kagablog

On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 11:39 PM, Aryan Kaganof wrote:

hi julia
sean asked me to write a review of sing into my mouth for artsouthafrica
would you be able to answer a couple of questions for me?
best wishes
aryan kaganof

julia rosa clark wrote:
> Hello
>
> Of course I would be happy to answer your questions. Would you like to meet? Or email?
>

> Julia

On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 10:55 PM, Aryan Kaganof wrote:

hi julia
sorry i have taken so long to respond, mad busy here

first question

you mentioned that you don’t think hierarchically - “I like to think rhizomatically”

do you mean in the deleuzian sense?

and if so, how has mille plateaux impacted on your curating practice?

best wishes
aryan

julia rosa clark wrote:
> Hi
>
> oi sorry been marking Michaelis exams, bit snowed under.
>
> Of course I DO think hierarchically (probably more often than I realise, or care to admit)!

hi julia
this came in at the perfect moment! thanks!!
so
does this mean that deleuze has NOT been influential in your thinking about curating?

julia rosa clark wrote:
> god sorry sent as i was meant to save!
> i am REALLY tired: was with students til 7 tonight. aaaw.
>
> I have not read A Thousand Plateaus (do want to) but have read around both Deleuze and Guattari, and have been influence by the trickle down effect of their ideas on other writings, artworks and projects that have interested me over the past seven years or so.
>
> I am interested in analogous ways of understanding process, and I spose I used the word “rhizome” intuitvly to offer an alternate way of describing an A to B approach. A “net” or other woven image didn’t seem quite right, where as a rhizome offers the idea of paralell threads or many a to b’s from a unified base.
>
> So I would say that there is an important but oblique Deleuzian undertow to the way I work, but I am not responding to his work directly.
>
> Let me know if you have more questions or need images. I haven’t had a moment to process them yet, but we did manage to document it quite thoroughly before taking the show down.
>
> apologise about the lag…
>
> ciao
> J

you mentioned that it was morrissey’s birthday

were/are the smiths important for you?

and you spoke about the nepotistic tendency being one of the subjects of the show - was this a conscious foregrounding of nepotism as a thematic? or was it an unconscious byproduct of the nepotism itself?

Aryan Kaganof occupies a unique position on the South African art landscape. A prolific producer of poetry, novels, films and fine art, he is certainly capable of producing moments of profound intensity and transcendent beauty. Kaganof’s real artistic product is not his work but his self: the notion of Kaganof as the artist, the writer, the performer, the grand entertainer, always bending into the arc of fiction. I see him as raconteur-as-artist, and on occasion, also as ringmaster, for he certainly does like a circus; he has exactly that kind of slightly dark charisma. Kaganof’s utter refusal to rein things in – to exercise intellectual control – might be the key to his art. Much of his work exists as a critique of the offensiveness of the real world and all its vile imbalances.

Peter Machen
Artthrob

1. How important is it to understand the three act classical structure?

Hugely important if you are writing a three act classically structured piece.

2. What are the advantages of this understanding?

One is able to replicate the clichés and appear brilliant to other mediocre minds (of which there are many).

3. Many script teachers emphasize that one cannot break the rules without knowing the three act structure, what are your views and when does experimentation become necessary?

A film is not a building, it won’t fall apart if the foundations aren’t laid properly. Therefore one approaches its construction with entirely different principles.

4. What do you think are the important aspects about directors like Fellini and Godard that breaks with the ‘traditional classical script structure/film?

Neither of these directors break much with traditional narrative structures. Their films are intimately related to the so-called classical conventions and would not work without a knowledge of those conventions that are being ostensibly “broken with”. If you are looking for film makers who really did break away from the so-called classical structures then you should try Sergei Paradjanov, Isidore Issou and Guy Debord.

5. Do you think that the Hero with a Thousand Faces (if you have read the book) can translate into a more experimental film?

Joseph Campbell is being filmed and re-filmed unconsciously, in the collective subconscious of most movies being made. His is the meta-movie constantly being mashed up and remixed in our universal brain.

6. When do script/films become boring and why do you think this is?

After about 5 minutes.
Because they are all the same.

7. If you look at Hollywood there is a particular style, the same with Bollywood. Do you think that SA can develop its own unique style and what would this be?

Claire Angelique has developed her own unique film style in “MY BLACK LITTLE HEART”. That is an example of how to do it. But there isn’t only one film style possible in South Africa. There are many. In order for a truly authentic film style to develop in this country we would need to be able to have film students study film in their indigenous languages. Until that happens all our cinema is colonized.

