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Concepts of perception, visual practice, and patternart among the Cashinahua Indians (Peruvian Amazonarea)Barbara KeifenheimPublished online: 17 May 2010.
To cite this article: Barbara Keifenheim (1999): Concepts of perception, visual practice, and pattern art among theCashinahua Indians (Peruvian Amazon area), Visual Anthropology: Published in cooperation with the Commission on VisualAnthropology, 12:1, 27-48
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Concepts of Perception, Visual Practice, andPattern Art among the Cashinahua Indians(Peruvian Amazon Area)Barbara Keifenheim
This paper attempts to demonstrate that consistent regard for culturally specificconcepts of perception and analysis of native visual practice open new possibilitiesfor the interpretation of Amazon Indian pattern art. For the ornamentalistics theorya new paradigm results from this, with emphasis on the processuality and perfor-mativity of the construction of meaning instead of the previous focus on structureand system, the basis for the search for iconographic traces of semantic content.
The Cashinahua Indians, inhabiting the Peruvian-Brazilian border region, are asmall Amazonian group of hunters and planters.1 In the field research whichI have regularly conducted there since 1977,1 have concentrated exclusively onthe Cashinahua on the Peruvian side. They are descendants of a segment of thegroup that, at the end of the rubber boom, fled from Brazil to the region of thesource of the Rio Curanja after the murder of a hated trader and avoided all con-tact with the outside world through the end of the 1940s. Even though a defini-tive connection to Peruvian society has now transpired, the Cashinahua nonethelessprofit from their geographic isolation and thus live, in comparison to othergroups, relatively undisturbed by massive foreign influences. Thus the tradi-tional pattern art, with which I am here concerned, still plays an important role.
My study deals with the complex shifting relationships between viewing andimage and attempts to demonstrate, with the example of Cashinahua ornamental-istics, that the consideration of culturally specific perception concepts and visualpractice opens new interpretation possibilities for Amazon-Indian pattern art.
In my empirical on-site investigations, I took up recent questions arising in thefields of visual anthropology as well as the anthropology of the senses. While thehistorical and cultural impact on human vision became a central theme for visualanthropology in the 1990s,2 the anthropology of the senses concentrates especially
BARBARA KEIFENHEIM, a native of Germany, received her Doctorate in Anthropology from theSorbonne in 1982. She has been conducting fieldwork among the Cashinahua and the Shipibo-Conibo Indians of the Peruvian Amazon since 1977. Also an active filmmaker, Keifenheim has lec-tured on visual anthropology at various European universities. She lives and works in Paris andBerlin.
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28 B. Keifenheim
on the culturally specific differences of sensory orders and points out that con-ceptions of the visual cannot be grasped when disconnected from the particularperceptual universe.3 It is perhaps surprising that I not only found orientation formy investigations in approaches from these two subdisciplines of anthropologybut also gave central importance to the question of performativity of visualprocesses. Therefore I would like briefly to describe from which perspective theparadigm of performativity appears to me to be applicable to the area of vision.
PERFORMATIVITY AND VISION
In the investigation of performative processes, through which actors and culturalevents are indeed constituted, the body as sensate body receives ever more atten-tion. And yet, when focusing on the body, it seems to me essential also to dealwith the basic question as to what role perceptions play in the mediating andnegotiating process between the subject and the multi-layered levels of its envi-ronment. Not only is the body, in its "insistence on meaning" (Kirmayer), to beunderstood as the primary site of negotiation between symbolic and sensoryorder, but it also must be stressed that the body, in its sensory arrangement, pro-vides specific negotiation modalities as well. If the paradigm of performativity isto be applicable to visual perception processes, various criteria must however befulfilled for us to be allowed to speak at all of performativity in this area. In thisregard it seems to me essential that a visual transformation process can be demon-strated on a conceptual and praxeological level in which—even if only for a fleet-ing moment—observer and image constitute each other in a specific mannerwhich is perceived as endowing meaning. Further criteria are the possibility tostage and repeat such processes, their character of creating a community spirit,and finally the emotional potential thereby released.
My working hypothesis consists of the supposition that the criteria mentionedcan indeed be demonstrated in the case of the Cashinahua. Should this supposi-tion prove correct, a new paradigm for the ornamentalistics debate would be pro-vided with emphasis on its rooting in process and performativity rather thanfocusing on structure and system, which have until now formed the basis for theiconographic search for traces of semantic meaning content.
First, I shall present the Cashinahua's general concepts of perception and thengo into the native vision theorems.4 In a further section, I shall describe some ofthe characteristics of ornamental pattern art so as to then develop the concept ofperformative vision in the ornamental visual experience. Finally, I shall list theconsequences of this concept of vision for the theory of ornamentalistics.
ASPECTS OF THE EMIC CONCEPTS OF PERCEPTION
The fundamental scepticism of the Cashinahua with regard to all sensory percep-tions5 as suitable means for the judging and testing of reality is striking. Thisbasic idea stands in close connection to a widespread Amazonian concept of mul-tiple and interfering realities.
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The Cashinahua myths of creation report that at the beginning of things eachliving being was in communication with each other being and could exchangeforms af will (dami-). The visible and the invisible did not stand in opposition toeach other, but were rather shifting transformational appearances of one and thesame unbroken reality.
