kagablog

November 17, 2009

By Atiyyah Khan

When I interview Aryan Kaganof, I try my best to avoid mentioning that the first time I saw him perform he was naked, suspended from a rope, hanging upside down from the ceiling.

Known for pushing the boundaries as a filmmaker, director, poet, novelist, musician and blogger, Kaganof is thankfully not intimidating at all in person. Although he does suggest that we both stay quiet and rather telepathise the interview in a mind battle.

Kaganof is the architect behind a collaboration that brings together a collection of mind-bending artists in the upcoming Badilisha Poetry X-Change on November 27 and 28 at the Spier Estate. In Kiswahili, “Badilisha” is an expression denoting change, exchange and transformation.

The festival is curated by poet Malika Ndlovu and arts manager Lorelle Viegi.

Kaganof will present his African Noise Foundation, consisting of an explosive line-up of Warrick Sony (Kalahari Surfers), musician and composer Zim Ngqawana, legendary Uhadi bow player Mantombi Matotiyana and Xhosa singer David Mayekane.

“Noise,” he explains, ” is a sign of our culture. It’s everything that people in charge want you not to hear and not to see.” Together the collective hopes to create a space of “healing alchemy”. He says that in putting this piece together, he feels “the second most excited since having a baby”.

Ngqawana, despite being highly revered in the music community, is scarcely seen performing in Cape Town.

“This country has a terrible history of neglecting its great jazz artists while they’re still alive,” says Kaganof. “And I think it’s insane that Zim isn’t playing constantly.”

Describing the musician as a “compositional genius and an improviser” he adds: “It’s a dream come true to put people like Zim and Warrick together because they’ve never worked together before.”

He tells me this story: “I first saw Warrick in Cape Town in 1978 at a club called Scratch (named after Lee “Scratch” Perry) that was one of the few non-racial clubs in the country. I was 15 at the time and he was playing in this band called The Happy Ships.”

Kaganof claims to have seen Sony playing the “scissors” and continues: “My whole aim was bringing him back to those kinds of acoustic instruments.”

Kaganof talks about non-racial clubs during the ’80s as a group of political partygoers all “dancing their way to freedom”.

“I’m still trying to dance my way to freedom,” he confesses.

About the project at the festival, he says: “We don’t want to set limits, everyone is coming in with absolute openness.” This is Kaganof’s way of bringing these hugely diverse artists together, in producing something that could possibly never be seen again.

The African Noise Foundation was originally started in 1999. “It is an umbrella and in that umbrella the personnel can always shift and change, but it’s a way of putting people together in ways that don’t fit within a genre. Putting these artists together was too important not to do.”

more info here

The build-up to Badilisha will include a series of workshops from November 24-26 at various venues in the city. Kaganof will present Lost For Words: Working in Collectives, which will aim to deconstruct poetic conventions and discuss language exhausted of meaning. The festival includes international performers Dorothea Smartt (UK), Warsan Shire (Somalia) and Ngoma Hill (US).

# Check out the Badilisha Poetry X-change on November 27 and 28 at the Spier Estate. Time: 7.30pm. Tel: 021 422 0468. Info: www.badilishapoetry.com

this article first published in tonight.co.za

this interview was first published on mooks.com

The Badilisha Poetry X-Change 2009 calendar of poetry exchanges and collaborations continues with a weekend of poetry performances at Spier.

Taking place at Spier’s beautiful and intimate Boma by the river, the local and international poets will weave their words into the night from 7:30pm on 27 and 28 November 2009.

About the poets

American performance poet and multi-instrumentalist, Ngoma Hill, shifts paradigms with work focusing on culture as a tool for socio-political consciousness. Having worked with Allen Ginsberg and Amiri Baraka, his credentials show that this critically-acclaimed artist packs a punch with his words and sound.

Dubbed a ‘Brit-born Bajan international’ by Caribbean literary icon, Kamau Braithwaite, Dorothea Smartt, is a poet and live artist who merges standard and Caribbean English through poetic form, speech rhythms, myth, history, observation and reflection.

2007 Poetry Slam Champion Warsan Shire is a London-based, Somali poet who uses her words as a conduit for the messages of the marginalised and misunderstood. Warsan has performed extensively in the UK and North America to rave reviews. This is her first appearance in Cape Town.

