kagablog

Author: Siyolwe, Wabei

Interview WS: Southern Africa has a unique media history - race, class, cinema, broadcasting and censorship. Your research and writing explores these issues in the context of South and Southern Africa. Why do you address these issues? Why does this mean so much to you?

Tomaselli: I started my university education at the University of Witwatersrand (Wits) in 1968 wanting to be a meteorologist, then a psychologist, then an urban geographer. However, while at Wits (1968-1973) I became interested in making movies. I had made a number of short Super-8 films for modern idiom church services at St Columba’s in Johannesburg in the late 1960s. This was a most progressive Church, in which the youth were involved in church government, and encouraged to create annual multimedia worship services. The services were very successful in drawing in youth who normally avoided religion. This was my first taste of a truely democratic institution.

My second film was on the last legal student protest march during apartheid in Johannesburg in 1970. The film was shown on campus and at churches. It was regularly updated over the next four years, as protest and anti-apartheid student struggle intensified at Wits. As South Africa did not have TV in those days, the films I made on these protests were shown in edited, and immediately in unedited form, at campus film screenings and other events. The continually lengthening documentary and the unedited shorts performed the function of TV news for students who were also often the participants in the protests. The composite edited film was sold to a number of local and international anti-apartheid organisations. I then made other short films for a variety of University and anti-apartheid organisations. I learned TV production while working as a cameraman and floor manager in the newly built educational TV studio on the campus between 1972 and 1973.

The title which gained the attention of the South Africa film industry, however, was a 30 minute Super-8 film I had made with friends and colleagues on surfing in 1972. Suddenly I was being offered top jobs in the professional industry. Compared to these professionals I was still very much an amateur. When I finished my studies I joined a company and made sports documentaries, vox pops for advertising companies, and product promotional films between 1974 and 1977. As the protests on the Wits campus continued I found time to cover these events. This eventually led to my brief detention by the Security Police. I was fortunate, however, in working with some of the industry’s top technicians as a production manager, cameraman and director during the late ’70s.

Though I learned a great amount, and had a great time while working in the industry, making a living was very hard in those pre-TV days. When TV was introduced in 1976 I bought into a film sound studio. But the pressures of paying the monthly lease on the studio killed the enjoyment of production. I sold my shares and was offered a post in the newly established School of Dramatic Art at the University of Witwatersrand in 1977. I was employed to teach film and TV production. Though I knew the technical side of filmmaking, I knew next to nothing about film history, theory and criticism. What I had learned was from Ross Devenish, director of some of Athol Fugard’s films, with whom I taught a film course in 1977. I had previously attended a short course on cinema at Wits with John van Zyl, who later set up the School of Dramatic Art at Wits. It was Ross who had introduced me to Third Cinema and its accompanying theory, which I am still teaching to this day. While at Wits (1997-1981) I registered for an MA in film studies and it was there that I obtained a more comprehensive knowledge about cinema theory and history.

One of my MA projects involved research on the South African film industry. This early essay, drawing on my professional experience, was published as The South African Film Industry (African Studies Institute, Wits, 1979). Though the book was a very cheap production, and theoretically very thin, it sold fast and furiously, and garnered intelligent and enormous press, radio and TV publicity. It was reprinted in 1980 and again in a revised edition in 1981. A few years later I met Dan Georgakas, an editor Cineaste, the US magazine on film and politics. Geogakas offered to publish The Cinema of Apartheid: Race and Class in South African Film (Smyrna: New York, and Lake View Press: Chicago) appeared in 1988. This title was an immediate critical success internationally and I was greatly honoured to have been the recipient of a KWANZAA Award. The international rights were sold to Routledge, though this edition is now out of print. Intervention Press in Denmark has the European rights.

The Cinema of Apartheid was surprisingly well received by sections of the South African film industry, though it is highly critical of it. (The book had obtained endorsement from veteran anti-apartheid activists, novelist Nadine Gordimer and the exiled poet, Denis Brutus.) The reason for this surprisingly positive response from an otherwise ideologically conservative industry was partly because the book explains the way the industry worked under apartheid, in language which could be understood by professionals. To some extent, aspects of the book also voiced their own concerns. My direct experience of the industry, and of labour issues via my work for the SA Film and TV Technicians Association, told them that this was not ivory tower writing, but a description and explanation o f actual conditions and processes in which they were themselves participants. People could recognize themselves in my analysis.

A journal which I started in 1980, Critical Arts , contributed to the systematic development of critical media and drama studies in South Africa. Critical Arts then provided the only domestic outlet for sustained theoretical critique of the South African media. As a result of the international prominence that this journal earned in a short period, I found myself at the helm of a publication - and a host of progressive co-editors and authors - which mapped out the critical history and strategies for anti-apartheid mobilization within the academic media and cultural sectors. Earlier, I had been involved in the technicians’ union as an executive council member and then chairman. So, my contribution to the industry was both academic and professional, incorporating labour and anti-apartheid issues.

I have continued to publish extensively on the South African film and TV industries in books and journals. I wrote the historical section in the “Film” chapter in the Arts and Culture Task Group Report and was a co-writer (with Martin Botha, and a number of professional advisors) of the Film White Paper which was published in 1996. The White Paper aimed to restructure the South African film industry to meet the needs of the new democratic order. (A version of this White Paper has also been presented to the Zimbabwean government by that country’s industry). The work I was invited to do on the White Paper was a rare honour: not many academics have the privilege of putting their theories into practice via democratic policy-making at the level of the state itself. Seeing one’s life’s work take an affirmative and democratic direction is a once in a life-time experience. It gives meaning to life, to struggle, and to the (regrettably declining) notion of “public service”.

One of the proudest moments for me after apartheid was when Lionel Ngakane was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Natal in 1997. I had personally motivated Lionel’s nomination for this award. Lionel is a powerhouse in African cinema, constantly facilitating, always encouraging, developing and exploring new avenues for African cinema. Most people nowadays are devoted to building their own careers and PR images; Lionel continues to contribute to the development of others, and the industry as a whole. He, of course, played a major role in formulation of the White Paper

WS: Broadcasting is currently going through a major revolution in Southern Africa in terms of who “rules the airwaves”. What are your feelings regarding the recent successful bid by Midi TV (of which Warner Bros owns 20%) to operate South Africa’s first free- to-air commercial television station?

Tomaselli: Seven consortia (most with international partners) bid for the license. All the bidders had involved black empowerment interests. Midi’s shareholding is 80% black-owned. Midi TV will broadcast 24 hours a day, and include a news service, which is not part of the line-up of M-Net, the pay-TV channel. Significantly, M-Net in late 1996 came under primarily black control and owns about 4% of Canal Plus in France. The growth of black-dominated South African capital in the South African media industries has been phenomenal. The entre` by Midi TV continues this black empowerment trend, which started in 1993, though it would have occurred with any of the bidding consortia.

The inclusion of Warner Bros, part of the Time-Warner stable, has raised eyebrows in South Africa. This was because this US company came on board very late in the bidding process. Also, Midi was permitted by the Independent Broadcasting Authority, against bidding regulations, to modify its business plan at a very late stage . (The Authority has been dogged with allegations of corruption and incompetence since it was established in 1994.)

Warner offered to buy the maximum (20%) of the proposed Midi company permitted by South African law. While the other bidders had long included foreign partners, a veritable rogue’s gallery of media moguls, the current era of globalisation makes this international cooperation inevitable. To secure programming is one thing; to secure global markets for locally made product is much more difficult. A foreign partner is useful for raising the necessary capital injection and meeting start-up costs, and for top class management expertise, affordable programming, and export opportunities.

One consequence is that trivial American product might may find another outlet to clutter up yet another South African channel (five South African channels existed prior to Midi going on air, three of which were free-to-air). Fortunately, the purile playground smut that passes for day-time entertainment in USA network TV is currently not that evident on any South African TV channel. And, in any case, local content provisions reserve at least a minimum of 20% airtime for South African productions (excluding news and sport). But the themes may not be necessarily South African in orientation. The local content provisions have to be enforced by the IBA. Whether or not Midi gets on-air in October 1998 as intended depends on whether the other bidders take the IBA to court for allegedly breaching the tendering procedures with regard to the Midi application.

