Book Chapter
Reference
From the Lascaux cave to Lascaux IV: repetition and transformation of a simulacrum
LERESCHE, Nicolas
LERESCHE, Nicolas. From the Lascaux cave to Lascaux IV: repetition and transformation of a simulacrum. In: Maria Gravari-Barbas, Nelson Graburn, Jean-Francois Staszak. Tourism fictions, simulacra and virtualities. Routledge, 2019.
Available at:
http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:137089
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N I C O L A S L E R E S C H E
From the Lascaux cave to Lascaux IV: repetition and transformation of a simulacrum
This article is based on fieldwork (observation and interviews with visitors, reception staff and guides) and a series of interviews with the designers of the Lascaux IV facsimile (Atelier des Facsimilés du Périgord) and the Chauvet cave facsimile (Alain Dalis Studio). I would like to thank them all for giving me their time and for their invaluable explanations. A big thank you likewise to Mme. Anick Chevalier for having directed me so judiciously on my visits to Lascaux.
Introduction
Tourism has always had to do with images and, as Susan Sontag reminds us, photography may be the very reason for tourism in its modern versions (Sontag 2008, 24). More generally, tourism induces more than any other social activity, a relationship with the world articulated around vision.
Thus, the desire to consume the world visually may condition the way it is laid out. Whether in terms of transport, attractions, communications or architecture, there are many examples in which the design of infrastructure is a matter of visuality. In short, tourism may be seen as a stage that requires a rigorous scenography and a strict layout of its actors for the smooth running of its dramaturgy (MacCannell 2013).
Among the many elements related to vision which are components of tourism dramaturgy, there is a series of objects, both conceptual and material, that express the condition of modern tourism and post-tourism: simulacra or mechanisms for simulating the world. Appearing at the turn of the 18th century through what has been called the instrumented gaze (Gleizes and Reynaud 2017) and following advances in optics, these devices consisted, through ingenious mechanical systems of varying sizes, in reproducing another space-time. Generating so much enthusiasm that they became the main attractions at many of the universal exhibitions that punctuated the 19th century, these optical devices were part of a visual frenzy characteristic of the emerging modernity (Gunning 2006, 30).
These pre-cinematic devices had the effect of modifying, if not the status, at least the function of the image by moving it from an object that we look at to an object that we inhabit. A transformation whose echo is still felt today, whether at the level of technology (virtual reality) or activities (the selfie), both of which involve literally blending into the image. The duplication of reality operated by these simulation devices has led many authors, in the long Western tradition of image criticism, to question their links with the capitalist economy and their role in the emergence of an entertainment society. In particular, Jean Baudrillard and Umberto Eco have most discussed the links between simulacra and postmodernity (Baudrillard 1985; Eco 1991), making the former the conceptual and critical tool for understanding how reality has been replaced by the signs of reality.
The problem of reality, its nature, its aestheticization and its duplication compose the tourist experience and it is relevant in this respect to deploy the analysis of tourist visuality on at least two levels: practices and techniques. In the first case, for example, it is a question of understanding how actors negotiate normative injunctions (stereotypes), how they reproduce them, deviate from them
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or revisit them. In the second case, and this will be the theoretical framework of this article, it is a question of understanding how the cultural experience, when mediated by technology, contains a cognitive and therefore political potential (Buck-Morss 2010).
In order to discuss these elements, I propose to analyse the transformations that have been made to the painted cave of Lascaux in France. Since its discovery in 1940, this cave has been developed as a tourist attraction, sometimes to the detriment of its heritage and archaeological value, thus marking the beginning of its spectacularization. Following its closure in 1963 for conservation reasons, several replicas have been created to offer the public the experience of one of the largest Paleolithic sites discovered to date. Successively named Lascaux II, III and IV, each of these reproductions used different techniques. In 1983, a first facsimile representing two sections (about 80% of the paintings) was opened 200m. from the entrance of the original cave. Next came an international travelling exhibition presenting models and five frescoes painted on resin panels, which was organized in 2012. The third iteration (Lascaux IV), located at the foot of the Lascaux hill, was created in 2016, in a specially dedicated architectural complex. This last facsimile is not only the first complete replication of a painted cave, but it is also the result of the use of new digitization tools and in particular new 3D software that have made it possible to take an unprecedented 1/16 of a millimetre reading of the entire cave.
