kagablog

Undernourished
Because of his exclusive diet
Of Illusion
The Mythless Man
Stockpiles more products
Than he has the time to,
Realistically,
Consume

He requires the constantly renewable jouissance
Of the value exchange
Of that moment
When his labour
Represented as Money
Is swapped for the Other’s labour
Represented by the Product

In a sense
The Mythless Man
Is buying Time

Terrified,
Not only of Death,
But of his own purposeless Life
He endlessly postpones
His Day of Judgement
In the delaying tactics of
Constant purchasing
He avoids the meaning of time
(and thus of being)
Focusing instead
On its reification,
And ongoing replication,
In Collectables.

This is how he earns his
Customer Of The Month
Award.

first published by underground voices

jimmy gulzar and fem van den elzen in wasted!

The agony and the ecstasy

Review: Wasted
By Lauren Shantall

An image of a dove in flight opens Ian Kerkhof’s Wasted. It’s imprinted on a tab of ecstasy, setting the premise for the film in the first few seconds. Wasted is an hallucinatory trip through chemically enhanced lands of excess, yet it is not an uncomplicated, euphoric ride. Despite spinning a love story, Kerkhof’s over-arching cynicism is never far from the fore, and the film, ultimately, is a downer.

When this exploration of rave culture was first released in Holland in 1995, it was an instant box-office success and was critically acclaimed at the Rotterdam and Berlin film festivals. It played at the Labia in Cape Town (who bought the rights when Ster-Kinekor passed the film over) on the Marginal South African Cinema festival in 1996, at the Durban Film Festival and at the 1997 Grahamstown film festival. Now Wasted takes up position on South Africa’s First Dutch Film Festival.

Considering the opportunity for cultural exchange that the festival presents, Kerkhof is a welcome choice. A South African who went into exile in the Eighties, and currently lives in Amsterdam, Kerkhof is “South Africa’s most radical and prolific film-maker”, according to fellow film-maker and critic Andrew Worsdale.

He is probably best known here for 10 Monologues from the Lives of the Serial Killers which screened at the 1994 South African International Film Festival and won Best Film at the Potsdam Film Festival. Kerkhof has long been respected, both in South Africa and in Europe, as an experimental, courageous film-maker. His avant-garde Kyodai Makes the Big Time and The Mozart Bird were well received by art circuit critics overseas.

Naar de klote!, as Wasted is known in Holland, is the director’s first attempt at a feature-length mainstream movie; not aimed, as Kerkhof explained at the film’s release, specifically at “housers”, but at a wider audience. Its subsequent commercial success has firmly cemented Kerkhof as part of a new, young and energetic crop of Netherlands directors, many of whom are showcased on the First Dutch Film Festival.

Hype aside, the film is worth a watch for its adventurous camerawork and special effects - coming as near to a visual representation of a psychoactively altered state as I have ever seen. It even rivals David Cronenberg’s “Interzone” in his version of William Burrough’s tripster classic Naked Lunch.

Rather than going in for Cronenberg’s surreal settings and creature animations that were more suited to Burrough’s toxins, Kerkhof’s characters are Nineties users - they’re “pill”-poppers (as the film’s lingo refers to MDMA). So Wasted employs lots of slow-motion takes and acid-like colour-manipulated frames to try and recreate E’s loved-up slant. Although the visuals are more psychedelic than emotive, they work nonetheless.

Wasted was shot on hand-held home video, and only then transferred to 35mm, so that each video frame could be coloured millimeter by millimeter. Joost van Gelder, whom Kerkhof regards as the “best cameraman in the Netherlands”, is responsible for the unconventional, swooping angles and interesting, disorienting view points.

Most of the shots, except for the slowed-up scenes, are first takes. Combined with the hand-held feel, it gives the film an appealing and intentional rough-and-readiness. It serves to enhance the veracity of the events, lending them a semi-documentary feel.

The camera follows Martijn (Tygo Gernandt) and Jacqueline (a debut performance by Fem van der Elzen), a young, small-town couple, to the big city where they become involved with the underground house party circuit. Jacqui peddles pills to pay bills, gets caught up with a nasty dealer called JP (played by Hugo Metsers III), and becomes further and further embroiled in the world of drugs, sex, debt, violence and house music, while her relationship with Martijn falters.

