In a study of prehistoric material culture, archaeologist Linda Hurcombe shows how everything we know about that historical period is determined by traces that have been handed down to us. However, Hurcombe urges us not to forget the theoretical and technological knowledge associated with organic materials that has not stood the test of time because it is perishable or has been handed down orally. She calls them the ‘missing majority’, i.e. a system of knowledge related to nature that has been forgotten by so-called high-brow culture, but that is closely related to the ideas, identities and beliefs of a community.

Starting from these considerations and through the works of Mercedes Azpilicueta, Aron Demetz, Margarethe Drexel, Arnold Holzknecht, Tonico Lemos Auad and Marinella Senatore, The Missing Majority explores the interweaving of knowledge related to the vegetable and animal worlds, in an interactive relationship between communities and their habitats. This knowledge is considered alternative, and since it has no place in the mainstream discourse of the dominant culture, is transmitted through non-traditional circuits and often reaches us in a fragmented and partial manner.

Rediscovering, rereading and reappropriating this knowledge means questioning who holds the knowledge and reaffirming the central role of a form of knowledge that is:

/rooted, insofar as it is connected to the habitat and the community in which it is developed;
/embodied, insofar as it is present in human, vegetable and animal bodies;
/symbiotic, insofar as when such bodies interact, they contaminate each other’s knowledge;
/in movement, insofar as it is shared and transmitted among bodies.

The works of the artists involved in The Missing Majority explore various aspects of the relationship between human and nature, and ponder the way in which we inhabit a space at different latitudes, building relationships and interacting with an infinitely larger ecosystem. 

→ Read more | leggi di più | weiter lesen