(Excerpt)

Part 2. The corpse, a technology of memory

Regardless of the original intentions the earliest human had for drawing, this accounts for one of the first technologies of memory for which it captures–by artifact– an image of a material present to preserve it against the erosion of time: the continuity of human experience. I now want to emphasize the notion of death. Death is involved here not in a ritualistic character but in the material in two respects. First, it is believed that the torches these people used to illuminate the cave were made of animal grease5, here the death of the creature and the substance of its body are thus intrinsically integrated into the process leading this activity. Second, and this is my major contribution to the analysis, is that the corpse of the animal could not only be a matter of material resource (food, covering, grease), but becomes an object of aesthetic quality, an object studied by the human for its difference, and its shape and attributes assimilated and reproduced pictorially.

The question is, why analyze the corpse and not the living body standing in grace as depicted in the caves? Let us not forget these images belong in a deep, dark space, given the careful inscription of the beast’s attributes, the precise dimensions of its form, and even the depth of its form, it is just logical to suppose that it could have not been achieved only by means of observation and innate memory, but that a referential image/object needed to serve human contemplation in a state of immobility. The image could have not been the result of an ethereal, phenomenal experience of witnessing and remembering. Unless they possessed a quality of photographic memory that we’ve since lost, the human brain cannot by its own imprint images and preserve them for further replication without the use of a technology of memory. Instead of thinking that they observed “scenes” and brought them into the caves to reanimate them, I propose that a meticulous study of the creature’s shape in a state of immobility was thus necessary. The corpse, for instance, might not have been present during its drawing, but it had been analyzed priorly, as an object of difference.

Detail of Hall of Bulls, Lascaux c. 16,000–14,000 B.C.E.

The human, before knowing it is human is a beast. Yet it is a beast conscious of the death it has brought upon the multiple beasts that surround, threaten and help its own existence and the ones it protects, these radical creatures bear terrified at what they no longer are, and for whatever reasons, have chosen to depict these different beings (animals) in the most grandiose and advanced way available to them.

For instance, this contraposes the general notion that these pictorial practices were ritualistic, as for hunting as commonly argued. Let me stress again the idea that for this sensible exercise (image-making), hunting precedes the pictorial practice and not the other way around. That is to say, there is no way to prove these images are created as the means for achieving an undisclosed capacity, but given that the images can’t be created without a total investment of human will upon the beast’s body, we are certain that they can only come from–as a result of–hunting.

Depiction of aurochs, horses and deer. Detail of Hall of Bulls, Lascaux c. 16,000–14,000 B.C.E.

Part 3. The creation of darkness through light

We can’t affirm whether this pictorial activity was exclusive to cave-like dark spaces, or if only the ones done in caves have been preserved, thought, we can’t ignore that the crucial decision for these people to choose deep darkness for this to take place, responds to a particular need followed by a deliberate determination (discern) inaccessible for our present comprehension. Nevertheless, there are just a few speculations available to us to make sense of humans’ earliest sensible interventions in their environment and the creation of their own environment.

Let us imagine for a second the total darkness of the world at night before sustainable systems of lighting, while we cannot know how these creatures related to this immense obscurity, for them to find a place that remains dark against the totality of its surrounding, changing environment (dark even at day), and the decision to intervene on it with light technology (torches and painting) conveys the creation of a space, architectural if you dare. In Lascaux, light and darkness define one another in a negative relation, functionally they are not only creating illumination but creating darkness as something that fills up a space, and the images, in their phenomenal condition, are brought to life only in a moment granted by a device of light, and along with that light, they will vanish until they are once again discovered.