Prolific and provocative South African wordsmith and filmmaker, Aryan Kaganof, features in the eclectic African Noise Foundation, together with Zim Ngqawana - a composer in the Blue Note tradition, Mantombi Matotiyana (one of the last living traditional exponents of the Uhadi instrument), Warrick Sony (Kalahari Surfer) on acoustic instruments, and isiXhosa vocal improviser David Mayekane.

Badilisha Poetry Xchange Workshops

The local and international poets participating in The Badilisha Poetry X-Change will conduct a series of workshops and discussions during the week leading up to the performance weekend.

Discussions deal with a range of topics, including Poetry in Urban Spaces (presented by Ntone Edjabe in partnership with the Africa Centre for Cities), a discussion on issues facing refugee communities with Warsan Shire at the Scalibrini Centre for Refugees as well as a poetry in process dialogue with Dorothea Smartt, hosted by the UWC English Department.

The workshops focus on the intensification of poetry-writing skills. Ngoma Hill’s workshop focuses on the use of music in performance poetry, encouraging young artists to find original and inventive ways of expressing their own truths. Dorothea Smartt will explore place and environment as a metaphor for creative expression and Aryan Kaganof will work with a small multi-genred focus group.

‘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.

On September 30 PASS Live opens with a choral rendition of pioneering Chilean author, Fernando Alegria’s War Chorale composed by Bheki Khoza.

From October 1 - 4 2009, PASS II plays host to genre-busting music outfits from global Africa dedicated to exploring new musical territory.

The line-up features Kora maestro Toumani Diabate; Queen of Ndebele music, guitarist Nothembi Mkhwebane; 9-piece, Chicago-based jazz troubadours Hypnotic Brass Ensemble; Cameroonian funk-master Franck Biyong and his Massak Afroletric Orchestra; Zanzibar’s legendary taarab orchestra and social club, the Culture Musical Club; Ras_G & the Afrikan from his El-Ay, Western Sahara space base; and Ghanaian Pidgin rapper Wanlov the Kubulor.

PASS II also features a series of new collaborations between South African musicians: Barry van Zyl’s southern African sound-rhythm stew, Baboti are joined by jazz vocalist and trombone player Siya Makuzeni; and politically engaged, slamming jazz upstarts uDaba perform with spoken-word author Kgafela oa Magogodi.

Some of the continent’s most esteemed selectors, including Dar es Salaam’s DJ Yusuf Mahmoud and Cape Town’s own Fong Kong Bantu Soundsystem are also making appearances.
The live music component PASS takes place in a series of different venues across greater Cape Town, engaging diverse together audiences and provoking new forms of creative expression and social mobilization that foregrounding history and memory as well as agency and difference. Audiences will travel from St Georges Cathedral, the Centre for the Book and the Slave Church in the city centre to Guga S’thebe in Langa and All Nations Club in Salt River.

BOOK NOW!

All shows: R30 pre-booked; R50 door. Tickets available via computicket: www.computicket.com

083 915 8000
083 131
011 340 8000

www.panafricanspacestation.org.za

short films (under 30min)

as african noise foundation

so when i go to the swedish embassy to apply for my visa, this blonde lady looks at me very dubiously and she says “so are you a visiting professor, or are you visiting a professor?”

shot by isabelle schiltz

“Kaganof went to sleep thinking that he knew all the answers.
When he woke up he couldn’t even remember the questions.”

Kaganof is first and foremost an ironist who eschews what he calls the “heresy of didacticism.” To avoid piloting his audience he has created a new, often puzzling genre that he provisionally labeled as “aphorisibles”.

Since most of the pieces are short narratives, I prefer to call them postmortemist parables – whose meanings are not spelled out. They defy our stereotypes and wishful thinking for the purpose of engaging readers in dialogue. Kaganof assumes his readers to be hypocritical. Kaganof forces us to respond, to examine ourselves, and to scrutinize the narrator. We must remain vigilant. What I call “ethical irony” is the key to penetrating his poses and disguises: moral insensitivity, anger, or even crude misogyny should arouse self-reflection.

Kaganof parodies this Socratic method in the grotesquely comic story The Cockroach. Beneath his alienation the narrator proves to be attuned to his human environment. Still, these postmortemist fables undermine any reassuring interpretations.

