Branzi

We Are the Primitives
Author(s): Andrea Branzi

Source: Design Issues, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Spring, 1986), pp. 23-27
Published by: The MIT Press
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Andrea Branzi
We Are the Primitives
This article was
originally published
in Italian in
Modo, June
1985.
We are the
primitives
in two
ways
at least:
analogically
and
linguis-
tically.
We are
analogically primitive
because our condition is that
of those
who,
having
fallen from an
airplane
into the middle of the
Amazon
territory,
find themselves
operating
with
technologically
advanced elements still on
board,
as well as with natural materials
of the forest. The
ideological parachute
no
longer
works,
and the
transformations we
accomplish
in that
jungle
are meant to realize an
accelerated renewal circuit rather than a
design
for
global progress.
Culture and
design
no
longer
are forces that
slowly
but heroi-
cally
move the world toward salvation
through logical
and ethical
radicalism.
They
are mechanisms of emotions and
adaptations
of
changes
that fail to
drag
the world toward a
horizon;
they only
transform it into
many
diffuse diversities.
Progress
no
longer
seems to be
valued; instead,
the
unexpected
is valued. The
grand
unitarian theorems no
longer
exist,
nor do the
leading
models of
the rational
theologies.
What exists is a
modernity
without
illuminism. We are
witnessing
a definitive and extreme seculariza-
tion of
design,
within which
design represents
itself and no
longer
is a
metaphor
for a
possible unity
of
technologies
and
languages.
Human nature and the artificial nature of
mechanisms,
informa-
tion,
and the
metropolis
cohabit in sensorial
identification, just
as
the Indian who identifies with the forest. That
neoprimitive
con-
dition is not a
design
in the sense that it does not wish to be the
latest trend of
avant-garde
fashions;
but it is
precisely
a condition
into which various
languages
and
already
diffuse attitudes fuse. To
perceive
that condition
helps
move
postmodernism
out of reaction-
ary equivocations
and,
probably, gives greater
freedom and
awareness to our mode of
designing.
The communication of the
primitive,
indeed,
achieves its maximum
efficiency
inside a closed
system:
It
operates by archetypes
and
myths, working
inside a cir-
cuit of users
capable
of
perceiving
its
metaphorical keys
and
subject
to its
specific energy.
Outside those
conditions,
the culture of the
primitive
is
nothing
but a formal
repertory
that
currently
is heeded
and used
by
a
large
number of
operators,
artists,
and
designers.
A
password
has not
yet
become
effective,
and
already
we detect
the
symptoms
of a
great
attention
paid
to
neoprimitive languages,
Design
Issues: Vol.
III,
No. 1 23
From the series "Animali
Domestici,"
by
Andrea Branzi.
to the extent that we have had to make a selection
among
the
many
possible examples
of that latent condition. There also
exists,
there-
fore,
a so-called
neoprimitive linguistic
fashion that
pays great
attention to
languages,
to anatomical
aspects
and artifacts of
primitive
men,
to African ethnic
groups,
to
technological
animism,
and to
primitive
ethic. This fact coincides with a need of
both users and
designers.
The first sees stable
signs, powerful
but
liberating,
in the
neoprimitive style. Designers
are
seeking
the
original key
to their own
identities,
the
building
code of their own
languages, setting
themselves
up
as
possible
tribal heads.
The
design panorama
that awaits us in that extreme seculariza-
tion of
design
consists of an ensemble of
linguistic
families
grouped
around ever more numerous
family
heads who will
assemble around their own
expressive
minor
archetypes
and
aggressive
followers. That tribalization of cultural
society
is at
once a result of the
neoprimitive
condition and
awaiting
the fall of
the old cultural tinsels in front of a new and different civilization.
Similar to the
good savage,
we are naked while
awaiting
the worse
or the better.
"The last
things
which can be done
always
are
endless,"
(oseph
Conrad).
The 1980s.
Complexity,
real and
theoretical,
is
spread-
ing. Lacking
in the
postindustrial society
is that unified
symbolic
24
i -r
.-
' _ [' ^ 0~~~SO
universe
capable
of
integrating
various institutional environments
and the individuals in them.
Symbolic
worlds
proliferate
and
become differentiated. The
very process
that
multiplies
the codes
and the
symbolic
resources of the
individual, and that weakens the
integrity
and the
plausibility
of that
person's
familiar
world, also
enormously
widens the field of various
possibilities perceived by
individuals.
The
range
of choices becomes wider and more fluid. There
occurs not
only
the
disintegration
of the
strong type
of
identity,
but also the
development
of a new weak
identity,
which is
flexible,
open
to
change, intimately