Based on an analysis of the first developments of the original cave and the Lascaux II and IV facsimiles, I will show how the success of a simulation apparatus depends as much on the political and ideological context as on the possibilities offered by the reproductive technologies on which it is based.
But more importantly, I will try to show how these different transformations inform us that a simulacrum is not a closed object, definitively detached from the original to which it refers, but that its status as a copy and its legitimacy are on the contrary constantly renegotiated. Adjustments are made as much at the level of the promotional discourse as at the level of the apparatus itself, and consist in producing and refining the effect of realness necessary for the success of any tourism experience.
Staging of prehistory and visual modernity
At the time of the discovery of the Lascaux cave and although many painted caves had already been discovered since the second half of the 19th century, the consumption of prehistoric remains by the general public was only in its infancy. However, there was already a collective imagination around prehistory and in particular the lifestyles of prehistoric peoples. Like the geographical imaginaries of the elsewhere, which have "meaning only in their opposition to the here" (Staszak 2012, 2), the temporal elsewhere is constructed in relation to the present of the speaker and the group to which the speaker belongs. In the case of imaginaries linked to the prehistoric past, it was less a question of opposition than of a duplication or transposition into another era of the norms specific to industrialized societies1. It was in particular the success of Louis Figuier's book "L'homme primitif", published in 1870, that enabled the first fantasy figures of prehistory to be widely disseminated. The forty engravings that make up this book, which has been reprinted several times, presented the theories of the day in visible form and, above, all, created a feeling of familiarity with that period (Coye 1998).
The strong social demand for visual artifacts quickly pushed the young science of prehistory to provide images of the past. Thus, at the 1867 Paris Universal Exhibition, prehistoric objects
1 It is mainly through gender norms that this fantasized past has been inscribed in the collective imagination (Alberti et al.
2006; Bolger 2012; Sørensen 2000)
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contributing to the recognition of prehistoric archaeology were presented to the public for the first time (Quiblier 2014; Quertelet 2010). This event took place in a section called the Gallery of Labour History (or Retrospective Museum), a gallery that allowed visitors to contemplate a series of objects produced "by different nations from their origins to the 18th century" (Quiblier 2014, 68)2, with prehistory marking the zero point of human history. But it was above all at the 1889 Universal Exhibition that a new way of presenting Cro-Magnon Man was introduced in the form of dioramas (Fig.
2.3.1) presented in the section dedicated to the "History of Work and Anthropological Sciences".
Figure 2.3.1: Photograph of a diorama presented at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1889.
Image credit: © Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac
Visited by millions of visitors, the Universal Exhibitions allowed the Nations not only to showcase their know-how and the benefits of progress, but also to experiment with new scenographic devices (Ballester 2017). Through the rivalry played out amongst the industrialized nations, new visual standards appeared, laying the foundations for a new visual culture made up of an accumulation of material objects (attested in particular by the proliferation of private collections that would lead to the creation of the first museums), technological progress (in particular through pre-cinematic devices and the use of electricity) and the cultural desire to consume productions on the world stage (following colonial conquests in particular).
It is through these "world festivals of change of scenery" (Ballester 2017, 2) that the consumption of the world and history as an image was concretely set up. There were many simulation devices such as dioramas, but also stereoscopes, magic lanterns, panoramas, cinoramas and mareoramas. These pre-cinematic visual devices aimed to produce an image that went beyond its own framework and above all to give the spectators, through an effect of reality, the experience of being part of the image and thus being in another space-time. Appreciated for their immersive dimensions, these devices built part of their success on their ability to engage other senses than sight. Seeking to increase "the power of representation" (Gunning 2006, 36), these visual devices then shaped the viewer's experience in new ways.