The plot is somewhat thin - girl-loves-boy, girl-wins-boy - while the sub-plot manages to comment on the cult of the house DJ and the worship he/she commands. Kerkhof tends to hone in on the consequences of dealing ecstasy in his depiction of the club scene - all the characters get their come-uppance in one way or another - exposing the fact that violence and greed often motivate a culture too often held up as innocent in its euphoria. But the wonderful, unusual form, rather than any kind of lesson, is what makes this experiment worth the trip.

this article originally appeared in za@play

just published in the phillipines.
edited by krip yuson
featuring work by Gabeba Baderoon, Mphutlane Wa Bofelo, Leo
Janssen, Aryan Kaganof, Joan Metelerkamp, and Malika Lueen Ndlovu, - all from South Africa
order your copy directly from krip at - kripbam@email.com.ph

dionysos andronis with kaganof in charlie chaplin mode
This photo was taken July 6th, 2005, in Grahamstown
see his website here

“Ginny’s Dad”

“I’ve always felt bad about feeling good.”
  Ginny is moaning again. She’s a trust fund cutie with two shrinks to
help her out of her blues. She flies to Cape  Town every thursday
morning for onion ring therapy. Her dad’s even more depressive than
her, he stands in front of the mirror all day brushing his long silver
hair and hoping out loud that Ginny’s mom will come back to him.
  Ginny asks me to bite her. I do so.
  “I went all hot when you did that.”
  It’s called arousal Ginny.
  “No one ever bit me that hard before.”
  That’s the secret you see, you have to leave tooth prints. Chicks are
hard wired to translate the pain as evidence of passion. It’s easy.
Just hurt them.
  Our waitress is getting impatient with Ginny’s vacillations.
  “I’ll have a glass of pizza and Ginny will have an SMS.”
  “Will that be all sir?”
  “For the moment.”
  When we get back to my place we transgress an entire encyclopedia’s
worth of taboos.
  “What will we do when we’ve broken all the rules?”
  “Mend them.”
  Ginny really does love her jensing. But the orgasms make her feel
guilty about her poor dad at home with his hairbrush going “error error
on the wall.” It’s too silly. But then again, he did supply the
trust fund. Life is always and only about women accepting who they really are.
Until they do it’s merely “never again” followed by vodka and gin.
  Ginny’s actually quite a beauty. The boys all tell her so.
  “It’s nice to be noticed but so disappointing when they fall so fast
and so hard.”
  She would eat me alive if I displayed but the slightest trace of
emotion. I have to lay her hard and lifeless. She comes again and then
I do at last and I tell you I’m knackered. Ginny just keeps on talking,
she’s priceless.
  “I’ve learned from experience that living hedonistically just hurts
you in the end,” she takes a big puff from her doobie, “it’s fun to
play the game but you have to stay in control.”
  When I drop her off at the mansion her dad comes to the front door.
He’s still holding his hair brush, gives me a quizzical look. Ginny
pecks me goodbye.
  “Thanks for a wonderful evening.”
  He shakes the hairbrush at me.
  “Goodbye.”

first published march 2006 by underground window

soon to be published by jacana

tuxedomoon’s blaine reininger in front of the new atlantis flag

ian kerkhof caught sulking again

if you are looking for french language information and articles about ian kerkhof this is the page to go to: cineastes.net

you will find links to all the articles written by greek experimental film maker dionysos andronis, as well as links to the many translations that andronis has done of articles that originally appeared in english, german etc.

it is an invaluable guide for the french language student who wants to get acquanted with kerkhof’s ouevre
andronis’ translations are excellent!

Joe’s garage prenotes: act 2. by mick raubenheimer
 
 
chapter –1: the ugliness aesthetic.
 
 
Zappa’s apparently infantile attraction to the icon of Ugly runs amuck throughout Joe’s midi-tragic pseudo-demise:
Moustached Catholic hornies; unpronounceable itches; Don’s big dumb “I’ll take care o da faggot” cock; compromised wet titties (and big ‘uns..); gay robots ‘plooked’ to death; Sales Execs suckin oneother off to da beat of Grim-hole; Journalists squattin on da (revolvin’) cosmic-utensilled pensil, et al..
and yet echoeing along these sordid symbol-scapes a painfully melancholic watermelon croons its ballad:
Almost each of Zappa’s cruddy poems are submerged in rare, intricate and idiosyncratically wonderful instrumental patterns (or, abstract communications)- on ‘Joe’s garage’ these sublime and dark beauts perpetuate the entire audio-script.., ripe examples: the Pink intrusion in “Fembot in a wet T-shirt”, the resolution to “Keep it Greasy”, the completely ‘unrelated’ instrumental description of the emotional/psychological state “On the bus” (:y’know, Mary squished thru multiple muso/roadie appreciation into seat 33 etc)..
 
