The Hole

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PRETORIA ART MUSEUM
25 FEBRUARY - 25 APRIL, 2021
Cnr Francis Baard and Wessels Street, Arcadia Park, Arcadia

012 358 6750 | http://bit.ly/PretoriaArtMuseum
art.museum@tshwane.gov.za
GPS coordinates: Lat: 25°44'53.63”S; Long: 28°12'45.20”E

TEMPORARY COVID19 HOURS
TUESDAYS - FRIDAYS 10:00 to 16:00
SATURDAYS 10:00 to 14:00
Closed on Sundays, Mondays and public holidays

Exhibition supported and promoted by
The Italian Cultural Institute

Hemelliggaam or The Attempt To Be Here Now is a visual archive, composed of photographs, video, installations, text and sounds that constantly moves between the reality of significant scientific sites and the imaginative fragments of old Afrikaans science fiction novels in particular reference to one of the most existential and emblematic writers, Jan Rabie (with his books 'Swart Ster oor die Karoo' - Black Star over the Karoo 1957, Die Groen Planeet - The Green Planet 1961, and 'Die Hemelblom' - Heaven Flower 1971).

‘To look down, is to look up.’ A selection from the Hemelliggaam archive is initiated by work from the Tswaing Crater and mining areas in Johannesburg. ‘The Hole’ exhibition, is a site specific installation at the Pretoria Art Museum.

“There are legends, nobody will go there at night. It’s called the hills of the spirits.”

Tom Learmont, Sci-fi writer - In reference to the Tswaing crater

Curator Filippo Maggia
Sound compositions Alessandro Gigli
Scientific team Mattia Vaccari, Lucia Marchetti and Michelle Cluver from Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of the Western Cape.
Consultant Davide Chinigò

Hosting partner
Pretoria Art Museum, City of Tshwane

Project supported by
National Research Foundation

Tommaso Fiscaletti and Nic Grobler are both artists based in Cape Town, South Africa.

Their collaboration, started in 2016, is focused on "Hemelliggaam Or The Attempt To Be Here Now”.

Work from the collaboration has been exhibited in museums in South Africa and internationally including the Iziko South African Museum, Cape Town and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Guarene, Italy. They have been among the winners of CAP (Contemporary African Photography) Prize 2018. For the artists, the exhibitions form an essential part of the creative process, where the viewer is invited to experience unique sequences of the work, revealing the mutable structure of the archive. They are currently working on the third and final chapter of the project.

PRESS RELEASE IMAGES & VIDEO

SCALE MODEL, TSWAING CRATER, SOSHANGUVE, PRETORIA‘Well there is a big mark in time, Soutpan, Tswaing. I don’t know how many million people would die if it would happen today but it was 200 000 years ago. I forget the size of the meteorite - a few th… — SCALE MODEL, TSWAING CRATER, SOSHANGUVE, PRETORIA
‘Well there is a big mark in time, Soutpan, Tswaing. I don’t know how many million people would die if it would happen today but it was 200 000 years ago. I forget the size of the meteorite - a few thousand tons, and it threw up this central point and a ring of hills. There are legends, nobody will go there at night. It’s called the hills of the spirits.’
Tom Learmont, Sci-fi Writer, Johannesburg

OFENTSE LETEBELE, IZIKO PLANETARIUM PRESENTER, CAPE TOWN Ofentse Letebele is part of the team working to translate some of the old Planetarium shows to the new Digital Dome system. — OFENTSE LETEBELE, IZIKO PLANETARIUM PRESENTER, CAPE TOWN
Ofentse Letebele is part of the team working to translate some of the old Planetarium shows to the new Digital Dome system.

NEUTRON THERAPY VAULT, ITHEMBA LABS, CAPE TOWN‘The wooden bench looks primitive but neutron activates anything, so another material would become radioactive…’Charlotte Vandervoorde, Researcher, IThemba LABS, Cape Town. — NEUTRON THERAPY VAULT, ITHEMBA LABS, CAPE TOWN
‘The wooden bench looks primitive but neutron activates anything, so another material would become radioactive…’
Charlotte Vandervoorde, Researcher, IThemba LABS, Cape Town.

