The indigenous cosmology of the Amazon and the Brazilian modern project:
the relationship between intuitive thought and rational thought within contemporary design
Rosane Costa Badan
Introduction
This paper proposes a cultural encounter between Western vision and the magical sphere of the
shamanic world in design. Instead of opposing magic and science, the aim is to compare these two modes of
knowledge within a vision that is more vertical than horizontal.[1] Scientific knowledge is characterized by a
rational logic that demands integral transparency to reality. On the other hand, savage knowledge possesses
a magical mentality which desires that a certain human density be incorporated to reality. Western civilization
functions horizontally whereas shamanic civilization functions directly on verticality. The consideration of
Brazil as the study object of a systematic analysis of these two forms of knowledge leads to a debate over
the reconciliation of these two opposites: rational and irrational.
New Perspectives
The starting point of a new rationality could consist in penetrating the wisdom of the Amerindian
shamanic beliefs in the search for traditional roots. Western view is horizontal and linear: it lacks vertical
distancing that enables one to perceive the discontinuity of the cultural process as an extensive and noncentralized process. Such distancing might redirect the glance to another direction with the purpose of
making them see the existence of other civilizations and categories of thought that may reveal essential
aspects of humanity. [2]
The shamanic perspective transcends the limits of vision of this orderly, stable, and determined world.
Whereas science is turned to the outside world, shaman is turned to the inside, to the laws that govern
beings and the Universe. Once free from every ordinary external stimulus, the individual is able to
experiment with various states of awareness which may help him to reach creativity, transcendence, and
revelation. Shamanism is not a primitive phase of religion but a highly elaborate state of awareness that can
be found at all times, a key that human beings developed in order to understand the environment and to live
in harmony with it. The shaman does more than dominate nature, he seeks to commune with it by
establishing contact with cosmic forces and intrapsychic energies.
The shamanic awareness of the neoprimitive tribes of the Amazon and of the remaining autochthonous
civilizations of the world reveal that the structure of the Universe is always perceived in very similar terms
among these groups, regardless of place or time. According to Amerindian cosmology, the universe is formed
by three levels – the sky, the earth, and the subterranean world – which are connected by a central axis.
Below the earth’s layers are the aquatic and the subterranean worlds: the former concerns the aspects of
creation and transformation whereas the latter relates to cannibalism; the earth is the space of hunting; the
sky is the world of the sun, the moon, and the stars. Each of these worlds possesses an ancestral Anaconda
that governs and represents them: the Anaconda in the water, the jaguar on earth, the harpy eagle in the sky.
Shamanic knowledge and technique regard ways of moving from one world to the next. The passage is
represented by an opening or a hole through which sublime creatures or guardian animals that represent
other worlds come down.
According to the traditional vision nurtured by Amerindian cosmology, all things must be linked as parts
of a unified universe. There exists a set of relations within which all members of creation – man, culture,
Nature – interact with and interpenetrate each other with their particular qualities and energies, in such a set
the perception of the visible and invisible universe implies fluidity and transparency which lack an absolute
contour: global unity is wholesome, there are no limits between the world of animals, of humans, and of
spirits; the real is One and the Universe is perceived as a live entity.
In contrast, urban civilization tends to perceive a habitat as an unmoving place, not as an extension of
a live and essential being. In addition, modern scientific culture classifies, analyses, and names all the
objects known in the outside world and treats them as separate entities. By dividing life into subjects and
objects, observers and observed, science fragments Nature and hence loses the idea of the whole.
Consequently, as a separate entity, Western man seems himself as incapable of understanding the unity of
Nature and the order of the Universe. In practical terms this is a separation that has never existed: a human
being is not dissociated from Earth, he is also the world and the Universe: he is whole, identical, and not
separate.[3]
There certainly is a tension between savage and scientific thinking: the native is the unpredictable, the
irrational, whereas the modern is the providence that orders, the rationality that organises. On the other
hand, thanks to reports by ethnologists, anthropologists, and mystic believers, researchers began to
acknowledge that it would be possible to elevate science beyond ordinary awareness with the objective of
understanding the concept of scientific rationality itself. In such a circumstance magical, instinctive, and
irrational components of human existence began to be appreciated and a new dialogue between logical
thought and savage thought was set in motion. The intention would be to rationalize the irrational.
Primitivism in Modernity
In order to assess the influence of shamanic thinking within Brazilian contemporary design, I now refer
to the historical moment that discusses the height of the primitive aesthetic in the world of arts. In this case I
consider aspects related to artistic manifestations of Brazilian Modernism which are approached from a
mystical and above all anthropophagic perspective.