For Zappa sucking cock, lechering voyeurism, dark desires, dirty love et al are not images of ethically compromising physical situations:
The elements involved are symbolic.. and symbolic of that much-censored drive toward communication of self: sexual desire as symbolic of the urgent drive in individuals to communicate the self: that which you are, your consequentiality/meaning..
This of course also one of the underlying meanings of art – Communication of the special self, the unique, the individual, and its experience of reality.
 
Note that sucking cock, lecherous voyeurism, dark desires and yes even dirty love are only compromising and sad (:ugly) in contexts that suppress the original impulse.
In a healthy Sunshine the above become nubile, virile expressions
of Life (:pretty)
:Dirty love becomes naughty toight positions, Dark desires become passionate motivations, Lechering voyeurism becomes the moment preceding coy consent and sucking cock becomes.. well, Sucking cock.
 
Alchemy: ugly as beautiful.
     
Joe’s garage is ultimately concerned with the nihilism of censorship, and its ethical guise: “We suppress what is wrong (for the undifferentiated masses), in order to preserve the quality of life of the (dead-eyed, molded, undifferentiated) masses.”
For Zappa reality only has meaning through the individual.
Any social reality bred in the dogmatic soil of some ideologically fixed/set Governing body is worthless – an exercise in the anti-human. Artless, void of aesthetics: minus cock and absent pussy.
 
Two things capture the individual-as-concept for Zappa: sex and art. What conjoins the two is passionate frustration towards communication of the individual self: art being sex’s abstract incestuous sibling. This why Zappa’s art (ahem) is so saturated with sexual (ahem) imagery..
 
Zappa relishes in the unsayable, in the aesthetic possibilities lurking behind iron curtains:
Sweet devoted catholic girls (all light pinks and golden halo..) sucking mean fat hairy cock in the Confessional acquire potent down on the ol’ upper lip, signifying growth, evolution.
Zappa is all about erectile tissue..
When scolding studio muso’s on their ‘to-the-note’ translations of tablature (ie. their sterile renditions of fertile ink) Zappa says: “Give it eye-brows!” (he might as well have exclaimed- “give it beard”, for here eye-brows refer to the arsenalizing of the latent brow.. making it say something.):
In the album ‘Uncle Meat’ a mad professor invents a gargantaun machine which emits powerful beams reducing bland innocent victims to a palpitating paralyzed state swooning in wild sexual fantasies; the ‘affected’ individuals stand up (a good palpitation later) markedly different in two respects – strange eyes and hugely elongated noses:
the noses have grown in order to accommodate the subjects’ newly amplified grey matter (are also phallic – representing potent new patterns bent on fertilization, on spreading the new word..), the eyes represent, of course, new sight, new vision –
new values… 
 
The Unsayable is then, for Zappa, the crucial, the potentially defining: For the unsayable is either that which is suppressed (because it is dangerous, ie. potentially disruptive of an established system, ie. potent), or that which hasn’t been found (the unconceptualizeable, the patterns outside the given awareness..):
 
HERE WE FIND ZAPPA’S AESTHETIC- TO REVEAL THE PRESENCE OR POSSIBILITY OF NEW PATTERNS, AND IMPLICITLY, OF NEW AWARENESS, NEW VALUES.
Art and Sex as evolutionary in concern.
 
For Zappa censorship nihilizes not only new possibilities, but also their attainment: for it not only forbids the new but also that in the self which desires the new.    
 
 
 
 
Chapter two: theme one.
 
 
As model for Zappa’s general aesthetic as well as his more specific socio-ethical concerns Joe goes down a blast – it’s all here:
The political vulgarity, the scatological scenery, the linear assault of various apparently unrelated imagery and sound-patterns, the post-jazz pre-electronica staccato ambience, the eerily and oddly beautiful guitar-solos, the eerie and the odd.
And yes, the odd watermelon.
 
On the surface ‘Joe’s garage’ is just another crude vehicle for mr Z to release more of his vulgar music and overlong guitar indulgences.. look carefully however and you’ll notice that ‘Joe’ has no surface; that is, in sync with all his albums ‘Joe’s garage’ has no surface value as such – in Zappa’s world every element is connected to every other element, forms an intrinsic cue to the all-arching tapestry and its secret design..: Surface as nothing but Content in a specific position.. Conceptual Continuity ladies n gennlmen.
Zappa, then, exists only for the initiated, or rather, the initiating (for there is no consummate conclusion, no set point of pregnant recognition): the uninitiated forever misread, don’t sense the presence of Zappa’s personal language, the subtle or violent perversions of extant meaning that permeate his tongue, his riddled code..
 
