kagablog

02.02.08 - 04.05.08

Palazzo delle Papesse
Palazzo delle Papesse - Centro Arte Contemporanea
Via di Citta
126 53100 Siena
Italien
fon 0577 - 22071
segreteria@papesse.org
homepage

.ZA
young art from South Africa
Kuratoren: Lorenzo Fusi, Marlene Dumas, Kendell Geers, Bernie Searle, Minnette Vari, Sue Williamson

mit Bridget Baker, Simon Gush, Nicholas Hlobo, Nandipha Mntambo, Zanele Muholi, Ruth Sacks, Sean Slemon, Pippa Stalker, Doreen Southwood, Johan Thom, Nontsikelelo Lolo Veleko, James Webb, Ed Young

Pressetext:

Palazzo delle Papesse announces the opening of their 2008 exhibition programme with the group show .za - young art from South Africa.

The exhibition was conceived by Lorenzo Fusi, who asked five established South African artists - Marlene Dumas, Kendell Geers, Bernie Searle, Minnette Vàri, Sue Williamson - to take part in the event in the role of co-curators. Each of these artists was asked to put forward the work of artists not older than thirty-five, still residing or mainly operating in South Africa. More than twenty works were thus gathered from as many artists, mostly unknown or very little known to the Italian and European public.

The show represents a sort of passing on of the torch, as well as a tribute on the part of the better known artists of already established international reputation towards their younger colleagues, often penalized by their geographical isolation in the farthermost point of the African continent. The generation that gained ample visibility in the Nineties, riding the wave of global enthusiasm for the end of Apartheid, passes the torch on to a new generation still in search of recognition. These younger artists reached maturity in the course of the journey their country took towards political stability, finally achieving the state of modern democracy through a process sometimes fraught with difficulties and contradictions.

The exhibition looks at South Africa through the eyes of South Africans rather than through western eyes, rejecting pre-conceived ideas and stereotyped interpretations of the country’s culture. The partial portrait that emerges highlights the unresolved conflicts of a multiethnic society torn between tradition and modernity, drawn as it is towards the future, especially in view of the new image it intends to present to the global community as the host of the football World Cup in 2010.

The works selected do not share a common theme: rather, they bear witness to the diversity of expression and debate within the current contemporary art scene in South Africa.
However, many of the artists in the show seem to share the influence of the post-conceptual experience.
The ‘new art’ from South Africa, although often politically and socially committed, can no longer be referenced solely in relation to Apartheid. On the contrary, the artists taking part in the show seem to strive to overcome this easy and univocal classification. Torn between a life at home and the possibility of a life abroad, between activism and diaspora, the artists of .ZA provide a perfect example of the plight of intellectuals and cultural professionals at the periphery of the globalised world, where everything appears to be within reach yet the periphery knows little redemption from its condition of isolation.

The selected artists include: Bridget Baker, Simon Gush, Nicholas Hlobo, Nandipha Mntambo, Zanele Muholi, Ruth Sacks, Sean Slemon, Pippa Stalker, Doreen Southwood, Johan Thom, Nontsikelelo Lolo Veleko, James Webb, Ed Young.

Catalogue: Silvana Editoriale, bilingual italian-english, will include essays by all the curators.

AN ENERGY DRINK

Someone came up to him and told him that an energy drink called Red Bull was available at the bar at CRASH. At first he thought that that someone was pulling his leg. He made an enquiry.
“Yes there is such a thing,” the barman said oddly.
He wanted to laugh.
“You’re not being serious?” enquired Ampleby in genuine disbelief.
The barman shrugged impatiently.
“Can I see one?”
Yes…there it was, in a can. Really and actually there. He examined it carefully, curiously, as if looking at himself in the mirror for flaws.
“Now I’ve finally cracked”, he thought. “Now I’ve seen it all! How very very curious - curiouser and curiouser - the commercial world imitating life! Wasn’t it supposed to be that ART imitates life, or that LIFE imitates art? This is a real
fine howdy do!”
“That can has my life in it” said Ampleby and handed it back to the barman.