Dismantling all forms of complacency and idealism, Kaganof’s “aphorisibles” amalgamate, in a dialogically open-ended literary unit, ambiguity and judgement, kindness and cruelty, anger and generosity, reverie and analysis. There are no definite lessons – only responses. In the end, we must judge for ourselves.

helgé janssen takes issue with peter machen’s description of kaganof as a goth, read it on artthrob

(a personal overview by helgé janssen of the work/ism of Aryan Kaganof in the light of peter Machen’s controversial and un-researched statements in his review of Velvet which was published on Artthrob.)

To say that Kaganof’s real artistic product is not his work but his self shows a somewhat skewered perception of Kaganof’s work and displays an attempt to reduce him to a personality, and to dismiss him as such. And to find an excuse not to have to engage with the work. Is this not rather patronising?

It is IMPOSSIBLE to separate Kaganof from his work…he IS his work…

Kaganof’s ‘process’ therefore has been to PLUMB THE SELF

IN SO DOING HE IS DOING EXACTLY WHAT ANY CONTEMPORARY ARTIST IS BEING EXHORTED TO DO

FOR THIS TIME AND THIS PLACE 2008 ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD.

IN THIS SENSE KAGANOF IS TOTALLY IN TOUCH WITH THE ZEITGEIST OF CONTEMPORARY ART/EXISTENCE, both globally and locally.

This does not reduce his work to the ‘lightweight’ or whatever weight….it has everything to do with GRAVITY…..gravitas……

……therefore the aforementioned statement has little meaning in a modern day artistic context.

This IS what contemporary art is all about…..if not what real art HAS ALWAYS BEEN ABOUT given these ewer updated/updating reference points!! It is shocking that there are those who do not understand this utterly essential ingredient in Kaganof’s work, who thereby try to do everything to belittle him….sidelining issues with ‘he certainly likes a circus’!! What on earth has that got to do with his art….you might just as well judge him on the way in which he drives his car…really!!

Kaganof is so much at the forefront of this artistic realisation that it is understandable that he is being misunderstood, BUT TO BE ATTACKED SO STUPIDLY defies analysis in civilised society!! We should in fact be applauding, urging him on, not telling him that his work is not cutting edge enough!!

But if Kaganof is being misunderstood, that still does not make him a huckster…

I mean HOW do you respond if someone tells you you’re a huckster?? Look at them pityingly and say

“Well, honey, I am that mirror that you put up to yourself….so say whatever you like.”?

This does not mean that Kaganof AGREES WITH THEM…he is just being polite….

There is very little of Kaganof’s work that I have not seen, read or experienced. In the 28 years of knowing him, I have as yet never known him to either throw shit at the wall, or produce work of inferior quality.

This therefore becomes an utterly inaccurate statement that some idiot flings out when they cannot comprehend the mechanism behind the creation and amounts to a projected assumption based on that persons own tacky perception (sadly).

And to say that Kaganof has an ‘utter refusal to rein things in’ as if this is now a crime deluxe further exacerbates every artists need to give themselves artistic license. They do not understand exactly how he DOES REIN things in….they only see what has already gone through an entire ARRIVAL PROCESS….i.e. the CONCLUSION THAT HIS INVESTIGATIONS has brought him to….and wouldn’t it be just too DUMB for anybody to go through that process AND THEN PRE-EMPT THE CONCLUSION?!!

It is more likely THIS that KAGANOF refuses to do, than to refuse to rein things in.

And yet, if anything, Kaganof has shown intense personal discipline in finishing his artistic product: ‘Velvet’ is structurally without a flaw, ‘SMS SUGAR MAN’ has been brilliantly conceived and put together (the world’s first cell phone filmed movie!) and ‘Jesus and the Giant’ has been edited to perfection. These are the most recent examples of his work that spring to mind.

Once again it appears that there is a paradigm shift necessary in the ordinary consciousness to get to grips with his oeuvre. In so doing, is Kaganof actually not making an enormous contribution to the EVOLUTION OF ART? Is he not in fact REALIGNING art, bringing it back into constructive focus? Haven’t we all been through the arguments about art having lost its way….particularly with the rather sad diversion of instillation art that seemed to rob us of what art really is…?????

I DO NOT KNOW OF ANY OTHER ARTIST CURRENTLY WORKING IN THIS AREA…BUT THERE MUST BE…OTHERS IN THIS AND OTHER COUNTRIES ALSO STRUGGLING WITH THE MIND SETS OF THEIR UNIMAGINATIVE FELLOW HUMAN BEINGS!!

