Future Fossils: Deep Future and Archaeology
Our ancestral inheritance is bound by migration, exchange and conquest. With the gods and semi-divine heroes there also travelled a mental cargo, the baggage of stories – muthoi, thus myths. Although during these times – the Greek alphabet was on the point of being invented, circulating in the many contexts of gods and heroes.
The beauty of ruins and archaeological sites is that its mysticism is unleashed through one’s imagination, filling in the voids one senses and views, when laying eyes upon such a fragmented and disembodied landscape. Objects lying around scattered, become entities – relics, belonging to what were immense temples either places of sacrifice, spaces of communal rite and lives perished.
Accessible for future generations through data, art, science and all knowledge assemblaged and entwined through the construction of stories and poetics, ruins of antiquity – be they Classical antiquities, both monuments and sculptures of past civilization, future fossils are future stories yet to be told; myths connecting to Deep Future.
Language as much as ancient monuments, ruins and artifacts thereof, belong to the notion of an everchanging landscape and deep sense of cultural synergy, forged by migration, whence our timely presence merges with the existence of ephemeral ‘bodies of forgotten civilization’. Materialised and non-material entities, objects likewise vowels uttered, brought together in a ritual performed, in Deep Future. Alas, a future odyssey is to be uncovered, along the Mediterranean shores and its hinterlands…
These works were created in connotation with “One”, A Letter to Eternity, a hybrid filmproject – currently in development. During a process of orientation a visit to Egypt in December 2019, enabled to do further research. My visit was sponsored by The University of Leiden and the Department of Classical and Mediterranean Archaeology, affiliated with the NWO-VICI project Innovating Objects, whilst being present during an international conference held at the Centre d’Études Alexandrines: Alexandria the cosmopolis: a global perspective, by Full Professor dr. Miguel John Versluys, Dr. Eleni Fragaki and Marie-Dominique Nenna, Director of Research, CNRS and Director of Centre d’Études Alexandrines.
October 2019 the Netherlands Film Fund allocated a startsubsidy for the first development phase of the hybrid filmproject “One”, A Letter to Eternity.
I am inspired by Greek tragedy & mythology, Egyptian mythology, Hermetic philosophy and alchemy, Classical- and Mediterranean archaeology and the Phoenicians’ ancient maritime routes, connecting the Levant to South-East Europe and North-Africa. The concept and its research took shape during – and since, a three month artist-in-residence at Ashkal Alwan, from March 1st – June 1st 2016, in affiliation with the Mondriaan Fund in The Netherlands.