Due to a tragic misfortune, however, a differentiation process occurred. Sincethen, separated reality levels of space and time, of the visible and the invisible,have existed. Nonetheless, they are not dichotomically separated, but rather haveshifting boundaries.
As a result of this differentiation, every living being also now has a body yuraand spirit yushin, which are specifically predetermined according to its species,and must be content "to be in itself" for the brief duration of its finitude. Thislimitation becomes all the more a prison since the beings have lost the ability foruniversal communication. Animals are condemned to uttering cries and peopleare caught in a deceptive language. Illness and death came into existence alongwith language.
Thus the break in original creation simultaneously led to the emergence of lan-guage, illness, and death, of deceptive communication and the problem of illusionand reality. Since then, it is part of the human condition that every course of lifetranspires in a dangerous field of tension, since everything appears to waverbetween the illusion of reality and the reality of illusion. Through deceptive realityperception and judgement, there is always the risk of losing the "being in oneself'and, having got "outside of oneself', of succumbing to dangerous metamorphoses.
The concept of multiple realities interfering with each other explains why theCashinahua regard every perceptory stimulus as basically polyvalent: the classifi-cation of the perceived in one of the various possible reality levels can, in theCashinahua mind, never be unequivocally determined. Borrowing from the termi-nology of semiotics, we can label this problem a deficient referentiality of percep-tory signifiers. One and the same infatuating odor inin which a hunter perceives onhis treks through the jungle can be produced by one specific plant source, the sink-abin tree, but may also come from the spirit of a dead person attempting to induceyearnings for the beyond in him. The flow of saliva which one perceives whenwaking up at night can result from the process of digestion, but it can also be thetrace of an oral sex act which a forest spirit has secretly conducted with the sleeper.
Thus, for the Cashinahua, perception is often accompanied by the search for aconnection between the perceived and the non-perceived superior to it, whichitself likewise possesses perceptory capabilities. The perceiver is caught in a dis-position of energetic permeability and is also subjected to the perceiving non-per-ceivable. A human's sensory instrumentarium not only opens the world to him,but also allows the perceived world to penetrate him. This idea is articulated, forinstance, in the concept that sensory perceptions are accompanied by a transfer ofsubstance which is potentially dangerous. Thus poisons, for example, can enterinto the body through voices or touch and ultimately will lead to death. In con-nection with this, some Cashinahua women confessed to me some time ago thatthey had been careful in the first years of our contact that no baby came into myarms because they feared their children could be harmed through skin contactwith me or by my voice.
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The imana- illness, in which the desire for the beyond turns one away from life,is not considered a psycho-social crisis but a result of the effect of substanceswhich have penetrated the patient through olfactory and auditory contact withspirits of the dead. After he has "extra-sensorally" smelled and heard, someonesuffering from the imana- illness will also soon see spirits of the dead. The spiritsof his dead relatives will come, touch him, and, by means of pictures of wonder-ful objects, invite him to follow them into the beyond. The ill person turns awayfrom human nourishment and begins to feed himself, as spirits do, on worms andearth. Thus his normal sensory order dissolves and all his senses are completelydirected to the beyond. It will not be much longer until the eye spirit, beruyushin,6 leaves the body and the human dies.
Moreover, there are free-floating perceptory substances which transverse thevarious cosmic spheres and enter into humans preferably through nose, ears, andskin. Free floating substances alter the personal sensory order and thus a per-son's identity. For instance, the substance yupa entering into a hunter results indeficient perceptions which eliminate his hunting qualities from one day to thenext. No matter how much he tries, he will no longer be able to smell or hear anyanimal, nor will he be able to aim correctly at wild game should it accidentallyend up in his field of vision. Thus one infested with yupa is, because of his defi-cient perception, no longer able to fulfill his duties as hunter. Along with theassociated social prestige, he also loses his sexual attractiveness and slips pro-gressively into an outsider position.7
In addition, being penetrated by the substance muka is a decisive characteristicof shamans. Appropriately enough, the Cashinahua word for shaman is hunimukaya: literally, a man penetrated by muka (bitterness). In contrast to theunlucky hunter, he experiences a magnification of his sensory abilities whichhowever let him drift out of the usual sphere of interaction with humans and intothe sphere of communication with animals and spirits. He will henceforth beunable to kill any more game because in his perceptions the boundary betweenanimals, humans, and spirits has dissolved. How could he be capable of killinga tapir when he can communicate with it in the same sphere or recognizes adeceased relative in it? His singular perceptory competence indeed does, in aspiritual sense, contribute to the well-being of the community because he is capa-ble of boundary-transcending communication and interaction, but he is lost tosociety as a producer. And thus no family is pleased when one of its membersreceives an obvious calling to be a shaman.
A strict treatment is necessary to rid oneself of the cosmic, identity-changingsubstances. Since they are considered indestructible, the only method to dealwith them is to set them free again. And one must be especially careful that noone is near the patient, for when the substances are driven out of his body theycan immediately penetrate another person.