Kaganof thus represents an extremely heightened form of expression of an innate ARTISTIC INTEGRITY and seems to be currently beyond most (ordinary) people’s comprehension. Is this now suddenly Kaganof’s FAULT?

In working with others, Kaganof GIVES/AFFORDS THE OTHER PERSON SOVEREIGNTY….which may come across to the short-sighted as anything goes. And because he does not IMPOSE his artistic vision on others (he may shock, confront, take you unawares….but you can always just get up and walk out….he does not condemn you for it…he may be saddened by it….that you are not rising to the challenge…and undoubtedly he will find your taboo, AS HE HAS FOUND HIS) where in fact he is being incredibly generous with his artistic time.

“But it is foolish to take Kaganof at one’s own face value. To do so is to get entangled in a web of personal likes and dislikes, revealing one’s own psychological imperfections, and this serves no purpose whatsoever”. This quote was taken from my own review of Velvet which I feel is particularly apt under the circumstances.

For Machen to state that he is “charged with calling his (Kaganof’s) bluff” is so preposterously ludicrous a statement it makes me wonder if Machen hasn’t lost his mind??

He is basically telling Kaganof that he is a liar and a fraud.

I think this amounts to DEFORMATION / DEFAMATION OF CHARACTER.

The least left for Machen to do is to apologise profusely, deeply, and publicly.

He can always plead TEMPORARY INSANITY!!!

this article first appeared here

Aryan Kaganof occupies a unique position on the South African art landscape. A prolific producer of poetry, novels, films and fine art, he has a small band of committed devotees and a similar number of critics who see him as something of a con man. The truth, as is usually the case, lies somewhere in between. Kanagof is certainly capable of producing moments of profound intensity and even on occasion transcendent beauty. But he is also the man who throws shit at the wall and sees what sticks. In a sense, all artists, writers and other ‘creatives’ do this all the time. But it is usually a private process. Kaganof makes that private space public, which is an interesting proposition. But he does have a lot of shit flying through the air, and I’m not entirely sure that the artist himself is capable of initiating quality control.

For all his ponderousness and poetry, the bulk of Kananof’s output is conceptually lightweight, dressed up in edge and accessorised with a specific brand of gothic that came only from 1980s South Africa. The feeling of substance comes from controversy and the fact that virtually anything – well anything representational at least – is allowed into an art gallery these days.

Now I’m perfectly fine with this fact. My own conception of art certainly doesn’t exclude even the violently pornographic; it doesn’t necessarily exclude anything, really. And as an artist, Kaganof is certainly allowed to play with this notion that anything goes, and also with the idea that criticism of hard-core work can be so easily deflected with words such as ‘Calvinism’ and ‘conservatism’. But as someone who is charged with reviewing his work, I am certainly allowed to call his bluff.

And so, if I’m to be honest – and it would be easier not to be – I’ve always felt that 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. And unlike many people in the art community, I find him to be very likeable. That, said, my feelings about his previous work remain consistent with Taylor Rain is Dirty Girl in Velvet, his latest short film, which premiered at Grahamstown, and recently showed in the KZNSA Gallery.

With an electronic soundtrack from edgy US minimalists Matmos, this film, which lasts just over 11 minutes, begins with squelchy porn sounds blending with Matmos’s music. After two minutes some text starts to appear, cut-up poetry that moves mostly at a speed that is just readable. There’s a fragmented narrative inside the text that maintains a tenuous relationship with the layered soundtrack. Then, after six minutes, we are introduced to the adorable – okay, pretty hot – Taylor Rayne and her somewhat elasticated anus and vulva. We get to know Miss Rain fairly intimately as she fingers her asshole with controlled enthusiasm. The poetry then returns, stampeding through a frame in the screen in close proximity to said anus. Rain then, in classic porn style, changes positions, partially perhaps so we can get another view, but mostly I think in aid of her auto-penetration. The tension, such as there is, arises from the possibility that Taylor Rayne might or might not manage to get her entire fist up there. One finger, two fingers, three fingers, four…and…that’s it. Sorry to spoil the plot.