At the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, European art broke with the
conventional aesthetics of academies in order to reveal the culture of the other. In this case, the image of the
cannibal became a constant theme in European art from the moment that intellectuals began to reassess the
concepts of primitive and civilized. The anthropophagous went from villain to hero within the critical reception
shown by the European vanguards and by Brazilian Modernism. However, if Europe sought to break with the
tradition of its secular culture through primitive art in order to install a movement of rupture, this should not be
so for Brazil, a country which did not yet have anything to destroy but instead found itself in a rising process
of construction. If primitivism meant rupture and desacralization to Europeans, to Brazilians it represented
the revival and continuity of a tradition that should be promulgated by art. What was exoticism for Europe
was, for the Brazilian tradition, the portrayal of a cultural reality.
The anthropophagic feature of the Brazilian movement revealed that the aspects of the Brazilian
aesthetic problematics focused on the search for a new language, on the adjustment of expression to the
sensitivity of the moment, on the advent of a new meaning of mimesis represented as the impossibility of
copying a multiple, fleeting, and mutable reality. The Brazilian designers have taken part in this aesthetics by
an intuitive perception that was and still is being formed by their contact with the environment, people, and
things formed by their living together with the environment, people, and things.
The protagonists of Brazilian design are bearers of a culture that is linked to several other cultures
found in the heart of the country, such as music, dances, parties, sport, and literature. Nevertheless, the
general principles of Brazilian design also descend from European and indigenous cultures. As regards
European culture, the aesthetic principles originated from the vanguard’s rationalist currents; [5] as regards
indigenous culture, the principle of primitivism involved an aesthetics of balance and surpassed the process
of cultural rupture thanks to a system of spontaneous assimilation which has taken place between native
culture, intellectual culture, and technology along the years. These elements were articulated within a
syncretic cultural notion, conciliating local information with the universal demands of the modern spirit.
The evolutionary process of Brazilian design reveals a symbiosis between the universe that was
created from these two parameters – European and autochthonous – and the structure of the universe
perceived by the shamans of Amazon indigenous tribes. In this sense the conformation of the universe of
Brazilian design may be aligned in four specific worlds. In order to shed light on the adopted criteria I state
that the set of ideas assembled in each world are not contextualized within a chronological order. Instead,
they were gathered by issues of identity and affinities that were above all verified in the process of
intellectual development of designers.
The first world is the Cannibal world. It consists of the interpretation of indigenous forms associated
with an ample research on the “roots of Brazil” based on the vernacular element. The second world is the
Anaconda world. In this case the language becomes modern and the search for signs related to the “roots of
Brazil” continues. However, even though the underlying discourse is indigenous the European style persists.
As for the third world, that of the Jaguar, the design is compact and results from inanimate raw materials
provided by nature itself. The fourth world belongs to the Harpy Eagle. This world is made from a set of
fragments and the original function of materials is subverted so they may be used in another context. The
world of the Harpy Eagle constitutes the main focus of the present analysis because it presents a correlation
with supernatural manifestations. Such expressions may be recognized in the individual attitudes of
contemporary Brazilian designers, in their private motivation, and in the subjective ability of suggesting
technical and aesthetical innovations.
Through a kaleidoscopic expression – resulting from the urban living of a world fragmented by news,
shows, television, and Internet – a procedure of mixture was developed from the language of the
experimentalist art.[7] This art emerged in Brazil during the 1950s with the Experimentalist Manifesto. With the
purpose of eliminating the technical-scientific trend, the manifesto contained the ideology and the program of
a movement which instructed its followers to use sensitivity, expressivity, and subjectivity as ways of
recovering creative possibilities and of incorporating the observer into the development of the inventive
process.
Experimentalism itself leads to the idea of experimentation. The experimentation indicates the mode of
creation at the same time that it exposes the risk of failure and allows the creation of new things. Experience
is the direct perceptual contact with what is presented by mental faculties, such as perception, memory,
imagination, and introspection. According to this line of thought, researches add that experience is an
important principle not only to design but also to the Amazon indigenous cosmology. In conformation with the
wisdom of Amerindian shamans, to experiment is a concept that reveals the possibility of transformation and
of continuous creation of the elements that make up the Cosmos. Parallel to this, contiguity would constitute
another structuring principle of this cosmology which finds support in design. This concept functions as a link
between differences and thus allows the construction of new relationships and the production of new senses.
Just as it happens within Amerindian beliefs, the celebration of individuality and the right to difference
are principles which constitute the world of design in Brazil. By sharing the same point of view, logical
thought and shamanic thought indicate that the experiment enables the emergence of difference, [8] a
difference which produces an effect of “strangeness” at first on whoever perceives it before starting to
establish meaning. In the present case difference is defined by the parameter that establishes identity.
