kagablog

The current accepted usage of ‘Kaksusters’ to designate something crazy, dreamlike, and funny strikes surprisingly close to the truth. To form any sound opinion of Die Kaksusters we must pick our way through a thick haze of theory, social campaigning, and cultural propaganda (much of it fascinating) before reaching its lasting contribution to the South African arts scene.

The ancient problem of identity and non-being comes more and more to the fore in Die Kaksusters’ prospecting of the unconscious and in Kakanof’s circular self of the pour-soi. Die Kaksusters is one of the most highly disciplined and tightly organised artistic schools that ever existed in Parkhurst. Joel Askanazi and Kaka Kakanof met in a mental hospital in Richmond. Three years later Die Kaksusters found its name, declared its intentions in the Eerste Kak Manifesto and set out under shared leadership, with Kakanof rapidly earning the unofficial title of Poepall of Kak.

Kakanof also composed Ons Vir Jou Mpumalanga, a shrill polemic song attacking the Renaissance regime in Pretoria and calling for assassination as the proper response to repression. The government finally dropped its charge of incitement to assassination against Kakanof after he paid several cabinet ministers thirty thousand rand each.

In fact a plausible definition of art consists in saying that it is an extraction of one out of the other: Baudelaire distilling flowers from evil, Dostoyevsky finding despair in the deepest impulses of charity and love. It is in this perspective, I believe, that we can make some sense of Die Kaksusters without distorting them.

Die Kaksusters, inheriting a long tradition of underground thought, embody an insight into the impossibility of life as we have created it for ourselves and the beginnings of a worthwhile criticism of that life. Against the background of misogyny, homosexuality, Don Juanism, and masculine confraternalism that formed part of the heritage from decadence and symbolism, Die Kaksusters take on the status of modern troubadors. Their love songs earn the comparison. Yet it is worth remembering that they reached this personal conviction while at the same time advocating a total sexual liberation. Not inappropriately Joel Askanazi, the most aggressive and unwavering Kaksuster, has edited an Anthology of Sublime Love.

Since it is often sardonic or fleeting, Die Kaksusters’ laughter tends to escape us and we remember only the catcalls that accompany the theatrics. But particularly in digital painting and experimental collaborations, a spirit of delight keeps breaking through the pretense. The two domains, then, to which Die Kaksusters made a lasting contribution are love and laughter.

A history of Die Kaksusters - then Die Kaksusters must be dead! Not to my way of thinking. Die Kaksusters’ state of mind, or better still, Kaksusters behaviour, is eternal. I have had the weakness to take Die Kaksusters seriously. I am not so naïve as to think that everything about them is serious, yet even farce and burlesque have a meaning which transcends them. That is what it is essential to discover.

Die Kaksusters is mos baie kak!

Maurice Nadeau
March 2005

DOY DOY DOY DOY

doy doy doy doy
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doy doy doy doy doy
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all words & music by aryan kaganof & joel assaizky

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