THE BEREA INN

Ampleby had been focusing his energies at the Berea Inn, on a Tuesday night. The Goth scene had become the only authentic option, that still had an underground identity, that still gave the impression of breaking the mould. A core of ‘thinking Goths’ were quickly disillusioned with the commercialism of the new club. Yet the managers of the Berea Inn were not too happy with the Goths because they were not alcoholics - they did not drink to excess - they were more interested in wearing black, wearing makeup, silver jewellery and dancing to Nick Cave, Sisters, Nephilim, Bauhaus, Cure. The Goth boys were utterly divine looking, with long black locks, black skirts and dark eyeliner. The Goth couples looked like lesbian couples. And nobody could play a Goth set quite like Ampleby! Watching a lone woman dancing to Orff’s Carmina Burana took him to heights that no performer on the professional stage had ever done. Swirling black skirt. Swirling black silhouette. The bright multi-coloured squares of the Berea Inn dance floor flashing at her feet, enhancing the contrast, shadows reflecting in the surrounding mirrors. He adored these night creatures that shied away from the sun. So anti grunge. But a strange dissonance constantly recurred. The chords were out of synch. The desire to experiment, to innovate receded. The Goths had become just as subject to fear of change as anyone else. The moon ebb of excitement pulled ever harder away, away into a fear of expression, a negation of that edge that leapt into new territory. Nobody would dance to the new Nick Cave album “Murder Ballads” apart from the commercial track with Kylie Minogue and the slightly less commercial track with P.J. Harvey. Nobody would dance to Christian Deaths’ brilliant version of “Venus in Furs”. Too dramatic. Too passionate. Too intense. Madly, change became synonymous with a need for self preservation. It was as if letting go had previously presumed a safety net which now was no longer there…letting go became impossible….the fear of change created strange counter currents indeed! The Rift had swooped in on the alternative movement with its radio brand of rebellion. They had done more in one month than the entire Security Branch had been able to do in years, surfing the ten year impetus little caring where it all went. Initially, Ampleby did not mind this shift. He thought “Let them have it…they want it that badly…let them take it….” Yet, for him there still was a sustainable sense of progression: he saw his move to the Berea Inn as little more than a detour. But as time progressed, the conservative wave that enveloped the country congealed into something harder to shift than anything even Ampleby could have imagined. The mountain had returned, heavier, darker, wiser - like a clam that had been swooped upon unexpectedly, prized open - now more sensitive to intrusion. It would never allow what had happened to ever happen again. The alternative movement lost sustainability: it had transformed into contemporary rock, no more, no less. What the Rolling Stones represented in the ‘60’s without the challenge. By 1994, as the country prepared for its first ever democratic election the regressive madness turned obsessive. Two white females had a fight that was over in seconds: the one ended up concussed, the other, a gaping hole in her cheek where a broken beer bottle had pierced. As she swigged her beer (still in shock), beer and blood streamed through the hole, down her neck, soaking into her blouse. Then the Goths had a fall-out with the Punks, with both groups boycotting the Berea Inn. Everyone wanted to have their say. Discernment became a dirty word. It was as if the sudden sense of democracy meant that ‘anything goes’, as opposed to ‘anything is possible’. But the interesting thing was, was that everyone had to make a paradigm shift - the Zulus, the Xhosas, the Whites, the Coloureds, the Indians - no one group occupied centre stage. Yet nobody was interested in common ground. Yes, it was all happening politically, but that was politics, this was real life! People arriving at the Berea Inn had no interest in whether or not Ampleby had a history. He might as well have just been born. Nobody was interested in his experience. The fact that he had been djing for fifteen years held no sway whatsoever. That he might have known something of where this could be going was of least importance. Patrons would bring a CD, request a track, dance to nothing else until it was played, and then leave. His exposure of New World Music never gathered momentum - was shut out with indifference. Transglobal Underground, The Orb, The Future Sound of London, Eat Static, Leftfield, Underworld, cleared the dance floor. “Now what does this guy think he’s doing?” Too much new stuff, too soon, all at once. Souxie, the Cure, Pete Murphy were all hitting middle age. Marylin Manson was a Cover Queen. Computer technology force-fed the record industries and the splurge of new music overwhelmed. Nobody could tell the difference between what was good and what was bad. Progressive music tastes shifted from the ‘collective’ to the ‘personal’ where the personal did not translate back into the collective. It stopped right there - like trying to have a conversation with somebody who only answered in monosyllables. Rave Culture tidal-waved in, and with it the wonder drug ‘e’, swamping the last vestiges of individualism. If the endless doef doef challenged no one before, now it made no difference, it was just an excuse to be somewhere rather than somewhere else. And being ‘somewhere else’ rested purely on who else was there - hopefully everybody. Music became the shadow, the hazy background. Lazer lighting hit the clubs transporting the crowd into ever increasing highs. ”Trainspotting” the new cult movie. All that drugging that Seremia had been talking about became reality. There was no longer any need to ‘think’. “Think? That’s the last thing I wanna do,” said somebody when Ampleby suggested an amazing movie. Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band suddenly sprang to mind. “e’ created everything inside oneself, just pop the pill and an amazing time was guaranteed to all. Hit the shopping mall! And thus it was that shopping mall ethic superimposed on/into night life. Wandering around 330 on a Saturday night was like wandering around Musgrave Centre with its lights out and lots of loud music. That was the way they wanted it! It never occurred to Ampleby to experiment with ‘e’. It looked all too stupid…’e’ bunnies mindlessly bopping their heads like those toy dogs at the back of some cars. Besides he had his own energy. Energy that he had been honing for the past twenty years. Performance energy. If the music was right, and it seldom was, that was all he needed. ‘e’ is everywhere - in your television set, ‘e’ TV, Felecia on ‘e’, the impetus behind every single 20 second byte advertisement, into the consciousness of your children, fashion. ‘e’ is here to stay, the new alcohol - and far superior. Nobody ever had a fight on ‘e’. Pity about the come down. Pity about the fact that the Nigerians were making all the money out of it. Pity about the fact that it gets laced with rat poison. But ‘e’ is a desperate thing and life and living can make one very desperate - so who will be the judge?

There was only one thing for him to do - let go.

At the Vic Bar one Saturday evening, Ampleby noticed Cheth. He was sitting at one of the tables and he was crying. He was talking to a woman and he was crying. Tears were streaming down his face. He and Maya had broken up. Conversely, it was the first time Ampleby felt there might be some hope for him yet. It was the first time he had seen Cheth express any real emotion. Two weeks later he was dead. Overdose. Wellconol. He curled up into bed and went to sleep.

by dave chislett

A little while ago I wrote a rant about how what I perceive of as the spirit of rock ‘n roll has been subverted. Well, last Sunday I was asked the question if there was not a new place for rock n roll in South Africa, and in particular, for the rebellious spirit that it for so long personified and advocated. And yes, there is, as the asker of the question went on to point out. Which got me thinking…

Rock ‘n Roll has always been a working class phenomenon: The voice of the underprivileged, of the people who sweep streets and clean up after the rest of society. For that reason alone, rock in this country has long been treated with suspicion as here rock is mainly made by nice middle class boys who eventually will put their guitars away and go and take up Daddy’s offer of a job and get on with life. Right here and right now in South Africa, we are ripe for a voice of dissent; a voice that speaks of inequity not from a racial or gender or political point of view, but from a sense of outrage, from a sense of injustice, from a sense of very real anger.

