implicit art

First up, Nicole (my better 2/3rds) picked up a hot-off-the-press copy of Time Out, Johannesburg yesterday. For those of you who don’t know, Time Out, New York is this great NYC mag with listings of restaurants, shows, exhibitions, spaces, the works - and a few good articles and must sees - for NYC; I think it comes out once a month. How cool is it that there is now a Time Out, Joburg and (yes, even a) Time Out, Cape Town (including a visitor’s guide)?

In other news, for interactive video producers out there, a new version (free upgrade) of jitter has been released. And those keen to work with text should check out the latest batch of free objects from jasch, just ported to windows and made cross-platform. I’ve been working on using these for live XML news feed downloads, to control real-time video effects, and they are brilliant!

And how I could I forget my own self-promotion (this is http://nathanielstern.com after all)? My first solo show opens at the Johannesburg Art Gallery this Saturday at 18h00. More info here: the storytellers

With, what?, 5 days until my first solo show opens, I’m feeling a little woozy. Perfectionist and anxious guy that I am… if you are around, have some free time, a relatively able body, and want to help, lemme know!

But at least there’s some eye candy at the JAG to gaze on while breaking a bit. Peops have been talking about how good Clive Kellner will be for the JAG ever since he took over as Director; the word is that he’s a fantastic administrator. Yesterday, however, we got to see his chops as a curator. negotiated identities: black bodies is a must-see of big names and interesting, provocative work. Pictured, stills from two projections that face each other in Berni Searle’s Snow White.

Here’s some pics of the beautiful, wooden, moving sculptures at a duo show between Toni-Ann Ballenden and Richard John Forbes at GordArt in Melville. These are kind of mythic, rock-a-bye trees growing in the middle of the gallery. Maybe it’s the child in me, but I just kept pushing them like those old punching bags filled with air, from when we were kids. Look Ma, it’s interactive!

Yesterday afternoon saw a fantastic double event at the WSOA Digital Arts friday soiree. First, Cobi Van Tonder facilitated successive performances in her award-winning, interactive gumboot project. Analog sensors in the soles and on the sides of these boots trigger and control live samples of electronic music. Her collaborative performances went from fairly simple - where we could mostly see exactly how our performer controlled the music - to very complex. There were all kinds of ideas thrown around with the kinds of samples one could remap to her boots, the kinds of people we’d like to see using them, and how to make the interaction more or less transparent - as well as what this might do to the conceptual framework, and audience, of the work.

Next up, Aryan Kaganof overheated the projector (literally) with 5 video shorts from the past year. The series, entitled collaborations was made up of dialogues with other artists, where contributions, edits, and suggestions went between parties in several iterations before each work was completed. The Q&A session was the weirdest I’ve ever been to, and also the most entertaining. AK managed to sell a handful of his poetry books, and gave me one of his SMS (Sanctuary Mental Space) books from this show. Admittedly, I’ve been eyeing this book for a while. Besides some extremely provocative poetry, the intricate detail of his beautiful text art puts anything ASCII I’ve seen in the Digital Space to shame. Often, I find myself mesmerized by the amazing patterns, and completely forget that these are also legible poems. It’s a stunning publication, highly recommended to digi-geeks, poets and Colin Richards fans, alike.

Finally, about 20 cats from the soiree went over to the Wits post-graduate club for drinks. Attendees included Wits crew, Wits Tech, Bag Factory, even Tuks - it’s really amazing to see the Digital Arts community growing in this way. There are plans, I say, there are plans under way to foster this even more….

Needless to say, the Bell-Roberts book launch saw some nice drinks, food and important people. It was not as crowded as expected, and I think this is because a lot of people may have been at the Wits Group student Exhibition (pictured, left, is an untitled installation by lee-at meyerov), Usha’s show at gallery momo (yet to make it, but will review soon enough) or at Malcolm’s farewell party (center image is the final performance of the evening - he is now a “visiting professor”; I knew they would not let him get away that easily). Also pictured is jeremy wafer’s dinner from the lattermost of those events.