Metonyrhic doubt and the risk of dangerous substance transfer lead to an existen-tial dilemma, for even a banal daily occupation can be extremely overloaded withpotential dangers and the enormous complexity of possible interpretations whichmust be reduced to a tolerable level in order to experience the world as order ratherthan chaos. In this context, the significance of perceptory strategies, whose masterybelongs to the socialization of every Cashinahua, becomes clear. The simplest
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strategy consists of closing the affected sensory organ in case of danger, i.e. in sit-uations in which reality orders may be disrupted: one stops up the nose, coversthe ears, closes the eyes, or shields the skin from touch. The purpose of thesemaneuvers is to interrupt the energetic circular movement among the perceiving,the perceived, and the perceiving non-perceivable. Even children are enjoined torecognize when such behavior is necessary. Thus every young Cashinahuahunter must assiduously use all his senses to detect the slightest behavioralchanges among animals. A wild animal whose death rattle does not sound spe-cific to its species, which one with unimpeachable hunting technique strikes withan arrow and sees fall to the ground, but then cannot find, which moves in anunusual manner, which emits an atypical smell, or which demonstrates othersuch unusual behavior, indicates that one is certainly not dealing with a wild ani-mal but rather with a spirit. Then one must drop everything, look away, stuffone's nose with leaves, and rush back to the village.
One important perception strategy consists of the linkage of seeing, hearing,and smelling to avoid perceptual deception and associated interpretation mis-takes, especially in the jungle and in contact with outsiders. Whenever a percep-tion is not further supported in the jungle by visual, auditory, and olfactorycorrespondences, there is, according to the Cashinahua, the danger that one isdealing with spirits of the dead or other invisible powers.
This combination of visual, auditory, and olfactory information is also necessaryin contacts with whites in order to recognize their true being and the aims behindtheir outer facade. Thus it is important during visits from tradesmen, for instance,or representatives of regional political authorities, not only to pay attention to thespoken word but also not to let the vocal qualities of the speaker "out of the ear"and simultaneously to perceive and interpret his outer appearance in connectionwith his smell. In this way, the awkward gait, the constant gesturing, and espe-cially the voice of a missionary that they felt was too loud was surely responsiblefor robbing his salvation message of a good deal of credibility: his words pro-claimed love, peace, and redemption, but his loud voice revealed him to be a puben:this term is used by the Cashinahua to designate antisocial and anticultural beings.
Thus the Cashinahua practice of perception in the outside world of the jungleand in encounters with strangers is above all marked by avoidance strategies and"cognitive linkage".
The principle supracomplexity of their perception interpretations is, however,reduced by the fact that the multiple signified levels per se are not necessarilyeverywhere nor must they always be decoded as such. Though there is basicknowledge about the illusionary reality of outwardly perceptible forms, sinceeverything can be itself and also something else, the perceptual polyvalence mustbe subjected to a sort of dissociation for one to be able to come to terms with thepragmatic necessities of day-to-day life and, yet more principally, to be at all ableto recognize the meaning of ordinary life. A Cashinahua hunter must be able torely on the fact that, when he sees a tapir, it is really an animal in order to be ableto kill it. Nearly everyone can, however, report on liminal situations in which hegave up on his hunting prey because he could not avoid simultaneously recog-nizing more in the wild animal than the animal itself, e.g. the incarnate spirit ofa dead person.
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Whether the multiple layers of perceptual signified are evoked individually orconnected depends on the most various personally, situationally, and expecta-tionally specific factors. In their totality they represent a sort of "subliminalmodel of the world" for the Cashinahua, yet its multidimensionality is surelyonly accessible in liminal situations for most individuals. There are howeverwomen and men who have developed a specific disposition for perception andinterpretation through which this model works like a meta-mood for them. Thisis the case for shamans, but also for all people who are said to have a highlydeveloped consciousness (shinan), for example for herbalists, experts in ritualacts, singers and pattern artists.
PERCEPTUAL DIFFERENTIATION IN THE REALM OF SIGHT
The general concepts of sensory perception are of course also applicable to thesense of sight. It must however be pointed out that the Cashinahua maintain thatthis is the most unstable sense of all and that its undependability and insuffi-ciency must be compensated for through a combination, for example, withsmelling and hearing and a corresponding "cognitive linkage". Yet, this multi-modality, in the sense that a coupling of perception and interpretation is strivenfor, represents only one intermodal sensory variant. In fact, we are dealing herewith a practice of seeing marked by a fluctuating overlapping of visual, acoustic,and olfactory modes. Nonetheless, for the purposes of semantics and analyticdiscourse, at least three modi may be distinguished which mark the visual per-ceptual flux. For reasons of description and analysis, I would like to distinguishbetween them and label them monomodal, linked intermodal, and synaesthetic,although these terms have no correspondence in the Cashinahua language.
In the monomodal mode, no specific interaction with the other senses occurs. Itis day-to-day sight with the usual spatial-topographical and temporal limita-tions. This mode of sight is preferably developed in intersodetal contexts wherethe problem of metonymic doubt is largely eliminated, since all perceptual stim-uli arise from one's own kind, who have been socialized and "culturized" in thesame way. Sensing and bestowing sense amount to something ordinary whichlets one forget the principle insufficiency of perceptual acts.