8. Who are some of writers you admire and why and how do their scripts translate into film?

Jean Claude Carriere
Tonino Guerra

I was very moved by Tonino’s speech that he gave in Rimini on the occasion of Fellini’s death. He described how he used to write for Fellini, always in the kitchen while both of them were cooking. He described how he never ever did a re-write of a script, “Re-writing is for those writers who lack talent.”

tonino guerra

At the Friday following (4 March), internationally acclaimed South African film-maker, artist and writer, Aryan Kaganof, gave a stimulating lecture on the genealogy of the “digital underground” illustrated with screenings of influential short films including ANTINOOS by Dionysos Andronis – Greece (1991); SUBSTITUTION No.4 by Kiki Picasso - France (2002); and POEMS THAT SHOOT by Catherine Henegan - South Africa (2004).

Kaganof concluded his presentation by showing his award winning documentary WESTERN 4.33. The documentary investigates the German concentration camps in Namibia where the indigenous Herero population were massacred in the early part of the 20th Century. Soundtrack includes music by Lamonte Young, John Cage, Friedrich Nietzsche, Macy Gray, Jesus Rodriguez and South Africa’s own extreme noise terror outfit, Virgins.

more info here

it’s the sounds of shots that make them look good

aryan kaganof

This short film by Kaganof was made in November 2008 during the three-day seminar of the same name at the University of Malmo from 2nd – 4th November. Compared with earlier works in his filmography, this one is very different. It is also slightly ironic. This hint of irony also makes it different. It is gentle and discreet and becomes especially obvious at the end of film when the director appears in front of the camera, giving us an “optimistic” thumbs’ up. Michael Blake’s music is just as gentle and sporadic as the resulting irony. This backs up a poem by the director which appeared a few days later on the KagaBlog – “most academics aren’t intellectuals, they’re intellect managers” (see “How I died (again)” of 15th December 2008).

Among the academics attending the seminar we can make out Anne-Marie Duguet, Lajos Varhegyi, Michael Heim, Dick Hebdige and various others. They are all turning towards the camera at the start of the film before leaving the scene to Kaganof. Nobody cites their names, either during the film or in the credits! We’d met Anne-Marie Duguet at the Parisian festival “Astarti” in 1998. She is professor at the Sorbonne and specialises in video art. She also directs the wonderful theoretical series “Anarchives”, whose ambiguous title achieves its aim. This same ambiguity characterises most of Kaganof’s creations. The American Michael Heim is also a composer and the nature and quality of his art (like that of our aforementioned idol) could take the seminar in a new direction. The most famous professor at the seminar had to be Dick Hebdige, an Englishman working the States. He is also the darling (among others) of the hugely influential Palais de Tokyo in Paris, which has made reference to his writing several times. “He is particularly interested in the white working class and its subcultures in relation to music, from teddy boys to mods, from rockers to punks and skinheads” (in “Palais” N° 7, Paris, Autumn 2008, page 90). His incredibly famous work “Subculture: The Meaning of Style” has just been translated into French for the first time – an inadmissible thirty years after it appeared in English. “The translated version of the text, now available from publishers La Découverte, enables us to assess, thirty years late, the decompartmentalisation of cultural studies’ disciplines, from which France has distanced itself for such a long time” (Gallien Dejean, in “Zéro Deux” (Nantes), N°49, Spring 2009, page 35).

To return to our argument at the start on Kaganovian irony, which has a new socio-political dimension this time, let us quote once again from the poem “How I died (again)”, inspired by this encounter:
“i can’t
be the only one
who’s onto what an
extraordinary waste of
time and energy this gathering
is?”

The film “New Media Politics – Experiment number 1” is not only available on the famous KagaBlog, but also on You Tube.

Written by Dionysos Andronis, translated by Lucy Lyall Grant

listen here

this interview first published on www.kopenhagen.dk

neo muyanga and ayanda

athi mongezeleli joja and aryan kaganof


neo muyanga

rosemary lombard

mogale

athi mongezeleli joja and aryan kaganof

athi mongezeleli joja and aryan kaganof

genna gardini and ayanda

mogale

athi mongezeleli joja and aryan kaganof

garth erasmus

garth erasmus and aryan kaganof

mogale

neo muyanga

this interview was first published on mooks.com

‘As little as we can be declared clear of every coercion in the world, so little can our writing be withdrawn from it. But as free as we are, so free we can make it too.’
MAX STIRNER, The Ego and Its Own

Bo Cavefors isn’t doing dogma.
Bo Cavefors isn’t doing politics.
Bo Cavefors isn’t doing what’s expected of him.
Bo Cavefors isn’t trying to attract converts.
Bo Cavefors hasn’t got a plan.
Bo Cavefors will not repeat himself.
Bo Cavefors has seen through what the spectacle has to offer.
Bo Cavefors was there, on the frontline.
Bo Cavefors is always on time.
Bo Cavefors is a distinguished Swedish gentleman, even with your dick in his mouth, your finger up his arse.
If your finger is up his arse it’s because he wants it there.
If your dick is in his mouth it’s because he loves sucking dicks.
Bo Cavefors is a child.
Bo Cavefors is that polymorphously perverse creature we read about in Semiotexte.
But Bo Cavefors isn’t limited in his imaginings by motley post-anything theories.
Bo Cavefors is an electric current - he’s charged.
He charges.
When he walks into a room his blue eyes see immediately what’s valuable, what has worth.
Bo Cavefors does not waste his time.
He’s to the point.

