{"id":449,"date":"2026-03-14T20:11:57","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T18:11:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ratwestern.co.za\/?page_id=449"},"modified":"2026-03-15T14:03:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T12:03:09","slug":"refrain-in-perpetuity","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/ratwestern.co.za\/index.php\/refrain-in-perpetuity\/","title":{"rendered":"REFRAIN (IN PERPETUITY)"},"content":{"rendered":"<!--themify_builder_content-->\n<div id=\"themify_builder_content-449\" data-postid=\"449\" class=\"themify_builder_content themify_builder_content-449 themify_builder tf_clear\">\n                    <div  data-lazy=\"1\" class=\"module_row themify_builder_row tb_poe1590 tb_first tf_w\">\n                        <div class=\"row_inner col_align_top tb_col_count_1 tf_box tf_rel\">\n                        <div  data-lazy=\"1\" class=\"module_column tb-column col-full tb_tito590 first\">\n                    <!-- module fancy heading -->\n<div  class=\"module module-fancy-heading tb_m1dh590  tb_hide_divider\" data-lazy=\"1\">\n        <h1 class=\"fancy-heading\">\n    <span class=\"main-head tf_block\">\n                    REFRAIN (IN PERPETUITY) (2020)            <\/span>\n\n    \n    <span class=\"sub-head tf_block tf_rel\">\n                    <a href=\"https:\/\/ratwestern.co.za\/index.php\/art\/\">RETURN TO ART MENU<\/a>\n            <\/span>\n    <\/h1>\n<\/div>\n<!-- \/module fancy heading -->\n        <\/div>\n                        <\/div>\n        <\/div>\n                        <div  data-lazy=\"1\" class=\"module_row themify_builder_row tb_4uqz762 tf_w\">\n                        <div class=\"row_inner col_align_top tb_col_count_1 tf_box tf_rel\">\n                        <div  data-lazy=\"1\" class=\"module_column tb-column col-full tb_1hvi763 first\">\n                    <!-- module video -->\n<div  class=\"module module-video tb_nxvx64 video-top  \" data-lazy=\"1\">\n                    <div class=\"video-wrap-outer\">\n            <div class=\"video-wrap tf_rel tf_overflow\">\n                                    <noscript><iframe data-no-script src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/f0z4bnCOfTs?pip=1&#038;playsinline=1\" allow=\"accelerometer;encrypted-media;gyroscope;picture-in-picture;fullscreen\" class=\"tf_abs tf_w tf_h\"><\/iframe><\/noscript>\n                                <\/div>\n            <!-- \/video-wrap -->\n        <\/div>\n        <!-- \/video-wrap-outer -->\n            <\/div>\n        <\/div>\n                        <\/div>\n        <\/div>\n                        <div  data-lazy=\"1\" class=\"module_row themify_builder_row tb_x8u7850 tf_w\">\n                        <div class=\"row_inner col_align_top tb_col_count_1 tf_box tf_rel\">\n                        <div  data-lazy=\"1\" class=\"module_column tb-column col-full tb_zgg5850 first\">\n                    <!-- module text -->\n<div  class=\"module module-text tb_yx6p421   \" data-lazy=\"1\">\n        <div  class=\"tb_text_wrap\">\n        <p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8220;I met a traveller from an antique land,<br>Who said\u2014\u201cTwo vast and trunkless legs of stone<br>Stand in the desert. . . .\u201d<br><i>&#8211; Ozymandias, <\/i>Percy Shelley<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">This work was created as a response to several disparate, but overlapping, influences related to the archiving; the seeming permanence; and the ultimate fragility of collective cultural communication.\u00a0 The first of these was a series of works by the choreographer Alan Parker entitled <i>(an)archival trilogy<\/i> (2015-2017).\u00a0 In this series, he questions the impossibility of archiving the live experience &#8211; whether this be live art or lived experience.\u00a0 As an embodied experience before an audience, he suggests that the true way in which these works live on is not in an air-conditioned archive or storage facility but in the memory of the audience, who may again, in their turn, bring the works \u2018back to life\u2019 though embodied witnessing.\u00a0 A second influence was an interest in long-term nuclear waste warning messages, an interdisciplinary field of study involving anthropologists, archaeologists, architects, behavioural scientists, engineers,\u00a0 linguists, nuclear physicists, philosophers and science fiction writers.\u00a0 These experts have come together for various design panels to develop a system of communicating the presence of hazardous nuclear waste at deep geological repositories in the US and Europe.\u00a0 The remit of these design panels was to develop a multifaceted communication system through architecture, symbolism and language which would continue to communicate the same warning message for 10 000 years.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">The difficulty of this design endeavour is multiple and is at 10 000 years, perhaps too short given the half-life of Plutonium 239 at 24 000 years.\u00a0 To place this idea further in historical perspective: the oldest known cave paintings are those in the caves of Maltravieso, Ardales and La Pasiega, Spain.\u00a0 These red ochre handprints are 64 000 years old and were made by an entirely different human species than ourselves.\u00a0 What they mean, if anything, is entirely lost other than the statement: we were here.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">During 10 000 years in our own knowledge of history, empires rise and fall; languages are lost; signs and symbols change their meaning.\u00a0 Should we have come across the statue in Shelley\u2019s Ozymandias, we would have no means, over time, to tell (without further investigation) whether it has fallen into ruin or was deliberately designed to demonstrate the power of the atomic bomb. \u00a0 Our curiosity as a species to excavate and investigate lost temples and decipher stone tablets may render such landscaped warnings with accompanying stone monoliths in dead languages more of an attraction than a dissuasion. A counter-argument to the presence of elaborately designed stone sarcophaguses to designate sites of danger (which may ultimately be read as sites of reverence) has been put forward in the shape of a deliberately induced cultural myth: in the shape of story and song.