kagablog

Living in Strange Lands
The Tsafendas Story
By Mary Corrigall

It is fifteen years after apartheid and we are still counting the cost. But the focus has shifted from the physical effects on the collective to the consequences on the individual’s psyche. This approach draws our attention to the insidiousness of this corrupt racial system, which has wormed its way into conceptions of the self.

This aspect is amplified in the case of Dimitri Tsafendas, the Mozambican-born South African who assassinated then-prime minister Dr HR Verwoerd in 1966. The segregationist laws caused a seismic rupture in Tsafendas’ conception of himself.

The progeny of a black woman and white (Greek) man, Tsafendas didn’t readily fall into any of the prescribed racial groups. This had terrible practical consequences for him for most of his life; if he married the person that he loved, a coloured woman called Helen, he would have to be classified as a coloured.

This classification, however, would limit job opportunities, making it that bit harder to support his wife and prospective family. Besides, one senses from this dramatisation of his life that Tsafendas was an activist at heart, who was unwilling to give into the authorities’ rigid laws.

But the apartheid laws didn’t only have an impact on his working and romantic life but on his psyche, causing the ultimate split of the self: schizophrenia, a disease that manifests in multiple personalities. Not that we experience Tsafendas as a double-sided character in this play. Rather he appears like a cohesive persona given to fantasy and delusion as a means of escape from his real-life predicaments.

When we meet Tsafendas (played by Renos Spanoudes) it is towards the end of his journey, shortly after he has been imprisoned. He paces up and down his cell as he relays his life-story.

Though his actions and persona are so obviously a product of racial segregationist policies, ironically, Tsafendas seems to have posed a riddle to the authorities at the time.

Not that the audience is ever privy to the voice of authority. Aside from infrequent visits from an abusive guard who rarely employs verbal communication, Tsafendas remains the audience’s sole source of information.

Given that he is mentally unstable he isn’t a reliable witness either and there are moments when his narration becomes jumpy or irrational or there are blanks in his memory, implying that the truth can never be fully ascertained.

His sanity becomes an important issue: if the assassination was an act of madness then it undercuts the heroism of his attack on Verwoerd, the central architect of apartheid. No doubt the Nationalist government were keen to embrace this explanation.

But given the dehumanising and destructive ideology that Verwoerd propagated, Tsafendas’s act of violence seems reasonable. Certainly the apartheid system was predicated on a brand of madness.

This is juxtaposed with Tsafendas’s state of mind, leaving the audience wondering whether Verwoerd was as disturbed as Tsafendas and pondering on the nature of sanity and how it is temporarily defined.

Driving the narrative is the desire to uncover the conditions and events in Tsafendas’s pitiful life that propelled him to stab Verwoerd repeatedly.

As Tsafendas begins to recount a life of rejection and pain it becomes clear that the attack was simply the culmination of frustration and anger, which sought an outlet and a suitable target, the main architect of his distress and loneliness. In regaling the audience with each painful rejection and drawing attention to his social isolation, writer Anton Krueger quite firmly positions Tsafendas as a victim rather than a perpetrator, implying that the apartheid system caused the roles to become obscured and moral codes to be distorted.

No doubt, if he had had any strong political affiliations (he alludes to once being a member of a communist party) he would have been hailed as a hero and his name would grace a street sign, park or plaque in the new South Africa.

Krueger has reclaimed his position in our history and uncovers the personal cost that apartheid’s mad policies incurred. One can’t help but wonder, however, whether Tsafendas would have found happiness in the so-called Rainbow Nation, where racial and ethnic groups remain voluntarily defined and largely separate and where his fellow Mozambicans have seen their shacks burned to the ground because they “do not belong” .

The issues that this play raises therefore continue to resonate (it was first staged in the early 1990s) and Spanoudes turns in a very convincing and emotive performance, it’s as if he has somehow miraculously channelled the real Tsafendas.

Nevertheless the play isn’t as compelling as it should be; there is no dramatic tension. It runs at an even pace and the visits by the guard serve no purpose except to reiterate how Tsafendas has been persecuted throughout his life.

His assassination of Verwoerd should have been more drawn out: what was the expression on Verwoerd’s face when Tsafendas drove the knife in?

This should have been a vivid scene yet it melds into his life story as if it was an everyday occurrence.

To underpin the tragedy it might have also been interesting to have highlighted the futility of Tsafendas’s attack, even with Verwoerd out of the way the segregationist system he originated continued to flourish. As Benjamin Disraeli, the British prime minister, once quipped: “assassination has never changed the history of the world”.

Living in Strange Lands: The Tsafendas Story showed at the University of Witwatersrand Nunnery Theatre as part of the 969 festival and Arts Alive Festival which run until the end of the month.

this review first appeared in the sunday independent of 20 september 2009

IN 1996 Stephen Hobbs offered a rainbow up for sale. Not a photographic, sculptural or two-dimensional representation of a rainbow but the genuine multicoloured arc that sometimes spreads across the sky after a heavy downpour. Surprisingly, he had quite a few takers.