In summary, the work feels like a fridge magnet session interspliced with some hardcore masturbation porn; which is basically what it is. The resulting cut-up stream of consciousness is too littered with the iconic and the poetic, the words that are used and the ways in which they are used empty themselves with overuse. I am unfortunately not familiar with the work of the respected poet Gary Cummisky on whose poem April in the Moon-Sun the work is based, so I don’t know to what extent Kaganof has re-cut it. Regardless, although much of it was engaging, it wasn’t exactly spellbinding.

Kaganof’s utter refusal to rein things in – to exercise intellectual control – might be the key to his art, but it is also his major weakness. There is a far more intelligent and interesting work lurking in …Velvet, and I think that Aryan Kaganof would be the perfect man to make it. But he’d have to work harder, and more than anything, carefully digest the notion that this is a world in which William Burroughs and Andy Warhol have already lived and died and changed our lives in innumerable ways. We should be doing them proud, without feeling any compulsion to stand on their shoulders. With Kaganof’s work, there is that Fanonian feeling that everything has indeed already been said. But while that might be true of history and politics, in art – and in life – there is new everywhere, always. I think Kaganof might agree with me in conversation, but his work suggests something else, a combination of art school innocence and jaded arrogance.

For those Kaganof fans – and fans he does have – who read this review and think that I just don’t understand his avant-garde, I’d like to be pre-emptive and say that perhaps that’s not the case. If anything, with …Velvet Kaganof doesn’t go close enough to the real edge, the visceral one that is composed not of a global archive of words and images that is capable of disturbing any Mother Grundy, but one that engages with a real world that is far more offensive than anything Kaganof has produced.

And while I do think that much of his work does exist as a critique of the offensiveness of the real world and all its vile imbalances, he needs to work harder and beat his own drum with a little more substance and a little less bravado if he is to convince others that he is not the huckster many proclaim him to be.

Peter Machen is a Durban-based writer and artist

Opens: August 5
Closes: August 24

this review first appeared on artthrob.co.za

Die kunstenaar Aryan Kaganof (ook bekend as die Suid-Afrikaans gebore rolprentmaker Ian Kerkhof) s tentoonstelling van “digitale skilderye'’ is tans in Kaapstad te sien. Cobus van Bosch gesels oor sy werk en visie.

In die begin was die woord Logos

die Woord was met Kaganof

en die Woord was Kaganof

Hierdie inskrywing in Aryan Kaganof se Journal of the Plague Year (1999) bied ‘n invalshoek tot sy kunswerke wat tans in die galery van die Vereniging vir Visuele Kunste in Kaapstad ten toon gestel word onder die titel Logoff Logon Logos .

Aryan Kaganof is die nuwe naam van die omstrede rolprentmaker Ian Kerkhof, regisseur van onder meer die kultusprent Wasted (Naar de Klote!), wat homself nou ook op die terrein van visuele kuns begeef. Teen die galerymure hang groot drukstukke van collages van tekste en rekenaargeskepte kleurpatrone die produk van bykans vier jaar se werk en Kaganof se eerste tentoonstelling in Suid-Afrika.

Vir Kaganof/Kerkhof was die sprong van rolprent maak na “skilder'’ heel natuurlik. Sy belangstelling in visuele kuns het in 1997 begin posvat tydens ure se redigeerwerk op die rekenaar, sê hy. “Dit was baie opwindend. Ek het agtergekom ek maak eintlik doeke (canvasses); ek het ge¨nteresseerd geraak in die plat prentvlak en het beelde begin uitdruk.

“Dit is ‘n proses wat ek ook in my rolprentwerk voorsit. Ek is tans besig om van my rolprente weer te redigeer ek sny die vertelling uit tot net die essensiële beelde oorbly in kort weergawes van enkele minute.'’

Dit is vanselfsprekend dat die tekste op Kaganof se digitale skilderye die sleutel tot sy werke is. Maar dit is moeilik leesbaar en plek-plek onsamehangend. Boonop loop die reëls deurmekaar, selfs onderstebo, en volg dit verwarrende patrone op die prentvlak. Kortom, dit verg soveel inspanning om dit te probeer uitpluis, dat niemand waarskynlik verder as die eerste werk vorder nie.

“Die tekste hoef nie noodwendig gelees te word nie,'’ sê Kaganof. “Ek was ten tyde van die skryf daarvan gedurig onder die invloed van dwelms. Maar die inhoud wentel om apokaliptiese visies en verwysings na profesieë. Dis bewuste skryfwerk wat onbewustelik ook prente en patrone vorm. Dit is skryfprente wat in die ruimtes tussen die woorde lê. ‘n Mens sien dit nie sommer in die galery nie, maar al die kunswerke pas bymekaar in om saam een groot, universele visie of narratief te vorm.'’

