Elsewhere : between formal and informal

Chiri Giovanni Marco;Achenza Maddalena

2021-01-01

---

Abstract

The confrontation with the theme of the primitive, which historically Africa imposes on us, is articulated on three fundamental questions: the search for the first principle as a rational response to necessity; the expression of irrational drives connected to the dimension of the supersensible; the symbolic archetype of the ‘mother’ and of the genealogy from which the contemporary cult for vernacular expressions derives. The ‘Primitivism’ is the tool that the West has given itself to take this path. It is a topic that seems to haunt European culture from the outside but it is also the artistic revelation of a sort of image of the primitive within. Going ‘elsewhere’ is therefore no longer a question of moving the physical ‘limes’, nor is it exclusively the exploration of archaic or primitive myths, it means fulfilling the whole circumnavigation of the ‘antipodes’ until returning to oneself, to the origins of thought and relationship between humankind and its ways of inhabiting the Earth, but also on the ways through which contemporary thought wishes to tackle today’s issues while being aware of its ancient genealogies.