THE SHIP
HEMELLIGGAAM OR THE ATTEMPT TO BE HERE NOW

Everard Read, Cape Town
2 - 21 August 2021

'I believe it comes in peace. The lines are too harmonious to be designed by devils.'
Prof Roland Mertyn (From "Swart Ster oor Die Karoo", Jan Rabie 1957)

The ship is an installation from the project/archive Hemelliggaam Or The Attempt To Be Here Now. Images, videos and fragments from the project attempting to connect and resonate in the historically maritime surrounding area, in the house of the old Harbour Master:

All the contents, composing 'The ship', including some inspired by pages of old Afrikaans science fiction novels, are about the human journey, how we perceive ourselves and our connection with the cosmos.


'The ship' is sailing between waves and stars, between past and present, reality and fiction.
'The ship' is discovering, is passing, is disappearing.


 

Installation photographs by Micheal Hall

 

Selected works

 

Videos - on monitor or projection

1 Horisontal - 3 videos loop

DAVID AND BELLA, OBSERVATORY, WESTERN CAPE

The Carina Nebula. This is an exposure of several hours taken with the Astrographic telescope of the Royal Observatory.
A series of drawings of Halley's comet made by Sir John Herschel from Cape Town around 1835.
The McClean telescope dating from around 1900.
The bottom end of the Astrographic telescope. A glass photographic plate was placed in the plateholder.
Oldest dome at the Royal Observatory, dating from 1847.
The Royal Observatory photographed from across the Black River, with Devil's Peak in the background.
David Gill, who was Director at the Royal Observatory 1879-1907 at his desk in 1888 - with his wife Bella.
A total eclipse blotting out the bright Sun and showing the Corona around it.

Plates on loan from the South African Astronomical Observatory, descriptions courtesy of Prof Ian Glass.

THERE WAS NOTHING, TABLE MOUNTAIN, CAPE TOWN, WESTERN CAPE

The report came through on the radio… “We had to rise over Wenmmershoek and Du Toits kloof mountains, and they were difficult to identify. But the Hex River Valley's mountains were unmistakable. To our left is Matroosberg now. Nowhere even a light. Nothing…”

Video inspired by ‘Swart ster oor die Karoo’ (Black star over the Karoo) by Jan Rabie, 1957. On the future Earth where the main characters find themselves the earth is covered with ice and everyone lives underground. In Cape Town the entrance is on top of Table Mountain.

Translated from Afrikaans to English.

SKA-AP, SKA SITE, NORTHERN CAPE

'Feral horses and sheep within the core site were also causing problems, apparently, and so too the jackal populations now able to move freely between adjoining farms and a space functioning as a de facto (soon to be formalised) nature reserve. The result is a curious superposition of cutting-edge technology and incipient wilderness.'

From 'Impossible Images: Radio Astronomy, the Square Kilometre Array and the Art of Seeing' by Hedley Twidle

 

2 Vertical - 3 videos loop

:LOELOERAAI IN COURT, OUDTSHOORN, WESTERN CAPE

“The prisoner will finish three months of hard labour and then be sent away… “Wait, constable,” he says, “I’ve got something to say to the magistrate. Official,” he continues to the magistrate, “I don’t blame you. You are doing what you perceive as your duty. I also have a duty that I’m committed to - a commitment to myself and to those that I represent here alone. In the world that I’m coming from, we are law abiding, not under the force of the magistrates and constables and jails and chains, but out of love for one another.’

From Loeloeraai, 1923, CJ Langenhoven (Translated from the original Afrikaans)

KOM TERUG, KWAGGA (COME BACK, QUAGGA), ITEMBA ACCELERATOR-BASED SCIENCES, CAPE TOWN, WESTERN CAPE

Quagga were all wiped out by pioneer hunters in Southern Africa during the 19th century. They were a subspecies of Zebra basically similar in appearance, with wider stripes that disappear towards the back of their bodies. In 1987 a programme started to try and resurrect the Quagga using selective breeding. Those found on the grounds of the iThemba Lab (the largest facility of Africa for particle and nuclear research) is part of this ongoing programme.

EVA STELLARIS PLANT, ITHEMBA LABS, WESTERN CAPE

“For the first time, she looks up, her gaze straight and honest, her voice sad: “My assignment was only and specifically the biological and hydroponic work I did here in Saakni. Please, you have the power over my life, but not my words."

From ‘Swart ster oor die Karoo’ (Black star over the Karoo) by Jan Rabie, 1957. Translated from the original Afrikaans. Eva Stellaris was sent as a helper from the future. Part of her command involved only answering in a way that complements the knowledge that already exists and not help directly, “that man should, after all, help himself.”


IBART JANSE VAN RENSBURG, SALPETERKOP, NORTHERN CAPE

‘To think, that we went back - we went forward. Everything was white, ice, there was nothing. The ice was already a few hundred meters high when we left, but now there were no mountains, no hills. Just ice, as far as you could see, just ice. There was no Karoo, you didn’t even know which country you were in, just ice, people had to live underground - and still, what kind of life was this?’

Video and words inspired by ‘Swart ster oor die Karoo’ by Jan Rabie, 1957. Novel about a future human race that has to live in a solar system where the Sun has gone dark. They travel back in time and stop the earth from turning so that the one side becomes cold and the other side hot, to try persuade humans of the past to change their ways for the sake of the future - they also take them to the future where the physically adapted humans are all living underground to stay alive.

ANNA VAN WYK, SUTHERLAND, NORTHERN CAPE

’If I could see myself a few years ago I’d be a millionaire - if I only knew then what I know now. A person shouldn’t just look at and compare yourself to others - you need to look at yourself and let yourself grow into life so that you reach out to others.’

Video inspired by ‘Swart ster oor die Karoo’ (Black star over the Karoo) by Jan Rabie, 1957. In the novel there is a chapter where the humans are given the opportunity to see themselves - as they are in the past, but ahead of the time they left to travel to the future.