This auratic allure is obscured, however, by the uncanny conditions in which we now encounter these images: as most of the original sites are closed to the public in order to preserve them, we find exceptionally crafted replicas constructed in their place. Do these images\u200a\u2014\u200acontemporary in design, prehistoric in reference\u200a\u2014\u200astill carry through time? And if they do, to whom do they speak?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can consider, for instance, the Cosquer M\u00e9diterran\u00e9e, a new, almost full-scale replica of the famous Cosquer Cave, which is buried in a fjord in Marseille\u2019s Calanques National Park. In the ambient, 220-metre air-conditioned tunnel, we encounter a frieze of illustrations that saturate the cave\u2019s walls, with paintings and engravings of familiar figures: charcoaled birds, herds of horses and bison. A hand stencilled on the wall beckons the children in the \u201cexploratory vehicle\u201d ahead of me, as they obligingly raise their hands to meet it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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$\"CosquerCave\"$
Interior view, Cosquer M\u00e9dit\u00e9rann\u00e9e, Marseille, 2022.
Photo: Anthony Prerrot, courtesy of Kl\u00e9ber Rossillon & R\u00e9gion Provence-Alpes-C\u00f4te d\u2019Azur \/ 3D MC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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$\"CosquerCave\"$
Construction view, Cosquer M\u00e9dit\u00e9rann\u00e9e, Marseille, 2021.
Photo: courtesy of Kl\u00e9ber Rossillon & R\u00e9gion Provence-Alpes-C\u00f4te d\u2019Azur \/ 3D MC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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$\"CosquerCave\"$
Interior view, Cosquer M\u00e9dit\u00e9rann\u00e9e, Marseille, 2022.
Photo: Anthony Prerrot, courtesy of Kl\u00e9ber Rossillon & R\u00e9gion Provence-Alpes-C\u00f4te d\u2019Azur \/ 3D MC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Maria Stavrinaki, in Transfixed by Prehistory <\/em>(2022),considers both the fascination and the anxiety of the European imaginary in attending the discovery of an extended prehuman past. The invention of the concept of \u201cprehistory\u201d in the fields of geology, archaeology, and anthropology comes from the desire to anchor this \u201cdeep time\u201d in a linear, humanist chronology. But for Stavrinaki, this task is never entirely completed, because in our various rehearsals of prehistory in art and science, we are also reinventing ourselves.^{3<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 3 <\/a> - See Maria Stavrinaki, Transfixed by Prehistory: An Inquiry into Modern Art and Time<\/em>, trans. Jane Marie Todd (New York: Zone Books, 2022).<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
The experience of being \u201ctransfixed\u201d or bewildered by prehistory that Stavrinaki describes is also evoked in contemporary art and its engagement with parietal images. In Hito Steyerl\u2019s recent installation Contemporary Cave Art<\/em> (2023) at Esther Schipper in Berlin, for example, prehistory is cast as a pre-temporal prophylactic of sorts, transcending the destructive pathos of modern life. Steyerl\u2019s video piece Animal Spirits <\/em>(2022) is a fusion of genres and images that are coordinated around a monologue by economist John Maynard Keynes (1883\u200a\u2013\u200a1946), who describes the concept of \u201canimal spirits\u201d as the emotion and greed that impact rational decision making.^{4<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 4 <\/a> - See John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money<\/em> (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1936), 161\u200a-\u200a62.<\/span> Throwing this montage into relief is the environment of the installation, a cave in which illuminated glass capsules containing plants, soil, and sensors, responding to movement in the space, animate the Lascaux paintings that are projected upon its walls. The whimsical use of parietal art here is more in tune with the contemporary preoccupation with inter-species relations and with dissolving inherited notions of time than it is with the paintings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
$\"Hito-Steyerl\"$ Hito Steyerl<\/strong>
Animal Spirits<\/em>, 2022, exhibition view,
Esther Schipper, Berlin, 2023.