Linked intermodal sight involves an interaction with smelling and hearing. Thismode, as has already been mentioned, is especially effective in extrasocietal contextsand is "automatically" activated on the hunt and also in contact with strangers.
The synaesthetic mode knows no distinction between the individual sensorymodes, in contrast to the linked mode; rather, a mingling of the senses occurs.This mode characterizes especially the drug-induced visions after ingestion ofboiled lianas (Banisteriopsis caapi), but is however also effective in ritual dances.Although in synaesthesia the differentiation between the individual sensorymodes is dissolved, I continue to speak of a specific mode of sight in order totake into account an extreme dimension of the fluctuating vision continuum.
I have distinguished the three different modes which mark the vision continuumbecause, from the native's point of view, each mode of vision constitutes a differentrelation to reality, i.e. it can be determined which of the realities resulting from
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the creation story and their corresponding levels of signification come "into thefield of vision".
I shall begin with synaesthetic vision under drug influence. I would first like topoint out that mythological discourse and hallucinogenic visions retrace theprocess of creation in contrary, if complementary, ways. The myths accentuate thedifferentiation process introduced by the rupture in original creation. In sequences,there is a retracing of how the "world at the beginning of things" became the frag-mentary world of competing orders which we find today. In hallucinogenicvisions, on the other hand, a de-differentiation of the world of the here-and-nowaround us takes place through a dissolution of the ordinary sensory order. Withprogressing drug effects, the distinction of forms is abolished and replaced by thesynaesthetic determined vision of a pre-formal world which is filled with mytho-logical/cosmological significance: in a reversal of the process of differentiation,the fragments of splintered creation fuse into unity through a synaesthetic viewingduring the visions. It could therefore be said that the synaesthetic determinedvision leads to a holistic view of things, holistic also because synaesthesia impliesnothing other than a mingling of sensory impressions into a single sensory stimu-lus. Unity of the senses and unity of original creation correspond. Holistics is, inmotifs and perception, reliant on de-differentiation, which must however be con-trolled, since the people of the world of the here-and-now must not forget that itultimately leads to dissolution and death. That is the reason for the singing accom-panying drug visions and ritual dances with its ordering and guiding function.
If synaesthetic vision refers to the unbroken reality of original creation, then themonomodal mode of vision, with its spatial-topographically and temporally limitedpossibilities, refers to the reality of the world of the here-and-now. Since this is onlya part of the realities resulting from the rupture in original creation it is fragmentaryper se. It could thus be said that the vision applied to it implies a fragmentary view ofthings. This fragmentary view bears absolutely no negative connotation, for it issimultaneously the sine qua non for being at all able to situate oneself in the here-and-now, and the Cashinahua have absolutely no concept of a "paradise lost".
Combined sight has an intermediary position between holistic and fragmen-tary vision. This sight modus could therefore also be referred to as an intermedi-ary view of things. It occurs above all where levels and orders of reality can shift,overlap, and reverse.
I would like to stress again that we are dealing with a fluctuating sight contin-uum. The distinctions I have made, however, give us the possibility to considerperceptions, myths, and drug visions together; areas, that is, which until nowhave been researched separately. In a later section, I shall examine how thesesight differentiations become effective in the ornamental visual experience.
CASHINAHUA PATTERN ART
Traditionally, there is no figurative depiction for the Cashinahua; strictly speak-ing, pictures do not occur.8 'Visually noteworthy artifacts include, for the men,primarily feather dress and, for the women, the ornamental pattern art which isthe focus of my studies of the shifting relationships between vision and image.
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With the Cashinahua, ornamentalistics lies exclusively in the domain of women.Though this is the case with many Amazonian cultures, there are significantexceptions, as with the Yekuana Indians of Venezuela, where the patterns are exe-cuted exclusively by men [Guss 1989]. The female Cashinahua pattern artistsenjoy great spiritual respect, as it is generally agreed that the core of all knowl-edge lies in their woven and painted kene patterns. Kene patterns are now foundon woven hammocks, shoulder bags, and baby carriers among other things. Inaddition, they are found on woven baskets, initiation stools, kalebassen masks,and other ritual objects. Finally, they are also used in face and body painting.9
In developing the vision-ornament relationship, I will here merely deal withthe formal aspects of Cashinahua pattern art and not be able to go into suchthemes as the secret female knowledge of the pattern weavers, their social posi-tion, the marking of ethnic identity, etc. in this article.
With regard to the repertory of forms, Cashinahua ornamental pattern art differsfrom other Amazonian cultures in that neither individual creations nor innovationsexist. The repertory of kene patterns reproduced results from the combinatorypossibilities of a few basic motifs and similarly few combinatory rules. The mostfrequent basic motifs are meandering hooks (or geometric curls), rhombi, triangles,squares, wavy lines, and zigzag lines. As construction and combinatory rules,we find the negative-positive principle, the sequential arrangement of one and thesame basic motif or motif combination, the concentric placement of one and thesame basic motif inside each other, the spiral extension of a meandering hook,volutions and axial symmetric mirroring. (Figures 9 and 10 offer some examples.)
Figure 1 Example of patterned stripes where the hardly developed motif elements of a kene stopabruptly. (Photo, copyright B. Keifenheim.)