The point is

Cavefors lives his life.

Cavefors is alive.

And this is radical and threatening in these dead times.

But it’s wrong to describe Bo Cavefors’ status as “marginalized”.

It’s the anodyne, neutered culture around him that is marginal.

Bo Cavefors is centre stage, he’s the real mainstream.

“Je n’ peux rien” dit le scorpion. “C’est mon caractere.”

Freedom liberates (perversely).

Aryan Kaganof
12 October 2009

by kind invitation of rob schroder i will be giving a guest lecture at the sandberg institute on the subjects of autonomy and bankruptcy. these are both subjects that i know a lot about. all welcome.

aryan kaganof

sandberg.nl

Stephen Gray, in his review of “Who was Sinclair Beiles”, (Mail & Guardian, 07/09/09) implies that Sinclair was “some sort of impostor? A scam?” Gray’s egregious insinuation is further developed in the article: “In the classic accounts of the period, James Campbell’s The Beat Generation and Barry Miles’s The Beat Hotel, “our boy” merits only a footnote or two, and no listing of his works, if there were any, in the bibliographies.”

In fact Sinclair Beiles was co-author, along with William Burroughs, Brion Gysin and Gregory Corso of the hugely influential “Minutes To Go”, published by Two Cities Editions. Here is some information about this book by Jed Birmingham of Reality Studio: “One book in my collection highlights the important role of the independent bookshop in Burroughs’ social and creative life. Kaddish, Naked Lunch, Soft Machine, and Bomb were all written in part at the Beat Hotel, but the book that most captures the spirit of 9 rue Git-le-Coeur is Minutes To Go. In his editor’s note to Brion Gysin Let the Mice In, Jan Herman describes the Beat Hotel atmosphere as like a “laboratory,” and Minutes To Go is certainly the most representative result of those experiments in lifestyle and literary technique.

I want to focus on the community of bookstores involved with this cut-up collection. In fact independent bookstores made Minutes to Go a pubished reality. Minutes to Go was issued by Two Cities in 1000 copies on April 13, 1960. A limited edition of ten copies included a manuscript page. This reminds me of the limited edition for the C Press Time. I have never seen the limited Time or Minutes to Go for sale on the rare book market. The John Hay Library at Brown possesses a copy of the Minutes to Go and displayed it prominently at their Burroughs exhibition years ago.

Two Cities was a bilingual (French and English) magazine edited by Jean Fanchette, a young doctor. Fanchette published expats like Henry Miller, Alfred Perles, and Lawrence Durrell. The first issue was dedicated to Durrell. Years later, the correspondence between Fanchette and Durrell from this period would be published by Two Cities as well. Anaïs Nin was a correspondent for the magazine. With Gysin designing the covers, Fanchette fashioned Minutes to Go to mirror the magazine.”

“Minutes To Go” is a legendary text; a bible of avant-garde literary cut-up technique. Kathy Acker, J.G. Ballard, Lesego Rampolokeng, Paul Wessels, the list of writers influenced by this work could go on and on… Furthermore the book has exerted influence on a wide range of industrial culture outside of literature, most notably cinema (Peter Whitehead, Derek Jarman, Bruce Conner etc) and music (John Zorn, Throbbing Gristle, Einsturzende Neubauten, Henry Cow, etc). It would not be hyperbolic to describe the entire digital sampling culture of today as being prefigured in this Ur-text of experimentation.

Perhaps Stephen Gray is unaware of these trends and tendencies in the culture of the last fifty years? Then he shouldn’t be exposing his ignorance in the Mail & Guardian. He describes Sinclair Beiles as a “demented con man” but in fact it is Stephen Gray who is the con man, pretending to be a literary connoisseur whilst in fact writing well shy of the facts. Shameful

Aryan Kaganof
14 October 2009

ps. Sinclair Beiles was also the editor of William Burroughs’ “The Naked Lunch”, he organised a lot of the book into its published sequence, even re-typed many of the pages for Burroughs. This is information that can be found in various biographical resources and interviews with Burroughs. The imputation that Gray makes in his scabrous article, namely that Beiles invented, lied about, or exaggerated these facts, is simply disgusting.

short films (under 30min)

as african noise foundation