\u00a0 A nightmare for children that would give us instinctual pause in the face of specific signs and signifiers.\u00a0 That diluvian narratives abound in various unconnected cultures worldwide speaks to an understanding and remembrance of a time of flood, whether Noah and his Ark or a giant turtle take the starring role in this mythos. If stone, architecture and language cannot maintain a perpetual singular meaning, is it possible for story to do so? What would we choose to remember and pass on if all that were concrete were lost?<\/p>    <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<!-- \/module text -->        <\/div>\n                        <\/div>\n        <\/div>\n        <\/div>\n<!--\/themify_builder_content-->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;I met a traveller from an antique land,Who said\u2014\u201cTwo vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desert. . . .\u201d- Ozymandias, Percy Shelley This work was created as a response to several disparate, but overlapping, influences related to the archiving; the seeming permanence; and the ultimate fragility of collective cultural communication.\u00a0 The first of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-449","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"<h1>REFRAIN (IN PERPETUITY) (2020)<br\/>RETURN TO ART MENU<\/h1>\n[embed]https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=f0z4bnCOfTs[\/embed]\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\"I met a traveller from an antique land,<br>Who said\u2014\u201cTwo vast and trunkless legs of stone<br>Stand in the desert. . . .\u201d<br><i>- Ozymandias, <\/i>Percy Shelley<\/p> <p style=\"text-align: left;\">This work was created as a response to several disparate, but overlapping, influences related to the archiving; the seeming permanence; and the ultimate fragility of collective cultural communication.\u00a0 The first of these was a series of works by the choreographer Alan Parker entitled <i>(an)archival trilogy<\/i> (2015-2017).\u00a0 In this series, he questions the impossibility of archiving the live experience - whether this be live art or lived experience.\u00a0 As an embodied experience before an audience, he suggests that the true way in which these works live on is not in an air-conditioned archive or storage facility but in the memory of the audience, who may again, in their turn, bring the works \u2018back to life\u2019 though embodied witnessing.\u00a0 A second influence was an interest in long-term nuclear waste warning messages, an interdisciplinary field of study involving anthropologists, archaeologists, architects, behavioural scientists, engineers,\u00a0 linguists, nuclear physicists, philosophers and science fiction writers.\u00a0 These experts have come together for various design panels to develop a system of communicating the presence of hazardous nuclear waste at deep geological repositories in the US and Europe.\u00a0 The remit of these design panels was to develop a multifaceted communication system through architecture, symbolism and language which would continue to communicate the same warning message for 10 000 years.<\/p> <p style=\"text-align: left;\">The difficulty of this design endeavour is multiple and is at 10 000 years, perhaps too short given the half-life of Plutonium 239 at 24 000 years.\u00a0 To place this idea further in historical perspective: the oldest known cave paintings are those in the caves of Maltravieso, Ardales and La Pasiega, Spain.\u00a0 These red ochre handprints are 64 000 years old and were made by an entirely different human species than ourselves.\u00a0 What they mean, if anything, is entirely lost other than the statement: we were here.<\/p> <p style=\"text-align: left;\">During 10 000 years in our own knowledge of history, empires rise and fall; languages are lost; signs and symbols change their meaning.\u00a0 Should we have come across the statue in Shelley\u2019s Ozymandias, we would have no means, over time, to tell (without further investigation) whether it has fallen into ruin or was deliberately designed to demonstrate the power of the atomic bomb. \u00a0 Our curiosity as a species to excavate and investigate lost temples and decipher stone tablets may render such landscaped warnings with accompanying stone monoliths in dead languages more of an attraction than a dissuasion. A counter-argument to the presence of elaborately designed stone sarcophaguses to designate sites of danger (which may ultimately be read as sites of reverence) has been put forward in the shape of a deliberately induced cultural myth: in the shape of story and song.\u00a0 A nightmare for children that would give us instinctual pause in the face of specific signs and signifiers.\u00a0 That diluvian narratives abound in various unconnected cultures worldwide speaks to an understanding and remembrance of a time of flood, whether Noah and his Ark or a giant turtle take the starring role in this mythos. If stone, architecture and language cannot maintain a perpetual singular meaning, is it possible for story to do so? What would we choose to remember and pass on if all that were concrete were lost?<\/p>","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ratwestern.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ratwestern.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ratwestern.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ratwestern.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ratwestern.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/ratwestern.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":670,"href":"https:\/\/ratwestern.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/449\/revisions\/670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ratwestern.co.za\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}