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Figure 2 Example of patterned stripes where the hardly developed motif elements of a kene stopabruptly. (Photo, copyright B. Keifenheim.)
Upon analysis, the patterns reveal a conspicuous relationship between the givensurface and the organization of the motifs. In fact, it does not appear that themotifs are so arranged as to cover the surface, but rather that the motifs open per-ception to a larger space and suggest continuity beyond the limits of the decoratedmaterial, regardless as to whether dealing with hammocks, stools, faces, body sur-faces, or sheets of paper. They are painted or woven as though the patterns contin-ued into infinity. At the edge of the material surface, the lines—characteristicallycalled "paths," bai—simply cease. This is a decisive characteristic of Cashinhuapattern art (Figures 1 and 2 as well as many examples in Dwyer [1975]).
Dawson also did not miss this surface surpassing aspect of Cashinahua: "It isalmost as if the Cashinahua artists work with infinite patterns in their minds and,only as it suits them, present select parts to form basic design units or composi-tions". And she continues: 'This gives the design field the aspect of a 'window'through which one can see a portion of an infinite design" [1975:138,142].10
Most hammocks are not decorated over the entire surface, and bear only a fewpatterned diagonal stripes. At first glance, the kene, thereby extremely limited inextent, give the impression of being incomplete or only suggested, for, hardlyhaving developed their characteristic motif elements, they stop abruptly. Merelyweaving patterned stripes is however certainly not due to labor-saving motiva-tions of the women, but rather due to the specific reading that the Cashinahuaapply to their kene. Indeed, the recognition of a pattern seems to be sufficient toallow the inner eye to see its continuation.
On large weavings where the patterns cover the entire surface, seamless transi-tions from one kene to the next are often found [Figures 3-6]. It becomes apparent
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3 Example of seamless transition from one kene to another. (Photo, copyright B. Keifenheim.)
Figure 4 Example of seamless transition from one kene to another. (Photo, copyright B. Keifenheim.)
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Figure 5 Example of seamless transition from one kene to another. (Photo, copyright B. Keifenheim.)
Figure 6 Example of seamless transition from one kene to another. (Photo, copyright B. Keifenheim.)
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Figure 7 In pattern labyrinths the gaze is said to get lost. (Photo, copyright B. Keifenheim.)
Figure 8 Upon continued viewing, supplementary fields of perception emerge. (Photo, copyrightB. Keifenheim.)
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Pattern Art and Perception 39
that every pattern can be transformed and that the totality of visual transforma-tions engenders a shifting pictorial continuum. This further emphasizes theboundless dimension of Cashinahua ornamentalistics.
In this is an apparent correspondence to the conception of a patterned cosmiccontinuum. For example, certain spirits of the dead live in the most distant cos-mic space and are described as beautifully decorated and keeping richly pat-terned hammocks ready for the reception of the dead. Even the sick glance atthem. The boa snake, an extremely significant figure in Cashinahua mythology,appears as "intermediary" between the perceptible patterns of human arrangedspace and the, for the normal eye, imperceptible kene of the most distant cosmicspace, and in many regards plays the role of intermediary between various levelsof reality. Enclosed in an outer hull, the snake equates with mortal man. But withits ability for cyclical shedding of skin, the snake also represents the principle oftransformation and immortality for the Cashinahua. Moreover, in the opinion ofthe pattern artists, it unites the totality of all kene on its skin, and part of the tradi-tional education of the weavers was to receive the "pattern spirit" through ritualkilling of the boa. In its role as intermediary between separated realities, the boa,a spiritual preceptor, reveals paths of border-crossing vision to humans: to menthrough drug-induced visions, to women through art, it makes connecting paths(bai) visible.
As a bridge between divided spaces, the kene develop as a chain of unbrokentransformational steps, for, as already mentioned, movement from one pattern tothe next is seamless, without "break". This principle of transformation may how-ever also be documented through further formal pattern principles.
Many kene are arranged according to a positive-negative plan allowing, it is true,two visual directions, but, in contrast to the principle of pattern and background,revealing one and the same motif [Figure 10]. Thus the separation between interiorand exterior becomes arbitrary. The one is the transformation of the other.
Although dominated by rectilineal basic motifs, rectilinearity and curvaturedon't seem to be opposing formal principles. There exist angular and curved ver-sions of many patterns, and transitions from angular geometric forms to curvedones are frequent. Curvature and rectilinearity do not then appear to be separatestylistic elements, but rather transformations of the modalities of movement ofthe boundless paths (bai). Transformation, then, is not only a lineally conceivedsequence of changing forms, but in addition signifies that every form also con-tains its own transformation.
Despite strict geometrical arrangements, the patterns appear shifting. The geo-metrical order, as "arrested movement", seems only to exist when a single motifis studied or the entire patterned surface is viewed from some distance and theboundless aspect described above is disregarded. As soon as the gaze fixes onone kene, however, it finds no fixed point of reference any more. The attempt tofollow the meandering paths (bad blurs the apparently clear foreground orderbecause the gaze is caught in a pattern labyrinth and gets caught in "dead ends"[Figure 7]. By continued viewing, quadratic, triangular, or rectangular "fields ofperception" emerge, overlay the pattern, and are displaced or even dissolved bythe slightest destabilization of the glance [Figure 8]. In short, the longer one looksat the kene, the more they begin to move.
