Organizers: Ernst Halbmayer, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany
Anne Goletz, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany
Chairs: Ernst Halbmayer, Anne Goletz
This panel focuses on creative processes and the semantics fields of formation, reproduction and reconfiguration of life, the world and the living. Which actions and processes are involved in creative processes? Which technics and forms of knowledge are implemented? How are these processes conceptualized and linguistically expressed in myth and everyday life, and ritually enacted? How are these processes transformed and used to deal with the contemporary world? How is the creative potential of Others (spirits, gods, whites) conceptualized and what is the relationship between creation and destruction? Creative processes have been analyzed in terms of rituals with specific focus on the transformative power of music and instruments, in terms of fabrication and constructional understandings of personhood, as well as in terms of metamorphosis and of becoming an Other. This panel asks for the links of creative everyday practices, rituals and myth. Myths explain the transformation of formerly existing conditions, the creation of different forms of life and the transmission of goods through mythical beings in a historical-mythical past. But in how far do these processes permeate into everyday life and manifest themselves in environmental phenomena, landscapes, objects, the body and socio-cultural phenomena or much more contradict everyday practices? Of special interest are papers that theorize creative processes beyond the logics of the material and the immaterial, that scrutinize established theoretical knowledge based on new empirical research or that show from a comparative perspective the differences and continuities of creative processes and practices across Lowland South America and beyond.
Panel Schedule
Saturday, 29 June, WMW DG41
Session 1
14:30
14:50
Ernst Halbmayer. Mythical Actors and Forms of Creation among Carib and Chibcha-speaking Groups of Northern South America.
14:50
15:10
Alessandro Mancuso. The “Twin myth” among the Wayuu in comparative perspective.
15:10
15:30
Matthias Lewy. Intersemiotic Translations (Transmutations) in Mythical Complexes in the Guianas.
15:30
15:50
Juan Castrillón. Dis-appearing the Yuruparí in Three Acts, or A Shamanic Organology without Instruments: Woman Laughter, Radio Towers, and Sound Recordings in the Uaupés.
15:50
16:10
Questions
Session 2
16:40
17:00
Jonathan D. Hill. The Chant-Owner and his Music: Steps toward an Integrated Musical and Mythic Approach to the Poetics of Social Life in an Amazonian Community.
17:00
17:20
Elke Mader. Nunkui, the Potter: Creativity, Ontology, and Myth.
17:20
17:40
Bernd Brabec de Mori. Contemporary Inka – The presence of the remote past in Panoan mythology.
17:40
18:00
Anne Goletz. Corn Master Osema – On Transmitting Mythical Knowledge into the Everyday in the Serranía del Perijá, Northern Colombia.
18:00
18:20
Questions
Sunday, 30 June, WMW DG41
Session 3
10:00
10:20
Marie Claude Mattei Müller. The basketry, testimony of a mythical thought in the indigenous cultures of Venezuela: an ancestral art, today between tradition and innovation.
10:20
10:40
Alfonso Otaegui. “You only cry for the good Ayoreo”: On ritual wailing and the poetic creation of normativity in the northern Paraguayan Chaco.
10:40
11:00
Nora Bammer. Vocal Shuar masks in motion: Shuar tonal techniques for transformation and their current recontextualization.
Organizers:
