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Oct 4, 2008

Project: hikwsi (2008)

The Concept of Hikwsi in Traditional Hopi Philosophy

Scholarly efforts to understand the Hopi concept of hikwsi were rather unilateral and led to the oversimplified conclusion that hikwsi is a Hopi linguistic equivalent for the soul. This article attempts to shed some light on this important philosophical concept in a Hopi language perspective, particularly as applied in an explanation of human structure and behavior.

In the Hopi belief, death does not end a person’s presence in the physical world, but marks a transition from one state of being to another or, in other words, from one form of experience to another. On the fourth day after death, a person’s breath (hikwsi) leaves the body and goes to a place which represents the other realm of existence, not separated from the world of the living, but different in that this realm is unmanifested, unseen, and not accessible to the senses. In ethnographic and anthropological literature this symbolic place has been described as the Underworld, Lower World, Third World, or the World of the Dead (maski; mas-ki, “corpse-home”). According to Emory Sekaquaptewa, this concept can be expressed by a Hopi word, atkya, which literary means “down below.”

The word atkya can refer not only to an area at the bottom of the Grand Canyon (Ongtupqa) called Sipaapuni, from which the Hopi came out of the Underworld, but also to an area seen from the tops of Hopi mesas in the southwestern direction. This area is marked with kiikiqo (literally, “ruins”; metaphorically, “footprints”), places inhabited once by Hopi ancestors (Hisatsinom) before they arrived at Hopi present settlements, such as, for instance, Homol’ovi, Wupatki, Tsor’ovi (Tuzigoot), and others. hikwsi of the dead is believed to have the ability to return to the Hopi mesas in visible forms of clouds, rain (or katsinam) and act as an animating force in the sensuous world of the living.

Many researchers of Hopi culture considered the term hikwsi as the Hopi name for the soul which was said to live forever after the body dies. As Fewkes notes: “The modern Hopi recognize in man a double nature, corresponding to body and soul, and to the latter they… give the expressive name breath-body [hik’si]… It is the breath-body or shade of man which passes at death through sipapuh, or gateway, to the underworld…” The Underworld is perceived not only as “the ultimate home to which the soul of the dead person must go,” but also as “the place of its [the soul’s] genesis before it was embodied.”

By Maria D. Glowacka
American Indian Culture and Research Journal
23:2 (1999) 137-143

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Photo/Video shooting:
19 sept. / 03 Oct. 2008

Location:
New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, Utah

White Sands (New Mexico)

Arches National Park (Utah)

Bryce Canyon (Utah)

Grand Canyon (Arizona)

Canyonlands (Utah)

Dead Horse Canyon (Utah)

Monument Valley (Utah)

Potash Road (Utah)

———–

Music:

Michael Trommer

Michael Trommer is a Toronto based producer and visual artist who has recorded for such top electronic music labels as Transmat, Wave, Truffle, Stasisfield, Interchill, Monocromatica, Thinner and con-v. He records under his own name, as well as aliases such as ’sans soleil’, ‘minidisco’, ‘Hydraulic’,and ‘Manitou2′.

Broad-minded in his approach to electronic music, Michael also creates gallery-based audio installation work. 2005 saw him creating a site-specific sound installation for Australia’s ‘Liquid Architecture’ exhibition. Another of his recent works was a net-based audio-manipulation project which was part of the ‘from 0 to 1 and back again’ exhibition at Kunsthalle Schirn in Frankfurt; this became the subject of many radio specials on both Deutsche Welle and Hessischer Rundfunk. In 2000, his work was nominated for the Prix Italia for experimental music. His field-recording based material has been featured on London’s Resonance FM, www.vagueterrain.net, www.insine.net, www.monocromatica.com, and www.stasisfield.com. A site-specific field-recording based installation is being exhibited in New York state’s upper Catskill forest (www.restlessculture.net/deepwoods) from the end of May.

Contact: 
trommer@sympatico.ca 
http://www.myspace.com/mtrommer

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Video:

Part 1 (New Mexico - White Sands)

(4:00 mins. - HD)

Music: Michael Trommer