\u00a9 Hito Steyerl \/ Bild-Kunst, Bonn \/ CARCC, Ottawa (2024)
Photo: Andrea Rossetti, courtesy of the artist;
Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York & Esther Schipper, Berlin,
Paris & Seoul<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Cultural tourism replicas similarly romanticize the vital naturalism of cave paintings. The Cosquer M\u00e9diterran\u00e9e is part of a rich program of cave reproductions in Western Europe, the most popular of which are Lascaux II, inaugurated in 1983, and the Caverne du Pont-d\u2019Arc (Chauvet 2), constructed in 2015 (its original, the Chauvet Cave, was discovered in 1994). Reproductions certainly make sense as a way of mediating an authentic cultural tourism experience while also protecting the integrity of the original heritage sites, which are incredibly sensitive to human contact. Lascaux I, for instance, was closed to the public in 1963 after mould was found to be eating away at the drawings\u200a\u2014\u200athe culprit being the visitors\u2019 breathing, which dangerously raised the humidity levels inside the cavern. The Cosquer Cave, by contrast, was always difficult to access, even for experienced cave divers; three died after becoming trapped searching for the cave, which has since been closed off. Although it is not threatened by hordes of visitors to the site, the cave faces another danger, which is certainly not as easily managed: the effect of rising sea levels on the status of the drawings, which will inevitably be wiped out. The main threat to these sites, it seems, is the very fact of the life that surrounds them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Although a part of the life cycle of these illustrations is their disappearance\u200a\u2014\u200aafter all, the cave was once above ground before the early Holocene sea level rise\u200a\u2014\u200akey to the Cosquer M\u00e9diterran\u00e9e\u2019s image is the imminence of their erasure. So, more than it counts on the visitor experience of, or connection to the works, the replica bases its identity on the supposition that the original drawings are not just absent but have disappeared altogether. This resonates more generally with the preservation imperative central to contemporary trends in tourism, which scapegoat contemporary conditions\u200a\u2014\u200awhether that be longer, hotter Mediterranean summers or, in the case of \u201clast chance tourism,\u201d banking on an appeal to locations and sites whose natural or cultural environments and landscapes are threatened by climate change, globalization, or modernization\u200a\u2014\u200awhile also treating it as an opportunity for growth.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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$\"CosquerCave\"$
Interior view, Cosquer M\u00e9dit\u00e9rann\u00e9e, Marseille, 2022.
Photo: Anthony Prerrot, courtesy of Kl\u00e9ber Rossillon & R\u00e9gion Provence-Alpes-C\u00f4te d\u2019Azur \/ 3D MC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
The Cosquer M\u00e9diterran\u00e9e, which is expected to host half a million visitors a year, represents a significant investment in Marseille\u2019s expanding tourism sector. The replica, which is certainly one of the city\u2019s grand spectacles, must also broker with the fraught reality of its context: the impact of increased tourism, which is absorbing much of the available housing and amplifying poverty in the city. The post-COVID surge of homebuyers from outside of the region\u200a\u2014\u200ait was noted recently that one in ten new homebuyers are from the \u00cele-de-France\u200a\u2014\u200acoincides with Marseille\u2019s hosting of cultural and commercial art events. Throughout the city\u2019s streets one encounters graffiti demanding \u201cTourists go home!\u201d and similar sentiments that reflect a general apprehension about the deluge of visitors passing through. If these, like the cave\u2019s illustrations, are part of the archaeological record, then how does the replica negotiate where the cave\u2019s walls end and the \u201coutside\u201d world begins?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Scholar Vincent Bruyere describes the process of distinguishing between inside and outside, between illustration and spatial distribution, as one of (mis)managing interference. In his words, \u201creplication means selection\u2026. It filters and formats the information destined to make parietal art more legible once freed from interferences\u200a\u2014\u200acracks, calcite veils, water infiltrations, mold\u200a\u2014\u200aas if these were not integral to the image. As if one could always tell pigments from accidents, a line from a scratch.\u201d ^{5<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 5 <\/a> - Vincent Bruyere, \u201cLascaux IV, Chauvet II, Planet B,\u201d SubStance<\/em> 51, no. 1 (2022): 89.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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$\"graffiti\"$
Graffiti, Marseille, 2023.