To follow Zappa on his delighted madcap venture into unknowns one must learn his language, one must experience his attitude, his ontological mood. This is what we intend to extract from Joe’s central sneer – this piece herefore attempts to unveil Zappa’s aesthetic, his conceptual code ladies n gents, but through that wondrous perspective, that idiosyncratic nook of vision: ‘Joe’s garage’.
 
 
Chorus one resurfaced: Art vs. limbo.
(or, fucking vs unloading)
 
The white zone.
 
Zappa’s art can be pigeon-holed. Yes it’s true. From a socio-ethical vantage Zappa’s art is nothing more than a positivistic exercise against censorship. Ranging from the universal (ethical censorship) to the specific (aesthetic censorship) Zappa’s art is defined as an assertion of beauty and value behind conceptual iron curtains, and moreover as the lewd idea that essential human beauty thrives exactly there where various dust-smitten configurations of censorship forbid experience, sensation,
and yes even
presence.. 
 
‘Joe’s garage’ serves as a prime model for the elucidation of both poles:
Ethically it protests (in trademark idiosyncratic complexity) the ever-looming atmosphere of sociological censorship – individual acts (expressions of experience) as virtuous only if they promote the dogma-hewn mass.. ie. if they aren’t individual;
Aesthetically it sneeringly ignores musical/genre prescriptions and casually asserts Zappa’s musical language – a random and carefree collage of genre-affections boilt in a signature froth of underlying musiaesthetic dimensions: music ultimately as audio function of tension and harmony.. Zappa’s aesthetic essentially concerned with amongst others the challenge of creating harmony between apparently irreconcilable patterns/ sound-units..   music to infect the
 
white zone is for loading and unloading only.. if you have to load, or unload, go to the white zone.. you’ll love it, it’s a way of life..
 
 
Compositional frame: the stupid story
 
 
‘Joe’s garage’ is a silly story about how the Powers-that-be convert society into a neat package made up of cute little units (’individuals’) moved around by cute little forces (the current needs of the mass body).
Along the way ‘Joe’s garage’ comments on many questions including art, sex, beauty, religion, the Combine, plooking homo-bots to death, and the strands that connect them.  
 
The basic satirical message is self-explanatory: The central character is a teen-next-door whose sole and innocent aim is self-expression, represented by his musical and romantic ambitions – art and sex being essentially expressions of individual Self.
His aspirations are common and modest, never develop beyond the teenage dreams of fronting a band and going steady, making Joe a representative of individual man (with stress on individuality:
unlike common man Joe never compromises his individual self by “getting a good job”, by falling in line with the
white zone is for loading and unloading only, if you have to load or unload, go to the white zone, you’ll love it, it’s a way of life..)
Invariably these innocent pursuits, and specifically their passionate insistence, become threatening to his monochromatic social superstructure, the pristine grey-scape home to the Central scrutinizer.. and the Law gets called in.
Joe gets shipped off to a correctional facility where those most basic and effective techniques of correcting are applied – violation of the independent/ threatening self through violent removal of his freedom, his self, and complimentary violent assertion of the prescribed values.
 
Upon release, however, Joe has transcended the Orwellian society’s ethical/aesthetic restrictions and succeeds in expressing his soul through the abstract language of music, able to create sublime beauty fed only with the monochrome melody of the
 
white zone is for loading and unloading only, if you want to load or unload go to the        ….
 
Joe’s transcendence, however, comes at a price: Having no society with which to interact Joe retreats into an isolated madness – his expressions have value only for himself, are seemingly bereft of potency: Joe’s music is imaginary.
But not for Zappa – for Zappa art can never be sterilized, and so, in a parallell universe, Joe ends up tweaking nobs in the Utility Muffin Research Kitchen, releasing his idiosyncratic compositions into the minds of thousands who can but grin and bear the beauty of it all.
 
 
Philosophical signature 1: assaults on linearity
or: the what determined by the when.
 
 
One of Zappa’s key artistic characteristics is his unconventional use of rhythm, Neptunian, as Steve Vai coined it. In fact, it can be reasonably argued that a fascination with time (as the experiential medium of human perception) underscores and motivates all of Zappa’s compositional output, and that his musical legacy would be the sheer inventiveness of his use of rhythm, ‘time’, in composing.
 