But this was hardly astonishing for an artist who launched his career with an ice block (presented on a stand), attracting the attention of art dealers such as Warren Siebrits and South Africa’s one-time enfant terrible, Kendell Geers. Hobbs wasn’t just an art prankster poking fun at the art world. Well, not completely - he was fascinated with the notion of the ephemeral and how it manifested in architecture.

His ice block may have found a buyer in the Belgian collector, Pierre Lombard, but ultimately it was a transient object that could never be claimed. But it wasn’t altogether motivated by his rejection of the commodification of art. “The idea was that by the time my lecturers came round to assess my artwork, it would have melted,” recalls Hobbs.

He sees a kind of poetry in the transient or that which remains physically beyond one’s grasp. For him there is nothing more beguiling than that which leaves no trace. His fascination with this phenomenon ties in neatly with the conceptualist ethos that drives his practice. For the conceptual artist, ideas take precedence over the art object. Its full existence resides in the ideas that informed it.

“For the artist, the power of a statement is as good as the artwork. For me, the significance of what I do resides in the texts and essays I write about my work because I think that is where the integrity of one’s work lies - not in making the art object per se, but in questioning it,” observes Hobbs.

It’s an ethos that has given life to a number of cerebrally and sometimes visually startling artworks such as 54 Storeys (1999), video footage of a trip down the inside of the Ponte Towers, once a popular site for suicides, and consequently the ideal manner in which to visually explore the darkest depths of Joburg’s inner city.

Hobbs’s obsession with ephemeral phenomena has also been influenced by living in Joburg, a city in a constant state of flux, and the role he has played in the regeneration of the city through managing most of its high-profile public art projects as co-director and co-founder of Trinity Sessions. Hobbs has come to resent the time and energy that the Trinity Sessions steals from his own artistic practice and how it has overshadowed his persona as an artist - he calls it “the beast” - but it has further cemented his obsession with the fleeting quality in architecture and the urban landscape.

Involved in the regeneration of the city of Joburg, he has been able to closely observe the ebb and flow of this dynamic conurbation, concerns of which most recently featured in works such as State (2008), a work that captured its fluctuating nature.

Architecture is not exactly associated with the ephemeral but Hobbs has managed, through his photography, to best unearth this abstract quality, particularly in the Mirage City (1997) and Auto Camoflage (2002) series of works.

The former featured the mirrored facades of office buildings in Joburg’s inner city, which reflected distorted images of adjacent buildings, reducing them to abstract motifs that appeared to defy their solidity, thus challenging their seeming permanence.

Hobbs’s latest project, entitled Dazzle, continues this trajectory. Here he has painted the exterior walls of the Outlet Gallery in Pretoria with the Dazzle camouflage pattern, a monochromatic one made of geometric forms that used to be painted on to warships during the two world wars. Just as was the case back then, Hobbs also intends to trick the viewer, but for him it is about challenging the gallery’s architectural dimensions, obscuring its hard edges and its materiality.

“I have also been interested in looking at how I could go from a pure photographic source of the reflection or bounced light and really make it function, which for me is always there in the image that is a deconstruction or dematerialisation of architecture and a rematerialisation of it.”

But as usual, there are layers of concepts belying these zebra-like buildings - concepts that relate to ephemera of a different kind: it is the unrealised visions embodied in drawings and models of buildings by pseudo architects that hold a grip on Hobbs’s imagination. Instead of perceiving them as failed projects, Hobbs celebrates the grand visions that they once encapsulated. Of course, they also summon the intangible: they are buildings that only truly exist in the imagination.

“I have always been interested in architecture that is architecture that is never realised, that remains within the realm of the visionary, and my major frame of reference is Vladmir Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International, a constructivist tower built around 1919. Tatlin only ever made a 15m model.

“It was supposed to house scientists and revolutionists who would develop propaganda for the socialist movement. Tatlin always imagined that there would be a projector mounted on the top of the tower that would project propaganda films on to the underside of the clouds. Isn’t that beautiful?

“Part of the poetry of the piece for me is that, of course, it couldn’t be realised. So it remains forever symbolic as a constructivist gesture to the bigger socialist revolution. Tatlin’s creation is ultimately a statement, a manifesto - maybe it even brought about change.”

In paying homage to Tatlin, Hobbs is also recognising the value in all the unrealised projects that artists are never able to execute.

Usually, when artists are commissioned to create work for the Outlet gallery, they concentrate their efforts on creating objects to fill the interior, and while Hobbs has created a startling object that appears like an indefinable shining object (inspired by The Aleph, a short story by Argentinean author Jorge Luis Borges), for the interior he has concentrated his energy on redefining and disrupting the spatial characteristics of the gallery. This is partly owing to his ongoing interest in architecture, which he says “is much more interesting than art because it’s the most imperialistic art form there is”, but it is also determined by his slightly anarchic tendencies.

