Knowing Your Place In The Multiverse
Whenever you find a society, you’ll find artwork. Clearly if it was useless it wouldn’t keep popping up everywhere, no matter how tribal or sophisticated, no matter how libertine or authoritarian.
Today the Jakarta Post reported of an archaelogical find of some hand prints they believe predate Aboriginal settlement of Australia.
People were creating cave art in Indonesia 67,800 years ago, before modern humans reached Australia.
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One hand stencil was dated to at least 67,800 years ago, making it the oldest securely dated cave art ever found anywhere in the world. This is at least 15,000 years older than the rock art we had previously dated in this region, and more than 30,000 years older than the oldest cave art found in France. It shows humans were making cave art images much earlier than we once believed.
Those archaeologists will be taking some wild guesses as to why that hand was stencilled on the wall. My hunch is it could’ve been a signal of some kind, like “so and so was here” or “this way to the airport waiting lounge” or “this is our cave, get lost”. It could also be some tool to signify an identity (eg: whoever’s hand fits the silhouete is tribal leader), or maybe it was giving youth a frame of reference as to their age and height, like those charts they have in classrooms. Maybe it was all or none of the above.
I predict in the near future we’ll be travelling less than what we’ve been used to. If a civil collapse is properly on then there has to be people who’ll want to document what goes on. Or what is around them, or what is going on in their head. Or just doing some random fiddling with their hands that will turn into a material artifact. It may not even be material, it might be people making rhymes or whistling tunes in their head or re-enacting things that happened to their friends.
It is as simple as that. There’ll be alot of spare time. People will want to make art and talk about it. That’s what makes it an “expression”.
There’ll always be the other motives: religion, propaganda, advertising, instructionals, commemorations etc.
With Robert Williams’ book Ink, Blood and Linseed Oil still in my mind, I’m thinking about how a lot of cultural expression is anonymous and disappears quickly. One reason to spend more time on one piece of work is to make it more permanent, or a stronger and more valued feature that can stick around for longer.
If it is produced out of boredom, in a state of low-simmering thought, as a lot of good stuff is, then it represents a psychological subconsiousness popping up. So in that sense it represents dreams, fears and the state of mind of the artist, as that is the layer you find below intelligent thought. That can be a helpful marker for other people present and in the future, regardless of whether the artist gives much of a stuff about what they think or not.
PS: Happy Australia Day to everyone who honours that day, what a humdinger of a day it was.
