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“Their name is execrated today, but those who grieve over the “treasures” destroyed in that frenzy overlook two widely acknowledged facts: One, that the Library is so huge that any reduction by human hands must be infinitesimal. And two, that each book is unique and irreplaceable, but (since the Library is total) there are always several hundred thousand imperfect facsimiles-books that differ by no more than a single letter, or a comma.”[1]
On a warm September evening an unstoppable fire raged, culminating in the cataclysmic destruction of over twenty million artifacts that, in a split second, erased two hundred years of history and progress. Amid the chaos and debris, a meteorite remained solemnly still atop its pedestal. Its survival came as no surprise, having previously endured a voyage through atmospheric forces far greater than those of the fire that night at the museum.
There is something almost poetic about the fact that such a potentially destructive force –that is, a meteorite– survived yet another potentially destructive force. Fire is only destructive when uncontrolled or uncontained and, if anything, that night proved that cyclical destruction cannot be prevented, and that civilization is slowly paving the way to its own dissolution.
Falling into ruin is an inherently embedded condition of terrestrial continuation. “Rising into ruins”2 is the promise of survival. The disintegration of all matter on the physical plane into mere ashes and dust has ever been a guiding principle and a curse: pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris. Nonetheless, the museum had fallen into disrepair and nothing can nor should be romanticized about the aftermath of a tragedy due solely to gross negligence and the avarice of mankind.
The permanent and irreversible destruction of this compendious collection raises myriad questions regarding the immediate need for preserving [and digitizing] these repositories of culture and knowledge, especially in this turbulent and fragmented age. Museum spaces exist as microcosms that mirror civilization – equally reflecting both the cultures of the past and the generations of tomorrow. It is for this reason, then, that the conservation of the contemporary serves as a means of critical resistance against a condemned future of deserts, voids, and disrepair.
Ruin as: What Might Have Been
On the night of September 2nd, 2018 –two hundred years after its founding, on June 6th, 1818– the Museu Nacional do Brasil in Rio de Janeiro burst into flames that consumed approximately 92.5% of its archive, including over twenty million artifacts –ranging from natural wonders to ethnographic rarities and archaeological relics– along with 470,000 volumes from its library. The Museum was and, even in its current condition, can still be very much considered Brazil’s oldest and most substantial scientific institution. Prior to the fire, it housed one of the world’s most comprehensive natural history and anthropological collections.
Among the surviving museum pieces[3] was Bendegó: a meteorite first discovered in 1784, once acknowledged as the largest meteorite on Earth. It was found intact, atop its now-charred marble pedestal, as if the conflagration that consumed everything in its path had never taken place. Proof of the fire, however, drifted in the air, in the scraps of burned manuscripts, the clouds of black smoke, and the bitter taste of reality that reminds us how fragile worldly existence is, and how rapidly memories can be erased. Everything that had ever been written about Bendegó –research, studies, anecdotes– was kept in the library that succumbed to the fire, in the same way that so many other repositories have perished in bonfires throughout history.
Fire in itself is a paradoxical force: it cleanses and destroys. Fire is an agent of transformation and cyclical change; it is both origin and end. The most intriguing and intoxicating aspect of such a force lies in its ability to exist ad infinitum – in its power to burn continuously. The destructiveness of fire, however, lies not within its nature, but in the hands of whoever utilizes it as a weapon (or a tool).
For centuries, kings, emperors, and tyrants have all burned down repositories of culture and knowledge as a means of regaining control or, sometimes, as [failed] attempts to create new beginnings. From Alexandria and the Qin empire to Mosul and Palmyra in more contemporary times, a deliberate and systematic intention aimed to destroy with fire, and this intention required the active involvement and participation of specific agents that, even after thousands of years, can still be tracked down and identified. A fire –and the destruction of cultural heritage– due to negligence is even more troublesome, as it stems from multiple and simultaneous failures inevitably culminating in the dilution of responsibility and in a passive, unproductive state of contemplation, nostalgia, and remembrance.
