This book investigates the art and architecture of Papua New Guinean spirit structures with a multi-perspectival approach that combines cultural and social sciences with building architectural and spatial research. It offers the first comprehensive study of the spirit houses of New Guinea that exists to date. The book’s aim is twofold: First it aims to investigate the spirit structures and their associated cultural cosmos in detail. For this purpose a representative selection of traditional buildings and artworks from different regions of Papua New Guinea is documented and analyzed and theories for their understanding are formulated. In this course the author develops a spatial theory of anthropological concepts – such as myths signs persons and rituals. Secondly this analysis is then situated in the broader context of the Anthropocene/Kaiaimunucene. Transforming the historical spirit structures into models for future-oriented cultural imagination the consequences for contemporary productions of space and ways of worldmaking in light of existential challenges are traced. The book thus offers more-than-human and more-than-secular concepts for building art and worldmaking that are of critical importance in the ongoing Anthropocene/Kaiaimunucene. It will be of interest to researchers and students of architecture anthropology cultural studies environmental humanities and adjacent disciplines. Part I of the book was translated from German by Melanie Janet Sindelar. |Spirit Structures of Papua New Guinea Art and Architecture in the Kaiaimunucene | Architecture
