Toyin Falola and the Caravan of Thought:African History on a Global Stage in a Multifaceted Lens 2 : Spatio-Temporal Visualities
Image Above
Toyin Falola
Picture by Matt Wright-Steel
from
Accessed 11/24/2019
A Storyteller
I am a teller of stories, a traveler between various worlds, a sojourner in none.
I am located at the University of Texas because the human being often needs a location in space and time but my spirit has no address.
I travel through my stories, into the past, the present and the future.
An Asker of Questions
Human movement through space and time is my subject.
The shaping of meaning out of the probabilities, the labyrinthine permutations of human existence, is my theme.
What happened
when did it happen
how did it happen
why did it happen
what may happen
what is the significance of these happenings and possibilities
these are the questions through which I navigate this labyrinth, through which I steer across this ocean, a great story in which I find myself involved as I try to craft my own stories within the awesome narrative, an ocean originating from a point unknown and moving to a destination unknown.
Richard Serra and the Spatio-Temporal Continuum
My journeys of exploration and the journeys I explore are like Richard Serra's The Matter of Time, along with other works of his, a song of the beauty of temporal and spatial immensities, evoking the vantage point of my travels, a bird flying both above and within the temporal flow of existence unfolding within spatial dynamism.
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The Matter of Time at Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao
The Matter of Time is an "installation comprising eight pieces of torqued ellipses made of weathering steel", as the work's Wikipedia page describes it.
These are "monumental sculptures arranged to create a sensation of space in motion and progressing time" as depicted by Skott Chun in "Richard Serra: Man of Steel".
This temporal progression, he continues, is external and internal, physically constructed as well as internally realized.
This temporal continuum consists in "the chronological time that it takes to walk through and observe [ the installation] from beginning to end [ and ] the time during which the viewer experiences the fragments of visual and physical memory, which are combined and re-experienced".
This temporal continuum consists in "the chronological time that it takes to walk through and observe [ the installation] from beginning to end [ and ] the time during which the viewer experiences the fragments of visual and physical memory, which are combined and re-experienced".
These are experiences undergone in terms of multiple temporalities, peculiar to each one of us, temporalities recreated "in each of our paths [ as we walk the installation] where the interwoven times that constitute us are discovered and intertwined.... crossing strange corridors which offer narrowed or dilated experiences of ... lived time, we are confronted corporally with...questions [ that resonate beyond the immediate experience] : "Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?" as summed up by Paul-Louis Rinuy in "Richard Serra, Sculpteur du Temps", "Sculptor of Time."
These spatial and psychological experiences of time stimulated by Serra's sculpture, provoking questions of ultimate directionality, incidentally evoke my preoccupation with the physical and psychological act of progression within larger contexts, individual, group, terrestrial, cosmological, of space and time.
They suggest for me the physical and mental dynamisms represented by my focus on the human experience as reflected in the birthing, settling in and migrations from humanity's mother continent, particularly in the lives of those who remained in the homeland and their subsequent setting forth, in relation to those who had left before, experiences undergone in relation to the efforts of these people to situate their goings and comings within a cosmic context.
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Weatherproof steel, 13 feet 2 inches × 81 feet 10 inches × 40 feet 2 ½ inches (4.01 × 24.94 × 12.26 m)
© Richard Serra/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Lorenz Kienzle
© Richard Serra/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Lorenz Kienzle
Space and time as dynamic properties, the undulations of experience, the transformations of possibility, that define existence, as evoked by Serra's magnificent works, dramatised with unique force in the undulations of such constructs as his Inside Out, above, mirror my own explorations, my sensitivity to the dynamics of the human story in terms of epic scope in relation to intimate visioning, individual lives constituting the mighty whole within the frame of that which is larger than the life span of the delicately though exquisitely built bipedal creature who spans the cosmos with his thought.
Between Mind and Cosmos
Unfolding Creativity from the Womb of Being and Becoming
Confronted, stimulated and challenged by the transformative potency of existence, I have found myself welling forth in a ceaseless ocean of ideas, a galaxy of texts taking shape from the intersection of mind and cosmos, an unending gestation bringing a broadly dispersed network of associates into unity around the task of exploring the journey of the cultural development of humanity within their motherland and in their migrations from that primal zone, in their kinship with the other branches of the same family who left the homeland much earlier to populate the globe.
