So I fly down to Cape Town very early tomorrow morning, and stay there until New Year’s day. Anybody wanna hang out? Then, I’m heading up the Garden Route with my folks (visiting from NYC!) and will be back in Jozi on the 5th. Again, lemme know if you’re around those parts then, and wanna swap fun ;)
What a year - I am utterly exhausted.
I haven’t yet decided if it’s that I get tired more easily, the world is more tiring, or some grand combination (complication?) thereof. Every year I try to take these weeks to refuel, rejuvenate, or at least relearn to pretend that my curiosity about the world has returned. Every year I fear it won’t happen, I feel a little less there than I did the year before, and then I do it all over again - usually better than the year before.
But it gets harder to smile so much, and fun becomes work rather than the other way around.
Everything I’ve done lately has told me I need to play and experiment more, and not less. I need to trust myself, and the languages I know. I need to make less ‘to do’ lists and stop being so anal about web documentation (and everything else that this kind of behavior connotes).
My new year’s resolution is to let go just a li’l bit more. Who’s with me?
Wow. I think this is the longest I’ve gone without blogging in yonks. Well, it is holiday time, after all.
In the past while, I’ve been critting my Wits students’ amazing show, seeing art at GordArt, MuseumAfrica and Momo, and catching up on sleep. Oh, and I’ve already seen The Incredibles twice. It’s H-O-T.
In nathanielstern.com news….
What’s that you say? You want to see pics, and hear of more South African art? I’ll do my best, but the staff of nathanielstern.com (read: me, myself, I) is going to take it a little easy until we bring in the new year. Please be patient while we catch up on sleep ;)
OK, so artthrob has been slacking a bit lately, I know; they’ve been late on releases, and this time, are even missing a few of their regular features. And web geeks like me have been giving them a hard time (at least in our heads - and a much harder time than they deserve). But we have to remember that it’s free, it’s great, it was started as a one woman show, and it fosters the arts in ways that other SA institutions should (and often do) bow to.
So, as they try to find ways of working without their talented ex-editor, Sean O’Toole, let’s give them some space for the holiday season. Next year is, well, a new year.
In the meanwhile, read about the standard bank young artists of the year, including the very deserving Wim Botha and PJ Sabbagha (not that the others are not deserving, but moreover that I can’t say so, as I do not know their work).
And of course, we hear loads from Carine Zaayman, but the best is this little number: Five steps to holiday bliss. Its premise is the question, “Can you say that being a ‘new media practitioner’ today is analogous to being single? ” OK, so sometimes it (as in, the analogy) works, and sometimes it doesn’t, but at least it’s really funny, and she gives you some places to surf n’ shop (and I mean web not ocean)….
Shown is Portrait M2370, a collaboration between Stephen Hobbs and Marcus Neustetter, as seen at Artinthedark_ in Melville last Thursday. The event was really brilliant. It had the vibe of a drive-in, but with 90% of the people really paying attention to video art, rather than Hollywood, as little kids ran around and their folks drank beer and wine. The way the screen blew in the wind as a backdrop to some of our most prolific artists of the day made for a stunning exhibit, and fun night. I really hope that Trasi does this again, as the response has been extraordinary. Well done, girl!
Some very recognizable names asking for simple interactions in order to help… from networked_performance: Thank You - posted by Jo-Anne Greene, but originally from Mary Flanagan on grandtextauto.
altruism, interaction and exchange
Please visit the exhibition Thank You’Äîan activist art project conceived by Danish/Australian/U.S. group Wooloo Productions (I’Äôm in it!). It launched yesterday on World AIDS day, December 1st, 2004. Thank You “confronts its audience with the relationship of exchange between Africa and the West. Dealing specifically with issues of exploitation and disease, the project utilizes possibilities afforded by online technology to illustrate the absurdity of today’Äôs co-existing economic reality.” [blogged by Mary Flanagan on grandtextauto.]
The show is meant to be a platform to critique altruism and exchange while at the same time help real people (this contradictory stance of critical activism is driving me to read a lot of Negri, by the way’Äìand much of his writing is liberated!!).
Wooloo Productions invited one American (mary) and four South African artists to create interactive artworks. Each viewer interaction with the works results in the release of one South African Rand (approx. US$ 0.15) towards the cost of setting up an HIV Education Center in Khayelitsha. So when visitors click on projects they help raise $$’Äì we can collect quite a large sum from donors to help build the center if people visit our works. So click away!! The Thank You show takes place simultaneously in two physical locations’ÄîArtists Space and a public stage in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, South Africa’Äîas well as online. If you’Äôre in nyc, visit Artists Space (38 Greene st, 3rd Floor). In Khayelitsha, its on the center stage area at Site B, where Wooloo member Sixten is acting as host for the show . The works are presented on computer monitors in the two project locations from Dec 1 - 11 2004. There is a video hook up linking the sites.