Kaganof sien homself as ‘n politieke gevangene, en sy kuns is dié van “ ‘n man wat oorleef teen ‘n verskriklike oormag'’ en wat op soek is na waarheid, ‘n logos. Kaganof bepleit ‘n herwaardering van die psige en menswees. “Ons almal is slagoffers van totalitarisme. Alles wat ons geleer is, het net een doel om ons tot die stelsel te verkneg. Opvoeding maak slawe van ons. Die uitdaging is om hieruit weg te breek en jou ware aard te volg.'’

Om te sien hoe ons aan die neus rondgelei word, moet jy net bestaande “waarhede'’ en konvensies omkeer, glo Kaganof. Byvoorbeeld: kan iemand soos Hitler ook gesien word as ‘n redder van die Jodedom? “Hitler was ‘n soort messias vir die Jode. ‘n Messias is nie noodwendig ‘n goeie persoon wat liefde en verdraagsaamheid verkondig nie. ‘n Bevryder is iemand wat jou sterk maak (maak nie saak op watter wyse nie). Hitler se optrede het die Jode, wat wêreldwyd verstrooi was, weer sterk gemaak en hul eenheidsgevoel verstewig. Sonder Hitler sou daar nie ‘n Israel gewees het nie.'’

Vreemde logika? Oorweeg die volgende: “Nelson Mandela is die Antichris'’ lui ‘n stukkie teks op die werk The Anti-Christ .

Kaganof verduidelik: “Almal is gek oor hom (Mandela), maar hy het in werklikheid niks reggekry nie. Van al die beloftes wat die ANC met die 1994-verkiesing gemaak het, het min gekom. Die land is nog net soos dit was. Selfs die politici van vandag is maar net die gesigte van apartheid apartheid het hulle gemaak wat hulle is. Hulle is dieselfde mense met net ‘n ander masker. Politici hier is politiek korrekte fundamentaliste wat eintlik niks doen nie en slegs in terme van swart en wit kan funksioneer. Gaan gesels bietjie met mense wat op straat leef hulle sal jou vertel wat aangaan.'’

Op ‘n vraag of hy werklik wil hê bostaande uitlatings moet aangehaal word, antwoord Kaganof driftig: “Die feit dat jy hoegenaamd hierdie vraag vra, bewys hoe min vryheid jy om jou voel. Natuurlik moet jy dit aanhaal!'’

Nou ja, maar is daar dan ‘n alternatief vir hierdie droewige situasie? “Ja, maar om dit reg te kry, moet elkeen self uitbreek. As ons besef dat alles wat ons geleer is om te doen, verkeerd en skadelik is, is ons op die regte pad.'’ Wat gebeur dan? “Dan sal die mens ophou om te bestaan. Dit sal oplos in ‘n groot orgasme waarin liggame nie meer nodig is nie en ons vry is van slawerny.'’

“Maak jou psige leeg. Gehoorsaam jou innerlike wet,'’ is Kaganof se leuse. “Ons het ‘n keuse om van hierdie slawerny weg te breek; om spiritueel wakker te word. Daar is baie waarhede soveel soos mense maar dit pas alles ineen om ‘n universele waarheid te vorm.'’

In die besoekersboek in die galery beskuldig iemand Kaganof daarvan dat hy ‘n totalitêre psige het. “Natuurlik is dit so, elke psige is die resultaat van streng programmering, wat van die mensdom werkende slawe wil maak. Ek is (as wit Suid-Afrikaner) grootgemaak om totalitêr te wees om Angola toe te gaan en mense se lippe te gaan afsny. Die mind is iets wat ons gevange wil hou. Jy het wel ‘n keuse om spiritueel wakker te word, om alles te negeer en om ‘n mens te word. Weet egter dat jy dan deur die gemeenskap verstoot sal word.

“Ons moet besef dat die wêreld om ons bankrot is. Bemarkingsmense, die spin doctors, beheer alles. Die jeug is ‘n leërskare van verbruikers alles word vir hulle gegee.