The ephemeral nature of his often site-specific interventions has meant that he has largely remained on the fringes of the commercial art market, only finding a platform for his work in museums or non-commercial venues.

It’s a path he chose because he wanted “to do things my way and on my own terms. Working with a gallery means compromise. It was a compromise I didn’t want to make. I have never felt one’s art practice should be predicated on economics. In the 1990s, before there were all these galleries, we were just a whole lot of guys working in isolation and that’s how I thought that things should be.”

His resistance to sign up to a commercial gallery also came about when the close relationships he shared with Siebrits and Geers came to a painful and abrupt end.

Hurt and disillusioned, he gravitated towards making art on the fringes and made a name for himself as a curator, too, managing the Market Theatre Gallery in the late 1990s then setting up and running the Premises Gallery in the early noughties, where he played an integral role in launching the careers of a dozens of artists.

“I never liked the politics of curators and dealers. Partly because I was always a curator and I could make things happen on my own terms.”

In 1999 he was commissioned to come up with a project for Blank: Architecture, Apartheid and After, a book on architecture by Ivan Vladislavic and Judin Hilton.

Hobbs proposed doing a “signless city” and eventually got permission from the City of Cape Town to realise his idea, which involved blocking off an intersection and “erasing” all the street markings. The success of the intervention gave Hobbs confidence and he began to feel that “what I was doing was far more interesting to me than what was going on in the galleries”.

But he would rethink his modus operandi after a trip to New York in 2006 in which he spent time with Jeff Koons, the world-renowned American artist. Predictably, Hobbs was overwhelmed by Koons’s operation.

“I saw his studio and it is amazing… there were 18 massive canvases with two people painting and two people mixing paint for each canvas. There is a whole sculpture studio. It is a highly crafted system of delivery. It was an incredible experience to see what mass-production in art looks like at the highest end.”

What followed was a whirlwind introduction to New York’s art scene, which included attending gallery openings in Chelsea in the company of Koons, and rubbing shoulders with other art world celebrities and serious collectors. When it came to an end, he hit rock bottom.

“I was overcome with despair and depression. I just thought, what am I ever going to amount to?”

Hobbs felt “like crap for three days” and then it dawned on him “that as an artist, all that you have to show for yourself is the work that you make. So that’s what I did - I started to make works and began to worry less about whether they were ephemeral, or whether I had (gallery) representation. I decided to find the money do what I wanted to do and just get on with it.”

Determined to make tangible objects, he produced the acclaimed HighVoltage/ LowVoltage, which showed at the Substation at Wits University in 2007. It was a hit with critics and was selected as one of the exhibitions of the year in Britain’s Frieze magazine. It was a site-specific installation and, as such, would remain intangible to those who missed the opening night that was similarly the closing night. But it reflected a new direction for the artist.

“I was committed to making things. I want recognition for my work. I will be preoccupied with the ephemeral and the transient, but let’s wake up and be more strategic,” Hobbs says.

He has finally acquiesced to the commercial gallery market and will now be represented by the David Krut gallery.

“I am at a stage where I am growing up. To be successful, I need someone to lean on a little bit.

“Am I selling out on my true vision on what I think an artist should be? Of course I am. But that was all idealistic bullshit. You can still be strategic and brilliant. I just hope the integrity of the ideas stays there.”

Hobbs will continue to pursue his unconventional art projects and interventions, but now the documentation and series of prints relating to his projects will be the economic end of his initiatives. “There has got to be something you can buy.”

He has also become less dogmatic about his allegiance to the conceptual art movement.

“I have become less precious about whether I am a conceptual artist. If making an object is integral to the expression and the practice of the expression of articulation, then that is my job as an artist - I have to make things.

“If you look at all the work of Hobbs/Neustetter such as the Dakar project, it is really a whole lot of window dressing for nothing… documentation for an experience that we had. The artwork was about walks in Dakar and in Hillbrow.”

During those days, the ephemera of his interventions or pseudo-performance pieces were incidental to his practice.

“I was never so precious about the things I made, I was just inspired by the spaces I interacted with, and I eventually gravitated towards objects that could reflect on the spaces that I was interacting with; that’s why I never had any representation.”

Hobbs has also made peace with the visual poetics that some of his works exude. His reverence for Borges’s The Aleph, an intangible and seductive portal into an infinite world of lived experience, which is evidenced in his Dazzle exhibition, is proof of this shift.

“I am going to stop apologising for aesthetics and beauty. When you come from a tradition of conceptual work and people say your work is beautiful or aesthetically pleasing, it’s like a slap in the face.

“But I hope that those aesthetics will prompt an intellectual enquiry. That they present a further register for thought and not a passive experience of form, line and colour. My feeling now is that line, form and colour can be compellingly arranged, and why should one apologise for that?”