WRECKAGE MUSEUM, TSWAING CRATER, SOSHANGUVE, PRETORIAThe name Tswaing means "place of salt" in Tswana and the crater was also formerly known in English as Pretoria Saltpan crater and in Afrikaans as Soutpankrater.The meteorite was probably about the… — WRECKAGE MUSEUM, TSWAING CRATER, SOSHANGUVE, PRETORIA
The name Tswaing means "place of salt" in Tswana and the crater was also formerly known in English as Pretoria Saltpan crater and in Afrikaans as Soutpankrater.
The meteorite was probably about the size of a an average house and it would have taken no more than 10 seconds to slam into the ground after entering the Earth's atmosphere, releasing the energy of about 100 Hiroshima atom bombs. Life within a 35 kilometre radius would have been wiped out.

FACE IN THE HOLE, SA NATIONAL SPACE AGENCY # 1, HERMANUSSouth Africa maintains a scientific base in Antartica where it is ideal to study the Southern Atlantic Magnetic Anomaly - covering an area where communication systems are more vulnerable to dam… — FACE IN THE HOLE, SA NATIONAL SPACE AGENCY # 1, HERMANUS
South Africa maintains a scientific base in Antartica where it is ideal to study the Southern Atlantic Magnetic Anomaly - covering an area where communication systems are more vulnerable to damages and interruptions caused by high levels of radiation from space.
‘Face in the hole’ inside space science educational centre at SANSA.

SCATTERING CHAMBER AND TARGET LADDER, ITHEMBA LABS, CAPE TOWN'In other words, it's a place where we try to reproduce stars in a laboratory - stars are the place where there is a high density of protons, neutrons and from this high density, there are… — SCATTERING CHAMBER AND TARGET LADDER, ITHEMBA LABS, CAPE TOWN
'In other words, it's a place where we try to reproduce stars in a laboratory - stars are the place where there is a high density of protons, neutrons and from this high density, there are collisions that are going to create heavier elements. So this is what we are trying to do now, we are trying to reproduce what happens in stars, in the laboratory.'
Dr. Faïçal Azaiez, Director at iThemba LABS, Laboratory for Accelerator-Based Sciences.

THE OLD MINE #5, GOLD REEF CITY, JOHANNESBURG, GAUTENG

BEAM-DUMP, ITHEMBA LABS, CAPE TOWN'This is a beam dump - where the beam comes through from the target. This is the end of protons life! Obviously if we don't stop protons here, they will carry on travelling and they would probably be leaving the fac… — BEAM-DUMP, ITHEMBA LABS, CAPE TOWN
'This is a beam dump - where the beam comes through from the target. This is the end of protons life! Obviously if we don't stop protons here, they will carry on travelling and they would probably be leaving the facility and moving at a speed equal to around the world four times in a second... usually we have an average of maybe 10 million, millions, particles per second ending their life here"
Dr. Pete Jones, Senior Researcher, IThemba LABS, Cape Town

STERKFONTEIN CAVES #2, JOHANNESBURG, GAUTENG

NEW PETROL STATION, CARNARVON, NORTHERN CAPE “Greetings, Earthling. We come in peace. Take us to your leader.”Alien in an old Petrol pump joke. Petrol pump found in the small town of Carnarvon near the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) site - where there… — NEW PETROL STATION, CARNARVON, NORTHERN CAPE
“Greetings, Earthling. We come in peace. Take us to your leader.”
Alien in an old Petrol pump joke. Petrol pump found in the small town of Carnarvon near the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) site - where there is an international collaboration around building the world’s largest radio telescope.

STILL FROM VIDEOKOM TERUG, KWAGGA (COME BACK, QUAGGA), ITEMBA ACCELERATOR-BASED SCIENCES, CAPE TOWN, WESTERN CAPEQuagga were all wiped out by pioneer hunters in Southern Africa during the 19th century. They were a subspecies of Zebra basically simil… — ***STILL FROM VIDEO***
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.

STILL FROM VIDEOANNA 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 a… — ***STILL FROM VIDEO***
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.

THE ATTEMPT # 2, 2020 INSTALLATION OF COPIES, PHOTOGRAPHS, NATURAL ELEMENTS

FOR MORE DETAIL • info@hemelliggaam.com