kagablog

johnny hamilton loved chicken
an plain rice.
at about 10.00 on friday night
he was cooking his favourite
dish
not knowing
it would be his last.
three rifle toting gunmen
invaded his home
on
rasta avenue,
killing him.

today his mother hyacinth,
lives to tell the tale
of how
her life and those
of her
eight,10,12,
three and six
year old grand children
were spared
while they huddled
under a bed.

according to her,
she bawl out
“jesus”
an him(the gunman)
seh,
” yu ti’nk
jesus can help yu..
an so
de gun stick.”.

wild & intemperate,
i am only worthy of your love
when i am good.
i am a snail girl covered in salt
as your reproach dissolves
my substance.
 
the tyrant that inhabits my inner recess
does not allow
for imperfection.
it whispers constantly
in a ragged voice,
in a frothing fever my shell cracks.
 
i don sackcloth & ashes,
conscience-striken & contrite,
i become pure & pleasing,
on my best behaviour
i cast out the guilty, graceless snail girl
to purge my offence.
 
austere & ascetic,
all that remains
is a fading silver trail.

photos taken with a cell phone camera by nadine hutton
market theatre, 27-06-06

This 25 minute video, directed by Aryan Kaganof in 2003, is dedicated to Steve Biko, the anti-apartheid militant killed by racist police in 1977. Two production companies are listed in the credits, “Pine Slopes”, the writer Kaganof’s publishing house, and “Silent Woods”, the production company owned by Dick Tuinder, who composed the original soundtrack under his usual pseudonym, Ramon Dos Santos.
This art video is a difficult work to interpret or analyse. It is one of the most formally and symbolically complicated. Five black dancers improvise and recite together or individually the poems of Lefifi Tladi, a poet who writes in seTswana. The choreographies are directed by Moeketsi Koena and Nita Liem, both dancers themselves, and also interpreted by two others, Moshe Maboe and Thokozane Mthiyane. The film is in three parts. In the first part, the music is superimposed and the images show a lone dancer improvising. The slow-motion matches the slow voice of the reader (lefifi tladi) who recites the lines in seTswana from his poem Gare Itshebeng. The tilted and unsteady frames allude indirectly to the unstable political system of this poet’s country, and the incomprehensible lines nevertheless leave us with a strong and stimulating aural impression, and a desire to decipher this language which is ancient and yet modern too. This ambiguity prepares us for all the others which follow.
The second part of the film is still difficult to analyse, but a few characteristic symbols help us somewhat. The filming this time turns in circles while the five dancers together improvise a theatrical “happening”, portraying a quarrel in dance, and a “tense” reconciliation. Here, once again, we feel an ambiguity in this film of the imagination. The actors tremble with emotion, presenting us with an exciting and stylised game, full of visual and symbolic grace. A wooden door, the symbol of oppression, weighs upon one of the actors (thokozani mthiyane) as the others abandon themselves to their hysterical game, in symbolic discord with the opera singer, who bursts in briefly, thanks to a lively sound mix.
The third part of the film opens with a lone dancer (moshe maboe) accompanied by Dick Tuinder’s electroacoustic music. He gives us a snake dance as the music prepares us metaphorically for the end, which is also the simple and human culmination point – the audience applauds wildly as the actors take their bows.
It should be noted that contemporary dance has always been a favourite theme of Ian Kerkhof – Aryan Kaganof. Look again at his past classics such as “Dead Man 2” and “Minnamanna”, or recent films like “I Am An African”, made the same year. Lefifi Tladi’s poetry is also the subject of a short film entitled “A Sun Dance Ecstasy”, also made that year (2003).