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The Matter of Time Installation
dynamic spatial flow
from canalblog.com
Before my amazed eyes, a textual universe brings itself into being, with my help, creating a cosmos confronted by which people respond as Alicia Marin does to the sculpture of Richard Serra :
“Serra’s sculpture leaves us amazed, in awe and wonder...the mass of steel is colossal, immeasurable, and boundless, but it contains us, it holds us without judgment.
…a tangible and visible thing, immense sheets of steel bent into each other composing ellipses and curved walls...nevertheless, it is also an unprecedented space, at times tense, that subtlety will confront your body and your mental state [ in ] awe and wonder...”
The mysterious majesty of the pyramids of Egypt, the omnivorous scholarship of Aristotle, the creative restlessness of Leonardo, creations about which people wonder how they could possibly have been formed, are invoked as people try to assimilate the rushing pyramid of creativity that is my work, but what else can I do?
I must allow the flow of my creative spirit or life will be drained of much of its value.
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju, for example, asks questions about what may be described as "creative time", the various experiences of time that accompany creative work.
How can a person achieve so much within the time frame available to all human beings?
Do some people discover ways to expand time, achieving more through the drive of inspiration than is conventionally possible within the same time frame?
Conceptions of Temporal Flow
The recurrences, both creative and stultifying, that define what it is to exist in a stable universe, enabling planning for the future even as one reshapes the present and its legacy from the past, are evoked by Serra's spiral formations within the sculptural assemblage of his The Matter of Time, as seen below, one construct amongst his spatio/temporal progressions.
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The Matter of Time Installation
from
This spiral formation is highlighted by the Matter of Time installation spatial design by Richard Serra, shown below, which suggests the abstracting of the spatial and temporal progression realized by the installation in terms of visual rhythms, conjoining forward moving undulations with spirals and other non-linear shapes.
This visual abstraction, in its incidental relation to theories of temporality, may also suggest analogues of thought.
The Matter of Time Installation. Spatial design by Richard Serra
What really, as may be evoked by this installation, is the shape of individual, human wide and cosmological temporal progression? A forward motion reflected in human biological and mental growth and dissolution with the passage of time?
A linear arrow of time reflected at cosmological scales in what is described as the expansion of the cosmos from the epicentre of an originating explosion?
Temporal scales reflected in immense yet smaller patterns in the emergence, growth and entropy of such celestial configurations as stars and their dissolution into Black Holes?
Non-linear conceptions represented by a cyclical continuity encapsulating these linearities, as indicated by theories of human and cosmic death and rebirth, cosmological pictures stretching from Ewe cosmology as described by artist Nyornuwofia Agorsor in her Cosmos Series paintings, to Hinduism, as in Abhinavagupta's magnificent correlation of consciousness with cosmic motion, as Adepoju discusses in "Unifying Empirical and Mythic Thought : Human Consciousness and the Twelve Kalis in Hinduism" to scientific cosmologist Roger Penrose' development of a similar theory of a cyclic cosmos through mathematical tools in his Cycles of Time?
Or a state where there is no point of emergence, simply a ceaseless existence with no beginning or end, a steady state, as such scientific cosmologists as Fred Hoyle postulate, an analogue to religious ideas of the encapsulation of temporal transformations within the stillness of eternity, ceaselessly birthing though unbirthed?
Cosmological and cultural continuities akin to those invoked by scientific cosmologist Stephen Hawking in "The Beginning of Time."
Explorations at a Spectrum of Spatial and Temporal Scales
All constituent factors, all variables generating temporal unfolding within a spatial dynamic, are my interest, the nutrients making a rich narrative.
I create stories investigating the human story as it emerges within Africa and its Diaspora, and its intersection with various stories of the human family.
I navigate the spectrum from group dynamics to individual life peregrinations, from the developments of communities to particular human lives as these intersect with larger configurations of possibility, explorations taking place at various temporal scales.