The existence of a principle of identity projects a criterion of contiguity over the discontinuity of
manifestations. In order to understand how this knot works, Brazilian contemporary designers – attentive to
the values promoted by immaterial culture, improvisation, lack of tradition, and non-structural creativity –
often resort to trivial elements in order to merge them with the latest industrial advances. This form of
connecting fragments creates an identity between objects as well as echoes the way in which shamans
conceive the Universe. According to indigenous cosmology, there is a basic interconnection that reunites
everything. Such a connection is perceived only by shamans, who are able to provide explanations for its
meaning. They create new ways of understanding life through their ability of seeing the future in a
verticalized aspect, undergoing a metamorphosis, and transferring their spirit to animals and plants.
Similarly, this is a privilege of the designer who belongs to the world of the Harpy Eagle because he is
able to perceive new models of thinking. The intuition of designers makes them defend values that are rich in
meaning and act in a more human scale by communicating with Nature instead of desiring to control it. By a
vision that comes from above, they work in a dimension that transcends the rational and the sensorial,
exploring the irrational world by means of free associations of elements. Analogously to shamans, designers
are not content in perceiving the connections between things and beings: they modify them, recontextualize[6]
them. Once the original matter is transferred from its natural habitat the spectral character of the world of
objects is dismantled in an experimental kaleidoscope; after its reassembly it is reverted into an allegory
within a context of revalorization. The result of such work leads to a redimensioning of the structure of design
in Brazil and cannot be understood as a simple influence or adaptation of pre-existing codes or styles. By
juxtaposing diverse elements of a given culture one obtains a cultural synopsis of anthropophagic aspect.
The designer of the Harpy Eagle’s world conceives the object as a “quasi-corpus”, in other words, a
being whose reality is not worn out in the exterior relations of its elements. This product does not only occupy
a place in objective space but also transcends such space when it establishes a new signification which
objective notions of time, space, and form cannot account for.
Final Considerations
Brazil reveals what Europeans were able to insert and at the same time offers answers to the
globalized world. Therefore, the past and present of this country reveal useful testimonies for a more
extensive reflection concerning its future and the future of other countries. However, the civilization of
constructing, above all of daily objects, is genuine of its people and cannot be improvised or exported.
Without a doubt, one of the challenges of the 21st century will be to learn from nature but the
contemporary Western man has not been trained for this. Nevertheless, shamanic tradition teaches us that if
we observe with accuracy then we may learn considerably more from this nature.
The Brazilian designer articulates individual quality and creative capacity intuitively in a way that
cannot be transmitted through strict didactic methodologies. If this is continues to be the road to follow, I
believe that the future tendency of Brazilian design will be to approach an exhaustion of the experimental
need which is regarded as indispensable to its manifestation. This new path may conduct design in the
direction of an “evolutionary line” that has propensity to fuse rationality and magic not only spontaneously but
consciously as well.
Author information
Full name: Rosane Costa Badan
Academic title: Doctoral researcher
Held position: Ph.D. student in Industrial Design and Multimedia Communication at Politecnico di Milano –
Italy
e-mail address: [email protected]
Mailing address: Via Santi Nabore e Felice, 7/A Casella 15 – 20147 Milano (MI) Italy
Fax number: +39.02.23997274
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[1]
Vertical and horizontal are the fundamental rhythms of the Universe and Mondrian’s work illustrates this universal principle (Teles, p.
407).
[2]
Such an idea of a return to nature, of a neo-primitive condition of human life, is far from recent. In the last century, the writer Oswald
de Andrade, one of the greatest exponents of Brazilian Modernism, predicted the advent of a society that would give mankind back to
Nature. Years later, in an approach equally related to this neo-primitive condition, the French art critic Pierre Restany (1990) wrote on
the Manifest of Rio Negro that the primitive societies of our planet reveal an extraordinary intellectual, aesthetic, and religious wealth, a
high level of civility, and a peculiar relationship with nature.
[3]
Science itself has started to bring this truth to light thanks to the postulate of David Bohm, an old colleague of Einstein. He stated that
Nature could not be reduced to fragments and particles: it was necessary to sense life within an integral concept.
[5]
Generally speaking, European artistic currents may be ordered in two opposite fronts: Futurism and Dadaism were delineating an
identity while Expressionism and Cubism came nearer. The projects of such currents concurred for the emergence of esprit nouveau
and of Surrealism, movements that are crucial for an understanding of Brazilian Modernism. The vanguard represented a change of
beliefs experimented in thinking and in the art of the Western world and its chronological limits went from the end of the 19 th century to
the Second World War. After the Second World War a neovanguard was once again talked about in Europe, an attitude of recapture of
vanguardist experiences (Teles, p. 82-83).
[7]
Other experimentalists sought new paths to art by highlighting the productive process, the spirit of parody, allegorization as well as
the grotesque and carnivalesque view of the world (Favaretto, p. 58).
[8]
Basic principle for the constitution of the Cosmos (Gonçalves, p. 153).
[6]
To recontextualize means to remove an original matter from its natural habitat – where it is often regarded as something worthless, a
kind of waste – in order to place it within a context that values it (Borges, p. 148).