The national public broadcaster in particular is going to have to develop programming strategies to ensure that relevant social issues remain the pre-eminent topics for social debate. The SABC will have to work hard and creatively to retain viewers in its attempts open up and develop the public sphere. The quality of our hard-earned democracy partly depends on the audience impact of the public service broadcaster. Private commercial broadcasters always pander to the lowest common denominators, no matter their protestations to the contrary. Regrettably, profit always comes before the polity.

WS: Considering the ideological changes in South Africa, where is the pre-election socialist rhetoric in film?

Tomaselli : Socialism is no longer on the agenda in South African politics. The world into which South Africa re-emerged in 1990 after decades of sanctions and boycotts had also witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Bloc. The demise of apartheid was connected to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Armed struggle was replaced by negotiation. In a post-Cold War world in which capital now reigns supreme, and which has seen the rise of global entertainment and information industries, there is currently very little space for socialist mobilisation. A Luta continua, but the terrain of this struggle is now to limit corruption, to make politicians accountable to the people, and to create growth policies which benefit everyone, not just the few who wield political and economic power.

In writing up the White Paper on Film the Reference Committee appointed by the Minister, for example, grappled with clauses and criteria to discourage corruption, nepotism and selfish accumulation. We proposed a series of funding measures to facilitate the entrance into the industry of new producers, new directors, new exhibitors and new distributors. One of the objectives is to facilitate new entrants into all sectors of the industry, and to provide seed funding and venture capital (in partn ership with industry) in stimulating new and critical themes. Audience development is a key factor in this strategy. Econonmic growth, jobs and sectoral development are also key objectives. But it is early days yet, and the mechanism to facilitate this, t he South African film and Video Foundation, has yet to be established.

The themes which are currently emerging from both the film and TV industries are far more positively intercultural than previously. They are far more nuanced, and far more broadly South African than they have ever been. The SABC, in particular, has seized the initiative. Amongst the TV genres which work towards reconciliation and development are:

1. documentaries representing the history of popular struggle;
2. situation comedies courageously negotiating intercultural and interracial prejudices (Going Up, Suburban Bliss);
3. dramas offering health education via entertainment (Soul City);
4. game shows teaching about electoral politics (eg. Local Voter);
5. dramas made in part-documentary style on human rights (Rhythm and Rights);
6. visionary documentaries providing African perspectives on conflict resolution (In Search of Common Ground );
7. drama series which re-examine inter-racial relations during apartheid (Homeland);
8. docudramas on key anti-apartheid figures (like Alan Paton); and
9. magazine programmes which represent the full spectrum of South African politics from the far left to the far right.

In cinema, the Afrikaans-language film, Paljas (1997), about small town Afrikaners, was financed by Anant Singh, a South African producer of Indian descent, and directed by a white Afrikaner, Katinka Heyns. Paljas was nominated for an Academy Award in 1998 by a multi-racial South African committee, under the auspices of the Independent Producers Organisation chaired by Mfundi Vundla. This is where the real change has occurred. Intercultural communication, resolving the divisions caused by apartheid, reconciliation, and a critical interrogation of social prejudices and racism are high on the agenda. Socialist themes might well return, however, if the current centralisation of wealth accumulation continues at the expense of a broader redistribution.

WS: What about black consciousness?

Black Consciousness (BC) as humanistically articulated by Steve Biko continues in a racially exclusive form within the Azanian Peoples Organisation (AZAPO). AZAPO claimed the mantle of Biko’s Black peoples Convention after his death. The strategic value of BC was initially revealed in Richard Attenborough’s Cry Freedom, shot in Zimbabwe in the late 1980s, and in the Zimbabwean-made documentary, Biko: Breaking the Silence (made by Olley Maruma, Richard Wickstead and Mark Kaplan). The latter film explained the shift after Soweto ‘76 from BC to Charterism, a mildly socialist, non-racial, philosophy drawn from the Freedom Charter (1955).

AZAPO is a small, intellectually-based group, whose emphases have been largely supplanted by the racial inclusivism of Charterism as propounded by the United Democratic Front of the 1980s, and Nelson Mandela’s policy of non-racialism in the 1990s. Central to this notion of the “rainbow nation”, as described by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, is the political strategy of reconciliation. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is the central mechanism facilitating absolution for political crimes carried out in the name of ideology, no matter the identity of perpetrator or victims.

Since the post-apartheid moment is dominated by the policies of reconciliation, absolution and the building of a single non-racial nation, issues incubated within BC circles have not yet made their appearance in post-apartheid cinema and broadcast TV. Now that the black majority wields political power, and in the light of the speed with which black capital is being integrated into the national (and international) economies, BC may have to reorientate itself to address the new class dynamics which have come about since 1990.

WS: Where do concepts regarding orality in African cinema fit into your writing on film and video?

One of the advantages of the post-boycott era is that South Africans now regularly get to see African-made movies. The Film Resource Unit in Johannesburg, which is engaged in audience development projects, and the All Africa M-Net Film Awards, now bring these films south. The national public broadcaster has been showing African films weekly, and M-Net has been screening these films as well. For the first time South Africans are now privy to the cinema of their African colleagues to the north.

My writing on orality and South African film started in the late 1980s. Documentary films such as The Two Rivers and a number on popular storytellers like Mzwakhe Mbuli and Gcina Mhlope, required different analytical perspectives from those found in conventional documentary film theory. The Two Rivers, for example, is structured in terms of poet Rashaka Ratshitanga’s oral testimony about Venda history and the interpenetration of African and Western cultures in Johannesburg. The films on the storytellers are themselves sometimes structured in terms of the oral. A video on which I worked as a cameraman, I am Clifford Abrahams, This is Grahamstown (1994), is edited in terms of Cliffie’s own oral tale about his poverty-stricken life in Grahamstown. Another video I shot, Kat River - The End of Hope (1974), has become a cause celebre with regard to a spontaneous Lament uttered by an elderly coloured peasant farmer about to be dispossessed by land consolidation under apartheid. This Lament, by an illiterate, has been compared in structure by a scholar of orality to laments uttered by anguished European peasants of the 13th century also undergoing extreme hardships. It was this scholar of orality who actually unlocked the latent linguistic significance of the Lament.

Your question, of course, primarily refers to my more recent co-authored writing relating also to cinema made by West African directors. Africa is still comprised of people who exhibit varying cultures of orality, semi-literacy, and total literacy. As such, African directors often find themselves interfacing between oral and literate worlds. Tensions between tradition and modernity in the post-colonial era dominate West African films in particular. Literacy ensures continued economic and often cultural dependency on the Western metropoles (as in, eg., Jean-Marie Teno’s Afrique, Je Te Le Plumerai). To understand these kinds of films in terms of their own historical contexts, it is necessary to introduce theories of orality to film analysis. Orality helps to explain their episodic, often disjointed, lateral narratives, which break with Hollywood linear conventions of beginning, middles and ends. The film, Keita , for example, has no beginning, middle or end! The extraordinary experiences I had on videoing Cliffie and Piet Draghoender (in Kat River) sensitised me to these different ways of making sense of the world, history and experience.

WS: You mentioned Cry Freedom. I played Thenjiwe Mtintso in that film. Back to Black Consciousness and visual representations in Post-Apartheid Southern Africa. Do you think, the current positive production climate in Southern Africa will finally produce images and “collective memory” of Southern African blacks, that is authentic and original or do you think Southern Africa is currently going through a post- neo colonial scramble. Cheap locations, perfect light 365 days a year, cheap starving natives who will work for anything, wild exotic animals, natives who are still too savage to actually be the true protagonists and heroes of the films. Tell us Keyan is the industry in Southern Africa concerned about these issues?

Tomaselli: Film makers from both South Africa and elsewhere did cash in on the struggle against apartheid during the 1980s. White, vicious, Afrikaans-speaking characters were cast as the `bad guys’ in a number of US titles. Unlike the USA which has been pursuing its exorcism regarding Vietnam via its film industry, South Africans want to move on: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is the vehicle which is providing a forum for absolution for the horrors of the past. Film makers are going back to roots, and developing themes on reconciliation, local histories, and identity, as seen in Paljas , Sarafina , Cry the Beloved Country, and the TV shows I mentioned above.

Since the new film legislation is still in its infancy, things will take a while to develop. Original treatments about local issues and histories have been a feature of short videos made by students from the Newtown Film and TV School, broadcast on SABC, and the young directors who have contributed to the M-Net New Directions series. These young directors still have to make their mark, and will do so increasingly in the next few years.