Even tho I was informed months ago, I had totally forgotten that Creative Commons, South Africa was already underway. I was then sent this great cartoon, from Jo-Anne Green over at turbulence / networked_performance (a born South African, now living in the States), which led me to heaps more information. My own blog is now under a Creative Commons License, using an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike, um, thing. This means you can grab, edit and re-use any and all of my online content - including text, images, video, even (especially) the mp3 from this post - so long as you are willing to share it, too! Please link back to me, and lemme know, when you play, and where it lay! I’m really hoping that this kind of forward thinking can lead to more interdisciplinary, collaborative, public art projects in Johannesburg and SA @ large! Note that commercial uses must be approved by me ;) Thanks to a bit of surfing off their blog, my new RSS feeds, and links in my blogs i read section of this site, now include cc South Africa, .Camel and jo’blog. Rock on.

OK. This’ll be the last of the Kebble images I post this year (that’s not a promise). I couldn’t help but show the editioned Doreen Southwood trophy, titled “big night out” here; the idea of having sculptures like this is great (as is the printed invite), tho admittedly a bit cheesy in practice….

Anyway, tonight is the Big Night Out in joburg - tho not officially. Usha Seejarim opens a show at gallery momo at 6PM, and at the same time, those wacky cats from over at Bell Roberts Gallery will be at the Johannesburg Art Gallery for the launch of 10 years, 100 artists, which I picked up while I was in Cape Town - a stunning publication, well worth the R375 (or so - much cheaper prices provided at the preceding link). Also tonight, there’s a group student show at the substation at Wits (called eyeshadow), followed by a bit of a going away party for Malcolm Purkey, former head of Drama, now taking over as the director of the Market Theatre in Newtown.

Tomorrow is another digi-day at the Convent, too. WSOA’s Digital Arts department will be presenting the finished works from Colleen Alborough’s stop-frame animation course (12:45) , and then at 3 PM, Cobi van Tonder and Aryan Kaganof present some work they’ve been doing - this should be very interesting.

I’ll be jumping around between as many of these as I can. If you are reading this, and see me somewhere, the secret password is edible.

And not too far into the shadow of the deserving winners @ the Brett Kebble Art Awards, but indeed after the some of the heartwarming stories, there is a fantastic exhibition of contemporary South African art. Honestly, the BK exhibition has to be the most comprehensive, well curated, and interesting show of work I’ve ever seen in this country.

Above is one of said provocative pieces from the exhibition, which just might get lost - or misunderstood as a simple photograph - in the huge show, which requires a full day of time and energy to truly appreciate. More of a performance piece then anything else, Bridget Baker’s tryptich The Blue Collar Girl documents her “chroma-key character” series, which displaces the blue collar workers of Cape Town into a “cinematic narrative of a fantastical environment of ’Äòno constraints’Äô”. Her visual/textual pun of replacement is clever, and a bit eerie, on the imagination. More here.

Very well known for his performances (some of which are still going on in Cape Town, so I recommend checking them out if you can!), Johan Thom’s piece also consists of a beautiful double projection on dirty, butter-filled glass (complete with a sonorous envelope for a soundtrack), which stands on its own as a provocative image of entrapment - even without his physical performative presence. More here.

I could easily go on. Go to this show if you can….

Hektik!

Ok, so I promise to write a more extensive blog after I catch up on my work a bit, then relax, but the short of it is that the Kebbles were amazing, the winners extremely deserving, and the trip a huge success - step inside won a major award!!! See the Kebble site for more on the works - of course I’ll be sure to give my two cents soon enough, but it’s a good place to start (for a change - after the awards, they seemed to have more time to jump on in and do an overhaul of the back end, with a lot more info now).

Time to grade and prep my teaching, but thanks for everyone’s support and good wishes. Given that 4 of the 7 top winners were some forms of video, multimedia, or digital work, I can safely say that we are beginning to see a true shift in how to look at contemporary art here in SA - and I think I like it ;)

Most of all, I have to say (not sure what the word on the street is) that both top winners (it was a tie!) exhibited stunning work, and I believe there to be little to no dispute around their awards. In fact, the entire exhibition is a testament to the amazing work happening here (and I don’t envy the judges); check it out if you can!