Because fuck me, we have got a lot to be angry about right now. No matter what your colour, the rich are just getting richer, and the poor apparently poorer. More money is in fewer black hands now than it was after the ’94 elections. The middle class, as is always the case in these situations is being squeezed in a vice, and no-one seems to have a voice. The moment dissent is raised, racism, corruption and vested interests are cited as the reasons for the dissenters actions. And I don’t understand how we as a nation collectively are not more sick of it. Fuck it. We need a rock n roll band that is going to say what we are thinking. The Sex Pistols took pot shots at The Queen, the Beat took shots at Maggie Thatcher, The Dead Kennedys ridiculed anyone in power. Damn it, rock n roll is festooned with the annoyance of the people against their governments.

the finger

Frankly, I don’t give a damn what justifications Eskom is giving for the power situation. It should NEVER have got this far. I am sick of hearing about bread price fixing, now its milk apparently as well. A couple of years back it was cars. No-one ever did do anything about cell phone price collusion. But even simpler than that. I am sick of well fed yuppies in R700 000 cars parking badly, not indicating, sitting superciliously in expensive bars and restaurants pontificating about how much change in necessary as long as their lifestyle doesn’t change.

I am revolted to my stomach with a culture that sees brand names, conspicuous consumption and a lack of cultural appreciation as badges of honour. That sees the rapid growth of the economy as more important than raising the bar for everyone. I am sick and tired of angry young men taking to drugs and crime to assuage the greed that our country’s emphasis on material wealth ignites in their souls. I am sick and tired of otherwise sensible women insisting on C-section births to preserve their vagina’s when all they are really doing is preserving their doctor’s golf handicap. This country has got a fucked up world view and we are all only too happy to go along with the game. We know it’s wrong, we are all guilty. We all drink like fish after all. Apparently SA, with a population of 44 million, consumes 4 times as much beer as Nigeria with a population of 120 million. And they are the ones with the dangerous cities???

Anarchy-red

I want a Johnny Rotten to stand up here and yell into the microphone, “Wake Up You Dozy Bunch Of Cunts! You are all fiddling while Rome burns!” We need some rebels who are true to only one thing: that this system is broken and it is breaking us. Not a another gang of misinformed yahoos seeking only to enrich themselves, but a group of people who believe in the wrongs they see and are prepared to shout about it.

If I hear one more Pop Idol “doing it for the love of music” one more rock band saying, “We don’t really have a message”, one more hip hop artist rapping about his bitch or his bling I think I am going to spew up my internal organs. Fuck it! Wise up! Let’s look at what’s going on around us!

Bring back the old school rock and roll. Elvis may have died high on drugs eating a cheese burger on the crapper, but at least he got an entire generation to THINK, to break out of their central parental constraints. What’s going be on your fucking headstone punk?

this article was first published on the chiz

her swamp need a
thing

i am here and there
caught in the tumble
and mangle
of it all.
i stumble
tumble
laugh and fall
down
into islands
burning.

Book: The Heart’s Interpreter
Author: Mphutlane wa Bofelo
Publisher: Mphutlane wa Bofelo
Reviewer: Zenoyise Madikwa

I will never again judge a book by its cover. I dismissed Mphutlane wa Bofelo’s book, The Heart’s Interpreter, as not deserving my attention. I dumped it in my desk drawer for months.

It was my sister who dug it out. But after reading the first poem, I was hooked. Having since read the book from cover to cover, I now think Bofelo is possibly one of the most talented poets I know.

His thoughts are elegantly crafted. He records his feelings on love, human relationships, politics and spirituality.

In his political poems, he boldly touches areas that are shunned by many commentators. He does this with humour and authority. In his love poems, his voice is warm, confiding and intimate. While the poems are not showy or technically exciting, they have their own integrity.

He is an excellent writer who sets a glittering barb into every phrase. His political poems are a wonderful affirmation of life even in its darkest depths. The poems will either make you feel happy, sad, upbeat or distraught.

There is a grand sadness that creeps through some of these pages, many of which deal with the disappointment with the post-apartheid leaders and unfulfilled hopes. He speaks of the frustrations of the ordinary South Africans. Dear Citizens is one such poem in which he bemoans the aloofness of political leaders.

Twenty-One Gun Salutes When I Die is a touching poem of sadness, pain and deception.

The Heart’s Interpreter is a 74-page book that is both introspective and reflective in that the writer looks out at the world around him and brings it inside, where he twists it around within the realm of the personal and the emotional.

The poems are concise and punchy. His language is simple and does not clutter the reader’s mind with exaggerated vocabulary, a common feature in many political poems.

If you want to recharge your political batteries, Bofelo’s poems are a must-read.