As mentioned earlier the crude and vulgar lyrical structures in ‘Joe’s garage’ are always complemented by musical beauty, be it the beauty of intricate advanced musicianship or the more conventional beauty of melodic and rhythmic structures themselves. Note here Zappa’s self-revelatory claim that “lyrics exists for those who need them”. This movement will attempt to show that in ‘Joe’s garage’, as in all his work, Zappa’s most incisive and dramatic intellectual statements and gestures are mediated through the music, that is, the instrumental structures and their design, rather than the ’songs’.
As composer Zappa has striven to create a personal aesthetic, a musical signature – a music which derives from and communicates his philosophy, his ontological experience. To achieve this he has systematically broken down and refracted the stylistic influences from which his music was born, arriving at a style so multifariously inflected by existing musical genres as to be foreign to all of them, and eventually concocting out of this complex beast a musical aesthetic suggestive only of itself.. This process in itself demands a book for proper investigation, as such will only be touched on here – the name Zappa has assigned to the contours of this process, and the eventual design of its realization (for the former is subsumed in the latter) is Conceptual Continuity, a notion which informs and defines every aspect, every moment, of Zappa’s art.
 
Expressed as a formula Conceptual Continuity is “the when determining the what”, which is pretty vague, but a helpful cue nonetheless:
 
By reducing music to its abstract foundations, that is, a function of audio harmony and tension, stylistic elements become purely aesthetic manipulations, ie. are stripped of prescriptive force –
Any form of sound or sound-pattern can now be introduced to the linear structure without disrupting it, given that its presence is accounted for compositionally.. Zappa’s challenge here has been the realization of a compositional context which can cope with and absorb any conceivable sound-event into itself.
 
Sub-theme stirring: a musical equivalent to noise.
 
An exemplary and not-too-incongruent model for Zappa’s realized Compositional Context is Noise:
Noise taken as a linear aural event cannot be disrupted by any additional sound-events; within the linear parameters (eg. 2 minutes of noise) it translates any sound into itself – noise as self-improvisational. The reason for noise’s compositional supremacy is the modest fact that it defines itself as it unfolds – no aural event or relation challenges its structure, even absence of sound becomes merely a sly note tucked into its fretboard, its grammar. Noise has no stylistic politics.
As musical analogy noise is nothing other than the audio traces of time doing its thing. And “Composing”, Zappa says, ” is decorating time”, nothing more or less than pinning sound to various points in/of time – music being merely the interrelations between these audiofied moments.
Alchemy: noise as music.
 
In ‘Joe’ Conceptual Continuity rears its beautiful head in the instrumental and improvised sections, with the guitar digesting on and reacting to the various insane and tight melodic and rhythmic cluster-runs. With ‘Joe’ Zappa introduces into his sly compositional repertoire a fitting CC (hereafter abbreviation for conceptium cahntnooty) gimmick coined ‘xenophrany’. ‘Xenophrany’ being that smugly and snugly pseudo improvisational event where eg. a lead solo from a past compositional context is spliced into an APPARENTLY UNRELATED setting. A raising of the stakes ..
 
 
 
*****************
 
 
 
 

 

 
 
 
_{JOE’S GARAGE TAKE 3: VOLUME ONE..
 
 
 
prologue: Zappa and art on the bus.
 
 
Zappa is ugly. Approach him from any angle and you will reel, yes you will gasp and contort and slam your palms over your ears, your eyes, your aura.. too late. The damage is done: ugliness spreads, and whether you like it or not you are the carrier..
Ugliness as aesthetic. Welcome to Zappa’s universe.. no escape, the medium is shared –   tuck yourself into the safest, most ventilated nook of rock and you’re still here:
The universe is what cannot be escaped. Death? Nope: Just a moral trick – ego is a little more complex.. even the ultimate denial does no more than re-introduce you to your place.. the vectors and givens may have been reconfigurated, the essence remains.. and ladies and gentleman the essence is Uggily: Stubborn and a-gloat, carefree and insatiable and forever foreign in ethical design the ugly is what life is really all about: for the imposing dark mass that it is Ugly fosters the grand secret, the great design itself – Beauty. An illusion deeper and more dire than the conceptual trick of self and death and the strands inbetween is the illusion that shovels Ugly and Evil under the same ethicizing carpet. And this is what these electro-magnetic squirms of ink shall attempt to introduce: The notion of Ugly vs. Evil, in short: a reconsideration of Beauty through the tricky lens of Joe’s trivially sad meanderings into selfnessness, and the subsequent revelation of Evil as that very air from which bleak contra-individuals swallow their routine of Safety, Predictability and Security.
 