These investigations range from cities, as my work on Ibadan, to countries, as in my explorations of Nigeria, to continents, as in my studies of Africa and the Americas, to relationships between Africa and its Diaspora, to specific people, represented by my accounts of my own life, to summations of the lives of other persons, explorations moving across centuries and individual lifetimes.
El Anatsui and the Labyrinths of Possibility
I am thus a discover of purpose, of meaning, within labyrinths of possibility, a temporal scope and overarching thematic, a vocation, incidentally evoked by the following collage created using various online sources showing visitors navigating El Anatsui's immersive installation Lorgoligi Logarithms, at the Munich 2019 Anatsui Triumphant Scale exhibition at the Haus der Kunst, House of Art.
Suggestive of my work as seeking to grasp the total cycle of human life is the varied ages of these navigators of Anatsui's evocation of life as a labyrinthine progression, as the image of a child within the installation, top left in the collage, is described by Rikki Wemega Kwawu in his Facebook post of 11th March, 2019:
Here in the photo, a kid confidently strolls through the artist's masterpiece, "Lorgoligi Logarithms," 2018, which plays with the concept of opacity and transparency, and makes a poignant commentary on the vagaries and vicissitudes of life, and the complex, zig-zaggy journey we all have to undertake as humans, hence, the eponymous title, "Lorgorligi Logarithms."
The collage of pictures of navigators of the installation suggests the perspectival positionings that define the teller of stories, whether largely imaginative, largely factual or a combination of both, within the context of human navigations of the corridors, the opacities, the promise radiant pillars of existence, within adventurous venturing, contemplative motion, quiet stillness and exhilarated discovery.
Thus do I wander across the corridors of human existence, crafting stories about everything, asking questions as I create narratives, shaping ideas through which people understand the human story.
I am active in the exploration of the tension between the visible and the opaque, the transparent and the problematic, dialectics indicated by Wemega-Kwawu on Anatsui's visual parable of the human condition, in the great journey akin to the flight of a bird in and out of the boisterous activity of a great hall into the dark of a cold winter night, as human life is described in his Ecclesiastical History of England by the Venerable Bede, an ancestral master in the guild of narrators to which I belong.
Zones of Ultimate Possibility
I also seek to inhabit the high places of human thought, the zones of ultimate possibility from which people seek to make meaning of the dynamism of existence, zones of ultimate reflection akin to Intihuatana, Urubamba, the cloud shrouded altar of the mysterious Inca city of Machu Picchu, seeking where the human mind touches mystic reality.
Intihuatana, Urubamba in Machu Picchu
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Intihuatana, Urubamba
Machu Picchu
The Wikipedia account of this place, poignant and mysterious, unifies central aspects of my quest, seeking fact in the midst of mystery, arcane beauty in the midst of the concrete, time and space yielding information about action within themselves while pointing beyond themselves:
Intihuatana possibly from the Quecha spelling Inti Watana or Intiwatana, at the archaeological site of Machu Picchu, is a notable ritual stone associated with the astronomic clock or calendar of the Inca in South America [ and] thought to have been built by the Sapa Inca Pachacuti as a country estate, though it is equally likely that the Inca discovered much older ruins, ( the inti watana, the temple of the sun, and the temple of the condor) and opted to build this majestic estate on older foundations.
The Intihuatana of Machu Picchu was carved directly into the bedrock of the mountain's summit area.
It is characterized by complex surfaces, planes and angles whose purpose at this time is unknown. Incomplete descriptions of its purpose by the Inca in their chronicles only add to its mysterious existence.
Archaeological explanations which are not currently mainstream assert that the Inca did not construct Inti Watana but rather found it, along with other mysterious structures pre-existing at Maccu Picchu.
This implies a problematic consideration, that the Inti Watana's construction was done by an as-yet-unknown, apparently highly advanced earlier civilization. Current archaeological thought has no rigorous explanation whom this earlier culture could have been.
It features a slightly inclined plane at its top, an upright stone column tilts 13 degrees northward. Other features include a granite block resembling a carved shelf, bench, or altar, and a rectangular base.