June 28th, 2006

Review by Dionysos ANDRONIS

translated from the french by lucy lyall grant

review by Dionysos ANDRONIS

Cette vidéo de 25 minutes réalisée par Aryan Kaganof en 2003 est dédicacée à Steve Biko, le militant anti-apartheid assassiné en 1977 par la police raciste de l’époque. Deux sociétés de production sont citées au générique : « Pine Slopes », la maison d ‘édition de l’écrivain Kaganof et « Silent Woods », la maison de production de Dick Tuinder qui signe la musique originale du film avec son pseudonyme usuel Ramon Dos Santos.
Cette vidéo d’art est une œuvre difficile à interpréter ou analyser. Elle est parmi les plus compliquées formellement et symboliquement. Cinq danseurs noirs improvisent et récitent ensemble ou seuls les poèmes de Lefifi Tladi, un poète de langue afrikaans. Les chorégraphies sont dirigées par Moeketsi Koena et Nita Liem, également danseurs, et interprétées aussi par deux autres, Moshe Maboe et Thokozane Mthiyane. Le film est en trois parties. Sur la première partie les musiques sont surimposées et les images nous montrent un danseur seul en train d’improviser. Le ralenti est en accord avec la voix lente du récitant qui interprète les vers en afrikaans. Les cadrages penchés et tremblants font référence indirectement au système politique instable du pays de ce poète dont les vers incompréhensibles nous laissent pourtant une impression sonore forte et stimulante, une envie de déchiffrer cette langue ancienne et moderne. Ce point ambigu nous prépare pour toutes les autres ambiguïtés qui vont suivre.
La deuxième partie du film est toujours difficile à analyser mais quelques symboles caractéristiques nous aident un peu. Le cadrage cette fois tourne en cercle tandis que les cinq danseurs improvisent ensemble un happening théâtral qui nous montre une querelle dansée et une réconciliation «nerveuse ». Voilà encore une ambiguïté de ce film de l’imagination. Les actants tremblent d’émotion et nous livrent un jeu palpitant et stylisé, plein de grâce visuelle et symbolique. Une porte en bois, symbole d’oppression, pèse sur un de nos actants tandis que les autres se livrent à leur jeu hystérique, en désaccord symbolique avec la chanteuse d’opéra qui fait une irruption brève grâce au mixage sonore vif.
La troisième partie du film commence par un seul danseur accompagné par la musique électroacoustique de Dick Tuinder. Il nous offre une danse de serpent tandis que la musique nous prépare métaphoriquement de la fin qui est aussi le point culminant simple et humain : les spectateurs applaudissent vivement les actants rassemblés sur scène.
A noter que la danse contemporaine a toujours été le thème de prédilection de Ian Kerkhof – Aryan Kaganof. Il suffit de revoir ses classiques du passé comme « Dead Man 2 » et « Minnamanna » ou les films récents comme celui-là et « I am an African », réalisé la même année. Les poèmes de Lefifi Tladi serait le sujet du court métrage «A sun dance ecstasy », réalisé la même année (en 2003) aussi.

This is a confessional tale. Yet with the distance of a dozen years between the present and that fateful day, I am able to conceive of myself as a character, as someone who I am not anymore. There he goes, there he flickers, the shadow of myself in time, as if already captured within the all-encompassing and definitive framing of a photograph. But all photos are of ghosts, because there’s no-one there anymore. (How sombre these old films are with their record of the animated bodies of the dead.)

So here’s the thing: on 10 May 1994, when Nelson Mandela was inaugurated by the new dispensation, I went mad for a few hours. I took a holiday from sanity. I took a ride outside of the everyday assumptions we require to keep us afloat and floating the societal boat. More to the point, I became what could later be described with a reasonable amount of accuracy, as a paranoid schizophrenic, and I relate this here for the purposes of science, and in the interests of keeping a record of an experiment.

You see, what had happened, was that only moments before my friend and I joined the cheering crowds gathered on the lawns of the Union Buildings to celebrate the dawning of a new day, we had each consumed a tablet of Ecstasy (MDMA), and a cap of Acid whilst smoking some Malawi cob. Well, it was either this that did it to me, that pushed me over the edge, or it was the flyover of the SADF Air force over the Union Buildings, which I recall experiencing as a distinctly tactile sensation of power changing hands.

Whatever the case may be, this was to be the last thing I remembered for a while, since, the next thing you knew – there I was – ambling about the streets of Sunnyside without a memory. I couldn’t remember my name, or how things worked. I thought that I was either an old man who had lost his memory, or someone who was mad. I wanted desperately to know how systems worked, but was excluded from the knowledge of names and positions. I could recognise a symbol, such as a traffic light (a robot) when I saw it, but I didn’t know what it stood for. I was outside of the circle. To not remember is to be lost.