But the factors you mention - cheap labour, sunny skies, wildlife and top class production facilities, will continue to attract foreign films like the Ghost in the Darkness and the new TV series on Tarzan shot last year at the Lost City location at the infamous Sun City complex. Here are South Africans in a paper mache` environments built on myths about Africa claiming that these productions represent the `real’ Africa. What the Film White Paper Reference Group is hoping for is that the income earned from these kinds of commercial productions will help to contribute to the building of a more relevant cinema relating directly and critically to South African themes. This is a key provision in the proposed film financing mechanism. It’s a sort of ying-yang financial relationship in an era when governments want to get out of subsidising business operations.

WS: There seems to be this sense that “new” South Africans” are cashing in and openly dealing with those who were once the enemy. Does this contradiction play itself out in the media arena in South Africa ?

The whole point of the ANC policy regarding nation-building, reconciliation and economic growth is that there are no more enemies - only constituencies. As I pointed out above, despite numerous teething problems, our new economy, unlike Zimbabwe’s is rapidly becoming multi-racial as black and white dominated capitals interpenetrate on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange especially . Black empowerment schemes via the Stock Exchange, and via other mechanisms have brought black-owned capital (mobilised via the union pension funds) into the national economy, and via this stake, into the global economy, especially with regard to media. So, M-Net, Midi-TV, Times Media, the Sowetan, the Metro Cinemas, and numerous radio stations, and so on are now largely controlled by black-owned capital. However, this does not mean that these companies will automatically make space for African content. While local content provision on television ranges from 20-40 percent, there are no such provisions in cinema distribution. The SABC and, to a lesser extent, M-Net, are really playing the most important role vis-a-vis local content. They are also bringing films from the rest of Africa to our TV screens, and to the cinema and the home video market via the Film Reseource Unit.

WS: What is the most memorable thing you take back with you from Sabbatical in the US?

One of my tasks here at Michigan State University has been my work, ongoing since 1990, with the African Media Program, a division of the African Studies Center. The Program is developing synopses and critiques of film, TV and video by African film makers. We are also developing critiques on other media on and about Africa, by non-African directors. The intention is to place this educational data base on the World Wide Web. In this small way we hope to provide instantly accessible and accurate information to American educators looking for appropriate movies for use in classroom teaching. In 1997 at the African Literature Association conference on African Films, scores of papers were given by American professors on the topic. This growing interest in African expression provides the kind of base line which the African Media Program hopes to enhance. Also, innovative policy is now being put into place by President Clinton following his discussions with African leaders during his recent tour to that continent. This suggests a much more sophisticated understanding of the foreign policy issues involved. We may well be moving to a new plane of American foreign relations with Africa. It’s just a pity that the US network media continues to trivilise and senationalise everything on which it reports.

WS: What are your immediate or future plans in South Africa? Planning on making any films or any new publications ? What is the role you are keen on playing?

Tomaselli: We are still reconstructing all aspects of our society. Universities in particular are having a difficult time of it, as funds are cut, and academics who are unused to the need for regular restructuring as has occurred elsewhere, have to become more entrepreneurial and adapt to constantly changing circumstances. The Centre in which I am professor, however, has continuously adapted to this financially austere climate. Our MA in Media Studies has been a great success, with our students coming from all over Sub-Saharan Africa, North America and the USA. This year we introduced for the first time two undergraduate certificate courses in media studies, and we are now planning a whole undergraduate degree programme. So, while other disciplines contract, we are actually growing to meet the demands of the new media developments described above.

Also, most of our lecturers and even some senior students have been directly involved in government policy-making regarding media. Others have worked with African development agencies across the continent. One of the projects with which I am engaged is the Training in Developing Countries Board (TDC). TDC is a sub-committee of CILECT, the International Association of Film and TV Schools, based in Brussels. The TDC was responsible for the establishment of the Zimbabwe-UNESCO Film Training Project. My hope is that this Project could become the locus for a SADC Film, TV, video and multimedia training project, in which all the public educational institutions within the SADC area participate.

The transition from apartheid to democracy has been an exciting (and exhausting) time for all of us. The exhilaration we all feel in actively participating in the democratic process has been an empowering experience all round. I will return to South Africa in mi-1998 feeling recharged and keen to carry on with reconstruction and development in those sectors in which I and members of my Centre in Durban have been so active.

ENDS

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Keyan Gray Tomaselli is Professor, Graduate Programme in Cultural and Media Studies, University of Natal, South Africa. This interview was conducted while he was a Visiting Professor in the African Studies Center, and the Departments of Anthropology and English, Michigan State University, USA. Tomaselli was working on the MSU African Media Project, and teaching courses in Third World cinema and documentary film.

Author of The Cinema of Apartheid (Smyrna Press, New York), Tomaselli co-wrote the South African government White Paper on Film (1996), and was responsible for drawing up the Department of Health’s Guidelines (1997) for a national AIDS media strategy which mobilizes grassroots participation via action research and participatory communication. His most recent book, Appropriating Images: the Semiotics of Visual Representation (Intervention Press, Denmark) offers an analysis of visual imaging of Africans from largely Third World and African perspectives.

Tomaselli has served on the juries of the Milano Festival for African Cinema, Riminicinema, and as a judge for the All Africa M-Net Film Awards. He has been the guest of film festivals in France, Canada, the USA and South Africa.

this article first published here

by Erick Schonfeld on December 19, 2008

After suing tens of thousands of customers to no avail, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has decided to change tactics. Instead of dragging music downloaders and file-sharers into court, it has somehow convinced ISPs to take on the role of digital policeman (and jury and judge). The WSJ reports:

The decision represents an abrupt shift of strategy for the industry, which has opened legal proceedings against about 35,000 people since 2003. Critics say the legal offensive ultimately did little to stem the tide of illegally downloaded music. And it created a public-relations disaster for the industry, whose lawsuits targeted, among others, several single mothers, a dead person and a 13-year-old girl.

The RIAA will now work with ISPs behind the scenes in what is being described as a three-strikes policy. It will provide the ISPs with information (IP addresses, presumably) identifying accounts suspected of sharing music illegally. The ISPs wil then ask the owners of those accounts to stop. After the third request, the suspected infringer might lose his or her Internet connection.

This approach is certainly better than threatening jail time, but it raises a whole host of new issues. For one thing, what happens when someone is wrongly accused? At least before they had recourse to a court of law. ISPs are not equipped to set up quasi-legal proceedings or hear appeals. It will be much easier for them to simply send out notices and turn off service, and that is what will happen.

As for the recording industry’s bigger underlying problem (the death of the CD business) ,turning the ISPs into a music police does nothing to address it. Let’s just hope they don’t bring back the idea of making everyone pay a music tax through their ISPs.

And while the RIAA may not sue as many consumers in the future, startups trying to forge new paths for music distribution still need to fear its lawyers.

this article first appeared on techcrunch.com

Written by enigmax on December 17, 2008

A man who added custom subtitles to a pirated copy of the movie ‘Wanted’ and uploaded it to a file-sharing network has been sentenced. Kazushi Hirata, who uploaded the movie in advance of its Japanese theatrical release, received a 2 year suspended jail sentence.

WantedAll around the world, people who pre-release media onto the Internet face the prospect of harsh treatment if caught. The crew at EliteTorrents felt the full force of the DOJ for their uploading of Star Wars: Episode III, the uploaders on OiNK face uncertainty as their criminal trial is delayed again, and Kevin Cogill, the Chinese Democracy uploader, faces a year of confinement.

In September we reported that a Japanese man had been caught uploading the movie ‘Wanted’ before its Japanese theatrical release. Kazushi Hirata, a 33 year old from the city of Sendai, had painstakingly added Japanese subtitling to the movie, before uploading it to the Winny network. Following a complaint from Japan’s answer to the MPAA (Japan and International Motion Picture Copyright Association), Hirata was tracked down by the Kyoto Prefectural Police, the same department responsible for the 2004 arrest of Isamu Kaneko, the creator of the Winny software.

Less than a month after his September 20th arrest, November 11th saw Hirata pleading guilty to violating Japan’s copyright laws and faced the prospect of up to 10 years jail and a $95,000 fine. Yesterday the court came back with its sentencing decision.