Pedro Sueldo Nava, in A Walking Tour of Machupicchu, 1976, pp. 33–4, describes the landmark as "perhaps one of the most beautiful and enigmatic places to be found in Machu Picchu."
Thus, one may unify what I have written about the perpetual peregrinator, expanding and contracting at will, correlating all possibilities of existence, yet resident in the altar within the self, in Esu: Yoruba God, Power and the Imaginative Frontiers, with my observations in "Ritual Archives" and with the mysterious room within the self that contains all possibilities, from the Indian Upanishads.
A unification birthing the insight that "In the depths of myself, at the crossroads of being and becoming, I become as he neither big nor small, but containing all, the thread unifying the universe, my own cloud wreathed Macchu Piccu, arcane altar in ancient space, the solar clock conjoining my motions in time and space with my quest for the matrix integrating space and time in human creativity, constituting and shaping knowledge about the visible and invisible worlds [ of ] forces that breathe and are breathless."
Archetypal Figures
An archetypal figure of the quest for the kind of stories I tell as illuminators of reality, dramatizing where mind touches that beyond itself, at the intersection of fact and its interpretation, at the convergence of the progression of palpitating humanity with reason and imagination, is the ibis headed Thoth, a visualization evoking the contemplative image of the bird in its concentrated stillness, poised above the waters evoking generation and transformation, a reed in Thoth's hands as he explores and records terrestrial and cosmic permutations through the full scope of systems of knowledge, from magic to science, known to humanity, using the art of writing, the recording of linguistic symbols on a surface, an art he introduced to humanity, as he introduced all systems of knowing, a subsuming of human creativity within an ultimate, originating ground, provoking questions about whether there exists an "end, agent and exemplar, the source of the activity called freedom", as Thomas Aquinas is described as postulating, in the line of efforts thinkers from Aristotle to Augustine of Hippo to Georg Hegel and Oswald Spengler, to understand the great story of humanity in terms of something beyond humanity, an ongoing quest.
Thoth Writing. Ancient Egyptian
The little black man from Igeti hill, as evoked through the image below, witness to the enfolding of possibility within unfolding networks from the beginning of time, guide to the signposts of existence, as described by the scribbler from the bottom of the rock, is another of these archetypal images of the task that is my vocation, as that concept is so well put by Webster, the orientation of a person's life and work in terms of their ultimate sense of mission.
My guild ancestor, the consummate storyteller, narrator and at times character in stories innumerable, seeking to dramatize the total scope of human possibility through narratives drawn from the universe of the Yoruba people as perceived across centuries of time, stories building on fact but towering into parable.
He is here visualized in terms of the affectionate irreverence, the comically profound spirit, of a Batabwa ancestor figure from Fagg and Plass' African Sculpture.
This spirit is consonant with that of ese ifa, the stories of the Igeti man, stories acting as a distant but ever present reminder of heights already reached, the background for my own peregrinations across the universe of human possibility, roots of mind and of origin amongst the people of the man from Igeti, yet ranging across space and time as penetrated into by our human ancestors in their continuity of identity within transformation, from earliest times to the present, from Africa to the Americas and beyond.
Where do I stand in relation to the man from Igeti, my consummate ancestor? So many words, many stories, what force, what cumulative impact across the centuries, as his own words shaping his narratives, continuously resonate from a past lost in time?
The best I can do is my best, seeking truth with honesty and skill, creativity and determination, as I tell my own stories, symbol matrices in their own way akin to the mathematical permutations that underlie the ese ifa, the stories and poetry of Ifa, as shown in Moyo Okedji's depiction in the collage above, seating on his creation like on a magic carpet taking him to the various possibilities of experience those symbols evoke, as I look on from the rim of the visual construct, acolyte of the master of the odu ifa, the infinite matrix of stories seeking to weave all possibilities into words.
I give thanks to Rikki Wemega-Kwawu, whose Facebook wall post and thread introduced me to Richard Serra, to El Anatsui's Lorgoligi Logarithms and the possibility of comparing Serra and Anatsui.
Cover Image
The Corridors of Time
opening to ever amazing vistas
as evoked by
curved passageways circling the great enclosure
in the majesty of Great Zimbabwe
photographed by
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