Reverse Hallucinations in the Archipelago

3 Reverse Hallucinations in the Archipelago intercalations 3 I The intercalations: paginated exhibition series is an experimental foray exploring the structure of the book as a potential curatorial space. As the reader-as-exhibition-viewer moves through the book-as-exhibition, she discovers that the erratic intercalations of the Anthropocene invite new forms of literacy, visuality, inquiry, and speculation that are, in the words of Clarice Lispector, less promiscuous than they are kaleidoscopic. intercalations is a project of SYNAPSE—The International Curators’ Network, published by K. Verlag and Haus der Kulturen der Welt intercalations: in conjunction with “The Anthropocene Project.” paginated exhibition series II III Reverse Hallucinations in the Archipelago unfolds an itinerant encounter with nineteenth-century European naturalists in the Malay world, where the theory of evolution by natural selection emerged alongside less celebrated concerns about mass extinction and climate change; by re-considering Reverse Hallucinations the reverse hallucinatory condition of colonial science in the tropics—how scientists learned to not see what was manifestly present—the reader- in the Archipelago as- exhibition-viewer may exhume from the remains of this will to knowledge an ethical conviction co-edited by of particular relevance for confronting forms of Anna-Sophie Springer neocolonization in the Anthropocene. & Etienne Turpin in association with Kirsten Einfeldt & Daniela Wolf intercalations 3 Preface by Kirsten Einfeldt & Daniela Wolf Orra White Hitchcock, Plate 27, “Strata near Valenciennes,” 1828–40, pen and ink drawing on linen, (1 of 61). Courtesy of Amherst College Digital Collections. Below a surface of three horizontal, uninterrupted layers, six types of sedimentation are seen moving their way up and down in a zigzag and pushing against a nearly horizontal section of differently composed layers situated on the left side of the image. While the two segments are still separated by a thin black line, it seems like a mere matter of time before the erratic layers on the right side of the image infiltrate the more consistent horizontal layers on the left. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, Orra White Hitchcock (1796–1863) was one of the earliest female scientific illustrators in America. Working with and for her husband Edward, a geology professor, she created hundreds of illustrations of both botanical specimens and geological formations, such as Plate 27, “Strata near Valenciennes.” Seen today, Hitchcock’s sectional views of soil and rock strata in earthy tones evoke the evenly patterned artworks of twentieth-century artists Anni and Josef Albers. In the vocabulary of geology, the proper term for one type of rock being pushed in-between other stratified segments is an “intercalation.” With reference to its Latin etymology, the word literally means something like “being inserted between an existing ‘proclamation’”—or, something that has been under- stood as of official, and of great importance, is changed because of a new layer or element having entered the reified sequence. In contrast to hard rock, the stuff of narrative is softer and more V malleable to begin with. Nevertheless, in a novel, the work Dear Reader-as-Exhibition-Viewer, of weaving one story into another shares the eponymous, albeit literary term, “intercalation.” In the wake of the Anthropocene Reverse Hallucinations in the Archipelago explores the legacies hypothesis—which, at least in part, contends that anthropogenic of colonial science in Southeast Asia, asking how to meaningfully sedimentations are transforming previous geological compo- re-calibrate the natural histories of the Malay Archipelago in our sitions in literally fundamental ways—the intercalating of existing era, which some have called the “Plantationocene.” In dealing “stories” and “official proclamations” with transformative and with various natural history collections from Indonesia, this book erratic new layers seems of particular urgency. has become its own singular collection. It gathers a series of Inspired by Orra White Hitchcock’s dynamic line drawings contributions into a novel constellation that reflects on the Malay and a polysemic concept that sits comfortably, if at times errati- region and concepts of its “nature” within the context of the cally, in both earth science and the humanities, the intercalations: birth of modern biology and tropical agriculture, as well as colonial paginated exhibition series developed for the SYNAPSE resource extraction and the collection of scientific specimens. International Curators’ Network by Anna-Sophie Springer and How can the narratives of travel and studies of man and nature Etienne Turpin seeks to engage with entangled