Hirata was sentenced to two years in prison, suspended for three years.

“The conviction sends an important message about the illegality of movie piracy,” said Jimca executive director Yasutaka Iiyama adding, “Respect for intellectual property rights is critical to Japan’s economy and cultural identity.”

The arrest of Mr Hirata is believed to be the first in Japan relating to the uploading of a pre-release movie.

this article first appeared on torrentfreak.com

there is an instant attachement to the blog(and its ecosystem) for good or bad or for what it is.
this internal policing is not to be there because that appeals to good taste and moral opinions from which its contributors and viewers are moving away from.. i for one is one of these said contributors (594 entries and counting )

dunno.. i believe as mista k. about its internaleffects on the systems of my belief.. my sense of revealing showing and becoming.
the openness to say when im falling
and when i have fallen..i words image or audio or all ..

if that be art to read or view then so be it..
i do this everyday public or private. cus wickedness is soluable in my art..

ps.1.the kagablog.. has become an outlet for my outpourings.. my innervoicing rage passion love.the heavyness of being.. darkness and light.. ugliness and beauty..(for all i beleive)
trust and more trust in that my voice isn’t muffled or muzzled
isnt bullied or pushed into a corner of good or bad taste but rather a strong as hell voice in a dark world.. of conservative and wicked
silence
and finger pointing.

Hot Stuff came to Montford Primary in Standard Three and transferred from it around the middle of Standard Five. The hatred towards him crystallized on 10 March 1989, the day of the school disco, but he was always disliked. Hot Stuff was aloof and gave the impression that he was better than everyone else. There was no reason for him to think this. He was ugly, terrible at school and sports, poor even by Montford’s standards, and had no friends. Still, that didn’t stop him from walking the corridors of the school as if he was above it all. The way he would walk past a game of, say, five-stones, and not even show the slightly interest, rubbed people the wrong way. He had, people thought, airs about him.

The entire Montford Primary could have been wrong in their estimation of Hot Stuff. He could have been the most humble, likable boy around. But because he never spoke, because he never engaged, no-one could tell. For two and a half years Hot Stuff was present at Montford Primary. There isn’t much more to say. He showed up, never participated, scrapped by the exams, and showed up again.

Hot Stuff had come to Montford from the South Coast town of Renishaw. His family were farmers, part of a small group of Indian families that still stayed in and around the sugarcane plantations where their grandparents and great-grandparents had worked. Hot Stuff, along with his sister, went to school for half the day and worked in their fields the other half. His father had moved the family to Montford because he had found work in one of the metal works factories in Jacobs.

Hot Stuff’s unusual life wasn’t the most interesting thing about him though. The interesting thing about him was the way he looked. He was an average ten-year-old Indian boy in size and height, perhaps a bit beefier because of his field work. He had a thick pompadour held in place with coconut oil, deep set eyes and a large hooked nose. But what set him apart was his skin. Hot Stuff’s skin was covered in a network of large red blotches, which were so severe that it was difficult to make out his real skin colour. The official explanation was allergies.

Soon after he arrived at the school Pravasan Pillay, a classmate of Hot Stuff made the following comment loudly in History class: “He looks like Hot Stuff.” Pravasan had been reading the Harvey Comics title of the same name at the time, and had had blurted it out without really thinking. It was a poor observation. Apart from the redness of his skin, Hot Stuff bore little resemblance to the trident carrying, diaper wearing little devil. But the name stuck.

There are just two incidents involving Hot Stuff that warrant retelling. The first happened about a year and half after he transferred to the school. He turned up one scorching Durban morning with his head covered in white bandages, with his pompadour still protruding out the top. His left arm was also swathed with bandages. Hot Stuff had disappeared off of the radar for much of that year and a half but the utter strange nature his appearance again brought him into consciousness. There were one or two comments of the bandages being an improvement but the knowledge that the blank bandages concealed an equally blank face below soon caused interest to wane. Pravasan, who has since moved on from Harvey Comics to more mature fare like D.C’s The Doom Patrol, thought that from certain angles Hot Stuff resembled the Patrol’s Negative Man. But this time he didn’t say anything about it.

The bandages came off about two weeks later and the skin on Hot Stuff’s face and left arm appeared redder and was covered with tiny scabs, almost as if he had had a kind of localized measles.

The second incident took place in the first term of 1989. The headmaster of Montford, Mr. Moothiram, announced that every class from Standard Three onwards would be allowed to attend a school disco, to be held during school hours on the last day of the first term. Each pupil would have to pay five Rands to attend, and the money collected would go towards the building of a school basketball court. Mr. Moothiram wanted to spend as little money as possible on the organization of the disco and insisted that all the arrangements would be done in-house. This meant that the disco would be held in the school multi-purpose room, that there would be no store-bought decorations or mirrored balls or professional D.J. or catered food. The Standard Fives were in charge of organizing everything.

It was during a meeting attended by all the Standard Fives and chaired by the guidance councilor Mrs. Singh to discuss the distribution of tasks that Hot Stuff took his first step towards a new school. Mrs. Singh had just finalized assigning the décor committee and had asked the assembled students who would be interested in DJing the disco. It wasn’t as glamorous a role as the title made out. The D.J. of the first Montford Primary disco (and what turn out to be the last) wouldn’t have had a set of turntables or headset or a booth. He or she would simply have to sit next to the schools ancient HIFI system and press play on the tape deck when the teacher gave the indication and pause when one of the teachers had an announcement. Even the music selection, the essence of DJing, would be out of the DJ’s hands – instead the selection would be made by Ms. Naicker and Ms. Gonum, at 32 and 28 respectively, the school’s youngest teachers. Despite these limitations the position of D.J. was still very much sought over and almost every hand in the room went up. The surprising thing was that Hot Stuff was one of them.

It took a few moments for this to register in the room. Everyone was so concentrated on Ms. Singh, hoping to catch her eye that they didn’t notice that his red arm had also gone up. It wasn’t the most convincing arm-raising in history but it was up nevertheless. It was only when the class caught sight of Ms. Singh’s face that they noticed Hot Stuff. He had never ever raised his arm in class before, not to answer a question, not to use the toilet, not for any reason. There was no hesitation in Mrs. Singh’s mind. She announced immediately that Hot Stuff would D.J. the school disco.

Apart from this single explosion of activity Hot Stuff’s behaviour around the school didn’t change. He was still the same Hot Stuff. Though he attended the disco organizing meetings – at Mrs. Singh’s insistence – he didn’t participate in them. He would just sit near the door and leave around half-way through.

The doors of the disco opened around 10am on a Friday morning. Everyone filed into the multi-purpose room and admired the crepe paper streamers hanging from the ceiling, the tables along the side of the room laden with food and cooldrinks, a box of coloured “disco lights” that had been constructed by the woodwork class, and the table containing the school’s ancient HIFI system. Hot Stuff had already taken his place next to the table, his finger hovering over the play button. A sign in front of the table said: “Please don’t touch the music.” After a brief introduction by the principal, Hot Stuff, with Mrs. Singh’s approval, hit play.

Everything was going well, and there had been at least 45 minutes of dancing when there was a loud scream. Mrs. Singh circumvented Hot Stuff and turned off the HIFI herself. The girl doing the screaming was Rita Reddy, a pretty Standard Five girl who was one of the more popular pupils in the school. Rita took some calming down from the teachers and finally whispered something in Mrs. Naicker ear who in turn whispered into the principal’s ear. The principal then angrily announced that Rita’s pocket diary – which contained a neatly folded twenty Rand note – had gone missing from her purse. He told everyone to search the floor and when nothing turned up he ordered the boys and girls to separate and got the teachers to search their pockets. Again nothing showed up.

It was while the principal was consulting with the other teachers that Pravasan spotted Hot Stuff adjust the front of his pants. It was a quick movement, quite uncharacteristic for the sloth-like Hot Stuff. Pravasan had been having a lousy time thus far. He had been teased about the black poloneck he wore and had been sulking in a corner, not dancing. Rita’s scream and the subsequent search had provided a welcome distraction. Without thinking he shouted out: “Hot Stuff’s got it in his pants. He hid it in his pants” and run over and held Hot Stuff by the collar, lifting his body off of the ground. Hot Stuff made no attempt to fight Pravasan as he rough handled him. The principal separated the two, and then sent the girls out of the class, and in the presence of the boys and the male teachers ordered Hot Stuff to remove his pants. He did so without question. The outline of the pocket diary was clear in his white briefs.

