While the term ‘animism’ has its roots in classical philosophy, it received its predominant definition by anthropologists in the course of the colonial encounter. ‘Animism’ describes belief practices that endow objects and non-human entities with life and person-like qualities. Modern psychology on the other hand refers to animism as a psychological and aesthetic mechanism by which human-like features are ‘projected’ onto objects of nature.
Originally derived from ancient philosophical and theological debates disputing the conception and nature of ‘souls’ (‘animism’ is derived from the Latin ‘anima’, soul) in the aftermath of the Christian campaigns against heathen idolatry, Protestant iconoclasm and an emerging positivist enlightenment rationality, animism has become a rational-scientific category descriptive of the irrational, superstitious and primitive.
This exhibition project Animism builds on recent attempts to de-colonize this canonical understanding of animism, the colonial economy in which it is inscribed and the relations it therefore enforced with what it signified. It asks what it means to conceive of humans, non-humans and things as equally active agents operating on different registers that demand mediation. A de-colonized notion of animism can shed light on the way that on the one hand, images and framing devices participate in the fixation, objectification, conservation of life and, on the other, endow things with a voice, subjectify and animate; and how both develop a specific dialectics in modern imagery. The exhibition will encompass historical and contemporary works.
A reader will be published in conjunction with the first two manifestations of the project, a second publication is planned for the exhibition at the House of World Cultures in Berlin in 2012.
Animism is a collaboration between the Museum for Contemporary Art Antwerp/ MuHKA and Extra City – Kunsthal Antwerpen in cooperation with the Kunsthalle Bern, the House of World Cultures Berlin, the Free University Berlin and Generali Foundation Vienna.
Concept: Anselm Franke, Co-Curators: Anselm Franke, Edwin Carels, Bart De Baere (Antwerp), Philippe Pirotte (Bern)