Hobbs is only beginning to recognise and accept the visual beauty in his work but he suggests that it is the result of a new-found confidence and his less dogmatic allegiance to the tenets of the conceptual art ethos.

“You are not allowed to be seduced by your own work, according to the rules of the avant garde or the conceptual realm. But that’s a load of bullshit. If it is beautiful and conceptual let it be.”

It will be interesting to see how this new approach will further impact on Hobbs’s trajectory and what sort of artworks he will produce for gallery shows. Such exhibitions might cause an initial frenzy among his long-time admirers, who have for some time hankered for a piece of his ephemeral brand of art. Hobbs may make part of his art tangible and available for consumption but it is likely that his practice will continue to not only map the untraceable but remain just beyond spectator’s grasp.

“With Christo’s (the Bulgarian environmental artist) work you can buy the plans and the documentation and preliminary sketches of his work, which to me is so poetic because it means you can never own the work. Either you saw it or you didn’t. And the actual work itself is still not something that can be entirely owned.”

this interview first appeared in the sunday independent of 20 september 2009

When I was young
I wanted to be bigger than Jesus
I grew out of that
When I had acne
I wanted to be Hitler
Gas all the people
With clear skin
When I thought I was smart
I wanted to outsmart
Einstein
That was dumb
Now I’m forty
I just want to get paid
And laid

There’s a lot of talk
These days
About the previously
Dissed
Brothers and Sisters
You still getting dissed
That didn’t stop
Except for window dressing
And a few name changes
Not even that
Piet Retief is still
Piet Retief
And this poem is in English
Not exactly a language
You could call native

And what about the elections?
You can stand in a queue
All day every five years
But the land is still theirs
As for me brothers and sisters
I just want to get paid
And laid

Previously dissed
My point
That you might have missed
Is that amandla lost the plot
When democracy got the vote
Instead of nonkululeko
Nowadays it’s all the white folks
Going “Viva Nelson Mandela”
With their fists in the air
Yes indeed
There’s a lot of talk
These days
About the previously
Dissed

fuck you
and
your wayward
analogy
of
equality
we are
not
equal

that
sequel
left in
the
red
charge
over
that
there
hill
of lies
and
deceit

i.

De kip is bijna klaar
Het is waar
Alles mag niet meer
Geen fietsen a.u.b.

ii.

Daar zaten wij te etteren
Kutzooi allemaal
En toch
Lang niet
zo slecht eigenlijk

iii.

Wat hebben wij het goed
Waren we maar gelukkig

iv.

Pleepapier after party
Helemaal goed
Super te gek

v.

Gemakzucht
suf getraind
Van natuur
dat men
dat vindt
Daar ga je
de mist in. Het
was of zo of niet
Het staat je best leuk
Stijfkoppigheid. Ik ben
vormgever, Schat patat
Heus wel
Terwijl ik
daaro
In Pik
stilte zat
Veranderde
mijn Huppelkutje
geleidelijk In een darteldoos

vi.

Iedereen maakt zich druk om kinderarbeid
En volwassenarbeid dan?

vii.

Wat hadden wij het goed toen
Ik las De Groene
Jij keek naar Studio Sport

viii.

Zo had ik het niet bedoeld
Lieve mensen
De bar is gesloten
Tot de volgende oorlog

To give good advice is to disdain the faculty of erring that God gave to others. Not only that, we should be glad that other people don’t act like us. It makes sense only to ask for advice from others, so that we can be sure - by doing just the opposite - that we are totally ourselves, in complete disagreement with all Otherness.

fernando pessoa
the book of disquiet

Our personalities should be inscrutable, even to ourselves. That’s why we should always dream, making sure that we’re included in our dreams so that we won’t be able to have opinions about ourselves.

And we should especially protect our personality against being invaded by others. All outside interest in us is a flagrant disrespect. What saves the banal greeting ‘How are you?’ from being an inexcusable vulgarity is the fact that it’s usually completely empty and insincere.

fernando pessoa
the book of disquiet

Door Jente Posthuma

Tara Elders (29) is actrice en speelt zichzelf in de speelfilm Winterland van Dick Tuinder.
Aanstaande dinsdag gaat de film in première op het Film Festival in Utrecht.

„Tara Elders is een echte glamouractrice, maar ook een gewoon meisje”, zegt filmmaker en beeldend kunstenaar Dick Tuinder. In zijn atelier laat hij de eerste beelden uit zijn speelfilmdebuut Winterland zien, ‘een mix van live-action, animatie, film-in-een-film en film-over-film’, aldus de regisseur. In het droomachtige Winterland, ergens op het kruispunt van werkelijkheid en fictie, ontmoeten zijn twee muzen elkaar: de actrice Tara Elders (29) en het virtuele meisje Sally Dewinter (ongeveer 9), een door Dick Tuinder geschapen personage dat figureerde in zijn tekeningen en in twee korte films. De rol van Sally Dewinter wordt vertolkt door Kiriko Mechanicus, Tara Elders speelt zichzelf: een actrice op de set van Dick Tuinder (die ook zichzelf speelt). „Ze doet alles met grote subtiliteit en gemak in haar spel”, zegt hij. „Net als bij Sally wordt alles vanzelfsprekend zodra zij het beeld instapt.”