relationships by nineteenth-century European naturalists be transformed when and habitual distinctions in order to reimagine traditional fields reframed through contemporary Indonesia’s socio-ecological of knowledge within the unstable context of the Anthropocene. dilemma of land grabbing and habitat destruction from extensive When explored as intercalations, the presumably dialectical deforestation, peat fires, and the apparently endless monoculture categories of nature and culture, human and non-human, plantations spreading across the archipelago? As Anna Tsing subject and object, fact and fiction become transitional, layered has said, “staying alive—for every species—requires livable collab- narratives with porous, permeable, and shifting boundaries. orations.” Engendering a multidisciplinary conversation across science, art, and activism, Reverse Hallucinations maps some productive confrontations and livable, exuberant alliances capable of addressing climate change and mass extinction. Whereas a hallucination allows us to see something that isn’t really present, we introduce the concept of reverse hallucinations in our opening essay, “The Science of Letters,” in order to call attention to the phenomenon of not seeing—or willing not to see—what is manifestly present as the consequence of scientific inquiry. Our text considers the histories of scientific publications and personal letters sent from Southeast Asia by Franz Wilhelm Junghuhn, Alfred Russel Wallace, and Ernst Haeckel in order to discern a schizoscopic parallax at the perceptual core of the colonial-scientific project. Musician and anthropologist Rachel Thompson contributes a two-part composition relaying the Javanese osteo-mythology of the Dutch paleoanthropologist Eugène Dubois, a one-time student of Haeckel. Hypothesizing that the so-called “missing link” in the evolutionary chain between the great apes and the human species could be exhumed somewhere in Indonesia, Dubois dug around in river beds and volcanic rock layers on VI VII Java until, in 1891, he indeed excavated a set of sensational also giving a glimpse of the thousands of similar images the TDP fossils known as the Trinil skullcap and thighbone of “Java Man.” team are currently evaluating. Written in a uniquely lyrical style, Thompson’s contribution vividly The second part of Rachel Thompson’s essay produces weaves together her own experiences of archival research curious reverberations here, when we learn about Dubois’s in Indonesia and the Netherlands with historical incidents from obsession with the paleo-climatological history of the Netherlands. Dubois’s expedition and eccentric scientific biography. The Thompson describes how, towards the end of his life, he attempted result is a compelling narrative about the mnemonic charge and to reverse-engineer the flora on his own property as “a monu- semantic evolution of specimen collections as they outlive ment to the past through the recreation of a landscape in which their creators. early man lived in close harmony with the environment.” Entomologist George Beccaloni, Director of the A.R. Wallace Photographer Fred Langford Edwards presents a small selec - Correspondence Project, paints a picture of Wallace’s atypical tion of works from his expansive middle-format series docu- persona while illuminating the historical circumstances of the menting the insects, skeletons, skins, and taxidermy animals, naturalist’s Malay expedition and the resulting formation of which contemporary museum curators count among the 125,660 evolutionary biology as a scientific field. Wallace once suggested specimens of natural history that Wallace collected during his “that in all tropical countries colonised by Europeans the most Malay expedition from 1854 to 1862. Working with Edwards perfect collections possible in every branch of natural history during previous exhibitions, and discussing how artistic practices should be made and deposited in national museums,” as a means of documentation can shape how we deal with the inheritance to secure scientific knowledge of nature against its annihilation of collections such as these, has been a continuing influence on by those same colonial governments. In contrast, Beccaloni our research, writing, and exhibition making. discusses the challenges of doing scientific field work in our In 2015, artist and hacker Geraldine Juárez also participated current epoch, which he calls the “Destructocene.” in our exhibition 125,660 Specimens of Natural History at In a collage of images and texts, artist and founder of the Komunitas Salihara in Jakarta, with a project that copied and Migrant Ecology Project Lucy Davis describes the process of reprinted the entire digitalized collection of the Museum Nasional combining DNA-tracking and oral

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