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40 B. Keifenheim
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Figure 9 Basic elements and combinations.
Thus the study of kene does not fix one's viewpoint, but rather the viewingitself, since the observer attempting to follow the intricate paths (bat) can nolonger remove his gaze from them. The Cashinahua consider this process of per-ception extremely dangerous; therefore the sick are never laid in a patternedhammock, since their vision risks getting lost in the kene. All spiral-like patternsare considered especially dangerous. In an ill person's perception, the spiral endsbegin to transform into snake heads. According to the Cashinahua, soon othervisions follow containing the same motifs as hallucinogenic images occurring underthe influence of Banbteriopsis caapi. In contrast to the controlled drug visionsaccompanied by songs, the sick are without orientation aids and therefore getlost in their own perception. This means the ill person's eye spirit (beru yushiri)follows the visions and ultimately enters onto the path of death (maua bai) insteadof returning into the body.
The description of the path of death, along which the soul of a dead womanwanders, also bears witness to the fact that the Cashinahua are aware that thegaze can get lost in the labyrinth of patterns. The path of death for women corre-sponds, so to say, to a condensate of all the woven pattern paths of her life. Theeye spirit follows the kene lines, makes constant mistakes, and risks getting lostforever, for it, just as the gaze of the living, can hardly distinguish the paths (bai).
The descriptions of the progress of an illness and the path of death for femaleeye spirits raise the question of possible visual transformation processes in theperception of patterns. That we should take this question seriously is supported
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Pattern Art and Perception 41
by numerous monographs in which the description of Amazonian Indian orna-mentalistics repeatedly points out "visual disorientation" caused by the patterns.Roe, for example, writes [1987:5-6] that the patterns of the Shipibo Indians, whobelong to the same ethno-linguistic family as the Cashinahua, produce a "visualambiguity". This isolated observation receives a more general impact fromLayton for he considers it more than possible, in his The Anthropology of Art, thatgeometric ornamentalistic style ultimately relies on a "deliberate wish to createvisual ambiguity" [1992:170, emphasis mine]. Especially pertinent and precise isabove all David Guss' description [1989] of the kinetic visual process in his analy-sis of the pattern art of the Yekuana Indians of Venezuela. Moreover his observa-tions are of special interest for my case study since the Yekuana patterns are, ashas already been mentioned, very similar in motif and style to those of theCashinahua. He points out a "kinetic play of forms (...) in all of the abstractdesigns with some (...), becoming nearly impossible to view". He furtherobserves: "The kinetic structure of these forms creates an endless movementbetween the different elements, drawing the spectator into them. Perception nowbecomes a challenge, with the viewer forced to decide which image is real andwhich an illusion" [Guss 1989:121,122].
With reference to the geometric style of the Yolngu of central Australia, Laytonconsiders it possible that specific perception patterns are constitutive for the con-struction of ornamental significance. He comes to the, in my opinion, most dras-tic hypothesis, labeling it however himself as "speculation": "It is interesting tospeculate that the Yolngu may perceive their geometric motifs (...) as optical illu-sions that switch their appearance from one to another of the alternative mean-ings within a given set; realizing in visual form the transformations of theirphilosophy" [1992:191f, emphasis mine].
The Cashinahua material and other scattered examples, even if not followedup by the authors, indeed suggest the existence of a phenomenon that Peter Gowdescribed as "a common concern within Amazonian cultures with the nature ofvisual experience" [1988: 25, emphasis mine]. It seems to me essential that nativevisual culture be consistently considered in order to better understand AmazonIndian art, here specifically geometric pattern art.
From this point of view, I shall now attempt to describe the Cashinahua's orna-mental visual experience in more detail.
ORNAMENTAL VISUAL EXPERIENCE AS TRANSFORMATIVEPERCEPTION PROCESS
The differentiations marking the fluctuating Cashinahua sight continuum andranging from monomodal perception through linkage to synaesthesia imply that,in viewing patterns, various qualities of significance and experience move intothe foreground according to whether one approaches the pattern with a fragmen-tary, intermediary, or holistic view.
In the fragmentary, ordinary view, optical aspects come into the field of visionwhich alter the surfaces of bodies and objects. This view encompasses above all theesthetic and artistic quality of the production by means of which the ornamental
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42 B. Keifenheim
patterns lend beauty (haundua) to the surfaces on which they appear and engen-der joy (benima) in the viewer.
In the combined view, the above mentioned aspects remain in the field ofvision, but achieve, however, another significance through olfactory overlapping,for example. It is for monomodal vision completely irrelevant whether a patternis on the face of a small child, an old man, or a young woman. It always lendsbeauty and produces esthetic pleasure in the viewer. Should a person's facepainting also emit the bewitching inin fragrance, the olfactorily linked vision con-denses and the sexual availability signaled by the fragrant pattern moves into theforeground. Likewise, the perceptible sex appeal reduces the distance betweenthe viewer and the viewed. "Fragrant patterns" are given no significance in intra-marital communication; they always refer to an extended network of extramaritalsexual relationships in which the strict rules governing choice of marital partnersare cast aside.