De volgende dag weet ik niet goed met wie ik heb afgesproken: de echte glamouractrice of het gewone meisje. Tot ze het café binnenkomt. Ze heeft hard gefietst om op tijd te zijn. „Het was weer zo’n haastochtend”, zegt ze. Even later biedt ze me een hapje van haar tosti aan.

Volgens Dick Tuinder ben je zowel een echte glamouractrice als een gewoon persoon en wordt alles vanzelfsprekend zodra jij in beeld stapt.
„Goh.”

Wist je dat niet?
„Nee. Tegen mij zei hij dat hij me vooral ziet als ‘Tara Elders, de actrice’, want zo heeft hij me leren kennen. Later zei hij: ‘Eigenlijk ben je helemaal geen actrice, je bent meer een soort aanwezigheid.’ Dus ja.”
Ik las dat de film Winterland een eerbetoon aan Tara Elders is.
„Dat schreef Dana Linssen van NRC Handelsblad na een bezoekje op de set. Datzelfde weekeinde schreef Dick een extra scène waarin ik zeg dat ik uit de krant moet vernemen dat de film een eerbetoon is aan mij. En dat ik me afvraag of dat wel waar is.”

Beschouw je de film niet als een eerbetoon aan jezelf?
„Nee, helemaal niet. Ik vind dat Dick dat in die scène heel goed geschetst heeft.”

In diezelfde scène zeg je ook dat je steeds meer het gevoel krijgt dat de film eigenlijk een eerbetoon aan Dick Tuinder zelf is.
„Precies. Winterland is een wandeling door het hoofd van Dick Tuinder, waarin al zijn ideeën, tekeningen en personages tot leven komen. Totaal surreëel, en ook ontzettend grappig. Ik speel ‘Tara Elders’, een nogal bitchy tutje, zogenaamd een typische steractrice. Ik vind het leuk om daar de spot mee te drijven, mezelf er slechter vanaf te brengen dan goed voor me is.”

Want je bent niet zo?
„Nee, ik ben niet zo’n diva hoor. Voor de eerste opnamedag van een film ben ik altijd heel zenuwachtig. Dat hoort er gewoon bij voor mij, ook omdat ik het prettig vind om intuïtief te acteren en emoties echt te voelen. Toch denk ik er de laatste tijd wel over na dat ik die emoties niet alleen maar over mezelf moet laten gaan. Ik ben niet de enige die een film tot de verbeelding laat spreken. Dat doet een cameraman, dat doet het geluid, de montage, de muziek achteraf. En als je je daarvan bewust bent, weet je ook wanneer je zelf wat meer moet geven en wanneer je een ander het werk kunt laten doen. Niet om mezelf de moeite te besparen, maar uit respect voor het medium, en iedereen die daar een bijdrage aan levert.”

Ben je je met de jaren zekerder gaan voelen?
„Ik denk juist dat mijn onzekerheid gegroeid is. Niet zozeer op de set, maar wel daarbuiten. Als je bekend bent, is het alsof er elke dag een groep mensen met je meegaat naar je werk om je te beoordelen. Hoe erg ik ook probeer het niet binnen te laten komen, ik ben me er wel van bewust dat ik word bekeken. Er zijn sowieso in de dagelijkse omgang weinig grenzen meer. Toen ik zwanger was, werd me overal gevraagd in interviews, maar ook gewoon bij de slager: was het gepland? Dat vráág je toch niet? Die schaamteloosheid vind ik heel interessant.”

Niet alleen je spel, maar ook je succes lijkt vanzelfsprekend. Je had al vroeg grote rollen, was ‘de muze van Theo van Gogh’. Alsof het je allemaal kwam aanwaaien.
„Ik heb altijd hard gewerkt wanneer dat nodig was, maar ik ben niet heel ambitieus. Misschien dat je dat bedoelt. Je moet het ook niet te graag willen, denk ik. Vanaf het begin ben ik heel selectief geweest in mijn keuze voor films en interviews. Ik moet soms zo lachen om mensen die keihard werken en maar rondrennen en dan in dat heel drukke schema één uur inplannen omdat ze yoga moeten doen voor de ontspanning!”

Dat doe jij niet?
„Ik sla dan liever dat uurtje yoga over en probeer voor de rest alles met een gezond, maar niet dodelijk relativeringsvermogen te zien. Dat klinkt alsof een carrière me niets uitmaakt, maar dat is absoluut niet waar. Ik kan ongelooflijk van mijn werk genieten.”