‘Joe’s garage’ is a pretty little vantage for the more considerable task of absorbing the meaning of Zappa.. we shall investigate then, for full advantage, the dialect through which Joe communicates the greater rhythms of Zappa’s mysterious beat.}

“In love, it is the liberty of the other that I want to assimilate or to possess as liberty; for it is the liberty of the other that separates the other from me and constitutes me an object revealing my outside to the other. For the other can never love me as an object, and he can love me as a subject only by making himself an object which will be all the world to me and seduce me. The loved one only becomes lover by becoming consumed with the desire to be loved. Thus each is trying to be an object of fascination to the other and to demand that the other exist solely to found, will and sustain him as object. To love is in its essence the project to make oneself loved. It is in principle that this enterprise is doomed, for I cannot be loved as an object, and I cannot be other than an object to another, and the love of the other is essentially the same project to be loved as subject by me. I cannot get to the goal, I can only turn aside to masochism, making myself wholly an object, using my liberty to deprive myself of liberty, or to sadism, compelling the other to become wholly a thing, a body. These aberrations are themselves self-defeating. And they are only isolated and developed moments of normal sexual intercourse, which is the original project for possessing the liberty of the other through his objectivity. For sexual differentiation and sexual acts spring from deeper ontological structures. The desire which attempts to satisfy itself in sexual acts is a desire for a person taken in his life and place and to become with that person nothing other than one’s flesh and blood, pure facticity, contingency. I MAKE MYSELF FLESH IN THE PRESENCE OF THE OTHER IN ORDER TO APPROPRIATE THE FLESH OF THE OTHER. The ideal end of desire is the complete incarnation of both consciousnesses in the embrace, with the elimination of movement, the world, even of consciousness. It is the choice of a mode of consciousness: why does the consciousness choose to annul itself under the form of desire? In desire I live my body in a special manner and the world about me suffers a modification: my body is no longer felt as the instrument which cannot be used by another instrument, corresponding to my acts and to a world of serviceable-things; it is lived as flesh, and it is in reference to my flesh that I apprehend the world about me: I make myself passive, I am more sensible of the material substance of things than of their form and use: consciousness sinks into a body which sinks into the world. I come very near to being a thing in the middle of the world, and very like the dead. The meaning of all this is in the attempt to seize the liberty of the other in itself by reducing it to its identity with the palpable. This ideal aim is inevitably frustrated by turning into mere power over the body of the other. I wish to be drunk by my body as the ink by a drunkard in order that the other shall do likewise. The consummation of the sexual act disturbs the profounder intention, which anyhow is doomed to frustration since it is self-contradictory. The liberty, subjectivity, of the other cannot be seized physically.

HJ Blackham
Six Existentialist Thinkers (Sartre)

giant steps had its european premiere on tuesday 21 march during the 16th african film festival of milan

Dear Aryan,

I have watched your movie two days ago. Here it is my comment.

You gave a very good idea of the art sincretism in South Africa and also of the subversive value the arts still have there.

I have been able to perceive the intimate need of those artists to create art, so you described the real nature of art, which comes first, well behind its consequences.

From the movie, it appears that the political effects of the artistical movements were only one side of the thing, one aspect.

So I think you have reached your goal, that is not to give a simplified and simplicistic picture both of the South Africa society, politics, arts.

Thank you.

Ciao!
Rossella guiot

the new atlantis flag in a refugee camp in pakistan
for more information about the new atlantis project illuseum.com

A line drawing rendition of some Compressed Arum Lily leaves from my garden (http://compressionism.net). I’m in the process of converting many of the images (initially done as lambdas on metallic paper) into more traditional prints - using techniques like silk screen, lithography, engraving and etching, thanks to the help, inspiration and collaborative efforts of Jill Ross and Richard Kilpert.

stan engelbrecht joins the kagablog as of now. welcome!

andrej smirnov in izhesk

if you happen to be in the neighbourhood of izhevsk this week (it’s in russia), pop in to the local film club, which is organizing a mini-retrospective of my films. the screening will include a funeral, the dead man 2: return of the dead man, western4.33, shabondama elegy and wasted!
for more information contact festival organizer andrej smirnov artandrej@mail.ru.
thank you to holland film promotion for supplying the prints!

the new atlantis flag
for more information about the new atlantis project www.illuseum.com

three ideas to contribute to the common domain

here are three ideas which i’ve been carrying around for a few years now. it seems unlikely that i’ll have the time or resources to put them into practise, so maybe somebody else could pick up on them and give them a go.

