The Primitive stands before us as an abject and thoroughly debunked figure. Understood as a relic of a colonial and racialized discourse of the Other, an allegory of the childhood of Man, there really seems nothing more to say about this figure in the present. And yet, this seemingly vanquished figure remains as problematically vibrant and phenomenologically present as ever in nonfiction cinema – the Primitive holds sway over any visual artifact that purports to tell us who we ‘really’ are. As our interlocking projects show, expressing human nature cinematically never eludes the Primitive, be they films of our past (Deren, Christensen, Painlevẻ) or present (Herzog, Castaing-Taylor, Oppenheimer, Farocki).

Richard Baxstrom is Professor of Anthropology and the Humanities and Deputy Head of School, School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh

Todd Meyers is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Society, Health, and Medicine at NYU-Shanghai; Global Network Associate Professor, NYU


Zeit: Donnerstag, 4. Oktober 2018, 18 Uhr
Ort: Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Geschwister-Scholl-Str. 7 (VDV Winkelbau), Raum 116, 99423 Weimar

Eine Veranstaltung der Professur »Theorie medialer Welten«.

Kontakt:
Prof. Dr. Henning Schmidgen
E-Mail: henning.schmidgen[at]uni-weimar.de