2 This and other quotations originally in French have been translated by the author.
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This passion for images in general and visual devices in particular that characterizes industrial modernity will have two main consequences: (i) a modification of the status of the spectator by making his or her body a central element in the creation of the illusion he or she observes (Crary 1992) and (ii) a short-circuiting of reality and its duplication by the signs of the real (Baudrillard 1985, 48).
Invention of the Lascaux cave and birth of the simulacrum
The Lascaux cave was discovered by chance in 1940 by four curious teenagers and their dog.
Despite the young discoverers' agreement not to tell anyone about it, the news quickly spread and the inhabitants of the region began to visit it in large numbers. Swiftly organised, these visits were carried out under the supervision of the four young people (Fig. 2.3.2). Quickly recognized for its archaeological value, the cave has given rise to numerous interpretations as to the significance of its paintings and engravings, but also as to its duration of occupation or its dating, established today at about 15,000 years BC (Rigal 2016). These hypotheses are often probable, but rarely verified, as for example in the work of the prehistorian Marc Azéma, who sought to show the existence of an origin of the cinema in the "display system" present in Lascaux (Azéma 2015, 23).
Figure 2.3.2: “Visitors of all ages flock to the entrance of the cave”. The cave before the official installations and its opening to the public
Image credit: © M. Larivière / Archives privées de la famille Laval / Tous droits réservés
It is certain that the very setting of the cave as a confined, enclosed and underground space allows the experience of another space-time. In this respect, it is not unreasonable to consider that the Lascaux cave may have functioned in the eyes of Cro-Magnons as a rudimentary world simulation apparatus. At all events, it is in this form and with this function that the cave was developed following its discovery, thus falling within the category of layout specific to visual modernity that tourist simulacra belong to. This process of transforming an original cave into a simulation apparatus began, as I will show below, as soon as it was developed for its opening to the public in 1949 and will find in the various facsimiles produced after its closure a form of outcome.
The notions of simulacrum and world simulation apparatus refer to the same idea of duplicating reality and questioning the difference between true and false, real and imaginary (Baudrillard 1985, 12). In particular, it was Jean Baudrillard who popularized the term “simulacrum”
and made it the operative concept in his critique of mass entertainment and the consumer society.
Associated with the notion of hyperreality, the concept of simulacrum allows him to show how reality
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is replaced in post-modern societies by the signs of reality. This observation leads Baudrillard to see in the simulacrum "the identical copy of an original that never existed". A paradoxical formula that allows him to show how the sovereign difference between reality and its simulation models tends to disappear:
"The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth it is the map that precedes the territory - precession of the simulacra, it is the map that generates the territory (...). " (Baudrillard 1985, 10)3
There would thus be an inversion of the hierarchy between the real (as an original and authentic model) and its copy. Although Baudrillard's criticism fundamentally concerns the political economy, the capitalist production system and the power systems it produces, in the case of Lascaux it also allows us to understand the importance given to the accuracy of the copy and the reversal of status that took place between the original cave and its various replicas.
The notion of a simulation apparatus, on the other hand, does not contain any criticisms or normative dimensions. More functional than rhetorical, this term refers to an "arrangement of objects, places, installations, which provide visitors with the landscape experience of immersion in another space-time, within which they find themselves virtually translocated by processes of illusion" (Staszak, Sohier, and Gillet 2018) . Stressing the fact that this type of device acts on the scale of sensations by using processes which invite immersion, Alexandre Gillet, Estelle Sohier and Jean-François Staszak were among others interested in the pre-cinematic devices produced in the 19th century. Emphasizing the functional dimensions, they show how "large globes, dioramas, zoos, cinema, theme parks, three- dimensional city views or contemporary virtual reality art" can "influence both the imagination and the geographical awareness of those who experience them" (Ibid.). Closely linked to the degree of sophistication of the technology on which it is based, the world simulation apparatus thus remains a perfectible object. But it is also the cultural context and the status given to images, to reality or to the copy, as well as the ability (or willingness) of spectators to accept illusion, that ensures the success of any simulation apparatus of the world, despite its sometimes obsolete nature.
