Yesterday was the “make-up” session of the arts critical writing dialogue over at gallery momo. Pictured is Pitso Chinzima, speaking to a crowd of about 50 artists, writers and art appreciators; the two other speakers were Kathryn Smith and Sipho Mdanda (Colin Richards sent his apologies, along with a slew of quotes to use if anyone got bored, or the conversation lulled; that never happened).
Of course, the conversation degraded to issues of transformation, accessibility and privilege, but when we managed to stay on topic, some interesting questions came up (not that these aren’t important issues as well, but conversations about critical writing in SA are much harder to come by). Questions like: what are the textual resources easily available to the general public? Where can we publish to get seen more? Why, if there are so many complaints about no dialogue, do so few emerging/black artists show up to events like this? (This last question had to, of course, be posed by a person of color – thanks to Monna for hitting on it.)
I had to laugh at some point when there was a bit of a “we have it worse” debate. An artist said a musician can put out a CD to be heard. The writer said the artist can hang their work on a wall, but he needs to be published…. and so on. As a musician, an artist and a writer, I think this is all rubbish. I want to play live music, and I don’t care about (nor can I afford to press) a CD; as an artist, my work does not hang on a wall; as a writer, I just need a bloody blog. I offered my services of hooking all the cats up with blogger accounts, but nobody seemed to hear me. Hmmmmmm. Life is so hard.
The conversation got more interesting when Kathryn Smith and Zingi Mkefa (who write for the Mail and Guardian, and THISDAY, respectively) started asking questions like what languages, besides English, should we be having these discussions in (Xhosa was offered as a possibility)? Where, besides expensive publications like Art South Africa (not to say these aren’t extremely valuable), do we need to see articles that hit the hard topics in contemporary art, if we want to reach wider audiences? What kind of language should we be using then?
But on the blogging note, I’ve come full circle back to my idea for at.Joburg (Art and Technology, Johannesburg – was gonna be something like the Dublin Art and Technology Association). Maybe it need not be limited to art and tech? Maybe it need not be physically live, but can be online – after all, we already have the digital soiree on Fridays at Wits.
Why not have some combination of a public blog, and a South African art wiki? The blog would be for posts of events, ideas, collaborations, etc (a public version of artthrob’s exchange page, but with a few more features). The wiki could be a place for projects, artists and spaces – obviously, this is vague, but the whole point of a wiki is that it’s self organizing, right? Do you think people would use it? Are you interested in helping me try this out? If so, please call me.
If you don’t know what a wiki is, by the by (I’ve recently noted that a lot of South Africans don’t even know what a blog is, much less a wiki), here is a quick and easy wiki definition, with a link to wiki history.
And while we’re on the subject of critical writing and wikis, many2many has a great post about some debates surrounding the evolution and importance of wikis. The most lucid part of the article is an ongoing email battle between my old college buddy (from techdirt) Mike Masnick (we used to be radio DJs together! Ha!) and a reporter/librarian who trashed wikipedia (a wiki encycopedia that allows the masses to self-edit), without having ever tried it – it’s actually an amazingly valuable resource….
And the promised Bush criticism (while we are on the subject of connoted anarchic -aka, supposedly chaotic- education systems): it seems that we now have officers equipped with super-speed, live streaming web cams to “protect us” from “anarchists” in NYC (read: arrest war dissenting citizens who are clued up on how the US is becoming closer and closer to South Africa during the state of emergency). The Feature has the robocop article already online, and Nicole and I know someone (from over here in Jozi!) who has been harassed by non-uniformed federal agents, who said he had no rights, and came to his home to implement fear tactics.
On that (final) note, Joy Garnett, on NEWSgrist, tells us how over 250 bikers, and (while being filmed/interviewed by Ron Reagan) Bikes Against Bush founder, Josh Kinberg, were all arrested this weekend….
SCARY
