spending rands and sans pictures on this machine, i just wanted to check in and say hi. minette vari is prolific with her media (video, mostly), philip rikhotso (sp?) rocks, and actually, the fine art in general is very worth seeing. hannes olivier, ralph borland, bridget baker and nicholas hlobo (again, sp? no resources here!) are also of special note…. more when i get back!
So I’m on my way to the hidden gem with many facets for the KKNK (Klein Karoo National Arts Festival – but in Afrikaans). If I have any web access, will do my best to blog, but am assuming I’m pretty much signing off for the next week or so. Will come back with pix and a story or three, tho, I am sure…
Miss me!
Sue Williamson is an artist, writer, innovator, activist, and a whole heap of other great things all at once. Usually, I hate pretentious lists of nouns to describe people and what they do – readers tend to slough off that kind of information and take in more about what they really do.
However, in Sue’s case, these are hats she has worn for decades – and she has played a huge role in shaping South African identity and art here, and overseas, during the struggle, and afterwards. Her books, sites and work have showcased art, artists and lives with a kind of “speaking back” to perception of “who and what” beyond the “where and why”. I could go on for pages about her extensive contributions, and I’m sure I only know the tip of the iceberg….
Included is the powerful video and print series, Better Lives, commissioned by Africalia for the mega show ‘Transferts’ at the Palais de Beaux Arts in Brussels and shown on the Dakar Biennale last year. This is work in the tradition of questions Williamson has been asking for years. Simple and beautiful, the images are subtle, while the sound and text evocative.
But what I really enjoyed was the fact that an artist as profound and talented as this has not lost her sense of humor. Her Kebble-award winning piece welcome to the jet hotel, is a witty infomercial for a bad inn she stayed at while travelling, and the surrounding postcards and installations are quirky invitations to join her in the trip. (Pictured at top, the artist with some of that work.)
This show is just as worth seeing out of respect for the artist, as it is for respect of her work.
Maybe it’s the ex-comic book geek in me (well, uh, maybe not so ex?), the former Reggae/Ska fanatic with over 500 albums, the obsessions I have with text as a mediation/translation/creation of art and history, or maybe it’s just really rad – but this show kicks @ss.
Warren Siebrits, his wife (huge Wopko Jensma fans, and their first gallery – Metroplex – in Rosebank showed some of his subversive work from the mid-Apartheid era) and Michael Gardiner have collectively put together a show of rare South African literary magazines from the 50s through the 80s. As if the collection of covers – laid out in glass tables – weren’t enough, some of the less hard-to-find gems are in the open air for us to gape at whilst we turn the pages, and Siebrits has also found, and is exhibiting, paintings, photographs, drawings and prints by artists whose works were either featured, or who created cover art or illustrations for them.
Says Siebrits:
The aim of doing this was to reinforce the strong links that existed at this time between artists and writers working in South Africa, in their common goal to fight censorship and challenge the status quo with regard to the stringent limitations placed on freedom of speech and association during this era.
A bit more on the show, from Gardiner, another collector and scholar:
The first focus … consists of a brief account of fifteen of the literary magazines published [from 1956 – 1978]. The account is designed to provide essential information about [them] and a taste of each magazine’s qualities.
The second area of focus is the display of works by artists associated with five magazines on this exhibition: The Purple Renoster, The Classic, Wurm, Izwi and Staffrider. These works have been selected by Warren Siebrits.
There are omissions that must be acknowledged. One, the round of interviews with editors is incomplete. Where possible, written accounts by editors have been consulted instead.
Second, some magazines from this period have been omitted. These are: S’ketsh’ (1975 to 1979) and magazines from the early eighties such as Heresy, The Bloody Horse and Quarry as well as Taaldoos and Stet. They are part of the story and should be included in future accounts.
A figure in this exhibition that merits particular mention is Wopko Jensma. He is associated with every magazine on display except three. His presence, therefore, runs like a thread through the story that these magazines tell. It is for this and more personal reasons that I dedicate this catalogue to Wopko Jensma, the wonderful artist and poet.
My other favorite things are the knowledge bits, like the sticky note on the one of the covers that says “actually, this is issue number 2, not 3 – this is a misprint” and the articles that cover the history of their collecting and showing (where they found the zines, what interested them, etc), just as much as the history of the magazines themselves.
This show is worth a lot more time than I gave it, and I plan to go back. You should, too.
The talk yesterday afternoon was informal and cool. It was great to see some Wits Fine Arts undergrads, theatre peops, and a few outsiders, in addition to our usual crew of Digi-Arts grad students and faculty.
I promised I’d put links to some of the works and artists I talked about online, so here we go….
Myron Krueger doesn’t have a web site, but there is a great interview with him here (CTHEORY), some stuff about his early work is here, and his book I showed is called Artificial Reality 2, now in its second edition, and available from amazon (tho I prefer you to order it from loot.co.za – it’ll take longer for them to get, but they are proudly South African!).
Next up, we watched video of Camille Utterback’s beautiful untitled 5 and discussed text rain; these can be found here: camilleutterback.com
Here’s the very smart and savvy David Rokeby, who produced Very Nervous System. We also looked at his Taken and Sorting Daemon – Rokeby’s web site has all that, and then some; highly recommended.
Then there was Scott Snibbe, with his Boundary Functions and You are Here.
We looked at several interactive performance works by Golan Levin and Zach Lieberman (including the opera, Mesa di Voce), all of which have extensive online documentation at flong.com.
We saw the Tangible Media Group’s (led by Hiroshi Ishii) PP+ (Ping Pong plus), which used the sound of a bouncing ping pong ball to triangulate position and project feedback on a play-table in realtime.
We oooohed and aaaaahed at Jonah Brucker-Cohen, but there’s tons more where he comes from, given that his best work is less in the Interactive Video realm, and more based in deconstructing networks….
Finally, we showed Danny Rozin’s wooden mirror, and then looked – on request – at some of my own interactive work.
The two big schools we talked about, that were/are a hotbed of innovation, are ITP (Tom Igoe and Dan O’Sullivan) and MIT’s media lab. The former is more artists playing with science, the latter is more scientists playing with art.
Oh, and our WSOA Digital Artist in Residence, coming this June (a specialist and expert in the most cutting edge Interactive Video development environments), is Josh Goldberg (tho his website does not reflect how brilliant he is).
I think that’s pretty much the nutshell of our discussion. I hope to see more of you involved with WSOA Digital Arts and Art & Technology, Johannesburg!
So, my camera on my phone hates me, and it seems that I won’t be posting any pictures from it any time soon. It’s a real shame, too, cuz I’ve got some great photos of works by the likes of Simon Gush, Gerhard Marx and Theresa Collins over at the Drill Hall opening from Wednesday night – and Id’ love to share. Show is in a great space with a lot of smart art; Simon Gush’s work is especially subtle and beautiful.
Other photos I’m unable to share with you include Bronwyn Findlay pix from David Krut (worth seeing), Alex Trapani at the Gallery Premises (structurally unsound and wonderfully evocative), Joao Orecchia (great musician) at some weird fashion show, the Moscow Circus (nuff said) and Lara Rivera at her Franchise desk (mostly boring).
But I guess my lack of photos and explanations gives you less to read; you may consider yourself all caught up with the joburg art scene now!