Animal images in Palaeolithic caves challenge modern archeology, anthropology and performing studies. All attempts to explain these powerful images — from hunting magic to shamanistic hypothesis — are hotly debated. This article proposes to suspend the problematic inquiry into the intentions of Prehistoric artists and instead to focus on the cave performances. Groundbreaking discoveries in neuroscience revolutionize our knowledge of human behavior and stimulate new applications of recent brain studies. The article contributes to interdisciplinary model of cultural studies by referring to mirror neurons in reconstructing performances performed by anonymous artists in the French caves Chauvet and Pech Merle 32,000–22,000 years ago.
This paper proposes a performative analysis of a mask in order to research its agency, an active role in initiating world events. I will study four, in my opinion, basic “doings” of the mask: transformation, inspiration, transmission, and relocation. I am going to look at ancient masks as well as at Japanese, African and Asiatic ones. Of course, in a short paper the complete discussion of so complex subject matter is impossible. So, I will refer to selected case studies that most clearly expose the mask’s agency. I will use my own field research, my experience of directing plays and relevant scholarship — following a renown British social anthropologist Alfred Gell and archaeologist Ian Hodder.
I propose to study visuality as a rhizome of different performances. To better explain the complexities of the emergence of visuality I will focus on a case study, the Balinese shadow puppet theatre wayang kulit. I argue against reducing the visuality to the visible.
This paper, based on the five-weeks fieldwork on the great island of Madagascar, proposes to look at endemic prosimians as case studies of posthuman performers. It analyses performances of aye-aye, indri, sifaka, ring-tailed, black and brown lemurs.
In 1977, a young American missionary, David Everett, set off with his wife and small children to the wilderness of the Brazilian Amazon Jungle to convert a small tribe of Pirahã to the “right” faith. But the culture of “white man” failed miserably when confronted by nature. Everett never managed to explain the Christian doctrine to people living in the Amazon Basin. He could not even persuade them to learn to read and write. On the other hand, he became the first ever foreigner to learn the language of Pirahã. After three decades of living, though not continuously, in Amazonia, Everett lost his wife and his faith, abandoned his missionary activity, received a PhD in linguistics and became an academic teacher. Today, Professor Everett, drawing on analyses of the Pirahã language, questions one of the foundations of modern linguistics, the universality of recursion. Reversing the main topic of the conference in the title, I will try to demonstrate that Daniel Everett could not have managed to convert members of a small tribe to Christianity, because his cultural mission was not rooted deeply enough in nature.
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