Totems
One of the theories about the disappearance of the Rapa Nui people on Easter Island points to the depletion of natural resources and intense deforestation as the main cause of their demise. Today, the process seems to be repeating itself, this time on a global scale. As isolated as Easter Island, our planet is a fragile miracle full of life surrounded by the vast expanse of a cosmic ocean. And overpopulation and overconsumption appear to be pushing it towards a similarly gloomy fate.
Like moais standing by the ocean, these post-industrial ‘Totems’ become the perfect metaphor for what could be the only remnants of our human civilisation. These ‘Totems’, which are actually eroded vestiges of industrial farm walls, become the perfect metaphor for the contemporary chiefs and deities that rule our ‘Modern Project’, as coined by the philosopher Martin Heidegger. Eventually, like the moais, they might serve as the only traces that remain after its collapse. How will these ‘sculptures’ be deciphered once we are gone?
As Robert Macfarlane puts it: “The Anthropocene requires us to undertake a retrospective reading of the current moment, – a ‘palaeontology of the present’ in which we ourselves have become sediments, strata, and ghosts. It asks that we imagine a single figure: a hypothetical post-human [archaeologist] who – millions of years into the future, long after the extinction of our species – will examine the underland for what it reveals of the epoch of Anthropos”
When the guilt becomes unbearable, it might be useful to put things in perspective. On a more philosophical level, these ‘Totems’ remind us of the Japanese notion of wabi-sabi. Everything is devolving towards nothingness; all things are impermanent. These images, using the words of Leonard Koren, become an ‘aesthetic appreciation of the evanescence of life, […] force us to contemplate our own mortality and evoke an existential loneliness and tender sadness.’
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. In the face of deep time, whatever we do to our planet will last only so briefly.