# 1 – photography project: nude studies of olympic athletes

this is a series of male and female athletes shot in black and white against a white backdrop. they’re stark studies of the body which show how the human biological machine has been engineered into fulfilling certain functions.

particular sports force the flesh into distinct forms, so it might be interesting to compare the different types of bodies which have been made useful for particular ends. so one could contrast the bodies of people who have devoted their lives to, for example, the javelin throw, shot putt, discus, swimming, diving, long distance running, weight-lifting, horse-riding & etc…

(a related photographic project could be done with the hands of artists, which are also shaped by their endeavours. one could contrast the hands of a pianist with those of a sculptor, dancer, writer etc…)

# 2 – an easy course in reading a foreign language

in anthony burgess’ a clockwork orange, he uses about 300 new words (loosely based on russian) which make up a fictional dialect called “nadsat”. the first edition of the book doesn’t have a glossary, but after reading the novel and seeing the words used in context, one finds that by the end of the short book one has already acquired a sizeable new vocabulary.

learning is a process of familiarising oneself with the unknown and by relating it (usually metaphorically) with what is already known. familiarising oneself with words in context is a better way to learn them than by trying to memorise dictionary definitions.

it occurred to me that one could write a series of novels in which a new language gradually replaces a known language. now if one could learn 300 new words a novel, one might have a basic reading vocabulary by the end of about seven novels. and if the stories were compelling enough, this would be achieved with relatively little effort.

the grammatical structure of the new language could also be gradually incorporated into the known language in order to familiarise the reader with new configurations. in this way one tries to understand the known language in terms of how speakers of the unknown language understand it. one focuses on the mistakes speakers of the foreign language make when trying to speak english. for example, when learning japanese pronunciation, some courses first teach one how japanese people mis-pronounce english words.

(this would probably only work for languages which are already related; for one thing, they would have to use the same alphabet. perhaps someone with the time and inclination could test out this hypothesis as a research project.)

# 3 – social anthropology project: conveying the finity of the world

endemic waste and rubbish in third world countries has already reached frightening proportions. in less internationally-integrated countries, there might still be a sense that resources, and the world itself, is endless.

so perhaps a worthy educational project might be to get a globe to every person in the world, in order to convey the concept of the planet as a single entity, because i’m sure there are millions of people who are not aware of the singularity of the planet.

wasn’t it buzz aldrin who famously said how his life was changed by a view of the world from space? if there are social philanthropists out there who don’t know what to do with their resources, maybe someone could try to get a globe of the earth into at least every school on earth.

anton krueger

for more tuinder mayhem www.dicktuinder.com

aryan kaganof in sms sugar man

THE SOLIPSIST CREATES WORLD FIRST ON A CELL PHONE

Solipsism (SOL-uhp-siz-uhm, SOH-luhp-siz-uhm) - The belief that all reality is just one’s own imagining of reality, and that one’s self is the only thing that exists.

Aryan Kaganof is possibly South Africa’s most prolific filmmaker (over 15 films and 30 videos); certainly our most avant-garde cineaste. Biographer Immanuel Stammelman in “The Solipsist – problems of meaning in the films and videos of Aryan Kaganof” says, “Kaganof does not seem to believe that films should be about something; he reproduces his central themes compulsively regardless of the ostensible subject. He seems to film for the glancer; even the earnest viewer who begins at the first frame has the constant impression of having started watching somewhere in the middle.”

In 1996 Kaganof made the ‘rave’ movie Wasted! (Naar De Klote) which was a hit in the Netherlands. For the film he pioneered the process of shooting a feature on digital video and blowing it up to 35mm. True to his visionary modus operandi Kaganof has recently completed another cinema world first. His film SMS Sugar man which wrapped in late December was shot entirely on Sony Ericsson W900i cell phones.

The film stars newcomers Deja Bernhardt and Leigh Graves as two hookers and Kaganof himself as the titular Sugar man, a pimp who grapples with his conscience while driving three of his ladies around one Christmas Eve.
The film took three months from concept to wrap and the entire shoot lasted a mere twelve days. At the time of going to press Kaganof was under severe pressure preparing a promo for the film for Rotterdam, his response to my e-mailed questions was typically witty and acute, “I deeply appreciate the opportunity to answer all those questions but right now I don’t even have the time to read them…my only statement about SMS Sugar Man is ‘I FILM WHAT I LIKE`”

The film which was largely improvised around a collection of Kaganof’s short stories – “Sugar Man and Other Bitter Stories”- which he calls a ‘novel in ruins’ had an extremely low-budget. They had a treatment, then workshopped with the actresses and developed character arcs before concentrating on plot and structure.