Hot Stuff stayed two more months at Montford Primary, which included two weeks of suspension. His remaining time was not pleasant – boys would punch him whenever he walked by and girls would call him a thief. In short, he was given no space to be aloof. The week Hot Stuff transferred – no-one knows to where – Pravasan and Rita Reddy kissed for the first time. It was Pravasan’s first kiss and he couldn’t stop blushing.

It must have been when I was a boy at school that the phonograph was invented. At any rate it was at that time a chief object of public wonder; this was probably the reason why our science master, a man given to busying himself with all kinds of handiwork, encouraged us to try our skill in making one of these instruments from the material that lay nearest to hand. Nothing more was needed than a piece of pliable cardboard bent to the shape of a funnel, on the narrower round orifice of which was stuck a piece of impermeable paper of the kind used to seal bottled fruit. This provided a vibrating membrane, in the middle of which we then stuck a bristle from a coarse clothes brush at right angles to its surface. With these few things one part of the mysterious machine was made, receiver and reproducer were complete. It now only remained to construct the receiving cylinder, which could be moved close to the needle marking the sounds by means of a small rotating handle. I do not now remember what we made it of; there was some kind of cylinder which we covered with a thin coating of candle wax to the best of our ability. Our impatience, brought to a pitch by the excitement of sticking and fitting the parts, as we jostled one another over it, was such that the wax had scarcely cooled and hardened before we put our work to the test.

How this was done can easily be imagined. When someone spoke or sang into the funnel, the needle in the parchment transferred the sound-waves to the receptive surface of the roll turning slowly beneath it, and then, when the moving needle was made to retrace its path (which had been fixed in the meantime with a coat of varnish), the sound which had been ours came back to us tremblingly, haltingly from the paper funnel, uncertain, infinitely soft and hesitating and fading out altogether in places. Each time the effect was complete. Our class was not exactly one of the quietest, and there can have been few moments in its history when it had been able as a body to achieve such a degree of silence. The phenomenon, on every repetition of it, remained astonishing, indeed positively staggering. We were confronting, as it were, a new and infinitely delicate point in the texture of reality, from which something far greater than ourselves, yet indescribably immature, seemed to be appealing to us as if seeking help. At the time and all through the intervening years I believed that that independent sound, taken from us and preserved outside us, would be unforgettable. That it turned out otherwise is the cause of my writing the present account. As will be seen, what impressed itself on my memory most deeply was not the sound from the funnel but the markings traced on the cylinder; these made a most definite impression.

I first became aware of this some fourteen or fifteen years after my school-days were past. It was during my first stay in Paris. At that time I was attending the anatomy lectures in the École des Beaux-Arts with considerable enthusiasm. It was not so much the manifold interlacing of the muscles and sinews nor the complete agreement of the inner organs one with another that appealed to me, but rather the bare skeleton, the restrained energy and elasticity of which I had already noticed when studying the drawings of Leonardo. However much I puzzled over the structure of the whole, it was more than I could deal with; my attention always reverted to the study of the skull, which seemed to me to constitute the utmost achievement, as it were, of which this chalky element was capable; it was as if it had been persuaded to make just in this part a special effort to render a decisive service by providing a most solid protection for the most daring feature of all, for something which, although itself narrowly confined, had a field of activity which was boundless. The fascination which this particular structure had for me reached such a pitch finally, that I procured a skull in order to spend many hours of the night with it; and, as always happens with me and things, it was not only the moments of deliberate attention which made this ambiguous object really mine: I owe my familiarity with it, beyond doubt, in part to that passing glance, with which we involuntarily examine and perceive our daily environment, when there exists any relationship at all between it and us. It was a passing glance of this kind which I suddenly checked in its course, making it exact and attentive. By candlelight– which is often so peculiarly alive and challenging–the coronal suture had become strikingly visible, and I knew at once what it reminded me of: one of those unforgotten grooves, which had been scratched in a little wax cylinder by the point of a bristle!

And now I do not know: is it due to a rhythmic peculiarity of my imagination, that ever since, often after the lapse of years, I repeatedly feel the impulse to make that spontaneously perceived similarity the starting point for a whole series of unheard of experiments? I frankly confess that I have always treated this desire, whenever it made itself felt, with the most unrelenting mistrust–if proof be needed, let it be found in the fact that only now, after more than a decade and a half, have I resolved to make a cautious statement concerning it. Furthermore, there is nothing I can cite in favour of my idea beyond its obstinate recurrence, a recurrence which has taken me by surprise in all sorts of places, divorced from any connexion with what I might be doing.

What is it that repeatedly presents itself to my mind? It is this: The coronal suture of the skull (this would first have to be investigated) has–let us assume–a certain similarity to the closely wavy line which the needle of a phonograph engraves on the receiving, rotating cylinder of the apparatus. What if one changed the needle and directed it on its return journey along a tracing which was not derived from the graphic translation of a sound, but existed of itself naturally–well: to put it plainly, along the coronal suture, for example. What would happen?

A sound would necessarily result, a series of sounds, music … Feelings–which? Incredulity, timidity, fear, awe–which of all the feelings here possible prevents me from suggesting a name for the primal sound which would then make its appearance in the world … Leaving that side for the moment: what variety of lines then, occurring anywhere, could one not put under the needle and try out? Is there any contour that one could not, in a sense, complete in this way and then experience it, as it makes itself felt, thus transformed, in another field of sense?

At one period, when I began to interest myself in Arabic poems, which seem to owe their existence to the simultaneous and equal contributions from all five senses, it struck me for the first time, that the modern European poet makes use of these contributors singly and in very varying degree, only one of them–sight overladen with the seen world–seeming to dominate him constantly; how slight, by contrast, is the contribution he receives from inattentive hearing, not to speak of the indifference of the other senses, which are active only on the periphery of consciousness and with many interruptions within the limited spheres of their practical activity. And yet the perfect poem can only materialize on condition that the world, acted upon by all five levers simultaneously, is seen, under a definite aspect, on the supernatural plane, which is, in fact, the plane of the poem.

A lady, to whom this was mentioned in conversation, exclaimed that this wonderful and simultaneous capacity and achievement of all the senses was surely nothing but the presence of mind and grace of love–incidentally she thereby bore her own witness to the sublime reality of the poem. But the lover is in such splendid danger just because he must depend upon the co-ordination of his senses, for he knows that they must meet in that unique and risky centre, in which, renouncing all extension, they come together and have no permanence.

As I write this, I have before me the diagram which I have always used as a ready help whenever ideas of this kind have demanded attention. If the world’s whole field of experience, including those spheres which are beyond our knowledge, be represented by a complete circle, it will be immediately evident that, when the black sectors, denoting that which we are incapable of experiencing, are measured against the lesser, light sections, corresponding to what is illuminated by the senses, the former are very much greater.

Now the position of the lover is this, that he feels himself unexpectedly placed in the centre of the circle, that is to say, at the point where the known and the incomprehensible, coming forcibly together at one single point, become complete and simply a possession, losing thereby, it is true, all individual character. This position would not serve the poet, for individual variety must be constantly present for him, he is compelled to use the sense sectors to their full extent, as it must also be his aim to extend each of them as far as possible, so that his lively delight, girt for the attempt, may be able to pass through the five gardens in one leap.

As the lover’s danger consists in the non-spatial character of his standpoint, so the poet’s lies in his awareness of the abysses which divide the one order of sense experience from the other: in truth they are sufficiently wide and engulfing to sweep away from before us the greater part of the world–who knows how many worlds? The question arises here, as to whether the extent of these sectors on the plane assumed by us can be enlarged to any vital degree by the work of research. The achievements of the microscope, of the telescope, and of so many devices which increase the range of the senses upwards and downwards, do they not lie in another sphere altogether, since most of the increase thus achieved cannot be interpenetrated by the senses, cannot be “experienced” in any real sense? It is, perhaps, not premature to suppose that the artist, who develops the five-fingered hand of his senses (if one may put it so) to ever more active and more spiritual capacity, contributes more decisively than anyone else to an extension of the several sense fields, only the achievement which gives proof of this does not permit of his entering his personal extension of territory in the general map before us, since it is only possible, in the last resort, by a miracle.