this review originally appeared in the SOWETAN 23 January 2008

WINDS OF CHANGE

Negotiations were underway to release Nelson Mandela. By the time the negotiations were made public, deals had already been signed: what those deals REALLY were, were never made known to the South African public. The negotiations had begun as early as 1986. The first intimation that the possibility of change was probable came in 1988 when a Government delegation was sent to Dakar to meet the ANC. South Africa was blessed with a black leader without any sense of personal retribution. The Nationalist Party could no longer sustain the onslaught and had miraculously come to their senses. By 1990, from the impending blood bath, the country was headed for a multi-party democracy. Who could forget the day Nelson Mandela and Winnie Mandela walked in slow motion, hand in hand, into the New Country? Throngs of people in bewonderment? In one moment South Africa had a Hectic History, in the next, the birth of a New Nation. Yet the ongoing tensions between the ANC and the IFP did not auger well. Forces - the ‘third force’ - fermented violence. Murder sought murder, retaliation sought retaliation. An IRA mentality threatened. Buthelezi, leader of the IFP, was in the pocket of the Nationalist Party and had probably been hoping for some bigger slice once negotiations had been concluded. To Ampleby it seemed that he fermented violence, rather than trying to stem it. Every presumably sane word he uttered during those tense times of 1990 to 1994 were clouded in threat. Threat with a smile on its face. Violence was the negotiating tool. The right wing buffer. The Broederbond, that secret Afrikaner club, that ever watchful Afrikaner eyeball, had to disband. As if they actually did, could, or would. The unenlightened Afrikaner once more sought to ‘trek’, this time to Oranje. “If there is one thing that the 20th century has taught us,” said Ampleby one day to Canopy, “surely it is that prejudice/racism has no place in the modern world. That animal should be allowed to sink into extinction.” “Liberals” were being trashed in the press as having ‘sat on the fence’ - the implication being that it was far better to have been a racist! The Talking Heads track “Road to Nowhere” could now be heard frequently on SAFM. Yet the first real shock in the New South Africa came with the divorce of Nelson and Winnie. The first sign that something was awry. The press, the public, had to have a black scapegoat. Nelson had no choice. The fact that everybody was emerging from circumstantial insanity held no sway. A circumstantial insanity of which wars were all too familiar. But the changes that were to take place in the country had quite an unexpected outcome amongst whites: it created a conservative stasis - the country could change, but everything else had to stay the same! Change came at people faster than they could handle it. Held in abeyance for so long, it now flooded in. This lead to them clinging to whatever it was that they felt need not change: music and fashion was a prime reference point that could still that sense of intrusion. A surge for everything retro, anything to slow down the progressive wave predominated. Yet what was very curious, was that the ‘winds of change’ appeared to be a world wide phenomenon, not isolated to South Africa alone. The Impassable Berlin Wall came crashing down: Communism in tatters. The London Tories were swept out of office. The Democrats replaced the Republicans. Croatia, the Middle East…….
Stella Court was sold to make way for an Allenby Campus. It became impossible to find cheap accommodation. Black or Coloured people suddenly saw him as a threat:
“You’re white,” they said, “you can afford to pay higher rents. You earn higher salaries than we do. Don’t steal our cheap flats from us. Go and live where
you belong - with the Whites!”
He could hardly believe he was hearing this! Change obviously meant different things to different people. The cheapest flat he could find was a bachelor flat for R400 per month at a block in 6th Avenue, Morningside. It was all White.
But there was no other option. And that was how it came to pass that for the next few years, in the New South Africa, Ampleby lived exclusively amongst whites!
Yet he continued to pursue his performance images, performing excerpts from the “Parade’ section of BLOOD plus “I’m looking for my Country” to startled clubbers. Students who had video’d his performance went round interviewing people at Ampleby’s request:
“Hadn’t he taken the image of the Red Bull a bit too far?”
“We’re bored with this by now! He’s suffering from apathy!”
“Does he expect us to be embarrassed because we’re white?”
“Why doesn’t he do something new?”
These statements, coming in particular from two obvious-looking alternative youths, stunned him to such an extent that he wondered whether they were not working for the Security Branch! It made no sense.

for every thought i think of
and
about you
a find a million questions surfacing,
each fighting their way to the top
none ever winning out over the other.
overwhelming,
this thirst for limitless time
for purity
for truth
for sharing with you.
i feel transfixed in a state of
contradictory desires
as i search for the truth of what i know.
i want to ask you a million
agendaless questions
and i want to hold you for very
long periods of time.
i’d love a map of your head so that i could
trace my way to you,
your-actual-self
and once i’d found you
i would never let you go.
i skip ahead.
i fall behind.
but all i really want is
now
with
you.

119

Steyn has a visitor, a stocky man of about thirty in the cheap smart clothes of a door-to-door preacher. He leans over the bed and reads from the Bible with an affected American accent, ersatz Billy Graham, grotesquely comical in the way he slurs his words and grimaces angellically. Norman Steyn stares up in blank wonderment, lost in senility.

120

Fisher to Mulligan: ‘Have you had enough, Sir? Have you finished? Yes?

A guts-full? You eat like a bloody horse.’

121

His wife has tipped me five rand in appreciation. Protection money? She wants his ring as he is losing weight fast and she fears it might fall off. That’s about all she will have. She is worried that on going back to Valkenberg he might be relieved of it. You never know.

122

Mulligan can’t remember that the batteries in his radio are run down. Each time his eye falls upon it where it stands on the locker, he reaches out, takes it, and turns it on. He twiddles knobs for a long time until convinced that it doesn’t work. Five minutes later he will repeat the performance.

123

Douglas is fifty-five and looks at least sixty-five. Another weak and stupid man. Having had TB he now has bronchial problems yet continues to smoke heavily. He is indignant that he should be advised to give it up. An ex-alc too, by the sound of it. His story is a garbled mess of lies and boasts too tedious to concentrate on. With an aggressive, nagging insistence he airs the ideas and opinions of a feeble bigot.

124

Martin Singer is back and I am jolted from my stupor. Ten minutes of talking to him and I see how starved I am of educated, cultivated, modern company. My isolation is virtually complete. All that I have is what I can glean from books and magazines. It puts me ten years behind the time.

125

Claude Mulligan is fast losing his ability to coordinate mind and body. Now he is unable to walk and his speech is so slurred as to be almost unintelligible. He does not know the day, month or year and often is unaware of the time, being as much as twelve hours disorientated. He forgets that he has just had lunch and says he is hungry for breakfast. His hands and head shake and his vision is impaired, as are all his judgements. When he tries to pick up an object he reaches to the side of it and has to grope. It helps if he shuts one eye.

This time he says he spent twenty years in the Post Office as a clerk.

‘Why did you leave?’