Finding a [somewhat] morbid pleasure in decay is unquestionably a human trait, as we exist in an already ruined and ruinous realm. “Ruin-triumph” is but the futile pondering of former glories, a longing for quondam hopes and dreams and the expectation of a future that never arrived and that could never be. “Rising into ruins” is merely one phase of the boundless cycle of construction/dissolution. Things are not destroyed when they fall into ruin; they are temporarily blurred, until once again uncovered. Their existence continues; it remains uninterrupted. The greatest discoveries of civilization were not discoveries at all, because these broken monuments and isolated relics were never lost; they were simply partially obscured.
All the artifacts now contained in encyclopedic collections derive from humanity’s need for order out of chaos and from an obsessive desire to make sense of the universe through the constant categorization and rearrangement of fragments. Science, history, and ethnographic museums are, fundamentally, repositories of dead things. Even if these objects are restored, reconstructed, and reinterpreted so as to recount past narratives and foresee upcoming ones, this afterlife does not bring the objects back to life. Museums are the tombs of all that has superseded cyclical destruction; they house the pillars of a past that endured fire and ice only to stand immobile today, as desolate specters among detritus and remains. These ruins reflect each and every individual who has wandered the earth, and, equally, everyone who is yet to set foot on this sphere. They will stand in the same place in perpetuity, or at least, until they crumble into ashes and resurface again.
The Desert As: What Will Never Be
This expected –however, not necessarily encouraged– dissolution, then, casts a light on the question of time and space, with regard to the emergence of ruins and “ruin value”, and makes sense solely when viewed in the context of the distant past or future. How soon is too soon for something to be considered a ruin? Ruins are reminiscent, didactic, and almost prophetic, and thus, the contemporary cannot embrace their new forms. If the remains are still burning and the acrid smell of fumes still lingers in the air, then they might be too raw and undigested in memory to be thought of as ruins.
The devastation of the Museu Nacional –and of every single artifact deemed irreplaceable– is not only a monumental loss of Brazilian heritage and of universal culture; it has also created a lacuna that demands to be replenished and that will ultimately affect the understanding and progress of human civilization. Allowing a building that was once an imperial palace to fall into disrepair is a tragedy in itself, but condemning a comprehensive collection of this kind to nothingness through mere indifference is unforgiveable. Neglect means slow decay, a decay that can be manipulated –whether kindled or avoided, incentivized or stopped–, but also a decay that does not culminate in ruins, but in a desert[4] in time. A desert that suggests a static state of emptiness and desolation; a desert that evokes regression and devolution.
What happens, then, when a ‘tomb of ruins’ becomes simply a tomb? When the cohesive reconstruction of millions of fragments is yet again shattered into millions of new fragments? Most of the matter that burned and disintegrated into dust and ashes had already previously risen from dust and ashes. Most of the fragments that are being ‘discovered’ in this newly uncharted space –concurrently being treated as a provisional archaeological site– were likely to have been originally discovered on actual archaeological sites. Disintegration surely means transformation, but if this is so, how then does the transformation of the same matter impact the objects themselves, or rather, our understanding of the objects and their contexts? Like the Ship of Theseus, we must ask the question: if this collection from the Museu Nacional do Brasil were to be reconstructed in its entirety would it still be the same collection that was lost in the flames?
The reconstruction of fragments does not necessarily aim at bringing the objects back to life, but rather at somehow reconstituting narratives and environments. Because everything is bound to disappear, we find ourselves in a constant, active struggle to fill in blanks, bridge gaps, and shrink voids. Individuals understand and constitute their contexts through fragments –of light, of time, of information, of memory–, so however fatal the fire might have been, there is still the possibility of, perhaps, reconstructing the collection through collective memory and digital interventions.
If artworks, artifacts, and documents are not preserved, conserved, and, in this age, digitized, did they even exist? So much of our knowledge about many of the world’s ancient repositories –most of which, ultimately, were destroyed– has, for the most part, been gathered after their destruction. Often, when the original material could not be safeguarded or reclaimed, that which endured was merely the remains of intangible fragments that lingered in time –writings, memories, songs, myths– that served to corroborate their existence in the first place. These lacunae are intrinsically embedded in our understanding of the past, and so we must embrace them with open arms.