Although Michel Foucault's notion of apparatus was "decisive in [his] strategy of thought"
(Agamben 2007, 8) and although he gave a definition (Foucault 2001, 299) adapted to his analysis of governmentality which has been widely used since then, it is when it is used in an empirical perspective that this notion acquires its full heuristic dimension. This is why Philippe Ortel proposes to structure the notion through three components: a technical dimension ("the arrangement of heterogeneous elements"), a pragmatic dimension ("the interaction between these different elements, according to circumstances and usage"), and a symbolic dimension ("the production of meaning and a discourse") (Ortel 2008).
In the case of the Lascaux cave, the first accommodations made with regard to its opening to the public were primarily practical and protective: to show a fragile object to as many people as possible while protecting it as well as possible from the damage caused by the influx of visitors.
Following the categorisation proposed by Ortel, this objective corresponds to the first technical dimension of the system (creation of an access ramp, electric lighting, an access door, lowering the ground level of the cave, etc.). The second dimension, pragmatic, consists in the different modalities of interaction between visitors and the cave paintings but also the interactions within the group of visitors or with the guide (whose presence is mandatory for any visit). A set of interactions that will become increasingly sophisticated as new communication, information and visualization technologies are integrated into the system and that will lead, as in the case of Lascaux IV, to limiting the guide's
3 “Le territoire ne précède plus carte, ni ne lui survit. C’est désormais la carte qui précède le territoire-précession des simulacres, c’est elle qui engendre le territoire (…).”
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work to managing visitor flows. To these two dimensions is finally added the symbolic dimension, through the transmission of information and values that allow the visitor to embed the experience in the prehistoric past, a past that is favourable to many fantasies (Semonsut et al. 2013).
Tourism development, heritage development and duplication of the past
The haste with which the various types of development were carried out in order to open the cave to the public, must be understood in the light of the relatively recent nature of prehistoric sciences and excavation protocols, as well as the symbolic place given to this discovery by the political authorities at the end of the war. It was only at the beginning of the 20th century that a consensus emerged on cave art as the only trace of prehistoric populations, thus opening a new chapter in the history of archaeology (Hurel and Coye 2011). This recognition followed numerous scientific and religious controversies that emerged following the discovery of the decorated cave of Altamira in Spain in 1879, involving "the old sacred history" and "the brand new science of the human past" (Fabre 2014). These controversies and the identification of the cave as the birthplace of Art were to mark the reception of the cave by the general public. But it is also the supposed presence inside the cave of weapons intended for the resistance fighters that would contribute, in the context of the end of the Second World War, to inscribe it in the dual imagination of the Nation and Art.
Figure 2.3.3: The now closed entrance to the Lascaux cave Image credit: © O. Huard / CNP / MC
As soon as it was discovered, the cave was thus perceived as a resource for science, art and tourism. This is reflected in the comment by Abbé Breuil, one of the first prehistorians to visit the cave, who in July 1947 was concerned about the delay in opening it to the public following a disagreement between the owner of the hill where the cave was located and the French State: "Have we the right to remove from all of us this beauty, a wonder of prehistoric times? Art, science and tourism are directly involved.” It was indeed urgent to channel the already numerous visits, which were being made in conditions unworthy of the heritage and archaeological quality of the cave. Between 1940 and 1963, the site received one million visitors, and up to two thousand people per day during the summer preceding its closure. If the developments that were carried out had a mainly functional aim and consisted in improving visitors’ comfort, there are already elements prefiguring its future transformation into a simulacrum, notably with the redevelopment of the entrance:
"The official services have had (...) a grand entrance established at the bottom of the descent gallery through which one can access the caves of this magnificent Paleolithic monument: the wall in massive stonework and the door that reminds one of Mycenaean art suggest to the visitor who sees them at the bottom of the excavation an impression
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of mystery: three projecting corbels have been cut out to provide indirect lighting that will add quite easily to the magic atmosphere of the cave."4
This excerpt from a press article published when the cave was officially opened to the public in 1947 shows how the designers sought to reinforce the magical-religious dimension that prehistorians of the time attributed to the place (Rigal 2016). This first staging of a scientific discourse for tourism purposes helps to dramatize the site and to place it in the realm of the spectacular (Fig.