‘That’s a personal story.’

This is no dignified resistance to an attack on his privacy. This is because he can’t think fast enough. Last time he was an accountant. Then he was married with two lovely children; now he’s a bachelor. Confabulation, they call it.

‘Mr Mulligan.’

‘Yes?’

‘Have you ever been in Valkenberg?’ knowing that he has spent the past three years in that institution.

‘No, of course not. Why, do I look mad? Ha, ha, ha.’

126

Dan Jones enjoys life, working hard, eating, drinking, screwing. Keeping the company of other rough men like himself. Drinking, above all. A welder by trade, he has also been a mercenary in the Congo, a fisherman, and a stuntman. Welding is a hard job and contract work is well-paid if one is prepared to be on the move, living for months on end in godforsaken parts.

There has been little choice. He found himself on a road and has followed it. He must know it will end soon when he is knifed in a bar, or shot to death in the street. Maybe he will land on his head next time he falls out of a building. He has accepted his fate and some would say this makes him a noble creature.

The ‘rays’ emitted in arc welding have sterilised him.

‘I can still get a cockstand and fuck normal, though.’

He gets a kick out of lying naked under a sheet and casually, accidentally, exposing himself to a nurse. Explaining to a pretty young thing about what happened to his leg, lifting the cast, he talks earnestly, all the while watching her embarrassment and excitement at the revelation of his balls. Then he pretends to suddenly notice and decorously adjusts the sheets.

Tales of fighting in Joburg bars - the Broadway in the south, the Bel-Air in Braamfontein. Weekends in jail. His mates: Harry Walker, Mel Lester, Monty Labuschagne, Hennie de Klerk, Okkie Van Heerden.

‘I tell you, those were good days. Those were fuckin’ good days.’

127

It is early Sunday afternoon and very quiet. I am bored. I am apathetic.

Outside, a group of chuls is sitting on the lawn under a palm tree singing hymns and carols, a little drunkenly. Slow and mournful on the heavy afternoon air. Do you have a friend in Jesus?

A zealous official in white coat hurries out and stops them. He is unmoved by the spirit of Christmas. This is a hospital. Take it to the Lord in prayer.

128

How terrible this boredom. The spirit falls supine, the eyes glaze over, lifeless, the voice is flat and despondent. Despair is close at hand in this valley of evil, black bitterness towering all around. Emptiness. Death.

Laugh, you cunt.

129

Outside a southeaster is blowing with steadiness from off the Indian Ocean bringing clean summer air. Christmas weather with few clothes; barefoot, certainly. Blue agapanthus flowers wave under a sky equally blue.

130

Three years ago his leg was smashed. Three years he has spent in hospitals, on crutches, being laid up. Nine operations. This tenth is a transverse graft, an attempt to get the bone to knit.

He is a zoologist delving into cell structure.

An exuberant young man, almost hyperactive in rapid speech and frequent laughter. He is tormented by an upbringing that was suffused with hatred and metaphysical violence, his own failed marriage, experiences in the Rhodesian civil war, financial difficulties, and now a crippled leg.

‘I have learned some patience. And empathy with the sick.’

131

I cannot say I feel transported by a spirit of festive joy.

132

Jacob Niemand is about thirty-five. He loosely describes his occupation as ‘operator.’ He was married for eight years and has been divorced for a year. The marriage produced a daughter, now ‘about seven.’ He had a good job at Witbank but after some three years trouble started. There was interference from the in-laws. The mother and aunts were always calling to cook, bring food, clothes. The father would even come on the weekend to cut the lawn and work in the garden - as if he wasn’t capable of doing it himself. Then he began to drink and that caused more strife. His wife took to the bottle too. He began to chop and change jobs and drink even more heavily. After the divorce he became shiftless, working for short periods and then roaming the country.

‘I would buy a train ticket to Durban, jol around there for a few days and say, Ag, nooit! and buy a ticket for East London. There a short time and, Ag, nooit! a ticket for PE.’

This time he was in Cape Town with a canvas tog bag and the clothes he wore and maybe ninety rand. At nine o’clock in the morning he was still drunk from the night before. As soon as the bottle store opened he bought a shot and went to the Gardens to drink. It was there that he was attacked, beaten up, robbed of bag, money, jacket and shoes.

‘I was earning four hundred rand a weak at Sasol Two. But I just spent it one time. No, just drinking. Thirty, forty rand a night. That’s all there is to do. No, I haven’t had one woman since I was divorced. Just booze.’

He has tried for Welfare relief in order to get back to Johannesburg.

‘But they just tell me I must waai back myself and get work. They can’t help. No, fuck it. I’ll just have to hitch-hike.’

The last time he tried to visit his daughter there were ‘too much hassles, too much grief.’ First they said she wasn’t there, but he knew this to be a lie. He went away and had a few drinks and when he came back they said he was drunk and couldn’t see her like that.

133

Early there were two coon bands playing carols outside, and then later in the morning the Salvation Army came and played.

I had a couple of whiskies with Dan Jones before lunch but I feel sober and cynical instead of joyously peaceful. It seems preposterous that anyone should choose to die like that.

134

An eminently weak and stupid man, he proclaims his cowardice and tells stories to illustrate how badly he behaves when under pressure.

Misadventure at sea: Something went wrong and they were nearly capsized. When they managed to reach the shore he leapt from the boat, ran to his car and drove flat out for home. A neighbour calmed him and made him go back and help his fishing companion to get the boat up out of the surf.

Last night he phoned his wife to tell her the surgeons had decided that another operation was necessary. She was irritable and short with him, telling him not to keep phoning. He felt deeply wounded.