And God, what a relief it was when the memory came washing back…in waves…how wonderful to put everything back into place…to be able to situate myself in terms of names and places and people and faces, and to realise how I fitted into the network of things. Without memory one is one the outside of the system. Every system requires the memory of its ceremonial processes. Our memories of ceremonial processes are, perhaps, more crucial to our idea of who we are than, say, private memories. Public memories provide places where it’s possible to interface with a community, to represent ourselves to an illusory forum.

You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realise that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all…Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it, we are nothing…
Luis Buñuel (in Sacks: p.22)
________________________________________________________________________

they were at it again.talking about how i was useless in the fields.saying how i sat day dreaming all the while and looking to the sky ..”fi what mi no know..said my uncle, in that drawn out patois so deep and rough, pulling on his long beard and scatching his head of hair that looked like a birds nest.
“him sit and stare and count all de rain bird going south and when him done, him count de birds coming back. him sit down by de riva and stare pan de fish dem and watch de cow dem eat and copulate.
him climb tree an fall out him, him stan inna ants nest and de ant dem bit him. him jump pan donkey an donkey kick him. him uselss i tell you.”
on he would go complaining, scratching an pulling on his beard and spitting. my granma would roll her eyes at him and look him up and down,cursing underbreath, when he said the word u.s.e.l.e.s.s.
he would ignore her stares and continue saying ,”him have two left hands.. an nuttin can make dem right”.
“an you wat bout you, she would shout back at him..”you jack of all trades an masta a none.
“him useless, an your pickni dem useful, fi carry water and feed chicken and fetch kerosene oil from road and fork de field.. an dem can’t read.”

to this he would not have a reply.. he would mumble some obscure thing about when he was a bwoy, and try to blame her for his own short comings. but she would laugh and say.. “you were neva interested inna books an school.. lawd know sey mi try..

truth is he spent all his days playing the saxaphone at all the local dances from spanish town to montego bay and back again.neva really set foot in school.

him useless cause him sit down inna bush an look pan gods creation and draw inna him book.
him useless to you cause you can’t work him like a mule, an you know sey him a go back to him mada soon. but when you want someting, written or someting fi read.. him no useless.

member de time when him write you a note an you laugh, an made fun of the way him write..Member de hurt inna him eyes, member.?
he had embarassed me in front of my brother and his friends. they all laughed and i had to write the letter over.Not knowing then that he could not even read.
“you might not send your pickni dem a school, but him de here, fi go a school an study, an go a foreign, far away from here an you..
you can’t read an write and you pickni dem can’t read an write..an you come stan up inna my face, an inna my yard, an come tell me sey mi granson,your sista’s child is, useless,
cause him can read and him no like fi work inna de field. him like airplanes, sunny skies, an him full a dreams. who is de useless one here beardy.. who is de usless one here.

a hundred fish-hooks
catch my tongue
whenever we meet,
 
traceless barbs leave
no mark, but
the heart knows,
 
it knows.

this interview originally appeared on dave’s blog on monday june 26

buy uselessly now (in south africa) (in united kingdom)

After enjoying a laid back weekend of unparalleled fun and relaxation, I decided in a fit of bonhomie and what have you to interview Aryan Kaganof for the blog this morning. What follows is quite, hilariously funny and an important reading. i have not edited this e-interview at all, to protect either myself or Aryan.

 The Interview:

DC: After so many years of self publishing and independent publishing, why an established publishing house for this novel?

AK: Strictly for the money.

DC: Compared to a large amount of your previous work in other fields as well as writing, this novel is the gentlest and least controversial you have released. Does this indicate some kind of sea change in your attitude to the world at the moment?

AK: Well I’m a lot gentler and less controversial now that I’ve had the lobotomy.

DC: Uselessly and his father The Devil are cast as somewhat amoral anti hero types in the novel. Why? Do you think the traditional mythic hero figure has outgrown its use?

AK: I was going for verisimilitude.

DC: There is a lot of prejudice, misogyny and moral flexibility in the novel. Is this a reflection of yourself or of the environment we find ourselves in?