“Dit is kommerwekkend om te sien hoe konformisties hulle is. Vroeër jare het jong mense hul klere geskeur in ‘n poging om ‘n eie identiteit te skep. Nou kan jy geskeurde klere in die winkel koop.

“Om die waarheid te sê, die winkelsentrum is waar alles vandag gebeur. Om in ‘n galery uit te stal, is soos om vir jou kuns ‘n kondoom aan te sit. Niks kom by niemand uit nie kuns in ‘n galery is impotent. Eintlik moet jy jou kuns in ‘n winkelsentrum uitstal. Dis die tempel van die geldgod om kuns soontoe te bring, is soos Jesus wat na die mark in die tempel toe gaan.'’

Die tentoonstelling duur tot Saterdag, waarna dit Johannesburg toe kom.

Cobus van Bosch

this article first appeared in beeld 31/07/2001

Gary Cummiskey: When did you start up the kagablog and why?

Aryan Kaganof: November 2005. I was interested in creating a forum for writers, poets, artists, academics, digital explorers of all persuasions to present work. this forum would, unlike the mass media as we know it, NOT be market driven, not be dictated to by the market. either in the sense of its content always relating to new product, or in the sense of having to pander to the consideration of what the “readership” wants.

i invited contributors whose work i admired, respected, believed in and or loved. once in as a contributor there is no editorial censorship. in this way too, the blog works very differently from market driven mass media.

GC: The kagablog covers a wide range of disciplines – music, art, photography, poetry, fiction, film etc. We don’t see any print publications like this around in SA, hence the nonprint distribution of the net obviously helps in this and gives you a wider readership. Any comment on this?

AK: like i said in the answer to your first question, i started the blog because ALL mass media is market driven. which is a huge problem. it means that “freedom of speech” has come to mean “freedom to promote what is available in the shops”. the blog steps out of that paradigm and presents are broad set of interests and obsessions of the various contributors (there are over 90 of them).

While the blog has a number of local contributors, they are a number of contributors from overseas, particularly Europe. Some posts are even in French, Dutch or German. I also feel at times that there is a distinct “European” flavour to the blog, references to debord etc. Do you feel that this “Eurocentric” aspect places the blog outside of the South African cultural context?

the point is that the kagablog does not exist in geographical south africa. it exists in the world of the web, and is thus global and local at once. because many of the contributors do live in geographical south africa i would say that the kagablog has a lot of relevance to those only interested in arts and opinions from the region. but in 2008 i don’t think it is really all that interesting to get hung up on regional locality. the work that i try to promote on the kagablog is work that i consider excellent, that i consider challenging - these are qualities that i consider far more important than where the contributor lives physically.

and its good that you mention Debord, because the Maponya Mall in Soweto is more “spectacular” in the Debordian sense, than any building in Paris. which says it all really. i believe that the kagablog reflects an entirely new, and medium specific, attitude to media and how it has changed our lives. thinking of art, of poetry, of critical discourse, in terms of national and regional boundaries only takes us back to what we already know, it does not take us forward. in other words, not only am i not interested in colonial regionalities of the mind, i am also not interested in post-colonial regions: the kagablog is a space in the collective mind that is outside of the colonial mind market’s agenda altogether.

GC: Does the blog receive any sponsorship at all?

AK: none whatsoever. it is a labour of love, on my part and the part of all the wonderful contributors.

GC: In view of the low level of internet penetration in SA – about 7% - how feasible do think online publications are for reaching local audiences?

AK: 7% is better than 6%. and it is growing all the time, geometrically. in a decade’s time those figures will be radically different.

GC: Do you think that online publishing vehicles such as blogs are taken seriously in SA? Do you think that they are regarded by SA audiences as legitimate publishing mediums? There are, after all, now awards given for blogs, so there must be some degree of acceptance.

Gary the only things taken seriously in SA are drinking and soccer and rugby and cricket. I cannot allow myself to be contained by the mediocre opinions of the market. What matters is that I take blogs seriously, that you take them seriously, that the contributors and the readership takes them seriously.

GC: Starting up a blog is relatively easy and cheap, compared to print publishing. Some print publishers worldwide feel threatened by online publishing, since it does sort of inroad on their business territory and could impact on their survival from a financial aspect. But do you think this threat is only financial, or is there a threat to a perceived cultural territory as well?