He feigns lameness in his right arm and asks me to give him a shave. Whilst I lather his face he tells me what a bitch his wife is but that he deserves her pitiless contempt. A sister walks into the ward and aggressively demands to know why he can’t shave himself. He forgets about the lameness and attempts to be chummy and hearty and offhand. She detests his oily manner and the way in which he touches her arm, tries to take her hand. In trenchant terms she belittles him and upbraids him and insists that he shave himself and stop wasting the orderly’s time. When she is gone his eyes are filled with tears of humiliation. A victim by vocation.

SUPERMODELS

Athena, modelling for Ampleby proved to be the most phenomenal model. It was as if his garments magnified her essence. At the next 330 fashion show she was a total hit. If ever Durban produced a super model, this was her. Yet she was not interested in approaching a modelling agency or going through any conventional channel. Eventually she would only model for Ampleby. On the ramp she transformed into a super creature that completely galvanised everyone. He had created a red corduroy bustiere dress, short, strapless, a short red corduroy jacket with a peplum style collar, which framed her face. He made long gloves to hide her scar. Her hair: white blond and styled into a forties crimp, short, gelled, waving into her neck at the back. False eyelashes and her 16 hole Doc Martens completed the look. Mathyra had come down from JHB to model for him. For her he had created a short flounced silver skirt, shiny silvergreen bustiere top, and burgundy velvet jacket lined with pink black-spotted fabric. Her Eastern looks, thick crimped long black hair, her Doc Martens, her movement to Tuxedomoon’s version of ‘Venus in Furs’ had the audience spell bound. The ever innovative Genie created a range using feathered masks, headdresses. Spacey (the third designer in this show) had the tall waspish Gaiela, goth-like, wafting in layers of black and purple chiffon.This fashion show, held on the Friday night, was electrifying. Two Tech students video’d the show, went back stage and filmed the models making up. Daida, beautician and make up artist, back for a short spell from London, was on hand to work her make-up magic. The same show held the following night met with stiff upper lips and aloofness. Oddly, Ampleby was accused of having some secret source of inspiration….some exclusive design magazine from overseas….that nobody else had access to…..these garments could never possibly have been inspired by his own imagination. For them, there was no such thing as a designer that created designs, that set the trend - in Durban designers followed fashion, they did not create fashion!
He was a marked man - a persecution.

CRASH

Cheth had a motorbike crash. It happened in the pouring rain along a stretch of road that Ampleby dubbed Durban’s Rain Belt. If there was rain anywhere in Durban, this is where it would be found: from approximately half way along Cowie Road, into Botanic Gardens Road almost as far as Mansfield Road near the Natal Technikon. A tricky bend dipped into a curve as Botanic Gardens Road twisted above Botanic Gardens itself heading towards the Technikon. Cheth lost control, careering into one of the street poles or palm trees. His lower leg was smashed just below the knee, having borne the full brunt of motorbike metal slamming into steel/trunk. For a while his leg was in danger of needing to be amputated. A 6cm gap in his tibia from where crushed bone had to be removed refused to grow. Eventually the doctors performed bone grafts and built a bridge between the broken bones to encourage growth. He spent the next six months in Addington hospital where he proceeded to give the nurses a hard time. A total brat screaming for pain killers. When they found out that he was a druggie, they curtailed and eventually stopped giving him any scheduled drugs. When he was finally discharged with a set of crutches and his leg in pins, he was physically more of a wreck than when he went in. Maya, with whom he had been living for about a two years, stuck with him throughout this ordeal. He recovered with a distinct limp.
Two years later he and Ampleby went on a jol for old times sake. Cheth took him to supper, then they went on a club crawl. Cheth proceeded to get more and more ‘out of it’ and Ampleby could not work out what he was on. In the early hours of the morning, Cheth insisted on coming back to the flat. When they undressed, he saw the scar on Cheth’s leg for the first time since the accident. That exquisite calf was gnarled and mangled. It looked as if a shark had torn a chunk out of him and the wound had been left unattended. Ampleby could see no evidence of stitches, or of any attempt at plastic surgery. Approximately six months later, Cheth and Maya invited Ampleby to supper. What became evident was that Cheth had been behaving extremely non-rationally. He had put jik in his landlords fish tank. When Maya was away he would pass out for hours and appear to be unraisable….the landlord could see his abandoned arm over the edge of the bed, immobile, unresponsive to bangs. Now, it was difficult to make any sense out of what it was he was saying, although he himself was oblivious to his lack of logic. Maya gave Ampleby a pleading look, and from time to time, Maya and Ampleby just looked at each other as Cheth continued in his incoherent reality.