I made the game [six.circles] specifically for this show. Players connect triangles to form shapes, but while playing, must introduce illness into the community. Players have to negotiate and sacrifice to cooperatively prevent the spread of the disease or cure pieces while still attempting to win the game by creating ’Äúsix circles’Äù out of the shapes. A circle cannot be “closed,” however, unless it is 1/2 infected, showing that communities must work together and embrace problems as a whole.
Right now [six.circles] is functioning as a game for two players on a local machine, with cross-net gameplay coming this weekend and single player mode soon to follow. Lots of people to thank for inspiration and help, including Ruth Catlow, Joline Blais, Jon Ippolito, and Sebastian. I’Äôm also working with the amazing Chris Egert, an old friend. He is technical engineer on the project and he’Äôs faculty in RIT’Äôs Information Technology Dept (where there are ruminations of gaming program afoot). You can also visit the project from my website, which has more writing about the [six.circles] game.
Nice work, impressive lineup, surfing donates money….
Yesterday was the above event, organized by myself, AT.joburg and the JAG (johannesburg art gallery), and sponsored by the JAG and the American Consulate of South Africa.
There was a a great turnout and a fantastic vibe around the work, what is possible in “the digital revolution” (can you smell the irony?), where it always already had begun, what we place value on, and how to locate various technologies, and the potentials they explore (literally and conceptually), in a Southern African context.
The walkabout raised some interesting questions from the participants, who asked about things from the devaluation of time spent on art when using software, to the pretense of narcissism in explorations of “self”, and “the promise of something new” inside and outside of interactive spaces. It set the stage for our panel discussion, bravely led by journalist Sean O’Toole, current editor of Art South Africa.
Above, left is video artist Thando Mama, next choreographer/journalist Zingi Mkefa making a point about where and how bodies can be further implicated, even explicated, in the new generation of interactive arts - if only it only weren’t so “wink, wink, nudge, nudge”. On the right is a full view of our panelists, from far left: Sean O’Toole, Thando Mama, Zingi Mkefa, media artist Franci Cronje, artist/curator/innovator Marcus Neustetter (of The Trinity Session, digi-arts Africa and the Southern African New Media Art Network), artist/lecturer Marc Edwards, video artist Churchill Madikida and Prof. Christo Doherty, Head of Digital Arts at Wits School Of the Arts.
We started at noon, and went straight on until five - what a great start of dialogue! More plans for future AT.joburg events are in the works….
Yes, dear readers; my humblest apologies for the inaction on this blog as of late - at some point, I just needed to slow down a bit. I know it sounds lame, but my wife actually took our digital camera with her to an academic conference all this week, and you know how I like to include pix on my blog, in order to support the textual rubbish I spew.
Anyhow, I’ll write some stuff about art in the dark when I get some images (H-O-T), and I’ll certainly post more about the panel discussion tomorrow at the JAG (don’t miss it! mail & guardian pick of the week!). I did see the MTN show over at the Pretoria Art Museum yesterday, as well, tho I was admittedly not that impressed - it seems more of a “showing that we have south african art” than a showcase of our most talented contemporaries (layered pun intended).
Here’s the text, for future reference (the catered event starts at noon, and carries on into the afternoon):
Art pick of the week
Public Walkabout and Digital Media Art Seminar Discussion Johannesburg Art Gallery: December 4
The critical positioning of ’Äúnew media” art, which includes video, digital and net.art, and even installation, within the broader economies of fine and contemporary art, is something that is contended and debated the world over, but more particularly in ’Äúdeveloping” countries, where the digital divide is most fundamentally obvious.
In South Africa in particular, access to technology, illiteracy and the legacy of apartheid education systems, and even access to electricity itself are conditions we live with side by side with wireless communication and other state of the art technologies. There is currently a push for scholars to take an interest in science and technology but how does this figure in terms of technology’s relationship to culture?
As part of an education programme supporting Nathaniel Stern’s current exhibition The Storytellers: Works From the Non-aggressive Narrative, there will a be free, public walkabout of this richly layered and critically informed show at noon on December 4. This is followed by a seminar discussion moderated by writer and editor of Art South Africa Sean O’Toole, and featuring practitioners, curators and artists who work within the field.
The kinds of topics under discussion will include defining the various practices in new media versus digital media, questioning digital media’s role in relation to traditional media like painting, looking at the developmental and educational potential of digital media, and issues concerning the collecting and curating of these ’Äúnew” art forms. Anyone with an informal or professional interest in the digital realm, including artists, designers, writers and composers, should make a point of attending.
’Äî Kathryn Smith
