Paper short abstract:

This paper sheds new light on travelling concepts of the (built) environment between Africa and Europe by first concentrating on a case study of such transcontinental exchange, before then discussing a case study of conceptual South-South relationships to overcome center and periphery concepts.

Paper long abstract:

This paper sheds new light on the question of travelling concepts of the (built) environment between Africa and Europe by first concentrating on a case study of such transcontinental exchange including notions of physical and epistemic violence, and the legacies of colonialism, before then discussing a second case study of conceptual South-South relationships. Caribbean scholars such as Édouard Glissant have long drawn on the image of the mangrove to conceptualize transcultural entanglements, interactions, and exchange. Focusing on coastal East Africa, a region physically covered by mangrove trees, whose built environment, however, is no less characterized by wide-ranging networks, connectivity, and liminality than these forests growing at the threshold of land and sea, while both are also frequently entangled - in the case of overgrown ruins, for example, and their representation in photography etc. - this paper investigates complex intersections between the natural and built environment, connectivity, resistance, and entanglements between the local and the global. A discussion of the productivity of the concept of mangrove aesthetics between the Caribbean and coastal East Africa will thereby allow to test this case of a possible conceptual South-South relationship to overcome traditional notions of center and periphery and to provide a counter example to the conceptual exchange between Africa and Europe, before making finally clear, how also analyses of the liminal spaces along the Swahili coast can make pointed contributions to current debates in transcultural art history today - also far beyond East Africa.