Regisseurs spelen daarin een grote rol.
„Ja, ik vind het belangrijk dat er wederzijds begrip is en dat ik het goed vind wat hij of zij wil vertellen. Dat maakt het voor mij aantrekkelijk om mee te denken. Al mislukt een film ten dele, het gaat om de poging, vind ik. Het gaat om al die dagen op de set. Ik ben blij als het resultaat ook geslaagd is, maar zo niet, dan niet. Dan heb ik wel een paar maanden of weken op een set doorgebracht met mensen met wie ik echt contact heb, met wie ik goede gesprekken kan voeren en die me inspireren. Dat vind ik goed leven.”

Daar doe je het voor?
„Nou, nog belangrijker vind ik de tijd die ik met mijn gezin en beste vrienden doorbreng. En dan gaat het niet om die stomme ‘qualitytime’ waar iedereen het over heeft. Het gaat gewoon om tijd, veel tijd met elkaar. Een uur per week is niet genoeg. Ik kies ervoor om afhankelijk van anderen te zijn en vind het heerlijk om me daaraan over te geven. Op een ander vertrouwen, dat is ook een nastrevenswaardig doel bij de regisseurs met wie ik werk: ik sta er voor hen, niet voor mezelf of voor het publiek.”

Een jaar na de dood van jouw regisseur Theo van Gogh overleed je moeder aan kanker. Jullie waren heel hecht.
„Mijn moeder was mijn grote zekerheid, zowel privé als in mijn werk. Ik besprak alles met haar. Tijdens haar ziekbed en na haar overlijden ontdekte ik een kracht in mezelf die er al zat, maar die ik nog nooit had hoeven aanspreken. Toen voelde ik dat ik het alleen ook allemaal wel aan kan. Tegelijkertijd heeft haar dood me juist meer op mijn naasten teruggeworpen, op mijn man [Michiel Huisman, red.]. Ik denk dat ik op dat moment juist gemakkelijker kon accepteren dat iemand anders voor mij zou zorgen. Het is heel bevrijdend om de controle uit handen te kunnen geven. En ik vind het mooi als je ondanks een groot verlies, niet bang wordt om iemand toe te laten. Dat je jezelf meteen weer kwetsbaar kunt maken.”

this interview first published here

michelle son and abraxas caelan kaganof, cape town, 16/09/09

Michael Blake

Two circumstances led to the composition of my first piano sonata. The more recent one was a request from Daan Vandewalle (who I first met four years ago in Bratislava) to compose a virtuoso piano sonata for him - about 15 minutes duration. He had given me his remarkable CD recording of the Ives Concord Sonata and so I needed little convincing; I knew at once that this would be my opportunity finally to pay homage to the Ives, a piece I first got to know more than thirty years ago.

The other circumstance went back further, to a lecture-recital I gave in Buenos Aires in 2001 (around 9/11). I wanted to present a programme of South African piano music spanning both the length of the country and the depth of the 20th century, but inevitably ran into problems seeking out repertoire by so-called black composers. That’s when I hit on the idea of making some transcriptions of choral pieces for piano solo, specifically pieces by Michael Moerane (“Ruri”) and Reuben Caluza (“Umantindane”).

I always intended to make further transcriptions, and I remembered this when I was thinking about writing a piano sonata for Daan Vandewalle. Eventually I decided on a ‘double’ homage (two for the price of one): pianistically to the Concord, materially to the choral composers, and conceptually to both. I consider the Ives work to be one of the pillars, if not the pillar, of the 20th century piano repertoire. It continues to inspire composers, challenge performers and affect listeners.

I tried to forge a parallel between the monumentalism of the Ives work and the enormous breadth of the so-called African choral tradition and the composers themselves, especially those composers who lived and worked in the earlier 20th century. These were the pillars of the Southern African choral tradition, our Palestrinas, Lassos, Tallis’s and Byrds.

Like Ives I wanted to have a four-movement structure, but ended up with three: two substantial outer movements, and a very short central movement, all quite unrelenting. The first movement pays homage to Michael Moerane and quotes his song Ruri (“Truly”) somewhat obliquely, the second to Reuben Caluza, quoting distorted fragments of his ragtime song Umantindane (“Tokoloshe”), while the third is a homage – in his centenary year - to Joshua Mohapeloa and takes his song Senqu (“Orange River “) as a theme for variation.

The first movement is permeated throughout by variants of the figure – a pair of chords - with which it opens, rhythmically varied and extended over the course of the movement, but with the pitches more or less unchanged. This material is intercut with passages of high or low bell sounds, a lyrical melody with a very jittery accompaniment, and so on. Both Moerane’s Ruri and fragments of Ives’s Concord Sonata are quoted and/or paraphrased.