AK: Look, the crisis in the publishing industry isn’t because of blogs, it is because too many books are published, too many books are thrown out into the marketplace in the hope that something sticks. It’s just a huge jumble sale out there, and it is exhausting for people, for readers, to keep up with it all. And that’s why people retreat, they turn inwards, they find refuge in the classics, in what they already know, in genre fiction, because it is just impossible to read through all the books that are thrown at one.

In fact blogs don’t impinge on the territory of physical publishing at all . The blogging phenomenon is something entirely different, it’s a distinct medium of its own. If anything, I think that blogs stimulate people to buy books because of giving readers access to so many fresh critical voices, who are writing from a position of passion rather than the established critical voices who write from jaded positions of power and assumed authority.

GC: When the internet first came out, some people foresaw the end of print books – this clearly hasn’t happened. In what do you see the relationship, if any, between online publications and print books?

AK: Online publications encourage people to buy print books. The same phenomenon happens in the music industry. The “end” of print books has already happened in a sense, with the demise of the specialist bookstores and the usurpation of bookselling as a craft and a trade by the ubiquitous supermarket chains that “wholesale” books to the public, two for the price of one, just like baked beans.

Lene Knudsen and I attended two lectures in film making at K3, Art,Culture and Communication, University of Malmø. The guest lecturer was the south african filmmaker Aryan Kaganof. Aryan had a very interesting introduction to “medium specific” filming, about why video is not film, why super8mm is not 35mm. He screened excerpts from his films to illustrate this concept:

35mm
- TEN MONOLOGUES FROM THE LIVES OF THE SERIAL KILLERS (1994, 10min excerpt)

16mm
- COME TO THE POINT (1995, 4min) featuring BLIXA BARGELD of EINSTURZENDE NEUBAUTEN

super8mm
- SIGNAL TO NOISE (1997, 7min) featuring MERZBOW

digital video (DV)
- WASTED! (1996, 20min excerpt)

He made a brief introduction to Guy Debord, to The Society of The Spectacle, to the Situationists, to May 68 and to the concept of détournement, followed by a screening of CLICK HERE TO UNSUBSCRIBE (2008, 33min) - a détournement of Guy Debord’s 1973 film of his own philosophical treatise La Société du spectacle

You can read more about detournement on Kaganof’s blog here:

We had discussions about issues of the signature, of sampling, of copyright and about transgressive cinema and in his second lecture we had a practical assignment; everybody had to choose a number and one by one we were called into a filmstudio. Here we answered questions like “what is a film” and “what is a dream” in front of Kaganofs preying camera, which made us think about the relation between them. After being in front of the camera, you sat down in the audience and saw the others following you answer the same questions.
He will send me some excerpts from his films, which I will show you in next semester He has also some very interesting thoughts about movie making on cellphones. This we will probably work with a lot the next semester.

Read more about movie making on cellphone on his blog.

Posted by Annette Finnsdottir here

nowadays almost everybody is a film maker of some sort, even the kitchen staff and people who work on trams, even in the remotest regions of the world like the kalahari desert, everybody is in some way associated with the film industry

the most common of all these film makers are of course, the documentary directors

and so, in the space of a mere twenty years, not only has all the glamour been drained from the film world, but in fact, there is something vaguely ridiculous about calling one’s self a film maker

it reminds people of the steam train, and all those high and mighty steam train executives who rapidly went out of business when electricity took over

one has to guard very carefully the truth about one’s identity these days

aryan kaganof

…innan vi smäller upp bilder från Elisabets galna födelsedagsfirande!Mannen på bilden heter Aryan Kaganof. Han är Sydafrikas kanske mest överskattade konstnär just nu. Han inte bara vände sin namnskylt upp och ner på ett barnsligt och demonstrativt sätt under seminariet vi deltog i under lördagen utan filmade även en av seminarietalarna med sin mobil under hennes 10 minuter långa tal.Mobilen var ca 10 cm från hennes ansikte ibland.Vid något tillfälle sa han något på något afrikanskt språk som en slags protest mot att det talades engelska på seminariet och det gladde mig oerhört när jag hörde ett par färgade killar bakom mig fnissande viska till varandra:”What did he just try to say?!?Hahaha…”.Vi fick även se två verk av denne man och de var ungefär lika pretentiösa som hans kamouflagefärgade mössa.
Näe.Jag gillar inte Aryan./Sofie

this article first appeared on djungeltelegrafen