The butterfly effect
Nineteen eighty-nine was a remarkable year that disrupted the world’s balance and overturned old beliefs, dividing the planet in two. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union undoubtedly marked a new beginning, but since then, this beginning has inevitably reminded us of what Nietzsche called the ‘eternal recurrence of the same’. This ‘same’ naturally presents seemingly unprecedented aspects but constantly brings us back to the same reasoning: globalisation. Money now reigns supreme on a planet where the gap between the rich and the poor is wider than ever before, and where self-declared communist countries operate on the stock market and fight in market wars. In this new era of globalisation, some people may even pine for the ‘good old days’ of the Cold War, when we at least felt like we knew what was at stake.
The fall of the Berlin Wall was a real-time illustration of what Edward Lorenz (a meteorologist and mathematician who worked on chaos theory) called the ‘butterfly effect’, which he described as the metaphorical example of the details of a tornado (the exact time of formation, the exact path it follows) being affected by minor perturbations such as a distant butterfly flapping its wings several weeks earlier1In 1972, Edward Lorenz gave a lecture at the American Association for the Advancement of Science entitled Predictability: Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?. We’ve all heard the classic sentence that sums up this theory: “Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?” While we all agree that the fall of the Wall was in no way comparable to the flap of a butterfly’s wings, its effects went much further than the reunification of Germany, as many Europeans might believe. The end of the Soviet regime caused a great deal of collateral damage, including the war in the former Yugoslavia and the worsening of the situation in Cuba, which is still subject to the United States embargo. In general, all sister countries were affected by this shift in the so-called ‘world order’. Beyond the historical and political realities that were transformed as a result of this event, the fall of the Wall can be seen, just like the example of butterfly wings, as a metaphor.
But while the world’s main memory of 1989 was the fall of the Berlin Wall, there were also a number of ‘minor perturbations’, to borrow the words of Lorenz, that did not receive the same level of attention but nonetheless challenged the established order. In the same year, an inspired Jean-Hubert Martin created the historic exhibition Les Magiciens de la Terre, with which he intended to provide an unbiased representation of contemporary artistic production around the world. Without going into great detail about the impact of this exhibition (which has been widely discussed), one of the most important counter effects was the launch of the magazine Revue in 1991, leading to the development of a different, not exclusively European approach to art history. In 1989, the CAAM (Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno) was created by Martín Chirino. For the first time in Europe, this represented a clear desire to move away from Eurocentrism. By basing its initial concept on tri-continentality (Africa, Europe, and the Americas), CAAM opened up a new space for cultural exchange and discussion, a new contemporaneity that would finally influence the international scene, which adopted a less condescending attitude towards non-European artists.
But before returning to artistic and contemporary developments, I would like to take a look back at the historical, political, economic, and religious context of this time. Here I’ve distinguished these four concepts in semantic terms, but they are obviously closely linked and still directly influence the way the world is organised. I will begin this journey back to the future with the Abrahamic religions. After that I will not necessarily follow a chronological order, but rather attempt to visit all the different continents. As far as religions are concerned, they have clearly reached the four corners of the globe. The effects of the Crusades, the Jihads, and other more or less latent religious conflicts can be seen daily in international politics. Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press marked the height of the schism in the Catholic Church caused by Martin Luther.
In October 1517, the Augustinian monk Martin Luther posted his Ninety-five Theses against papal indulgences on the door of Wittenberg Castle in Saxony. This act of separation is considered to be the beginning of the Reformation, laying the foundations for a new Christian religion, Protestantism. The culmination came with Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press, which enabled Luther to disseminate his vernacular translation of the Bible based on the original Greek texts of the New Testament, published in 1522, and the Hebrew texts of the Old Testament, published in 1534. Together with the Apocryphical books, they formed the first complete Bible in German. This event sparked a popular revolution in the way people approached the Christian faith.
The Age of Discovery (at least from a Western perspective) was not merely a time of scientific or cartographic expeditions, but was in fact driven by economic motives. It was the era of terra incognita or terra nullius, as the British called Australia. This classification, which heralded the division of the world among the Western powers, still has consequences on the way that certain theories are developed. The assumption that there were unknown lands or, worse still, lands that belonged to nobody entailed the development of a rhetoric that would later lead to colonisation (i.e. appropriation) and slavery. While creating divided and dehumanised societies, colonisation, just like slavery, contributed to the emergence of a creolized world, despite their stated objectives.