As with every intermediary, intermediary vision for the Cashinahua is con-fronted with ambivalences here as well: in the example mentioned, the olfactorilylinked view not only evokes the potential danger for social cohesion, through thesimultaneity of socially regulated and unregulated sexual relationships, but alsoindicates another reality: nothing attracts certain spirits of the dead more thanprecisely this inin fragrance. One and the same smell signifies sexual attraction,in the intersocietal context, and seduction to death, in the extrasocietal context.
In the synaesthetic view, ordinary sensory order is eliminated. The basic visualexperience which, as Jiirgen Trabant put it, with the aiming of the eye straight
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JCXXJCXXAAFigure 10 Examples of the positive/negative principle.
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ahead, clearly favors the idea of the opposite, the object [1993: 69], is abolishedwith the mingling of the senses and along with it also the distance between theperceiver and the perceived. With the intermodal mingling, vision gains qualitiesordinarily associated with other perception modalities: with the fleeting, transi-tory, and eventful of the olfactory and acoustic. In this transformation process,pattern and pattern viewer disrupt each other's borders. The strictly geometricpatterns move more and more and ultimately dissolve under the viewer's gazewhile he simultaneously perceives himself as "renounced". If the synaestheticview is achieved through drugs or ritual dances, singing guides the transforma-tive process. If it is, on the contrary, caused by feverish illness, it cannot, preciselybecause of the absence of accompanying singing, be arrested or controlled.Therefore, as mentioned above, the viewing of patterns with fever-inducedsynaesthesia can, in the opinion of the Cashinahua, lead to death. Thus, synaes-thetic "pattern viewing" is only desirable and connected with theoretical valuewhen it is induced in ritual stagings and simultaneously controlled.
PERFORMATIVE VISION AND INTERPRETATION OF PATTERN ART
In most attempts at interpretation up to now, the meaning and significance ofgeometric ornaments have nearly always been sought on a level separated fromthe "visual object" without being able to respond to the questions why and how,in a specific cultural context, iconographic, semiotic, symbolic, or other meaningsare formally and stylistically reflected "in this way and no other" in the orna-mental production. The question as to why culturally specific meaning variablesoccur in the same, culturally independent fund of basic ornamental figuresremained likewise unexplained." In these approaches, object and meaning levelsare in no reciprocal decoding relation to each other. However, cosmological,mythological, ecological, sociological, or other cultural specifics cannot be deducedfrom the ubiquitous existence of circles and rhombs. World views and socialstructures can at best be projectively "read into" them, by means of which such"over blown sign monsters" [Perez 1988:144] come to be that "thing so uncom-monly full of content" [Boehm 1992:136] for which they are taken in the typicalart ethnology of the Amazon.
In my investigation of Cashinahua pattern art, I considered the visual transfor-mation processes in the realm of ornamentalistics ever more strongly. This isdoubly justified: first, they can be demonstrated on a conceptual and practicallevel; and secondly, there are indications of specific processual aspects in generalornamentalistics theory which suggest the existence of an "ornamental visualexperience".
The art theoretician Oleg Grabar writes, for example: "Following Bakhtin in avisual sense, then, I would argue that a progressive dialogue is establishedbetween viewer/user and artifact that feeds on itself and changes both viewer andobject as it goes on" [1989: 44, emphasis mine]. In this context, he appeals for aninvestigation—as of yet hardly undertaken—of optisemic processes, of the"aspects or attributes (primarily sensory ones...) of artifacts that create an impacton the user" [1989:231].
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44 B. Keifenheim
My hypothesis is, then, that the formal-stylistic composition of the geometric-ornamental patterns is, given a corresponding disposition in the viewer, capableof unleashing a transformative visual process. Again I return to the formal princi-ples of arrangement, this time in order to stress how they contribute to the trans-lation of the delimitation and/or dissolution of forms into visual experience. Thenegative/positive principle abolishes the perceptual distinction between interiorand exterior; due to their concentric arrangement, motifs dissolve into spiral-likeforms upon extended viewing. In both cases, the impression of depth also arises.Because of the principle of continuing disjunction, the view is drawn ever furtherinto the inner pattern "event" as it attempts to find orientation; the fragmentaryfilling of space suggests the continuation of lines into a spatiality removed fromview. The effects described here result from the arrangement principles and notfrom the simple basic geometric figures. Only in combination do forms "at rest inthemselves" become "restless" forms and thus represent a perceptual challengeto the viewer. As Claus Miiller put it, the question is "of course open, whether allviewers will follow the dialogue offered ...The artists must, however, have con-sciously constructed the rule system" [1985: 29].
It is my interpretation, then, that meaning and significance of the patterns arefirst constructed in the performative process. By unleashing a transformativevisual process in which ordinary codes are eliminated, the kene effect a processualexperience of perception in the viewer in which both he and the patterns simulta-neously surpass their borders. In perceiving the kene, he participates with sensoryexperience, as in drug visions, in the ever possible metamorphosis of forms anddimensions: the strictly geometric patterns make a trip, so to say, possible fromthe world of strict forms into a pre-formal world where the traveler can, throughpersonal bodily-sensual experience, decode the production of mythological/cos-mological significance.
