a dead rat
south african art
Archives
The Official BB Mitten Project
To exactly quote Bridget Baker’s artist statement:
The Official BB Mittens Project is the third in the series of ’ÄúOfficial BB Projects’Äù, declarations on life according to ’ÄúOfficial BB’Äù wisdom. In all these projects Bridget actively cajoles her audience to take part beyond their own reason, where personal understanding is often consolidated through spontaneous action.
This Project was first performed in Cape Town in 2003 as an action for Gallery Puta’Äôs first curated show. In 2005 Baker performed the project at Liste ’Äô05 in Basel and in Bielefeld in Germany at 20+ (an Artists Unlimited group exhibition).
In this project, Bridget performs as a clandestine soothsayer: weary of her audience, while simultaneously offering treatment and pampering. This project begins at one circular hole in a wall, cut at waist height. Plastic camping watercontainers and an inscribed towel are the only other items in the room.
Inscribed in pencil on either side of the holes are a set of ’ÄúOfficial BB’Äù rules, instructions inviting Baker’Äôs audience to unwittingly trust her by putting a hand through the hole, thereby embarking on a regime of intimate processes that ultimately lead to the participants enjoying physical pleasure. Once the participants have removed their jewellery and washed their hands, they insert their hands into the holes. Baker, hidden on the other side of the wall, then subjects her participants hands to a therapeutic hot wax treatment, finally gloving the wax covered hands in ’ÄúOfficial BB Project’Äù trademark mittens that have been specially hand knitted. The BB mittens are applied as a catalyst to complete the action and at the same time advertise the BB brand. The participants are then free to interact with other participants in the room while the wax treatment takes effect. After about ten minutes the participants return to the holes in order to get the wax and mittens removed.
The participants leave the room rewarded with pampered hands.
According to BB wisdom: In life as in art rules are set and when followed explicitly an unexpected amount of pleasure is derived.
Archives
Archives
art | south africa is powerless
This post is probably related to this other post about the lack of reviews of emerging artists in joburg…
I can’t decide whether I find it amusing or enraging that in art | south africa’s big issue on “power and influence,” they’ve almost completely written themselves out. To quote Sean O’Toole’s (the editor’s) brief introduction:
Why embark on such a self-reflexive enquiry into power and influence? In his book, The Culture Game, Olu Oguibe remarks: “Ironically, the contemporary art ‘world’ is one of the last bastions of backwardness in the west today, which makes it an uneven playground, a formidable terrain of difficulty for artists whose backgrounds locate at the receiving end of intolerance.” Substitute the geographies – west for South Africa – and Oguibe’s statement retains a compelling significance. Of course, anyone who routinely engages the South African art world will know this already, that it is a formidable terrain of difficulty, one in which “institutions, patrons, brokers and promoters peddle not only art but careers, loyalties and fortunes of artists also,” to borrow a sharp statement from Oguibe.
Perhaps I am gambling my own fortune by playing with loyalties here, but is it not a disingenuous “self-reflexive enquiry” if Bell-Roberts, and more importantly, their magazine – art | south africa – are merely a footnote, a caveat, a sidebar? “What about Suzette and Brendon Bell-Roberts?…. it was decided to exclude the duo.” Aside from that statement lacking any agency (“mistakes were made!”), I’m more interested in why publications, and their editors, were left off this list. art | south africa is the only regular, high quality, international print publication in the country.
How much power do writers, gallerists or artists have without being seen in the public eye? art | south africa left out that they ask for, and/or refuse, columns both by and about everyone on their own (and everyone else’s) list. The mag is the (most) public face of our contemporary art, and with that comes power and influence.
Archives
Archives
Report from Unyazi
Published in rhizome.org’s digest yesterday, I wrote a Report from Unyazi – the electronic music festival – in joburg last weekend. The full article is also housed here.