But this forced creolization was not a natural movement, as shown by the Valladolid debate (from 15 August 1550 to 4 May 1551) between the Dominican Bartolomeo de Las Casas and the theologian Juan Ginès de Sepulveda. This debate concerned the moral legitimacy of the ‘right of conquest’. The question was whether Native Americans in Spanish colonies could be considered natural slaves, as per Aristotle’s definition of ‘those whose business is to use their body, and who can do nothing better, are by nature slaves’ (Politics, Book I).
In 1537, Pope Paul III condemned the enslavement of Indigenous peoples and asserted their rights as human beings to freedom and property, through the bulls Veritas ipsa (2 June 1537) and Sublimis Deus (9 June 1537). Torn between opposing interest groups defending economic interests and exposing the abuses of colonists, Charles V banned slavery and subsequently enacted the Leyes Nuevas in November 1542, which placed Indigenous peoples under the protection of the Spanish crown and required the viceroys of Peru and the courts of Lima and Guatemala to crack down on abuses committed by the encomenderos and to stop granting new encomiendas. These laws provoked an uprising of the encomenderos and brought about the death of the viceroy of Peru. Charles V suspended colonisation and decided that a formal debate must take place regarding the legitimacy of institutional conquest. In conclusion, Bartolomé de Las Casas won the battle. In the years that followed, Charles V published new laws that would, this time, effectively protect Indigenous peoples. Some historians have therefore concluded that Las Casas’ defence of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas led to the importation of Black people, who were not entitled to a debate on their fate.
One day when she was too tired, Rosa Parks decided not to go and sit in the rear section designated for Black people on a crowded bus in segregationist America. This personal and individual act contributed to the downfall of the unjust system that prevailed in the United States, confirming the proof that so-called minor phenomena can have major consequences. The Russian Revolution of 1917, like the French Revolution of 1789, spread like wildfire across the world and were later echoed in the student movements that marked the late 1960s. There are countless examples of these shock waves, and I will not attempt to provide an exhaustive list that would undoubtedly require hundreds of hefty volumes. Yet the world has always struggled to accept this interdependence, which is not always related to an intellectual or political event but can be a natural phenomenon, like the flapping of a butterfly’s wings. There are still people who, even in the first quarter of the twentyfirst century (mostly the big polluters), refuse to accept evidence of global warming, just like in the past when Galileo’s counterparts rejected his claim that the Earth was round.
I enjoy creating these brief stories about the world to put this famous historical and political space into perspective; this space that, like it or not, we have jointly inherited. These stories force us to decontextualise events and frame them within broader fields of reflection. They provide a panoramic view that allows us to appreciate, or rather analyse, the trends that invade us in successive waves, one after the other. The day before yesterday it was a jumble of structuralism, anthropophagy, postmodernism, and all the other ‘posts’ that followed (colonialism and humanism, to name but a few). Today, concepts such as the rhizome are back in vogue for those who are finally discovering Edouard Glissant. I even observe, not without a certain level of amusement, the arrival of certain theories in the West based on the quilombo (should we say quilombismo?), brought by those for whom the figure of Zumbi dos Palmares dethrones icons such as Che Guevara. I will not mention the Anthropocene, which has been all the rage for several years now.
How does artistic creation deal with this outpouring of discourse? How can seemingly contradictory or even conflicting stories be effectively and clearly merged? To create the whole-world, how do we bring together thoughts that have always been in opposition, and which may in fact be fuelled by these very oppositions? How can we make art today in a world that, contrary to the illusion promoted by globalisation, is shrinking and turning in on itself in a form of retrograde communitarianism? How can we develop an original aesthetic that does not clash with political and nationalist considerations, which sometimes echo old feelings of guilt? This was undoubtedly the personal undertaking of Koyo Kouoh, whose work on the 61st Venice Biennale will see the light of day without her. Koyo, who focused her philosophy on people (with art taking second place), created an experimental laboratory in Dakar, RAW Material Company, whose roots have spread around the world. If any proof were needed, this project shows that you do not have to physically be in the long-designated ‘centre’ to influence events beyond your geographic borders.
The butterfly effect renders any notion of borders obsolete, as it operates in a telluric manner. I remember the ridiculous political speeches given in France after the Chernobyl disaster, when authorities tried to convince citizens that the radioactive cloud would be stopped at the border. Telluric describes the raw material, the materia prima of alchemists, that Kouoh refers to, detached from any ideology or presupposed knowledge; a material that is used as is, observing it, listening to it, seeing it for what it is and not for what it is supposed to be. This is exactly what happened to Picasso when he discovered African statuary: ‘Only an artist who had shown themselves capable, with such precocity and ease, of imitating the type of painting his father championed, could challenge it so spontaneously, could understand so quickly that something was fundamentally flawed in what it was saying and the way it was saying it. Picasso would only see exactly what this was thanks to the ‘shock’, the ‘revelation’ he experienced when viewing tribal masks and ‘fetishes’ at the Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro. “And then, he would later say, I understood that this was the very meaning of painting”.2William Rubin, Picasso, in Primitivism in 20th Century Art, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1988.
