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21 October 2004 by nathaniel

creative commons

Creative Commons License 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.

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15 October 2004 by nathaniel

so, this is Cape Town

I’ve got some great photos of the Kebble works from during set-up, but have promised our courageous curator, Clive, that I would publish nothing until ofter the opening, so as not to ruin the surprise. The show is, admittedly, leaps and bounds superior to last year’s; all artists on board should be proud to play a part. I can’t wait to hear who wins, and see the catalogue!

In the meanwhile, Franci Cronje and I are crashing at Bridget Baker’s place (pictured above, in her bath), which is a great li’l pad over in Greenpoint (too bad she’s not here to join us! Is, instead, over on some fancy shmancy – well-deserved – residency/exhibition in Belgium).

SO, yesterday, we did the gallery circuit a bit. Bell-Roberts was a cool space, tho I guess I was expecting something bigger and more buzzy, given how much great print media (I’m talking mags here, peeps) comes out of there. I looked jealously on the art SA back issues I cannot afford right now; one year in (I used to complain) they don’t seem as expensive for ‘what you get’ as they used to. Comix, Bru was on show.

SANG (south african national gallery) had several fab exhibitions, most of which gave me a tad more insight into SA contemporary art history. I was especially intrigued by all the Colin Richards work in their collection (big surprise that I like him), and a place called home.

I must have missed the boat on the above James Ford painting, holiday time in cape town in the twentieth century. The sweet smell of irony pushes me to say more, but I refrain, and only smile over the rainbow. Sheer brilliance, I tell you.

We also tried to hit the Castle’s Democracy X show, but it was too damn pricey. We got as far as M Stevenson Gallery (Walter Oltmann’s stuff was sharp), and ran into Gordon Froud there. This quickly digressed (progressed?) into alcohol and crit bitch sessions of grandeur (we did hit a handful more galleries on the way….).

I like Cape Town.

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10 October 2004 by nathaniel

derridean illlogic

derrida

Nothing exists outside of the text – the purest of pharmakons. Jacques Derrida, father of deconstruction and one of my favorite post-structuralist philosophers, died from cancer at the age of 74 on Friday night. Although always controversial, to me, Derrida was one of the new philosophers who actually lived in reality (note: not to be confused with The Real); a space not made of binaries; one where the language we speak is recognized as a core influence on how we understand the world.

I’m sad I never got to meet him.

But, in celebration of his life (er, rather, just cuz we could), me Ralphy B, and Nicola (sp?) went out on the town last night. As someone who always believed myself to be “Jozi and not Cape Town” all the way through, it was nice to see the right night life of our mountain side. I met some cool art stars, had some fanfab drinks, went for some la-dee-da-dee-we-likes-to-party dancing; yeh, I think I actually dig this place….

Don’t tell anyone in Joburg.

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05 October 2004 by nathaniel

The Cape Buzz

And things are heating up in Cape Town now, as the Brett Kebble Art Awards approach. I, myself, will be flying down this Friday to set up step inside for the first time, and just about every ‘name’ in the SA arts scene will be at the awards dinner next Saturday, the 16th.

Any guesses as to who will win? I know we haven’t seen much of the work, but it’s no secret that artists who have been in the press a lot lately, whose body of work is known, have a major advantage over lesser-known artists, and usually take these kinds of prizes. I am thinking, however, that given Clive’s influence, this year’s winners might be slightly less conservative – tho the judges are mostly identical to last year’s (there’s been one addition). I do like, too, that the prizes are not broken by category any longer (1 grand, 6 firsts, and any number of merits in any category, rather than one prize per category), but my guess is that this weights work towards the bigger, and more traditional (sculpture and installation, vs. print and new media – and it seems that photography is still risque in SA, so maybe that’ll be the happy medium; literally….).

We shall see. (read: Prove me wrong! Prove me wrong!)

On another Capetonian front, the new artthrob is out (I am in the process of begging them to add my show to their listings). They’ve got a very nice feature on the work of Samson Mudzunga some stuff about the Kebble Web site (which I think is pretty poor on the info and buggy front; they very obviously outsourced this job, because it, in no way, stands up to the calibre of anything else the Kebbles are doing. I also have a personal bias: I’ve sent them great photos of my work for their show 3 times now, and asked them specifically to change the pic on their site – which I can only presume the web[not]masters got by taking a picture of a television screen, while blindfolded – with no luck, despite assurances), and a bit piece on [R][R][F] 2004 (Remembering, Repressing, Forgetting), which yours truly has a net.art site on.

Read up – my trip to CT will only give updates when I have i-net access, and we all know how dependable that is in SA….

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24 September 2004 by nathaniel

blackheart

Lesego Rampolokeng’s book (blackheart) is being published, and the launch is over at one of my fave spaces – gallery momo. Here’s an interesting article on him / the book. Admittedly, I’ve seen Lesego perform a time or two, and it was most certainly worth the effort; and then some. However, is it just me, or does this article paint him as a condescending, ‘hard-done-by,’ who thinks he is smarter than the world / universe / Stephen Hawking?

Of course, this could just be a bias of the author, so I’m gonna show up to the opening on Tuesday (6:45PM), to see for myself. I hope I’m reading it wrong.

I’ll follow-up.

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