Claybody / House-body The Cosmic Body

Abstract

Through this text the author explains the architectural research exploratory methods she applied for the architectural analysis of an indigenous Zapotec house-workshop and its urban context, as part of her doctoral thesis. Firstly, on the fieldwork with local communities, secondly, in the complex processing of information, and thirdly, in the various formats she developed for knowledge sharing. The author departs from indigenous premises of comunalidad for on-the-ground artistic fieldwork activities, posthuman critical theory tools, and symbolic hermeneutics for architectural analysis, creating an assemblage between the symbolic and the scientific. This depiction, not exactly western, neither completely indigenous, offers an unusual spatial reading, yet with important notions from the culture of study, where the uses of the spaces cannot be detached from their symbolic, poetic and ethical meaning. Understanding the house as a cultural artefact, graphically analysed and narrated through the lens of a myth, the author creates an epistemological assemblage between indigenous and occidental traditions, and between the sciences and the arts.

Keywords: indigenous spatial narratives, symbolic hermeneutics, posthumanities