RESEARCH

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by Michael Hirschbichler (2024)

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.

Published:

Michael Hirschbichler. Spirit Structures of Papua New Guinea. Art and Architecture in the Kaiaimunucene. London/New York: Routledge, 2024.

https://www.routledge.com/Spirit-Structures-of-Papua-New-Guinea-Art-and-Architecture-in-the-Kaiaimunucene/Hirschbichler/p/book/9781032412443?srsltid=AfmBOorezzY9LjmFil93SJKI4f2LuizOdK7K5VelttQ-Aduts7q2qmNc

Activated:

Zwischen-Konstruktionen
Lecture, Bauhaus University Weimar, Weimar
May 2023

Ground Work
Lecture, Centre for Environmental Humanities, Aarhus University, Aarhus
April 2023

Mythische Konstruktionen
Lecture, Pazifik-Informationsstelle Neuendettelsau, Neuendettelsau
June 2022

Of Models and Monsters
Lecture, Universität Innsbruck, studio2, Innsbruck
April 2022

Spirit Houses
Lecture, Museum der Kulturen Basel, Basel
April 2022

Architectural Monsters
Lecture, Hong Kong University, Hong Kong
October 2020

Cocreation: Of Men, Spirits and Monsters
Lecture, Conference Coworking Materials
Kunstuniversität Linz / Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, IFK, Linz
October 2020

Kaiaimunutektur
Lecture, Architekturforum Solothurn, Solothurn
August 2020

~~Urhütten~~
Lecture, Universität der Künste (UdK), Berlin
April 2020

Mythische Konstruktionen
PhD defense lecture, Universität der Künste (UdK), Berlin
October 2019