But if we are looking for a way by which to establish the connexion so urgently needed between the different provinces now so strangely separated from one another, what could be more promising than the experiment suggested earlier in this record? If the writer ends by recommending it once again, he may be given a certain amount of credit for withstanding the temptation to give free rein to his fancy in imagining the results of the assumptions which he has suggested.

Soglio. On the day of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, 1919

Resolving at one master stroke the problem of content without compromising the purity of the nonreferential object as such, Kaganof’s work, by reproducing the exact appearances of the other Aryan Kaganof’s entire oeuvre, nevertheless introduces new content and a new concept, in the total phenomenological sense, by actually representing the actions of someone none other than Aryan Kaganof. That is, in their real meaning, these objects are Kaganofs plus, Kaganofs and more, and the implications to be extracted from them will no doubt occupy a segment of the post-mortemist artistic and critical community for some time.

In their double orientation between past and present, they represent an advance in another respect; in no other form but the fake can the thing be so sharply distinguished from its self, the an sich, or essence, from the fur sich, or reality. For by reproducing existing art forms the artist both receives the sanction of his predecessor and at the same time negates the attempt to observe any new formal development, thus shifting the entire phenomenon to a superior, that is, critical, level.

In spite of the apparent similarity of the work there are some profound differences. The works faked by Kaganof were all executed by the other Aryan Kaganof over a ten-year period, whereas the works under review here were all completed within the year 2004. Looking at the works of Kaganof (whose first appearance in any exhibition this is), we see a lack of development in the artist’s refusal to succumb to either a unilateral linear statement or an expression of total circularity, but rather a synthesis of both in what might be called circulinear art, neither either or but both and.

Moreover, the above is made perceptually concrete to the observer through a process of heightened simultaneity. For on first viewing Kaganof’s oeuvre, we are reminded of Wittgenstein’s comment, “Seeing as…is not part of perception. And for that reason it is like seeing and again not like.” We are clearly in the presence of a dilemma. In answer to Wittgenstein’s question, what is the criterion of the visual experience?, his obvious answer, “The representation of what is seen,” simply will not do.

Self-clarification is obtained through the paintings themselves. To say this is by no means to slight Kaganof as such. But any comparison of Kaganof and the other Aryan Kaganof would have to concede that the former’s power and potentiality, his superior pictorial structure, his more exclusive visual mode, and lastly, his more fully depicted literal shape, based as they are on the reproduction of the latter’s work, vastly intensifies the conflict between them.

However, these are but stylistic differences, at best provisional. On second viewing, one begins to be more profoundly conscious of and receptive to a radically new and philosophical element in the work of Kaganof that is precluded in the work of the other Aryan Kaganof, ie. the denial of originality, both in its most blatant manifestation (the fake as such) and in its subtle, insouciant undertones of static objectivity. The identity we all share in the other Aryan Kaganof’s art as our art, the art of our time, is deepened, broadened and made, of all things, joyous, whereas Kaganof’s art on the contrary, is surface, narrow, and, most especially, tragic, for one is forcefully reminded at every line and turn that it represents the ontological predicament of our time, indeed of every living being: inauthentic experience. They are, in a word, fakes.

I found the comment on Anton’s porn piece extremely interesting. “No more reality for me please” writes with beautiful honesty.

Sex without nudity is the most interesting concept.

No vulnerability, no exposure. Can sex exist without it? I don’t think porn can. Porn is like a rehearsed advert reminding us where the blood can run to. Suits (birthday suits) are usually needed to come across to the viewer.

If there is no revelation of the body parts being associated with becoming aroused, would sex be as pleasurable? Even if you are born blind, there must be ways for your brain to “visualize” sexual organs, breasts, facial expression during orgasm etc. If you are born deaf, would you be able to imagine what a lover’s breath and voice sound like during the act? Sex is an act performed with every single sense. Even inhibited sex puts one in a defenceless place. Inhibition, not being able to cross the boundaries of your own hang-ups, is the most obvious form of nudity. White suits covering your whole body except for the areas that matter might just arouse your partner more. Imagination is visualization with extra strong glasses on. And no matter how you cover yourself up, when the orgasm happens you die. Is there a more pure form of exposure? Can one be more naked than during an orgasm, with clothes on or not?

Drugs during sex usually clothe you wonderfully. Your lack of inhibition on drugs is a fantastic cover up.

I think being in conflict with one’s own sexuality is extremely sexy. And brave.

Wishing your most primal attribute would just cease to exist?

That is some serious conflict, since instinct is the most powerful manipulator.

Brain vs body? It’s the same thing.

DJ Spooky/Paul D. Miller’s next large scale multimedia performance work will be an acoustic portrait of a rapidly changing continent. Sinfonia Antarctica transforms Miller’s first person encounter with the harsh, dynamic landscape into multimedia portraits with music composed from the different geographies that make up the land mass. Miller’s field recordings from a portable studio, set up to capture the acoustic qualities of Antarctic ice forms, reflect a changing and even vanishing environment under duress. Coupled with historic, scientific, and geographical visual material, Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica is a seventy minute performance, creating a unique and powerful moment around man’s relationship with nature.

Sinfonia Antarctica follows Miller’s highly acclaimed performance work DJ Spooky’s Rebirth of a Nation, which he has performed in Athens, London, Rome, Paris, Sydney, Auckland, New York, LA, Chicago, Atlanta, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, The University of Michigan, and at numerous other festivals, universities and theaters. The DVD of Rebirth of a Nation will be released by Starz Media (The Simpsons, King of the Hill…) in early 2008.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT:

In 1949 the British composer Ralph Vaughn Williams created a metaphorical portrait of Antarctica entitled Sinfonia Antarctica that he began with a poem adapted from the poet Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound:

To suffer woes which hope thinks infinite.
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night,
To defy power which seems omnipotent,
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent:
This… is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free,
This is alone life, joy, empire and victory.

As the only uninhabited continent, Antarctica has no government and belongs to no country. Various countries claim areas of the landmass, but essentially, the area between 90°W and 150°W is the only part of Antarctica, indeed the only solid land on Earth, not claimed by any country. In the era of satellites, wireless networks, and fiber optic cables, its ever harder to see the vision that Vaughn described for his orchestral work. What DJ Spooky’s Antarctic Suite: Ice Loops portrays is a land made of complex ecological interactions. Instead of a metaphor, the composition aims to go to Antarctica and record the sound of the continent. More than 170 million years ago, Antarctica was part of the supercontinent Gondwanaland. Over time Godwin broke apart and Antarctica as we know it today was formed around 25 million years ago. Using digital media, video, and high tech recording equipment, DJ Spooky will go to Antarctica and paint an acoustic portrait of this rapidly transforming environment. In the steps of environmentalists like Al Gore, or even films like March of the Penguins and Happy Feet, he aims to bring Antarctica to the contemporary imagination by digitally reconstructing it: historical maps, travelers journals over the last several centuries, crystalline ice’s resonant frequencies, and the Earth’s magnet poles - will all be paints for the audio palette he will work with. Essentially, he will go to the continent and create a recording studio that will be portable enough to move all over the territory. Think of it as sampling the environment with sound – something that Vaughn could only do with metaphor in 1949. The difference Is that Miller approaches the task with a technological background that fosters a direct interaction with the territory that inspires the composition.

For most people, thoughts of exploration in Antarctica typically center on dogs, skis, snowshoes, and people in fur, not paintbrushes or sketch pads. Actually, art has always had a prominent place in the exploration of Antarctica. Photography began in the 1830’s and only in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was it possible to take photographs in cold environments. Therefore, it was common for explorers of polar regions to be accompanied by artists to visually record the sights and phenomena for research and for popular distribution in books and articles. In the modern era, artists continue to venture to Antarctica. Their intent is not simply to record but to provide visual interpretations of the continent, based on direct observations combined with artistic talent. The Antarctic has many faces: it’s usually thought of as a huge pile of ice that somehow stays afloat at the bottom of the world. In different ages, before humanity had mapped out the world, it would have simply been beyond most maps and most ideas about what made up the geography of the world. As such, the Antarctic is one of the most unknown territories in the world today. The term “Antarctica” comes from the Greek term “antarktikos” meaning, simply “opposite to the Arctic.” For the purposes of this project, the idea of looking at the places beyond the realms of everyday life in the industrialized 21st century world, puts the continent front and center into the idea of making a map of the continent in sound. There have been several recent project’s that reflect artists interest in Antarctic and Artic regions: Pierre Huyghe’s A Journey That Wasn’t for the Whitney Biennial 2006, and Isaac Julien’s True North multimedia installation that focused on the African American Polar explorer, Matthew Henson, who accompanied Robert Peary, and who was one of the first people to reach the North Pole. Miller creates a separate scenario from those envisioned by these artists by focusing on the acoustic qualities of ice and its relationship to geography.