ISOLATION

Ampleby celebrated 10 years as a DJ. He hated any form of nostalgia, or celebration, but 10 years as a pioneer of the alternative movement is not something to be passed by lightly - as Zee had impressed on him. A cake was made that looked like a vinyl record - black liquorice icing! Somebody, probably Zee, passed a shirt around on which everyone signed their name and wrote a short message. At the same party he heard a rumour that he was ‘closing down’. That he was giving up djing. In typical Durban-speak, this meant that there was a new club on the horizon and the organisers were preparing the Durban public for their opening.
Many other alternative clubs had risen in opposition during his dj career. None had taken root. The new club prided itself beforehand as being the club that was going to close PLAY down.
The new club THE RIFT opened with overwhelming determination. A fair section of PLAY ‘faithfuls’ did not go to the opening which came at a time when he was needing a break - two years and not a single Friday had he missed! Three weeks later and it became obvious that PLAY had a struggle on its hands. He approached Kim and Betty and suggested that they overhaul his overheads, as he was now working at a financial loss, and that they should rethink their strategy. That he needed their support in what was going to be quite a tough time, even if only temporary. They showed no interest in his plight. He said that he would take a break for a month and that they should renegotiate if they wanted him back. He did not reject them, or part on bad terms, due to the sometimes strange cycles within the club scene: Faces surely was a case in point. The owners of the Rift (ex Faces ex Play supporters) had wasted no time in cashing in on the burgeoning grunge wave that fitted into Durban like a glove. This was an exact reflection of how Durban dressed surfer-style, so very little change or adjustment was needed. They could go exactly as they were. They could continue without any further threat to their closet being opened. Nirvana with their hit single “Smells like teen spirit” epitomised this new shift towards the over ground. The radical face of commerciality. It was a track Ampleby never played. “No wonder Cobain committed suicide,” thought Ampleby “it was all going horribly wrong…” And then of course the grunge bands came in thick and fast, all trying to sound like each other. This was the backlash. Yet the dj’s did not know HOW to look for music, what QUALITIES to uphold, what it all MEANT. So they just played follow the leader. And the leader was none other than an 5FM radio dj who had been playing alternative music on the airwaves, who up till then had never seen the inside of a club, who had no idea of what ‘dance’ actually meant, and was simply playing a handed down playlist anyway. Playing music of the ‘rebellious establishment’. A contradiction in terms. And those tapes that Ampleby had made during his dj sessions for all and sundry, certainly came in very handy! But Kim and Betty never got back to Ampleby. He drove past the club one Friday night on his way to the Vic Bar, to see parked cars and waves of alternative sounds drifting into the night air. What had they done? Had they hauled in another DJ? Gyreth? Gyreth getting in on the act while he could? So, that was it. He was out. He was replaceable.

*

In defense of the Outsider: he has not chosen his status.
he has been placed there to provide insiders with a context.
He is the goalpost shifted.
He is the envelope pushed.

*

Aging depends on the speed you travel.
Live fast stay young.

*

The moment just before the moment just before.
I love that moment.

*

It is in the act of hearing that the story gets told.

*

Seven young brothers and one sista shot over the last
four hrs. in my school’s “collection area”—you shd.
have heard [on my police radio]the ambulances being
diverted from one hospital to another (lack of
critical care personnel) as vital signs were failing
in the backs of the trucks: we have three Major League
(Bloods, Crips, and resident power Latin Kings) and a
mess of Minor League Mexican gangs (Asma[!], etc.)
caught-up in a Baghdad scene. (Each of the projects is
like a nation-home to each gang: Douglass = Kings;
Grant = Bloods; Manhattanville = Crips.) The whole
city, my brother, is sliding-back to the one you knew,
with its 2k+ homicides per annum.
One of my ex-students was Captain ‘on point’ on the corner of
108th & Manhattan Ave. last month as one of his
minions rushed toward me (at his nod) and tried to
‘make the sale’ (heroin): I glared at him so hard I
thought his skull wd. melt. At fifteen yrs.-old now, I
look like a chump to him—all those girls thinking
he’s fabulous in his five-hundred dollar jacket,
perfect rowed hair, flat-brim price-tagged cap, 365
pairs of mostly white kicks, sucking his dick—but if
he doesn’t die a “soldier” out in the cold, hollow
tips ripping his major organs and bones, to small
floating pieces, tatooed muscle freaks will row in a
row on his ass on Rikers Island. (Three-hr. surgery’ll
be required to stitch-up the hole.)

Remember when we used to say “you can’t save people”?

* * * * *

IN OTHER NEWS

Say unto them that live so low, the North Sea a
threatening sky of potential death, where smack flows
& pinay whores knit in windows… say unto them, one
who has the broad excited ears of an elephant, the
grey skin of Kenya-Kansas coupling, the leisured
cadence of one who studied the people of the tightest
hair, though he was not raised amongst them, is come,
to be Big Chief of America, to withdraw Marines from
maiming in Mesopotamia, to spit in the eye of white
supremacy & segregation, to erase misbegotten “W.” (A
three-hr. surgery req’d. to repeal what he’s done to
the nation’s ass!)

Let’s just hope nobody fucking shoots him.

the psychotic bushman

Après une existence très animée pendant nos huit premières années (entre 1999 et 2007) notre groupe, formé par les anciens membres de Queer Factory, renouvelle ses activités culturelles et artistiques en 2008 avec un nouveau nom, une nouvelle énergie et un nouveau souffle. D’autres vidéastes, comme le rédacteur de ce texte, se sont joints aux anciens du groupe. Par rapport aux anciens, ce sont les mêmes qui ont présenté leur travail lors des manifestations culturelles et des festivals spécialisés dans le passé. Ce renouvellement est en rapport d’abord avec le besoin de modifier le nom de notre collectif. Des raisons étymologiques nous ont obligés et aussi d’autres raisons supplémentaires liées à la nouvelle problématique du mouvement queer, une problématique différente de celle du passé.

Le mouvement queer était très intellectuel à son départ, tel qu’il a été défini par Judith Butler ou Monique Wittig. La publication en français des textes théoriques de Marie-Hélène Bourcier au début de ce nouveau siècle, a ajouté une touche moderne revivifiante aux premières théories des années 70, une touche sociologique poétique. Mais la déformation de cette culture extraordinaire par les mauvaises séries télévisuelles (par exemple «Queer As Folk »), en contraste énorme avec les anciennes valeurs progressistes, a complètement renversé et détruit les acquis du passé. Ces sous-produits télévisuels ont littéralement «imposé » une très mauvaise image des homosexuels aux yeux du grand public, nous sommes devenus des caricatures «faciles », baignées dans la culture du fric et de la consommation. En nous basant sur une attitude et une mentalité de différence et de distanciation, nous voulons briser cette mauvaise image du «pédé nouveau riche » afin d’assurer une suite aux principes esthétiques du mouvement queer, une suite digne de ses prédécesseurs. Ce sera une suite poétique qui n’aura pas de noms à revendiquer mais de programmes artistiques communs, en rupture totale avec l’embourgeoisement social et culturel des homosexuels d’aujourd’hui. Sans tracer une ligne officielle de créativité sur nos concepts esthétiques nous voulons nommer cette initiative «le renouvellement » de notre groupe d’art vidéo ou plutôt «la nouvelle QF » (voir plus bas). Nous sommes tous des plasticiens – vidéastes, éloignés des normes industrielles de la télé grâce à notre volonté commune d’enrichir la culture queer française avec une touche de subversion et transgression radicale.