The second movement takes two elements from Ives’s Concord - extensive use of clusters and the quasi-‘deconstruction’ of ragtime - and applies these to Caluza’s piece. The reminiscence of Nancarrow’s set of so-called ‘boogie-woogie’ etudes for player piano (No 3) is also intentional, and the quotation here even extends to the first piece I wrote for Daan Vandewalle in 2004. Their souls go waltzing on paid homage to both Ives (“Three Page Sonata”) and Schoenberg (“Five Piano Pieces Op 23”), a specific request from the 2004 edition of ‘Evenings of New Music’ in Bratislava -involving some 40 composers.

As far as we know Caluza and Ives never met, and I don’t know if Caluza ever heard anything by Ives while he was studying in America at Hampton University, but I like to think of this movement as something of an imaginary exchange (or perhaps a collision) between the two men.

The third movement follows a very particular scenario, the result of two important circumstances. The first was becoming acquainted with Senqu, a piece of Mohapeloa’s that I did not know. Particularly unusual was the rarely used 9/8 metre – rarely used in Southern African choral music that is. The second was a visit to his sparsely furnished, and sadly crumbling, former home in Morija. One of the few remaining items on his bookshelf was a vocal score of Lucia di Lammermoor. With Kagelian fervour I pressed these circumstances into service and contemplated the possibility that Mohapeloa might have attended opera performances during his period of study with Percival Kirby in Johannesburg during the late 1930s and early 1940s, with the possible result that he may well have become the great Southern African opera composer we have never had.

Senqu and other choral compositions by Mohapeloa intimate the possibilities of an operatic language and so in my third movement I used fragments of Senqu as scene-setting, and then having presented the theme, I composed an operatic fantasy on that theme. I worked backwards from the 21st to the 19th century, culminating in a paraphrase on Liszt’s Reminiscences of Lucia di Lammermoor, with the accompaniment closely modelled on Liszt’s.

At two structural points in the music I used, as connective tissue, two further pieces of material - both with riverine connections: Ives’s setting of At the River and Rzewski’s Ives-inspired Down by the Riverside (one of his “Four North American Ballads”) based on the popular song of the same name. As a final tour-de-force I combined the theme of Senqu with the melody of At the River in something of a Lisztian apotheosis, and left Liszt (the world of the late piano pieces now) and Busoni (his “Sonatina No 6: Fantasy on Carmen”) to pose more questions – unanswered - in the coda.

In 2009 I returned to the idea of a four-movement structure. There seemed to be a need for a slow, more reflective movement after the crazy second and before the wild fourth.
(To be continued…)

Originally given as part of a joint colloquium with Christine Lucia at University of KwaZulu-Natal Durban in August 2008.

It’s that time of year again! NewMusicSA, local branch of the International Society of Contemporary Music (ISCM), are gearing up for their 10th annual Music Indaba. Expect a feast of classical musics spanning different eras and cultures; with a special focus on contemporary forms, experimentation, and combining new South African musicians & compositions with renowned modern composers and international ensembles.

Central to NewMusicSA’s annual Indabas, is to explore meeting points and possible fusions between African musical forms and traditionally European classical structures, and to celebrate and nurture young South African composers - whilst affording them the opportunity to engage with established international performers and composers. We, the audience, are invited to glimpse these unique musical meetings; and to experience the thrill as musical ideas across the spectrum meet and combine to create something new, and get experienced live for the first time. A treasured aspect of the Music Indabas is their workshops: Here the audience gets to experience the behind-the-scenes processes of composition, arranging, and performance; while upcoming composers get to interact with international performers on different aspects of their work - at once a sharing of ideas, and fantastic learning opportunity for the young composers.

This year’s Indaba, which is to take place 1-4 October at Unisa’s main, and Sunnyside campuses, will feature local composers-in-residence Jurgen Brauninger and Hannes Taljaard. Performers will include internationally celebrated SA pianist Jill Richards; The Chamber Choir of South Africa, which has shared the stage with the likes of Sibongile Khumalo, Jonas Gwangwa and Johnny Mokoa; the Chamber Music Company, who have been called one of the most innovative and imaginative groups in the UK, and more.
Indaba 2009 will include concert programmes celebrating local great Kevin Volans’ 60th birthday; as well as a commemoration of the 200th anniversary of Haydn’s death; the music of avant-garde Tango legend Astor Piazzolla, and experimental pioneer Shostakovich will also be showcased. This in addition to their ‘Growing Composers’ programme, which will present works by emerging composers, exposing audiences to some of the latest music by the latest names in contemporary Classical music!

For reasons unknown, these wonderful annual festivals of musical excellence & exploration are not advertised with appropriate fanfare, making the Indabas something of a well-kept secret: Be sure to drop in for something unique and sonically invigorating. All lovers of Classical, Jazz, and World musics take note!