When a European artist breaks free from the aesthetic codes in which they were raised, they create the fluidity and openness needed for artistic creation. Picasso’s ‘discovery’ thus revolutionised the history of Western art and, through a process of ebb and flow, the history of world art. Ebbs and flows are elements of movement and circulation that liberate us from a local perspective to achieve the glocalism (a blend of local and global) advocated by Homi Bhaba. Even if some, particularly systems linked to the art market and institutions, continue to operate with a centralised mindset, creativity should obviously not be subject to any kind of hierarchy. The concept of beauty (along with all the reservations we may hold in this regard) is not exclusive to any particular geographical area but takes many different forms, influenced by different codes and sensibilities. And just as in the realm of music, it is these variations that enrich artistic creation.
‘In that house of shadows where Rembrandt still plies his brush, all the illustrious Shades, from the artists of the caverns onwards, follow each movement of the trembling hand that is drafting for them a new lease of survival — or of sleep. And that hand whose waverings in the gloom are watched by ages immemorial is vibrant with one of the loftiest yet compelling testimonies to the power and the glory of being Man’.
In this excerpt from the novel The Voices of Silence by French writer André Malraux, the author mentions the glory of being man (that is, of being human), and it is this notion that I would like to dwell on for a moment. A Latin author, I believe, once said ‘nothing human is alien to me’, and it is this idea, this concrete reality, that we sometimes tend to forget. Who remembers the exact origins of yoga (one of the six orthodox schools of Indian astika philosophy whose goal is liberation), which is practised the world over? Who remembers that chess is a Persian invention? And how many tools are there that we now take for granted and no longer pay any attention to, but which have changed the way we perceive the world? The blue note, which was the memory of black slaves (Africans) in the United States, helped them survive and was the origin of the blues, which revolutionised world music.
There is what we know, which amounts to very little, and what we do not know. There is our comfort zone, which gives us the illusion that we are the centre of everything, and the vast, bustling world that breathes and lives outside of us. There are countless minor perturbations that we are unaware of, but which influence our daily lives. Art cannot represent anything other than the echo of political, societal, and aesthetic situations worldwide. Art represents a space for invention, projection, and agglomeration. How can we envisage tomorrow’s world based on our experience? How can we respond to global madness from a position that is not hampered by short-term visions? How can we create a vision free of capitalist and commercial constraints that does not simply follow the latest trends? This seventh issue of Atlántica invites us to broaden our horizons and exercise our critical faculties, not by clinging to outdated certainties, but by embracing openness and inquisitiveness.
Were those who left these messages on cave walls, the meaning of which we still do not fully understand, mad, or were they unwittingly searching for something utterly impossible? These hands, which did not seek to undo the world order, but to become one with their environment and fears, show us the way. These hands, which, according to Malraux, have been trembling in the gloom for thousands of years, passed on their power to Rembrandt. And beyond the Dutch master, this same trembling has run through the hands of artists throughout the ages and been passed down to contemporary artists. A trembling from the dawn of time that, like the butterfly effect, has travelled across time and borders.
Simon Njami – Editorial Coordinator
Simon Njami studied literature, law, and philosophy at the Sorbonne University in Paris.
He is a Paris-based independent curator, lecturer, art critic and novelist. Njami was the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Revue Noire, a journal of contemporary African and extra-occidental art. He served as artistic director of the first Johannesburg art fair in 2008, the Bamako photography biennale for ten years, and the Dak’Art Biennale (2016/2018). He co-curated the first African pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007.
Njami was also curator of the 2020 Abu Dhabi art fair and co-curator of the Sao Paulo Biennale 2002.
In addition, Njami has curated numerous exhibitions of contemporary art and photography and currently serves as chief-curator of the international annual exhibition Something Else, at the Salah Adin Citadel in Cairo (2023).
He is member of the Curatorial team of the future Modern Art Museum in Benin. He created and is leading the critical thinking workshop AtWork, conceived with the Moleskine Foundation. He published and edited numerous books among which two biographies,James Baldwin and Leopold Sédar Senghor, and four novels. His latest publication is Stories Histories, the story of Revue noire (2021). His last novelLa Mécanique des souvenirs (JC Lattès) came out in November 2024.