Notre nouveau nom n’a pas été défini lors de notre dernière assemblée. Il y avait plusieurs propositions intéressantes comme «queer freaks » (qui a les mêmes initiales que la queer factory), puisque nous sommes tous des «monstres » exclus de l’industrie du spectacle, ou «queer core », puisque nous sommes (ou nous voulons l’être) des vidéastes subversifs et radicaux. Mais finalement ce nouveau nom reste à définir et ceci serait une preuve que nous sommes des partisans d’une véritable expérimentation artistique. Cette expérimentation serait éloignée des théories universitaires du temps révolu, ce serait une expérimentation spontanée guidée par nos instincts profonds, pas par un «dogme » ou une «discipline » préexistante. Nous n’avons pas de filiations directes avec le cinéma «expérimental » et ses doctrines universitaires mais plutôt avec le cinéma alternatif tel qu’il a été formulé par les cinéastes actionnistes autrichiens dans les années 60 (Bruno Muel, Gunter Brus et Kurt Kren), par les cinéastes américains de transgression dans les années 80 (Nick Zedd et Richard Kern) ou les cinéastes nord-américains post-porn des années 90 (Maria Beatty et Bruce LaBruce).

Sur ce nouveau nom tant sollicité, moi personnellement je mettrai «la nouvelle QF ». Ainsi nous gardons une trace très en rapport avec notre passé (la Queer Factory) grâce aux initiales et aussi avec notre hommage indirect à la Factory warholienne qui restera pour toujours l’avant garde cinématographique la plus importante du siècle dernier. Comme Warhol avait dans les années 60 le surnom «le pape du cinéma gay» (un surnom ironique créé par de critiques conservateurs), nous avons voulu honorer sa «marginalité cinématographique» afin de montrer que nous avons maintenant introduit une nouvelle marginalité positive auprès des homosexuels et que nous avons aussi des ambitions à satisfaire afin de surpasser cette dernière. Nous voulons une nouvelle petite «industrie » (factory) contemporaine mais nous savons très bien que notre public ne sera pas composé d’homosexuels accros à la télé poubelle (du syndrome «Queer as Folk ») mais de gens queers cultivés et affranchis de toute fascination populiste, au sens artistique du terme. Nous jouons avec les ambiguïtés et les équivoques de la vie artistique ou politique d’aujourd’hui puisque ces deux vies sont à réinventer. Dans le film «Flag » (Drapeau) d’Hervé -Joseph Lebrun il y a tout le brio d’un artiste accompli qui sait très bien jouer avec les impressions plurielles et les jeux de signification (un principe purement dadaïste des années 20). On y voit au début le défilé parisien de la gay pride. Parmi les manifestants il y a le panneau des policiers français issus de l’association éponyme qui manifestent à ce défilé. Ils se mélangent aux autres groupes. Le but serait de tromper les spectateurs exigeants et de leur offrir une énigme. Ces policiers homosexuels ne sont pas du tout notre idéal puisque nous sommes contre tout ordre dans le domaine de l’art. Les spectateurs qui aiment les métaphores du contenu seront régalés par cette volonté d’aller au-delà des significations faciles, par cette volonté indirecte (donc poétique) mais évidente de déstabiliser l’ordre (dans ce film par le biais de la photo floue - artistique) avant de le renverser.

En dépassant l’esprit communautaire nous voulons assurer des nouvelles éditions DVD, comme avant, ou même créer notre propre chaîne télévisuelle électronique à nous. Ce serait un signe d’ouverture à des spectateurs exigeants tant déçus par la suppression des émissions correspondantes sur l’unique chaîne payante gay du PAF (paysage audiovisuel français). Ce serait l’inauguration d’une chaîne sans patrons radins animée par la volonté de montrer l’art vidéo essentiel. L’art vidéo est par définition une discipline de l’art contemporain mais pour nous il serait aussi une discipline qui ne serait pas réservée au public des galeries. Nous voulons lui offrir une deuxième jeunesse et une ouverture aux exclus de cet art contemporain institutionnalisé.

Avant de terminer, nous allons citer ces phrases éternelles de Nick Zedd issues du «manifeste du cinéma de transgression » et écrites pour la première fois en 1985:
« Nous vous proposons d’aller au-delà des limites du goût, de la morale et de toutes les autres valeurs traditionnelles qui mettent des obstacles aux esprits humains….Il y aura du sang, de la honte, du mal physique et de l’extase dont les mérites n’ont pas été encore imaginées….Cette action courageuse est une transgression. Nous vous proposons de pratiquer la transformation par le biais de la transgression » reprises dans «Deathtripping. The cinema of transgression » de Jack Sargeant, éditions Creation Books, Londres, 1995, p.77, traduites par nous.

Comme cet ouvrage ci-dessus a été réédité pour une troisième fois l’année dernière (en 2007) contenant le même manifeste, nous, vidéastes QF, avons aussi une ambition de longue durée afin de garantir le renouvellement filmique avec une thématique et esthétique queers plus contemporaines mais toujours en rapport avec la volonté commune de transgresser les normes cinématographiques afin d’avancer vers la nouveauté.

Pour la QF, Dionysos ANDRONIS

Janvier 2008