Nevertheless, a museum should not have to burn down in order to initiate a conversation about the need for digital preservation and conservation of all of the world’s collections of artworks and artifacts. Pre-existing online repositories such as Google Arts and Culture and Wikipedia, of course, but also the databases of independent institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Museum, etc., are examples of the various ways in which collections could/should be utilized. However, they also shed light on certain issues linked to the meteoric rise of the economy of digital preservation and conservation; these procedures require large investments in terms of both ownership of space –both physical and digital– and the instruments, infrastructure, and workforce needed to maintain them.
The rapidly growing air of solidarity from the international community towards the Museu Nacional also raises several questions regarding the responsibility of preserving and conserving not only the collections, but also the spaces where they are housed, especially since, in this case, the building in question was far more than a Brazilian museum; the universal collection inside it was meant for past, present, and future civilizations equally. This in no way diminishes or belittles current actions and efforts to restore and reconstruct the decimated collection; rather, it underscores the fact that everyone is responsible for caring for and looking after it, and for preventing foreseeable damages to it and other collections, particularly those found in more endangered contexts and treacherous conditions (usually in the Global South).
Lacuna as: What Can Potentially Be
The tragedy of the Museu Nacional confirms the fact that endurance is a privilege reserved for only a few. The angst and loss related to this type of tragedy cannot be erased through the resurrection of ruins plus beau que la beauté. The frustration experienced after failing to preserve that which constitutes us –individually and collectively– cannot and should not be diluted with the promise or hope that, one day, future generations will look back to this moment and realize that they were able to learn and grow from these mistakes, or that these fires could have been avoided in the first place. Treating the remnants of the Museu as memento mori seems hardly appropriate; this type of catastrophe does not allude simply to individual impermanence, but to universal finitude as well. It serves as quintessential evidence that only we can and will be liable for the clash of cultures and the end of civilization, for humanity is slowly paving the way to its own destruction. Human existence is nothing but a continuous process of negotiation between persistence and decay aimed at their unattainable equilibrium, in a universe where it is impossible to differentiate between construction and dissolution, and that shall remain forever unaltered.
1 Jorge Luis Borges (2000). The Library of Babel. Fictions (pp. 65-74).Londres: Penguin Books.
2 The concept of “Ruins in Reverse” was first conceived by Robert Smithson in the 1960s, and further expanded in his 1967 photo-essay, A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey (1967). This notion came in direct opposition to the established concept of “Romantic Ruins,” as Smithson considered that buildings do not fall into ruin after they are built, but rather rise into ruin before they are built. Smithson, Robert (1996), “A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey (1967)”, Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, Jack Flam (ed.), Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 68-74.
3 Among the artifacts destroyed in the fire is Luzia –the oldest human skeleton ever discovered on the American continent–, dinosaur remains, Ancient Egyptian mummies and relics, one of the most comprehensive collections of dissected butterflies, historical indigenous artifacts belonging to cultures now known to be extinct, as well as documentation related to these tribes, including literature on their rituals and traditions and audio recordings of their languages, among many other irreplaceable items.
4 In the context of this essay, the term desert makes a direct reference to Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s commentary on the fire of in the Museu Nacional do Brasil, in which he referred to the consequences of the negligence and poor management of the –current and previous– Brazilian governments as deserts in time: “O Brasil é um país onde governar é criar desertos. Desertos naturais, no espaço, com a devastação do cerrado, da Amazónia. Destrói-se a natureza e agora está-se destruindo a cultura, criando-se desertos no tempo. Estamos perdendo com isso parte da história do Brasil e do mundo, porque se trata de testemunhos com significado para toda a civilização.” (Brazil is a nation in which to govern means to create deserts. Natural deserts, in space, with the devastating fencing of the Amazon. Nature was destroyed and now culture is being destroyed, creating deserts in time. With this we lose part of the history of Brazil and of the world, because these are testimonies with meaning for all of civilization.”).