Photo: Madelene Veber<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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If prehistory is constantly being invented, then its appeal, as Stavrinaki reminds us, is an internal one, striving for something beyond historical time; it is an unfolding into the future, the \u201cterra incognita of time, a boundless, uncharted, interior land.\u201d ^{6<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 6 <\/a> - Stavrinaki, Transfixed by Prehistory<\/em>,335<\/span> Behind the construction of the replica, however, is not a vision that longs for this terra incognita, or for the \u201cdeep time\u201d that captured the modern imagination; its concern with the permanence of the original paintings actually masks a preoccupation with its own relevance\u200a\u2014\u200amade clear in the strict prohibition against photography throughout the installation, as an attempt to protect against the public dissemination of its work. Photography, I think, might be seen as undermining the replica\u2019s authenticity by exposing its own photographic origin. Upon visiting Lascaux II, Jean Baudrillard reflects, \u201cIt is possible that the memory of the original grottoes is itself stamped in the minds of future generations, but from now on there is no longer any difference: the duplication suffices to render both artificial.\u201d^{7<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 7 <\/a> - Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation<\/em>, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), 9.<\/span> Is it that the difference between the two is flattened the moment it is rendered a 2-D proxy for the original? Or is it that no one needs to see a fake cave once they\u2019ve seen a photograph of it, or that the secrets to its reproduction, like the secrets to the cave\u2019s drawings, must be kept a mystery? As Bataille speculates, the cave\u2019s images may simply proclaim \u201ctheir author\u2019s desire to eat.\u201d^{8<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 8 <\/a> - Bataille, The Cradle of Humanity<\/em>, 82.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
An author and researcher based in Tiohti\u00e0:ke\/Montr\u00e9al, Madelene Veber is currently studying the social construction of archaeological sites and how their tourism-centric narratives negotiate contemporary concerns. She has written for a number of publications including New Media & Society<\/em> and Vie des Arts<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n
Hito Steyerl, Madelene Veber<\/div>\n
Hito Steyerl, Madelene Veber<\/div>
Hito Steyerl, Madelene Veber<\/div>
Hito Steyerl, Madelene Veber<\/div>
Hito Steyerl, Madelene Veber<\/div>
Hito Steyerl, Madelene Veber<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Our fascination with parietal art (also known as cave art), as with most prehistoric artifacts, often lies in the mystery of its origins, and the fact, astonishingly, of its enduring presence; it appears to us in images that speak through time. Georges Bataille, reflecting on his encounter with the images adorning the walls of the Lascaux caves, doubts that the mind could possibly imagine anything more distant than a \u201csight that has been waiting for us for a million [NOTE count=1]years.\u201d[\/NOTE][REF count=1]Georges Bataille, The Cradle of Humanity: Prehistoric Art and Culture<\/em> (New York: Zone Books, 2005), 82.[\/REF] <\/br>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":250603,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[882],"tags":[],"numeros":[6937],"disciplines":[],"statuts":[],"checklist":[],"auteurs":[6919],"artistes":[2039],"thematiques":[],"type_post":[],"class_list":["post-250618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-post","numeros-111-tourism","auteurs-madelene-veber-en","artistes-hito-steyerl-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250618"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":270815,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250618\/revisions\/270815"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250618"},{"taxonomy":"numeros","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/numeros?post=250618"},{"taxonomy":"disciplines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disciplines?post=250618"},{"taxonomy":"statuts","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/statuts?post=250618"},{"taxonomy":"checklist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/checklist?post=250618"},{"taxonomy":"auteurs","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/auteurs?post=250618"},{"taxonomy":"artistes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistes?post=250618"},{"taxonomy":"thematiques","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thematiques?post=250618"},{"taxonomy":"type_post","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type_post?post=250618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}