Sinfonia Antarctica will be an acoustic portrait of a rapidly transforming continent made of ice and condensation. In many ways, because there is little rain, the interior of the continent is technically one of the largest deserts in the world. What Sinfonia Antarctica proposes to do is explore the realm of fiction and ideas that underlie almost all perceptions of Antarctica – from the interior desert plains, to the Transantarctic Mountains that divide the continent, the Suite will take samples of the different conditions, and transform them into multi-media portraits with music composed from the different geographies that make up the land mass.

more information on dj spooky’s website http://www.djspooky.com

Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assaults of thought on the unthinking.

John Maynard Keynes,

one’s own aesthetic, one’s own sense of what is morally right, what is beautiful, is what is most difficult to transgress. of course i read this in john cage’s silence when i was a teenager, but i never really understood what he meant until now. when you hit your forties there is a strange kind of sediment that builds up. one’s sense that one now really does know something. that one’s life experience justifies one’s narrow-sightedness. that one’s own foolish limitations are now acceptable precisely because one has become old enough to see that one’s earlier, youthful opinions were mostly, indeed, foolish. it is so difficult to stretch out and stand on one’s toes and see that one’s own taste and opinions and morals are in fact, still merely transient moments, still mainly foolish and limited. and thus we are perennially stuck in this cage of our own sense of the rightness, the correctness of our perception, of our taste.

the kagablog is a rigorous exercise for me in breaking down the prison of my own taste, in rupturing the confines of what i personally hold to be “good art” or “bad art” or “beautiful” or “correct”. through the kagablog i have been able to interrogate my own aesthetic principles, my own thinking about what i like and why i like it. working on the blog has had a huge impact on my own filming practice, my way of editing, my writing. blogging has broken down my very stiff, very strict ideals in writing and framing, loosened me up as it were. and this process is never finished. it is in this sense that i call the kagablog an artwork, in this sense that i describe blogging as an artistic practice

aryan kaganof

my cat sula understands aesthetics..she will also scout a room for the most beautiful cloth on which to sit…she knows form and harmony and balance and pattern…and above all texture…given that her eyesight, hearing, sense of smell, and most probably her tactile senses are far superior, one could also imagine that her sense of taste must be superhuman, or i suppose, extra-human…so why do we keep feeding her those same boring kibbles???

Directed by Dan Klores
92 minutes
In English

This film was one of the very best documentaries made last year. Dan Klores’ CRAZY LOVE tells the astonishing true story of the obsessive relationship of Burt and Linda Pugach which shocked the nation during the summer of 1959. When Burt Pugach, a 32 year-old married attorney, met Linda, a beautiful young girl living in the Bronx, they fell head over heals and they had a whirlwind romance which culminated in a set of outrageous actions.

Basically when Burt discovered that Linda was engaged to marry another man, he hired thugs to throw lye ( basically acid) in her face, which left her blind. Burt is convicted of the crime and is sentenced to 30 years in prison. But during all his time in prison Burt never forgot about his beloved Linda, and once he was free he continued to pursue her for marriage….and she agreed! This is the stuff that this insane documentary is made of. Its crazy enough that it could have come out of a John Waters film!

This flabbergasting true story is slowly unveiled, but the key to the movie, though, is not the plot so much as the characters: Not only are Burt and Linda a fascinating psychological study, all of their friends are wacky personalities as well, each with their own story on what happened. The big events are bizarre enough, but it’s the strange small twists and turns–for example just how Pugach and Riss were brought back together again after so many years –that push the story into the realm of bizarre surrealism.

Winner of the Grande Jury Prize at the Sundance film festival.

I tried to read de sade;120 days of sodom..couldnt finish it ,so incredibly boring..

i hardly ever watch porn, i like porn but i’m uptight..i dont want to be liberated..not through the artificial male-dominated world of porn flicks..from time to time i loathe my sex drive..i long for menopause (with my add personality its kinda hard trying to conduct normal thinking with out sex coming in every now and then)..i tried to liberate myself in the past..but at a certain moment i could only liberate myself through lots and lots of drugs..i linked taking drugs to having sex..it made me think for a long time i was wild..but basically the drugs made me a corpse with a heartbeat..later when i stopped doing drugs..i was confronted with my ever presence insecurity about my nudity..i had to learn to enjoy sex all over again,i linked also so much with getting high..it was a sad realisation..i still dont like sex in combo with my own nudity..lately i had a reoccuring idea..what if i just had a white cotton suit on with velcro parts to rip of for the erogenes zones? that way i can enjoy sex,without the other staring at me..only for the sad realisation to come crushing in that its really the same as black latex/leather sm submissive body suits..I guess im back on drugs..(and when exactly did my life become a comic story?)

a philosophy of pornography is yet to be written…i know de sade and bataille and robert smith have tried to touch on it…but it only comes into its own in the digital age…in the transfer from across the oceans into a private room where one can sit naked and engage physically with the picture…a sculpture is public…even a book passes through many hands before it reaches you….the editor. binder, publisher, marketer, transportor, seller etc…with digital porno it’s possible to go direct from the model’s body to your screen with very few intervening stages of display…and in this way it’s more private…

there is also the aspect of control, that one can jump ahead in the story….even if it’s looking luscious already one enjoys that idea that one can push forward to the resolution and go onto the next story, that one can decide…also it is bottomless, endless…internet porn has already proliferated to the extent that i doubt it is possible still for anyone to quantify it or even access it all in a lifetime…there’s already not enough time…

the other thing is the nationality – the americaness of it, the holly-woodness, one doesn’t see indian porno so much, they’ve been dancing about for centuries midriff’s shown, they’ve had khajuraho and the kama sutra, so there wasn’t the same repression, the same calvinistic suppression of the picture which has now burst out, flourishing, flowering in the west…the indian porno one sees are really scaly, dodgy, ugly, lower end of the desperation cycle, where the american have conventions and awards and a competitive industry bringing out the most beautiful, the most lovely…

also – the idea that the women are “faking it” or that they don’t enjoy performing as much as the men is old fashioned…in fact i think it’s the reverse…women are able to enjoy themselves without having to overtly display anything, like the men…i think it’s a bit shit largely being a male porno star and having to force the erection, often aggressively force it…whereas the women have the opportunity to be largely passive, to be told what to do, to really be permitted to enjoy themselves…at the same time, knowing they are doing it for “work” releases them from the obligation to enjoy themselves…

why i also say a philosophy of pornography is yet to be writ is that the world is changing as a result of it…generations are changing…this generation is already different to mine in their access to pornographic material…how has it effected their relationships, their love lives, sex lives etc? how are they differently sexualised since e-tv started broadcasting soft-porn? even the ones who don’t watch it are aware of its existence…

what would a philosophy of pornography look like? the image / text of pornography…the conservativism of the story-line (as zizek points out)…the selection process, the economics of it…its effect on society and the individual…it’s effect on thought processes…the alternative world it postulates…the utopian vision and the living out of that fantasy of completion, of a total devotion to pleasure…it’s the ultimate freudian paradise, the pleasure principle has become the law of the land…one must enjoy oneself, one must give way, one must constantly strive for sexual pleasure all the time in all contexts and in all circumstances…the display of semen is also an invention of moving pornography…would be grotesque in statuary (as is the perpetual, eternal erection also for that matter)…so this act of “coming on” the body of the other was invented in pornography, it’s where image fudges its way into text…the story must be seen to have a climax, a resolution…it’s not enough for them to say they “came” they arrived, they reached the point for which they were reaching…it has to be made visual…here the imagery betrays its foundation as text, as narrative…

