ABSTRACT

SIGHTINGS is an illustrated collection of images developed from eyewitness accounts of unexplained beings. Thirty artists contribute personal or historically documented experiences with cryptids, ghosts, extraterrestrials, and other mysterious entities. It is presented in a box set of editioned fine art prints and includes a field guide with laser-etched cover. Honoring visual traditions across the globe that illuminate the human relationship with these entities, SIGHTINGS asks the viewer to reconsider the breadth of science, continually expanding our way of knowing the world.

FROM THE CURATORS

Tapirus kabomani is a species of tapir that was, until 2013, non-existent according to Western science. The Karitiana people -- First Nations residents in its Amazonian habitat -- have long acknowledged the animal’s presence. Before its “official” discovery in 2013, the tapir was, as cryptozoologist Loren Coleman calls it, ethnoknown. That is, it was recognized by remote autonomous communities, but not by the majority of scientists. (Cozzuol et. al.)

The tapir’s cryptozoological history illuminates scientific discovery as a political act. Officially recognizing the tapir’s existence, scientists legitimized an indigenous ideology that was once considered deficient by Western standards. This sort of “discovery” also brings to light the notion that not all of Earth’s inhabitants are readily visible -- that a wilderness remains.

We see the unknown as the realm of infinite possibility, unfolding in a vast landscape not easily accessed by humans: the wild, the abyss. It is in part the human inability to research, to control, to domesticate, to know these entities in close and constant proximity that drives SIGHTINGS. A manmade archive of illustrations, videos, and recordings informs the cultural conceptions of the world outside man’s grasp. This global repository of recorded events doubles back on itself, bringing our attention simultaneously to the infinite/inaccessible and to the finite/worldly. In this sense, theories might bring to light both the researcher and the researched.

It is through the conviction of human limitation in relationship to these beings that one is able to know the most transcendent terror, curiosity, and adventure: to encounter a mysterious entity is to momentarily commune with the extra-ordinary. We are compelled by the world not-for-man.

- Brittany Kieler and AJ Nordhagen