For post, the memory disk files were downloaded onto a laptop and then converted into a usable format for their edit on a G5 Quad Mac using Final Cut Pro. As for the look of the film, those who have seen rushes tell me they’re impressed and that it doesn’t look as pixilated as they imagined. Kaganof says, “It’s only a problem if you want the image to look like conventional 35mm, the point is that the image in this film will look like itself. In other words - a new direction, a new possibility for cinema. Perhaps only a tangent perhaps not, but we’re following it anyway.”

But Kaganof is not just a filmmaker; his creative gamut includes books of poetry, novels, collections of short stories, art exhibitions, live performances with his band Freedom Fighter, short documentaries and features. In a review of Kaganof’s anthology ‘Jou Ma Se Poems’ maverick filmmaker Anton Krueger remarks, “Kaganof is the foremost counter-culture revolutionary in South Africa. Often his virulently oppositional stance reminds us that that we have a culture at all. He’s ruthlessly extreme in his views; there is no middle ground for him, and it seems that people’s reactions to him and his work is similar: either people are mesmerised by his fiery enthusiasm and inspired by his prodigious energy, or they find him perverse and obnoxious. But love him or hate him, he’s impossible to ignore.”

By making SMS Sugar Man, Kaganof is once again tackling ‘film culture’ head-on and with the current boom in local content is determined to rumple more than a few cinema seats. In an interview in the Mail & Guardian last year to coincide with Film Resource Unit’s Awakening Film Festival he remarked, “The problem is “the lack of distribution of non-Hollywood propaganda movies in this country”, which, to a degree, the Awakening Film Festival is redressing. But “first we have to bomb the malls — they’re flattening our culture — and then we can talk about a solution to this problem,” says Kaganof. Perhaps the solution is in the palm of one’s hand or at least in the hand of this uncompromising cinematic solipsist.

Andrew Worsdale
(this article originally appeared in The Callsheet)

The Blonde

I was sitting opposite the SaSas Bar writing her life story when the Blonde came over to me.

   “What are you writing?”

   “Your life story.”

   “How does it end?”

   “Like it started, tragicomically.”

   “Sounds familiar; do I have a say in how it works out?”

   “Sit down, buy me a drink, we’ll find out.”

Later on, when we were naked, she asked me shyly if I really cared about her or if it was all just sex.

   “Don’t confuse matters, honey, I really care about your sex.”

Then she did her magic number, wrapped her ankles behind her ears and made those little flappy bits talk to me. It was good.

Afterwards we both smoked Blackstone Cherries and I ran my hand through her long blonde hair. It didn’t last long. But it was something.

Years later we bumped into each other at the Killarney Mall. She still looked good. We had coffee at Alfredo’s. Her hair was shorter, eyes a little sadder.

We talked about irrelevant things. But she seemed to know far more about me than I did about her.

   “You’re not a happy chappy.”

What could I say? The years had taken their toll. I walked her to her Mazda. We stood for a while with the car door open, watching one of Jo’burg’s thunderstorms preparing itself to break. She turned to me and her eyes swelled with knowing and I was touched by what she said: “Most of my life has been spent waiting for something to happen. Whenever something does threaten to happen, I run away. That’s the story of my life.”

It wasn’t the story I had written. I had written some other story. She drove away into the darkening storm and I stood for a long while outside the Killarney Mall wondering if a man could ever understand a woman. If a man could ever understand himself.

I drove home all the way up Jan Smuts and William Nicol, mixed myself a GT, lit up a cheap cigar, watched the sun setting behind the rain to the sound of Serge Gainsbourg. I didn’t understand French, I didn’t understand women. I tried reading JM Coetzee but he depressed me, made me feel insubstantial. The sun died and I didn’t have the energy to turn on the lights.

I sat thinking about all the Blondes I’d ever shared a night with. I couldn’t believe my life was nearly over. There was a space inside me crying out that it had hardly begun. I fumbled through the pile on my desk, found an old address book, sat staring at the pages for what seemed like a very long time. The GT must have finished itself, Serge ran out of things to sing about. I didn’t have the bottle to phone her. I couldn’t remember her name.

first published by unlikely stories
also published by litnet, may 2004