With this interpretative approach, it becomes possible to no longer look for themeaning of the kene referentially, i.e. on an extravisual level, but rather to developa theory of ornamentalistics in which the dualities, form and content, and thesensual and the semantic, can be differently understood, for the sensorial experi-ence of an artifact is not separated from its possible significances. It is certainlyundeniable that symbolic significance is a constitutive aspect of AmazonianIndian pattern art; yet my research indicates ever more that this is not to befound in some referentiality attributed to the patterns themselves, but rather thatit becomes manifest in the experience of visual transformations connected withthe viewing of the ornamental pattern: in ornamental visual experience, viewerand image are equally subject to the same transformation principle.
Within the inseparability of perceiving and granting meaning, the culturalgivens of significance, or the narratives creating community, are totalized andretrievable in the differentiation continuum of pattern viewing. Culturally specificconcepts such as transformation, the illusion of outwardly perceptible reality, theexistence of multiple realities, the interference of visible and invisible, the idea ofform as frozen metamorphosis, etc., are not semanticaUy revealed in the viewing ofpatterns but rather lived through the kene in transformative sensorial experience.
The performative subject does not constitute himself as primarily seeing, butrather as a multi-sensoral experiencing subject. The performative visual experience
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Pattern Art and Perception 45
represents a process in which significance must be understood as somethingwhich always emerges new and not as a corpus of fixed symbols. In the visualornamental experiences, the performative re-enacting is ignited less by the agentrole of the body in relation to the environment than by the perceptual relationbetween body and surface, here, the ornament.
Pattern viewing is not a mechanical retrieval through some visual modus, suchas the slightly cross-eyed vision which must be activated to view 3-D images, butrather a processual play of cognitive and imaginative capabilities which situatesitself in the cultural narratives. The kene allow all viewers, each according to hiscontext, expectations, personal conditioning, sex, age, and other factors, a spe-cific, nonetheless always sensual participation in an order which makes sense forhim and his peers and which is thus constantly and simultaneously constitutedanew. They unite the sensual and the intelligible; in them, the "sense of thesenses" is not only constructed but also becomes manifest.12
(Translated from German by Richard Gardner)
NOTES
1. For more details on the Cashinahua: among others Deshayes and Keifenheim [1994],Kensinger [1995].
2. Cf. Ruby [1989], Wendl [1992, 1996], Keifenheim and Wendl [1994]. A significantimpulse was based on the conventionalist approach of the American philosopher MarxWartofsky. With the supposition that the plasticity of the biological-genetic structuresof the visual system undergo a culturally specific supra-forming and socialization,Wartofsky took up a matter of longtime consensus in the natural sciences and postu-lated, as one of the first and in analogy to Gibson's "ecological optics", a "culturaloptics" [1980]. Thus, vision is not taken as a passive reception of sensoral stimuli, butrather as a complex process in which the visual is sensorally ordered. And thus, historyand culture become central factors by the determination of different schemata throughwhich interpretations of sensoral experiences are constructed.
3. Cf. Seeger [1975, 1981], Crocker [1985], Feld [1982, 1984, 1988], Stoller [1989], Howes[1991], and Classen [1993a, b].
4. In the limited space of this article, it is neither possible to go into the basic collectionproblems in the researching of alternative perceptual orders nor is it possible to presentmy methods. Likewise, it can hardly be avoided that the emic concepts are present invery compressed form and thus the connection to the research materials and collectionmethods come up short.
5. In more detail: Keifenheim and Wendl [1994] and Keifenheim [1995].6. The Cashinahua believe that man consists of one body and five spirits. The most pow-
erful spirits are the eye spirit (beru yttshin) and the shadow spirit (yum baka yushin),each playing an important part in the realm of perception and knowledge, the firstbeing closely linked to spirituality and supernatural realities, the second with all kindsof bodily knowledge and experience. Both spirits survive after physical death and areable to interfere in the affairs of the living. See also Keifenheim and Wendl [1994],Deshayes and Keifenheim [1994], and Kensinger [1995].
7. Cf. Deshayes [1992].8. Since the introduction of a national school system in the 1980s, children and youth now
learn the rules of figurative representation in class.
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9. On Cashinahua pattern art, cf. Dawson [1975], Tanner [1975], and Lagrou [1991].10. The suggestive aspect of borderlessness is not only indicative of Cashinahua ornamen-
talistics, but is also found in other contexts of Amazon Indian pattern art. Thus, forexample, Regina Müller came to a very similar observation when describing the pat-tern art of the Asurini Indians of the Xingu territory: "uma superficie supostamenteinfinita imaginaria" [1992: 240].
11. For criticism of the traditional art theories in the Amazonian context, cf. Gow [1988].Ravetz [1995: 39] criticizes in general Western art theories that "...seem to assume adivision between the sensual and the semantic, form and content, reflecting the ten-dency to separate the sensual experience of an object from its possible meanings"[1995: 38]. In general art ethnology, there are especially some critical contributions onthe widespread iconographic-semantic approach to interpretation, for example Layton[1992], Perez [1988], Boehm [1992], and Heintze [1992].
12. A German version of this article appeared in Paragrana (1998).
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