2.3.3). The beginning of a new chapter in the history of Lascaux, a history in which the principle of reality will be constantly redefined as degradation increases and the various replicas are created, gradually replacing the original.
It is in this context of touristic and heritage enhancement that in 1979 fifteen prehistoric sites and decorated caves in the Vézère valley, including the Lascaux cave, were added to UNESCO's World Heritage List. Although the tourist and heritage dimensions can sometimes meet from the standpoint of economic development of a region (as in the case of the Vézère valley) they also pursue often conflicting goals, particularly in terms of conservation, the tourist being often perceived "as a predator of heritage objects" (Lazzarotti 2011). Lascaux did not escape this rule and its closure was ordered in 1963 by the services of the Ministry of Culture and Communication, which were in charge of the management and conservation of the cave. Several research programmes were then set up under the supervision of a scientific committee in order to carry out continuous monitoring and deal with the persistent bio-climatic crises.
Lascaux II: the overbidding of the real
Following the closure and subsequent acquisition of the cave by the French State in 1972, its former owner Charles-Emmanuel de La Rochefoucauld undertook the construction of a facsimile called Lascaux II. But faced with difficulties, particularly financial ones, the project was taken over by the Dordogne department in 1978 and finally opened to the public in 1983 (Lima 2012, 31). Described as the Sistine Chapel of prehistory by Abbé Breuil, its replication had a double function: i) to ensure the economic development of the region that was already dependent on tourism revenues and ii) to perpetuate the symbolic and political significance of a "monument of world importance, which transcends cultures and borders and forms part of a common heritage" (Clottes 2008). In order to honour this dual ambition, significant resources were made available by the state, in particular the requisition of an old quarry located 250 metres from the original cave. An 80-metre cavity was created to house a concrete structure protecting the framework of the facsimile, which was then completely covered and planted over when the work was finished. This trick gave visitors the illusion of descending into a cave and is still a central element in the success of the experience of this tourist simulacrum.
Combined with an air conditioning system, this device represents one third of the cave and about 80%
of the original paintings. The facsimile was produced on the basis of a three-dimensional survey which was innovative for the time and was proposed by the National Geographic Institute (IGN). From the extremely precise contour readings, artists and engineers were able to bend hundreds of iron bars which, once assembled, formed a metal frame that reproduced the dimensions and contours of the cave (Lima 2012, 31). Finally, and to give substance to this structure, a mixture of cement and lime was manually pumped in and then shaped by hand, centimetre by centimetre, using maps and surveys that specified "the nature of the surface, more or less smooth, or the presence of a particular rocky edge, depression, bump or crevice" (Lima 2012, 33). As Pedro Lima rightly mentions, it was not only
4 "Les services officiels ont fait établir (…) une entrée monumentale au bas de la galerie de descente par laquelle on accède aux grottes de cette magnifique station paléolithique: le mur en grand appareil et la porte qui fait penser à l'art mycénien veulent donner au visiteur qui les aperçoit au fond de la fouille une impression de mystère : trois corbeaux en saillie ont été creusés pour porter un éclairage indirect qui ajoutera un peu facilement à l'atmosphère magique de la grotte."
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"the dimensions that were retransmitted, but also the sensory message and the element of mystery of Lascaux" (Ibid.).
It is obvious at this stage that the realization of this facsimile goes beyond the strict dimension of copying. For in fact the ambition was less to produce a resembling object, but rather an existing object, i.e. capable of existing instead of the original and letting it be forgotten (Fig. 4). This distinction refers to the Platonic conception of the image and the cleavage between the art of copying and the art of simulacrum (Deleuze 1969, 296). In the first case, it is the copy image "subject to the laws of mimesis" and in the second case it is the simulacrum image, with a vaguer status, but which would exist in itself outside any model (Stoichita 2008, 10). Although the facsimile of Lascaux II is based on mimesis, and in this sense produces "an effect of resemblance", it has ended up masking the model by overbidding its own reality (Ibid.p.11), thus acquiring in the eyes of many visitors tricked by the cleverness of the device, the status of original. In the case of Lascaux II, the overbidding of reality is spread over several registers: the choice of the site, with the location of the copy 200m. from the original cave, or the determination to find ochres in the underground cavities of the region that are as close as possible to the original pigments (Lima 2012, 34). Perfectly realistic in terms of the reproduction of the paintings, the designers also sought to include in the construct the qualities specific to caves, not only the underground dimension but also the hygrometry or temperature.
