Abstract

This article explores how conceptions of time are visualised and “storied” in the collaborative photography and video project Hemelliggaam or the Attempt to Be Here Now by Cape Town-based artists Tommaso Fiscaletti and Nic Grobler. Hemelliggaam is a digital audiovisual archive of photography and video installations “exploring the existential aspects of the human–environment– astronomy relationship” (https://hemelliggaam.squarespace.com/about). Through analysing a selection of photographs and videos, my investigation attempts to unravel the human–environment–astronomy relationship as it plays out in various narratives in the virtual archive. Combining representations of astronomic sites, such as the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project in Carnarvon, with fragments of Afrikaans author Jan Rabie’s mid-century sci-fi novels, the archive seeks to visualise the multifaceted complexity of human engagements with time. I argue that Hemelliggaam, as an audiovisual archive that contextualises time through geology, astronomy, mythology, and science fiction, should be recognised as a project visualising the overlapping of different timescales. The article contextualises Hemelliggaam in contemporary discourses of the Anthropocene, specifically Dipesh Chakrabarty’s idea that a critical framing of the topic needs to recognise the differences between human- historical time and geological-planetary time. By examining the “storying” of overlapped timescales, I suggest that an interdisciplinary approach acknowledging the contributions of both the sciences and the humanities to meaning-making is increasingly relevant to our age of planetary crisis.

摘要

本文探讨了在开普敦艺术家 Tommaso Fiscaletti 和 Nic Grobler的合作摄影和视频项目Hemelliggaam 或 Attempt to Be Here Now中，时间的概念是如何被形象化和“故事化”的。黑梅利加姆是摄影和视频装置的数字视听档案，“探索人类-环境-天文学关系的存在方面”(https://hemelliggaam.squarespace.com/about)。通过分析精选的照片和视频，我的调查试图揭示虚拟档案中各种叙述中的人类-环境-天文学关系。该档案馆将卡那封的平方公里阵列 (SKA) 项目等天文遗址的展示与南非荷兰语作家扬·拉比 (Jan Rabie) 的中世纪科幻小说的片段相结合，力求将人类与时间互动的多方面复杂性形象化。我认为Hemelliggaam作为一个通过地质学、天文学、神话和科幻小说将时间语境化的视听档案，应该被视为一个可视化不同时间尺度重叠的项目。这篇文章将Hemelliggaam置于人类世的当代话语中，特别是 Dipesh Chakrabarty 的观点，即该主题的批判性框架需要认识到人类历史时间和地质行星时间之间的差异。通过研究重叠时间尺度的“故事”，我建议承认科学和人文学科对意义创造的贡献的跨学科方法与我们这个星球危机时代越来越相关。