AK: This question reminds me of a poem I wrote recently:

the poetry magazine did not publish poems
that were racist, sexist or homophobic
and therefore
I did not submit this one

DC: Bearing in mind your own personal history with you father, some may be looking for much in the way of autobiographical content in this book. Is this true, or did your experience merely provide a jumping off point for the narrative and plot?

AK: When people ask about the autobiographical thing my standard reply is “everything I write is fiction, except for the stuff I make up”.

DC: Ultimately, are you happy with the novel? Do you feel that it addresses the core issues you wanted to cover? What are those core ideas?

AK: I’m always suspicious of authors with core ideas. Like Adorno, I believe that the novel IS the core idea. If I could have expressed it in any other form, in any other medium, in a more compressed way, more “core” so to speak, I would have done so. Uselessly is the core expression of the novel Uselessly.

DC: The market for art, books and music of an intellectual, left of centre nature is very small in South Africa. How are you finding working in this environment compared to your experiences in Europe?

AK: I agree with your statement which is one reason why I want to get out of the intellectual, left of centre ghetto. Those dull, dour, badly dressed leftists with the anti-capitalist rhetoric are the first people to queue up when there’s a sale, frenziedly grubbing for discounts. Essentially the leftists are resentful because they have never figured out a way to earn enough moolah to afford the goods at full retail. I broke with the left when I read the Unabomber’s Manifesto. It’s one of the most important documents of the twentieth century. He analyzes the phenomenon of the “chinless left”. That book woke me up with a start. Every so-called “revolutionary” toying around with “otherness” should read that Manifesto.

DC: How do you feel we are doing out here as artists? Are we coping with the demands of our environment? Are we keeping up conceptually, practically?

AK: I think south Africa is the most wonderful place to be living in as an artist. We are not interfered with by the government by way of tedious, creativity stifling subsidies and grants, and we are not messed with by big corporations who want to buy us up and own us and we are not even messed with by that vast, amorphous mass known as “the people”, who, are too busy watching ball games on television and beating their wives up, to be concerned with our trinkets.

DC: Is it possible that the unique circumstances that are South Africa are the breeding ground of something totally new and dynamic in the field of art and music? Or is that to over state the possibilities of the rapid change that our society is undergoing?

AK: There is incredible stuff happening in this country. Just one example, our most radical contemporary music composer Michael Blake is presenting his new composition Wringtones at the National Arts festival in Grahamstown. It’s a 5 minute composition for violin that will be performed by the Japanese virtuoso Yasutaka Hemmi, who is flying out for the concert. This is a piece that invents a genre “thrash classical” that simply hasn’t been heard before. It brings to mind great hardcore bands like the Bad Brains, Spy Vs Spy era John Zorn, as well as the apocalyptic thrash improv of Killing Time (Fred Frith-Bill Laswell-John Maher). It’s utterly wild. It reflects Joburg – the urban environment, car jackings, the constant paranoia of our life here, but also the exuberance, the buzz of Jozi. It is the most ruthlessly virile urban African music I’ve yet heard. Utterly distinctive. Utterly from here, but free of all simplistic “African” cliches - that curio shop mentality that pervades so much of the saccharine garbage pretending to be “music” in this country (Pops Mohammed etc). I recommend all readers of your blog go see the concert during the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown next week.

 DC: You are a film maker, writer, poet, singer/musician and artist. How do you find the mental energy and space to handle all of these things?

AK: I stopped doing drugs  six years ago and decided to quit finding excuses for not achieving my full potential.

DC: Do you ever worry that maybe by crossing genre so much you are depleting the effectiveness of your work, and that maybe you agendas would be better served if extrapolated to the nth degree in one discipline?

AK: It’s an interesting question, because I believe that it is the genre crossing that is the work’s effectiveness. I’m highly disciplined in all the media I work in. I believe discipline is the key to any artist’s success and development.

 DC: You seem obsessed with your Valiant and your Glock. What is with these two things?

AK: Beautifully designed machines that represent the peak of their respective disciplines.

DC: Who else out there do you rate as doing really interesting work, be it film making, writing or music?