Figure 2.3.4: Entrance to the Lascaux II facsimile Image credit: Author’s photograph
Another important element for the success of the experience of this facsimile was the addition of a museum airlock integrated into the underground structure. Its function was not only educational, allowing visitors to familiarize themselves with the techniques used by prehistoric artists, but above all to mark the passage between the outside and the inside, two environments that differ in nature and function. As a true liminal space it allows visitors to gradually switch to another space-time and helps them to forget the artificial side of the object they are visiting. Accompanied by an experienced guide whose narrative helps to mentally transpose the spectators, the visit then consists in putting the visitors in a position to accept the copy as an original work and to give it the status of authenticity.
These aesthetic choices of reinjecting reality into the mimesis then make it difficult to distinguish between the original and the copy and this disorder would contribute, if we follow Baudrillard's analysis, to "sending them both back into the artificial" (Baudrillard 1985, 21).
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At the time of its inauguration in 1983 (Fig. 4), the event of the production of this facsimile did not allow any confusion about its copy status. But faced with the economic stakes for a region largely dependent on tourism and the heritage stakes for the French State, which was criticised for not having better preserved the cave, the staging had to be spectacular enough to continue to attract the public while at the same time the production of the facsimile had to be carried out with full scientific rigour so as not to be perceived as a well executed fake, or worse as mere entertainment. In short, Lascaux II had to be endowed with a double character of authenticity: scientific and touristic.
Thus the question of authenticity haunts the experience visitors have of Lascaux. Always present, but paradoxically rarely utilized by designers or visitors, this notion refers more to the quality of the lived experience than to the possibility or not of consuming the original cave. In this respect, it is interesting to observe the use of flaming torches for the visit to Lascaux II, a lighting technique that is absent among prehistoric artists, but which in the visitors’ minds contributes to the authenticity of their visit despite its imprecision in historical terms. This observation is in line with the conclusions of numerous studies on authenticity in the tourist context, which have highlighted the fundamentally emic dimension (Harris 1976) of this category of analysis (Geurds and Van Broekhoven 2013; Lindholm 2008; Rickly and Vidon 2018; Timm Knudsen and Waade 2010; Bold, Larkham, and Pickard 2018).
MacCannell in particular (MacCannell 1973, 2011, 2013) with his conceptualization of staged authenticity shed light on certain logics at work in the relationship between host and visitor, but also with regard to attractions and their use in tourism. The main critics who followed sought to show how the quest for authenticity was not the tourist's only driving force and that the latter could for example simply seek to overturn a form of routine (Urry and Larsen 2011, 13) or even, for what is called "post- tourism", to play with the inauthenticity of certain tourist attractions. In conjunction with these criticisms, some authors have also sought to convey the complexity of the use of this concept in the tourist context. Thus Bruner (Bruner 2009) sought to show how the question of authenticity, while referring to the notions of simulacrum or copying, also referred to the notion of the invention of tradition. It is in particular through the paradoxical term "authentic reproduction" that he defined four categories of meaning for the notion of authenticity in a tourist context (Bruner 2009, 399) : 1) the authentic as the reproduced object is credible and convincing by its resemblance, it speaks of mimetic credibility or verisimilitude; 2) the authentic as the object would have the appearance of reality and could replace it; 3) the authentic as the original (in this case there would be no possibility of so-called authentic reproduction); 4) the authentic as the object would have been certified and validated legally (argument from authority).