For more information and updates, visit www.newmusicsa.org.za and click on EVENTS

[First to find page-embrace in the upcoming edition of Rootz Africa magazine]

reviewed By Mike Everleth ⋅ September 23, 2009

Civilization and Other Chimeras

The world is littered with movie “making of” documentaries. Oh, we may not consider those self-serving promotional DVD “bonus” features where filmmakers discuss their process the way a cheesemaker may wax eloquently about the way they make cheese as “documentaries,” but in their own way they are. Some may even exhibit some artistic creativity in and of themselves.

But South African filmmaker Aryan Kaganof elevates the “making of” documentary to a brilliant piece of artistry in his Civilization and Other Chimeras Observed During the Making of an Exceptionally Artistic Feature Film. However, a bit of a correction, as labeling Civilization and Other Chimeras as simply a “making of” doc is very misleading. What’s really happening here is Kaganof has taken the occasion of the making of a particular film to ruminate on the very nature of reality and to push the paradoxical idea of “Even if an action is recorded on camera, did it really happen?”

Kaganof sets up his premise with an on-screen quote from the post-modern French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, which says in its entirety:

There are two-way mirrors which allow you innocently to spy on people. This is one of the finest metaphors for consciousness. There is no two-way screen because there is nothing to see on the other side of the screen, nothing to see without being seen.

The Baudrillard quote also pops up repeatedly throughout the film. Someone — and we can assume Kaganof — has written the quote on a mirror hung on the wall of the film set’s make-up room. Kaganof films various crew and cast members reading the quote, but the only person it really seems to stick with is a young pre-teen actress, Kiriko Mechanicus, who seems to view the quote as a puzzle she needs to solve.

Mechanicus is the star of the “exceptionally artistic film” whose production Kaganof is documenting. Called Winterland, it is the directorial debut of fine artist Dick Tuinder. The centerpiece image of Winterland is of Mechanicus as her character, Sally DeWinter, riding a giant eyeball balloon. If the young actress could only see an image of an audience watching her watching the giant eyeball watching her, she might actually solve that puzzle she’s so desperately trying to figure out.

Baudrillard’s screen metaphor gets a physical workout through Tuinder’s directing style. When scenes of Winterland are being shot, Tuinder sits back watching the action on a playback monitor rather than watch the live action happening just a few feet from him. The actual scenes being performed are so close to the monitor that Kaganof is able to capture both the live performance and it’s immediate playback on Tuinder’s screen.

The effect of being an audience member watching a screen filled with another man watching a screen of simultaneous action that we can also see happening is an extremely disconcerting one. It makes that audience member question where does reality actually lie? The acting of the scene in Winterland is completely irrelevant unless it’s being captured by a camera. Yet, Tuinder acting as a director is also being captured by a camera. So, if Kaganof wasn’t filming Tuinder, would Tuinder’s directing being similarly irrelevant? And who is watching the audience watching Tuinder watching the acting? If nobody is watching somebody watching Civilization and Other Chimeras, does Kaganof’s documentary actually exist?

It’s tough to point out anything that’s real in the documentary. First of all, there’s never any discussion of what Winterland is about and the scenes we see being shot don’t offer any clues as to what the plot may be. Plus, many of the actors we never see outside of their costumes so that most of them don’t seem like real people, just characters living inside some hazy dream. Even Tuinder’s role as director becomes suspect as it slowly becomes clear that he has cast himself as a character in his own film. Where Tuinder the director stops and Tuinder the character begins — and vice versa — is unknown.

The “making of” documentary typically follows fairly rigid structural and formal conventions. For Civilization and Other Chimeras, Aryan Kaganof has completely subverted those conventions to concoct a real challenging mind-bender of a film that intriguingly weaves together layers upon layers of conundrums, paradoxes and mysteries.

this review first appeared on badlit.com

world premiere is on 29 september during the netherlands film festival in utrecht. more information here

…

Some die as soon as they die, while others live on for a time in the memory of those who knew and loved them; others survive in the memory of the nation that bore them; still others enter into the memory of the civilization they were part of; and some very few are able to span the contrary tendencies of differing civilization. But all of us are surrounded by the abyss of time, in which we will ultimately vanish; the hunger of the abyss will swallow us all….

Durability is just a wish, and eternity an illusion.

Death is what we are and what we live. We are born dead, we deadly exist, and we are already dead when we enter Death.

Whatever lives, lives because it changes; it changes because it passes; and, because it passes, it dies. Whatever lives is constantly transforming into something else - it continually denies itself, it perpetually evades life.

Life is thus an interval, a link, a relation, but a relation between what has passed and what will pass, a dead interval between Death and Death.

…

fernando pessoa
the book of disquiet

…

Every thought is debased when expressed in words, which transform the thought into the property of others, making it understandable to anyone who can understand it.

…

fernando pessoa
the book of disquiet

read holli holdsworth’s blog article about these ghanaian movie posters here