so a philosophy of pornography would investigate narratology, really look into it and not simply dismiss it as obvious or self evident…it would apply analysis to the historical trajectory of the pornographic narrative and the lebenswelt from which it issues…it would also examine the individualisation of sexuality…the increasingly solipsistic nature of the sexual in capitalist economies…the propensity and lust for solitude wherein these fantasies of the social can be lived out…the material response to pornography, the engagement of the body with the image/text makes it a unique phenomena…i can’t think of any other similar engagement beside perhaps the spiritual living into the text of religious documents, which is a sort of substitute body, the ephemeral spiritual being is inserted into the context of the religious story in the same way as the wishful sexual body is fantasised onto the pornographic situation…

a philosophy of pornography would also consider the sense most often dispensed with or trivialised in the pornographic landscape – sound…the repetitive huffing and puffing is as good as any a conceivable source for what it sounds like in hell…moans of pain/pleasure, groans difficult to distinguish from those of violence, submission, aggression…the tacky music is often the last consideration and even where they try to add a “romantic” flavour with a classic or two, the soundscape still inevitably degenerates into the animal repetitive, insolvent, painfully frustrated sounds of blurred articulation…my favourite pornography involves a lot of talking, the connecting to the personal , to the individual identity of the performers, because either selves come out in their voices – tone and words…as soon as they sink into the repetitive phrases: “oh yes oh yes, oh god oh god, don’t stop, don’t stop” etc we are back in the animal…while they still have the capacity for speech, for sentence structure – not phrases subsisting groans – there is still an individual personality present…

a philosophy of pornography would investigate a new vocabulary….such as the contemporary reference to “hardcore” as either a positive affirmation or an indication of vitality and authenticity…what other words have entered everyday speech via the aqueducts of the pornographic industry? how is it changing language?

we are also now in an era where the first generation of publicly recognisable porn stars are growing older, where they are taking over the industry for the next generation…not many have completely retired yet, so it will be interesting to reflect on their memories, on their perceptions of the industry in retrospect…the seventies stars reflected the exploitation of women and the ruthless aggression of the industry, but that was still in the days when they thought all that was needed was the act itself…there were no standards in terms of quality and compliance…it was before they realised that conditions in which the stars can feel comfortable, being able to choose their own partners, for example, were conducive to a better product…so now when a star like savanna has her own wine label, promotes the new york opera and so on, it’s a very different take…instead of being ashamed about her life she is like the courtesans of venice who slept with emperors…her prostitution is visible, is celebrated as somebody taking charge of their body or using it for herself…can one exploit one’s own body? what will happen when that takes a toll? as in the case of the other savannah who killed herself, it is alleged, after realising her beautiful face was beyond repair…

a philosophy of pornography must reflect on the premium placed on beauty in the contemporary capitalist state…advertising has been an enormous influence on the origins of the modern industry, to be sure…

a philosophy of pornography will have to consider the heterosexualisation of lesbianism and the whole quandary of the male gaze on the lesbian…as well as the increasing acceptance of bi sexual and homosexual pornography placed alongside that of the hetero…even in the hetero, those stiff dicks are still on display…the paradoxical escape of the dick (and its homosexual connotations) into the acceptability of the lesbian scenario…

in a philosophy of pornography the obsession with youth will need to be examined…the “staple fair” of the pornographic story – babysitter, cheerleaders, boss and secretary, teacher and student, positions of power…best friends, the all pervasive presence (everywhere all the time) of money and stories about money and fraud and spying…money features as a subject almost as much as romance…it’s the bedrock of the porno industry…it’s what it all comes down to…it’s the point nobody would argue with…it’s what they all say, isn’t it…i do it for the money…(sometimes, if they’re clever, they also say – i like to fuck, which might also be true)…i haven’t yet heard any porn star say they do it for love…

the images used to illustrate this article are all stills from aryan kaganof’s “taylor rain is dirty girl in ‘velvet’” which is a based on a poetic cut-up by gary cummiskey, “april in the moon-sun”

in answering your question: “who ever told you that the piece was intended to be erotic, or sexy?”, no-one did, and that was not my expectation of your piece (obviously the original clip itself had been made with the intention of getting people off though?! - that i DID assume)…

if you read my immediate reaction again (pasted below), you will notice that the only time i mentioned my reaction to the porn clip in itself was in brackets at the bottom - it was very clear to me that your use of it was not intended as erotica but rather imbricated with the other representational layers. what interested me was the manipulative aspect of what you were doing - a paradoxical laying bare through excess of the constructed nature of filmic meaning, and its deterministic effects on the viewer… also the revelation of the progressive mutation of representations’ violent power, from suggestive to dictatorial - moving from audio, to written words, to live images.

the reason ‘videodrome’ came to mind was because it explored some of the same questions brought up for me by your piece in a diametrically opposed way: cronenberg deals with how violent what happens in television/film/virtual reality actually would be if it literally penetrated the glass barrier of the lens/screen and engulfed the viewer physically. his android amalgams - the video slot in the stomach, the heaving, veiny video machine, the hand/gun - all drip with excruciating, existential gore.

the sanitised nature of the genitalia in the context of ‘velvet’ brought out the same issue for me: that we navigate vicarious imaginary worlds through making or watching film that could be harmful or scary if enacted in ‘real life’. in the case of taylor rain’s dry exploration, the contamination taboo is being played with in a non-threatening, aseptic way - it’s clear that any revulsion to the actions depicted must be intellectual, because there is not a drop of gunk of any description to be seen. she’s a kind of simulated simulacrum, if that makes sense? she’s not depicting anything realistic. (for interest’s sake, contrast that with 19 homemade clips of a guy making his girlfriend vomit during blow-jobs!)

i do believe that from my original response it’s clear that ‘velvet’ definitely came across to me as a piece anal-ysing several issues not directly related to porn in the narrow sense (however, in a broader sense, isn’t any representation that induces an intense vicarious reaction in an audience actually pornographic? cf. ‘food porn’, ‘holocaust porn’? and this is what you regularly get up to in your work .

what i was interested in was whether the dimensions that had struck me had been intentionally inserted there by you (please excuse the puns, they truly aren’t consciously intended!) or whether you had, in fact, intended to communicate another agenda that i missed entirely???

i would agree with you that you employ nudity and ‘real’ sex in films at the risk of viewers interpreting these formulaically. by doing so you do make it less likely that the ‘general’ or ‘casual’ viewer will understand your work - it’s not accessible because it doesn’t allow the viewer to use preconceived frames of reference uncritically- they are forced to confront their own beliefs and mores if they are to ‘get’ it, which many flatly refuse to do because it is difficult. as i see it, what you are doing is anthropological: it makes the familiar strange, and the strange familiar. by observing, understanding and revealing the constructedness, the violence, and often the absurdity, of what is considered normal, or imposed normatively, you allow my imagination exhilarating freedom to roam in uncharted territories Other. but i find that roaming usually only happens after the film/book is over. often your work itself is harsh and unpleasant: a stripping away, a violent confrontation with conditioned perspectives (and i think your use of nudity and sex is a literal shortcut to this). but that is often what is required before choice and freedom can be understood and embraced.

but perhaps it also shows the clarity of your vision and its communication to intelligent audiences willing to watch with open minds, to recognise and move beyond their moral baggage and foregone conclusions?

by jadran & asa sturm-lie

The Azanian Peoples Organization (AZAPO)
KwaZulu Natal, South Africa
1984-1990

Founded in 1984 in South Africa, Frank Talk is a political journal whose genealogy is rooted in the student-led anti-apartheid movement of the 1970s and 80s. Originally the pseudonym under which Steve Biko wrote several articles as the Publications Director of the South African Students’ Organization (SASO), Frank Talk became the title of the journal published by The Azanian People’s Organization (AZAPO), a nationalist group committed to Biko’s ideas of Black Consciousness.

Biko’s prolific SASO writings were published in early volumes of Frank Talk, and throughout its history the journal remained committed to the Black Consciousness ideology responsible for mobilizing student-led anti-apartheid resistance. Exploring the theory of Black Consciousness and related issues of race and racism, theology, culture and revolution, Frank Talk became a platform for rigorous political analysis of the frustrations and problems of black students and black people generally. Available in both Afrikaans and English, several issues of the journal were banned for distribution by South Africa’s apartheid government. The last issue of Frank Talk was published in 1990.