We understand then that the uses of this notion are multiple and above all that authenticity depends on a set of conditions that go beyond the strict framework of the object. It is thus never the object itself that defines and guarantees its authenticity by the sole authority of its existence, and it is therefore relevant to speak of a regime of authenticity.
Lascaux IV: the precession of the simulacrum
Following the opening of Lascaux II and the arrival of more than 260,000 visitors per year, new infiltrations were discovered in the original cave, leading the authorities to cordon the hill off in order to limit its access. Faced with the gravity of the situation and the impossibility of moving the first facsimile, it was decided to build a new replica at the foot of the hill at the exit of the village of Montignac: Lascaux IV.
The success of the facsimile of Lascaux II was based on the perfection of its duplication and its ability to replace the original. But the experience offered always led back to "a space whose curvature was that of reality or truth" (Baudrillard 1985, 11): the reality of the ochre pigments taken from the surrounding hills, the realism of the spatial displacement that leads us underground, or the veracity of the tools used by the fresco painters which were identical to those used by prehistoric artists. In the facsimile of Lascaux IV, on the contrary, the memory of the original cave ends up disappearing,
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replaced by the experience of a hyperreal cave, i.e. a space structured around an "overbidding of the signs of reality" (Baudrillard 1985, 17) and crossed by the fantasy of an absolute visibility.
Figure 2.3.5: The building housing the Lascaux IV facsimile Image credit: © Titia Carrizey-Jasick
With an estimate of more than 50 million euros for the construction, the Dordogne General Council had to call on numerous private patrons in order to supplement public assistance. The management of the site was entrusted to a semi-public company, Semitour, the department's leading tourism company with the objective of attracting more than 350,000 visitors per year. In a context marked by the multiplication of tourist offers (notably the presence of the first facsimile and many attractions related to prehistory) and the modification of consumption patterns (notably the growing importance of digital tools in the tourist experience) it was not only imperative to ensure that visitors arrive and to control their flow, but also to satisfy as closely as possible and even exceed the expectations that the latter would have of a cave facsimile.
In order to achieve these objectives, an architectural competition was organized for the creation of a building that would bring together the International Centre for Cave Art, the new facsimile, exhibition rooms, a bookshop and a café. Seeking to fit in and blend into the shape of the existing hill, the winning project, a true architectural gesture (Fig. 5), unfolds at the foot of the hill by mimicking a geological fault. But it is certainly in the scenography proposed for the visit to the facsimile that its simulacrum condition is best exposed. Contrary to what expresses the first condition for a cave, namely to penetrate the interior of the Earth, the designers invite visitors to take an elevator to the upper terrace to imagine the landscape as it was in the time of the Cro-Magnons. Then the group of visitors is called to a room below to watch a film that summarizes in a computer-generated image (Fig.
6) what they have just seen (a winter landscape, reindeer, snowy owls and cave bears). Then they have to take a semi-underground and overgrown ramp to the entrance to the facsimile, a journey accompanied by a series of sound effects mimicking the day of September 8, 1940 when the four teenagers entered the cave.
11 Figure 2.3.6: The cinema room presenting a computer-generated image of the site of Lascaux in prehistoric times
Image credit: Author’s photograph
The tour continues with the facsimile and then a series of adjoining rooms in which all the qualities of digital technology are displayed. At the beginning of a new chapter in the story of the cave’s conservation, digital tools are at the heart of the new museum project that accompanies the facsimile exhibition. The designers have thus chosen to equip each visitor with a portable digital interface and individual headphones (in fact a smartphone equipped with software developed for the exhibition) that acts as a guide and which, depending on the visitor’s location inside the exhibition rooms, offers different informative content in the form of videos, images and audio narrative. The device also serves as an interface for augmented reality experiments, and as a means of communication to be informed in real time of the various workshops and cinema screenings offered at regular intervals in other rooms. In addition to this central element in the visitor experience (called a companion on the visit), there are many other digital visual devices: touch screens, spectrogram of the heat and CO2 released by the visitor, digital diorama, 3D projections or virtual reality helmets. These elements relate back to Gunning's analyses of the importance of extending simulation to other senses than sight to create a successful experience for the viewer (Gunning 2006) and inform us how the effect of realness is now the responsibility of the viewer in person. It is indeed the viewer who is put at the centre of the experience, who is in charge of activating the various museum devices or even manipulating the images.