AK: Michelle McGrane recently sent me a copy of Houellebecq’s novel The Possibility Of An Island that I enjoyed reading and I was also deeply moved by Anita Brookner’s Leaving Home. I’m not much of a reader these days, too busy with my own work, although I read The Little Prince (by Antoine De Saint-Exupery) every year in order to remind me what it’s all about, in case I forget.

I got rid of all my cds, dvds, books etc about five years ago, and I live in almost complete silence, filling it up with my own creations. Every now and then a cd finds its way to me and most recently it’s been the mechanical music of Gyorgy Ligeti, who passed away a couple of weeks ago. It’s extraordinary music, way ahead of its time and I think we will be hearing a lot more of it, and its ramifications for other composers, in the future.

I almost never go out to see movies anymore because I hate malls. The most interesting recent South African film I’ve seen is I Love You Jet Li directed by Jaco Bouwer and written by Stacy Hardy. Massive talent on display there and if I was a film producer I would give that team a blank cheque and let them get on with it.

DC: What other projects are you working on right now, and what can we expect from you next?

AK: I’ve recorded a couple of songs with that great unsung hero of South African music, Neill Solomon. These are part of an album of song versions of poems by Beat poets. (Alan Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac etc) that he is producing. Am also working on my solo cd project and it is my greatest dream to do a duet with Koos Kombuis who really is a much more interesting South African novelist than that over-rated Kangaroo fucker J.M.Coetzee.

     la jeune fille panaméenne
     assise à côté de sa soeur
     en combinaison et pieds nus
     en train de lire une bédé
     et mâchant du chewing-gum
     dans un bordel appelé le
     Teenage Club
     attendant l’arrivée
     des premiers GI
     six filles alignées
     comme des quilles de bowling
     enracinées à leurs chaises
     avec des regards fixes des zombies
     faisant un truc de femme
     à l’intérieur d’un corps d’enfant
 

translated by eric de jaeger

MEMORY GAME ONE: BIGGER & BETTER

* * * * * * * * *

“They are playing a game. They are playing at not playing a game. If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me. I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game”…character in R.D. Laing’s play “Knots”…

* * * * * * * * *

Polite, probably male, acquaintances convene at a venue. Let’s call it a party. Perhaps one or two know one or two of the others, and these could provide useful links between the group. Possibly some strangers may even announce their names to the others and, in so doing exchange information about their situatedness within a language, a culture, a generation, and even, an economic demographic. When all have bartered their names, the group converges in a circle, possibly around a coffee table, or around a ire or even, just a cigarette. Whatever the case may be, at one point a topic is presented to the group (this could be by the Joker, or the Alpha Male, or his first Lieutenant). If none of these can present a suitable topic, try one of the following: shaving, cars, fights, accidents seen, success achieved, money made, travels in exotic lands, (or, if nothing else is forthcoming, in London.)

Once the topic has been introduced, each participant, (who is also, for the purposes of this game, a contestant) relates a story. More points are scored if the story happened to happen to them, and less if it’s a story they’ve only heard told. So the anecdotes, the stories, are told in turn, each player trying to equal or improve the scope, variety or intensity of the story told by the previous player. Each new story must (i.e.) be
Bigger & Better.

The winner of the contest is the one who tells a story which best exemplifies the type of story all the contestants wish they had told.

MEMORY GAME TWO: SHARING EMOTIONAL MEMORIES

Either in pairs or in groups of three or more, swap personal memories of emotions. Relive them if need be.

MEMORY GAME THREE

Tell each other what you believe.
What do you remember about what really happened?
Relate the truth about the past.

________________________________________________________________________

oh jesus kept on walking in the next town
full of brandy
..ran screaming from god’s house.
she said she had followed
her mind,
that power was being
restored to the suburbs,
the light of which is religious
what she believes
for fun,
her bare breasts
blackened
by the sun
and
the lamp, her radio,
the small of her back
was pure lust
in the dark,
above us

he was late,
drinking with his friends again,
you were mad,
another cold dinner,
another empty promise.
 
he was drunk,
angry at your lack of understanding,
i laughed at you,
knowing all the time
i would have felt the same.