Description
Book SynopsisDelinda Collier finds alternative concepts of mediation in African art by closely engaging with electricity-based works since 1944.
Trade Review“Delinda Collier's
Media Primitivism is a remarkable journey into the intellectual development of twentieth-century African art and how art objects themselves resist the categories accorded to them. Theoretically sophisticated and brilliantly argued,
Media Primitivism poses a serious challenge to those who like their African art suspended in a primordial past.” -- Steven Nelson, author of * From Cameroon to Paris: Mousgoum Architecture In and Out of Africa *
“
Media Primitivism is an important book that will resituate both media history and the historiography of African art. Delinda Collier convincingly argues that, from electronic music to world cinema, African technologies are not additions to electricity-based media but function as the very basis of them. The historiography is thrilling, the aesthetic analyses compelling, and the theoretical synthesis at times breathtaking.” -- Laura U. Marks, author of * Hanan al-Cinema: Affections for the Moving Image *
“Media Primitivism is a nuanced and singular intellectual project that stands to make an impact across the fields of African art, media studies, and art history. . . . Its most exciting contribution is that it breathes new life into the theoretical possibilities proposed by African art itself.” -- Allison K. Young * African Arts *
“
Media Primitivism is a compelling book that blends media theory, art history, and African art history in a masterful act of theoretical weaving on the part of its author. . . . Tracing deeper technological histories on the continent . . . proves that the question of Africa (as a place and idea) is not additive to media studies, but a foundational aspect of it.” -- Alexandra M. Thomas * Media-N *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii
Introduction. African Art History and the Medium Concept 1
1. Film as Light, Film as Indigenous 31
2. Electronic Sound as Trance ad Resonance 61
3. The Song as Private Property 93
4. Artificial Blackness, or Extraction as Abstraction 119
5. "The Earth and the Substratum Are Not Enough" 153
6. The Seed and the Field 183
Afterword 211
Notes 215
Bibliography 237
Index