differentiated,
and reflexive. The weak
identity
considers
every
choice as
temporary
and reversible and
becomes the
object
of "different
biographies,"
at the
border,
but
only
at the
border,
of
pathological
dissociation.
Simultaneously,
an
extremely
refined and
receptive
new sen-
sitivity
makes its
way
in. It is based on a kind of
zero-degree
rational
thought
and a new definition and
interpretation
of
magic.
That is what we could define as
neoprimitivism
and,
even
better,
using
an aberrant
neologism,
as ultimatism. The
recovery
of
magic,
of
ritual,
of the
mysterious (even though
in a certain sense
secularized)
derives indeed from an extreme and last condition
that
significantly opposes
itself to the
originating
condition of the
primitive.
The
complete
fullness
(religious)
of the latter is made
vain
by
the
complete
vacuum
(ethical
and
philosophical)
of the
postmodern
condition.
It is the
disintegration
of the
legitimatizing
Great Tales that
brings
us back to a common
ground
on which there is
played
the
new
(and
as old as the
world) game
of
identity.
In the swollen
hyperspace
of the
postmodern,
it is
possible
to reach numerous
opposite poles:
from the ironic
lightness
of detachment to the
appealing
involvement with the
archetype,
with the ancestral
form,
with the totemized
object.
Complexity may
also lead
(as
the last shore or as the first of the
last
solutions)
to the
mystery
and the
alchemy
of
encounters,
to
the uncontrolled and uncontrollable truth of the chance
god.
In a
word,
it is the advent of
magic
as the first of the last
pos-
sibilities,
as a dimension to be
completely
relived and reinter-
preted,
and that
may
arise from our relation with ourselves and
with
others,
objects,
and the world. This
magic
is closer to the
inexpressible
individual
sphere
than to its collective rationaliza-
tion
(as
in
primitive societies).
Within that
dimension,
an essential
part
is
played by
the rediscovered
centrality
of the
body. During
the
1980s, indeed,
the
body
invaded social
experience.
Love for
one's
body grows exponentially,
and interest in one's
physical
well-being
increases. The
neoprimitive body,
a new
magic object,
is a
phenomenon resulting
from an
emancipation process
that
plants
its own roots into the innovative ferments of the 1970s.
The
past
of our societies is marked
by
a
principle
of transcen-
Design
Issues: Vol.
III,
No. 1
25
From the series "Animali
Domestici,"
by
Andrea Branzi.
dence,
God or the laws of
history,
located in either case
beyond
daily
social relations. In the face of that
principle,
the
body
could
not but be lived as a
limit,
as the
product
of a
fall,
as a
degraded
nature to be
opposed
to the
spirit.
Toward the end of the
1970s,
with the failure of
global
horizons
and
designs,
a new turn occurred in connection with our bodies.
In
today's history, having
abandoned the
hope
of
improving
life
and the world in a
complex
manner,
we are
becoming
convinced
that the
important thing
is to better our own
psychophysical
con-
dition.
The
body
becomes one of the constructive elements of
identity,
which
escapes
the
uncertainty
and the
fragmentation
of the con-
temporary
universe. In
addition,
the crisis in the relations of social
and secular
integration
of
identity implies
the increased
impor-
tance of the
body,
that
is,
of the
spatial perception
of
oneself,
as if
the
certainty regarding
our
being
here were to be reinforced
by
a
body
that is
healthy, protected,
and cared for.
And
through
the
body
the
tendency
to a new ritualism starts.
The ritualism is a sort of
neoprimitivism
in which it becomes sur-
face to be
decorated,
a
symbolic point
of
communication,
an
object
to be cared
for,
a
pretext
for small but fundamental
daily
rites,
and an instrument of seduction for ourselves even before
being
so for others. This new
way
in which the
body
is lived
26
directly
involves the
problem
of dress as
representation
of
self,
within a
precise image
culture.
The
look-generation,
as an extreme
case,
passing
from one dis-
guise
to the
other,
offers a
conception
of the
body
as a
surface,
as
a
representation,
as an
image,
as a
language
to
interpret through
the continuous
multiplication/subtraction/superposition
of
signs
and
signals
that,
in some
cases,
leads to
neotribalization,
the
notorious subcultures of the
young.
In a more
general
manner,
fashion becomes a
magic
dimension that we follow to reinforce
our own
identity
and
by
which we remain bewitched.
The
body
thus becomes the central
point
of
expression
of that
emerging phenomenon
defined as
neoprimitivism,
and
that,
in
reality, represents
one of the extreme
poles
of the
postmodern
condition.
Translatedfrom
the Italian
byJuliette
Nelles
Design
Issues: Vol.
III,
No. 1 27

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We Are the Primitives

Author(s): Andrea Branzi

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