The playful and hyperreal experience offered to the viewer, but also the concern shown by the designers to transcend the original cave, would then express two characteristics of digital visual culture: the importance of the resolution of the images and the fantasy of their durability. In the first case, the ability to manipulate images and especially their success depends on the resolution and fluidity of the visual devices. The images are no longer this static object that we look at, but on the contrary objects that are transformed according to how they are consumed and the visual skills of the user, in the example of augmented reality proposed at Lascaux IV. In the second case, it is the mortal character of a cave that had survived 17,000 years that led the various designers to produce a hypervisible facsimile in order to transcend the model and inscribe its replica, an electronic and luminescent artifact, in a form of eternity, a fantasy of the digital image. This is why the spectacular dimension of the Lascaux IV facsimile is perhaps due less to the freshness of the prehistoric paintings than to the visual saturation effect produced by the precision and luminosity of the reproductions.
Although an important and indispensable job has been done by the copyists’ hands, the power of digital tools gives this cave, perfect in terms of reproduction, a sense of virtuality. The Lascaux IV facsimile would thus be less the experience of a cave than that of a relief screen, as the replacement of the traditional guide’s flashlight by the use of a laser pointer would seem to prove.
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Conclusion
"Lascaux is a painted cave". It is with this statement of the obvious that Romain Pigeaud closes the book in which he gives an overview of the different hypotheses about the origins of the paintings and the occupation of the cave (Pigeaud 2017, 171). Relevant from the point of view of prehistoric science, as there are many hypotheses about its meaning, it is incomplete when it comes to considering Lascaux and its links with visuality. In this case, it would be more appropriate to define Lascaux as a simulacra generator.
Through Lascaux and its various iterations, which cover the digital shift, some issues specific to visual modernity crystallize, such as the doubling of the real or the instrumentation of the gaze. Widely studied, these phenomena are now amplified by the desire to put the spectator at the centre of the experience. Characteristic of the digital economy, this trend is also observed in tourist simulacra. The effect of reality is now ensured not so much by elements such as the use of original pigments or the installation of the copy close to the original as by the possibility offered to visitors to produce the conditions for the success of their visit. Placed at the centre of the various devices, it is now up to them to manipulate, touch, scan, zoom, in short to push their perceptual abilities to the limit.
The immediate success of Lascaux II, the first facsimile, was due in part to its mimetic qualities and its ability to exist in place of the original. In the case of Lascaux IV, the original as a model was already dead, replaced by Lascaux II. Although the artists and copyists at work for this new iteration were able to visit the original cave, the copying work was mainly carried out from a digital clone. It is therefore not unreasonable to describe Lascaux IV as a true simulacrum, i.e. an "identical copy of an original that never existed" (Baudrillard 1985). This paradoxical formula makes it possible to grasp the vertigo one feels when experiencing tourist simulacra and in particular their ability to offer all the appearance of reality while bypassing its mishaps (Baudrillard 1985, 11).
In Lascaux IV, and also, but to a lesser extent in Lascaux II, it is now possible to see paintings and engravings in unequalled comfort. And even more, because by means of augmented reality it is possible to see engravings invisible to the naked eye or to call up short videos on the reproductions of the paintings. This raises the legitimate question of knowing what we are visiting, even if digital culture
"does not concern so much appearances or the observable", but the very modalities of "organizing our perceptions" (Vial 2017, 13). Although the designers of the International Centre for Cave Art have sought to avoid this question through a deployment of visual technologies and devices, many visitors who decide to complete their visit with the facsimile of Lascaux II are convinced they are seeing the original, marvelling at its state of freshness and worrying about its conservation. Carried away by the illusion that thanks to its earlier date this first replica would have an authenticity that would be lacking in Lascaux IV due to too many innovations, they forget that for the "triumph of the simulacrum the death of the model is necessary " (Stoichita 2008, 11).
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