular intervals in the outer islands of the archipelago. Within this space, performers, local audiences and visitors (such as tourists and art collectors) negotiate notions of otherness', of the authenticity of people and things, although it is an authenticity inevitably commodified in the process. This creates ambivalence and a feeling of loss of authenticity among both local people and visitors alike, but it also generates a series of values that relate to status and prestige among locals. This article, based on fieldwork in Vanuatu in 2009 and 2010-11, argues that what the author calls the contemporary turn in ethnographic art' generates increasing participation by local people in globalisation processes and the global art world.