kagablog

initially I photographed local and international layouts, but in the end, i was most interested in the worlds which imagined south african landscapes. this was because the modeler’s pursuit of realism had led them to engage - however unconsciously - with profound issues surrounding the representation of south african landscape, in particular the imagined landscapes of the apartheid period, which was also the high point of the railway system in this country.

my colleague, prof david bunn has brought to my attention the new school of art-historical writing which engages with the important role landscape painting and poetry have played in the constitution of a sense of class, national identity and even gender. w.j.t. mitchell in his introduction to “landscape and power”, the seminal collection of essays which take this approach, argues “we must pay attention to the specificity of effects and to the kinds of spectatorial work solicited by a medium at a particular historical juncture”. he goes on to suggest that the very exhaustion of the tradition of landscape painting in the realm of high art “may signal an enhanced power at other levels (in mass culture and kitsch, for instance) and a potential for renewal in other forms, other places.” could we see an alternative popular tradition of landscape in the work of south african railway modelers?

although the imaginative roots of the world-making impulse often lie in childhood, railway modelers are rightly irritated by accusations that they are playing with toys. the scale modeler, like the creative artist, and unlike the child with a train set, is involved with creating a functioning technical system and a believable world. as a consequence, modelers are deeply engaged with questions of realism. this epistemic break, between toy trains aimed at children, and the scale model railway, was initiated by a reclusive american genius called john whitby allen who introduced realism as an ideal into railway modeling. As an orphan with a small inheritance, after being invalided from the army during the second world war, allen was able to devote himself to building a new kind of layout over eighteen years. He pioneered the realistic landscape construction and weathering techniques which quickly swept through the hobby, and by the time of his death from a heart attack at 1973, had displaced the bright shiny toy arrangements of railway sets to a darker, more realistic imaging of landscape and mechanical decay. allen studied photography for a ucla fine arts degree and his careful documentation of the way he went about his layout construction and his realist techniques were propagated widely through his book and in popular magazines.

the realistic world-making had a further effect, visible to an extreme extent in allen’s own reclusive life. allen spent twenty years working in the basement of his house in monterey, california on his unfinished masterpiece - the ho scale layout he called “gorre and daphetid”. by all accounts allen barely left his house during this project. the imaginative world-building often becomes an obsession that draws the scale modeler into another world. the american railway modeler, sam posey, subtitled his autobiographical account of the obsession, “a passion beyond scale”. he describes his own immersion in the world he spent years building in the basement of his home: “i worked on christmas day, unwilling to sever my connection with the layout. all december, I had been lucky: areas kept inventing themselves, as if they were waiting for me in some parallel universe. I was being drawn into a fantasy world that was becoming increasingly real every day.” In his self-analysis, posey also identifies another potent aspect of the obsession - “mastery and control of a world of your own making”. the scale modeler experiences a sense of remote power from operating his railway trains in a landscape of his own imagining. So each layout is a document of obsession stimulated by the dialectic between realism and imagination.

what was striking about the South African modelers whose work i photographed was how many spoke of a particular childhood vision as the impetus behind their complex layouts. the imagined worlds of the railway modelers are a reminder that the emotional roots of fantasy worlds often begin in the intensity of childhood experiences. one of sigmund freud’s most powerful insights was that creative artists are driven by childhood impulses. rod herring recreates the vision he had of the natal midlands in the 1970s where he spent holidays with a schoolfriend on a farm outside greytown. pramod makan remembers the experience of visiting durban harbour as a child from springs and being struck with wonderment by the sight of the soaring bows of the big ships, the lifting cranes and the complex railyards. the layout he has spent the last 30 years constructing is centered on a recreation of Durban harbour. frank graham can actually point out the figure of a little boy on a bank above a busy railway line on his layout, “there I am as a 10-year-old boy standing next to the tracks at discovery on the west rand and loving the trains, loving the trains.”

there are two tendencies in the railway modeling world. for many modelers the working rail system is everything and they create complex track layouts in order to run trains in elaborate schedules. calling themselves “operators” these modelers have very little interest in scenery and often use layouts that are pared down to bare arrangements of track and signals which they operate in teams, working under the direction of the “dispatcher”. the opposing tendency is towards artistic creation, with an emphasis on the creation of realistic rail environments. these modelers are known by the operators as “scenery builders” or “scenikers”

scenikers build scale landscapes, painstakingly laying tracks, constructing hills and mountains out of wire and plaster, rivers and lakes out of layers of epoxy resins and plastic. the creators of these layouts have god-like powers over their diminutive worlds, but the work takes years and, as most freely admit, is never completed. their layouts are works of imagination that usually attempt to recreate particular eras in the history of railways. although often using raw materials for construction (”scratch building”), the scenikers make use of pre-fabricated kits and models created by a multitude of international suppliers and manufacturers which they customize. like the databases of objects that underlie most virtual worlds, the supply chains of these imagined worlds are an early example of the “long tail” phenomenon described by chris anderson, in which niche manufacturers supply products to scenikers scattered around the world.

Imagined worlds existed prior to the explosion of virtual worlds on the Internet, but it seems the very newness of the Internet and the strangeness of the worlds it birthed, has blinded us to the similarities between the imagined worlds on the World Wide Web and earlier analogue creations. For example, Lev Manovich, the influential new media theorist, claims the concept of new media as a technological tabula rasa, an entirely fresh start, has obscured the dependence of computer-based forms of art, such as video games, on ways of seeing that began with the invention of cinema. In The Language of New Media, Manovich argues that cinema introduced the world as screen and our reliance on computers has just extended the domination of screen-based vision from entertainment to all aspects of our working and playing lives. Following Manovich’s example, shouldn’t we try to understand the psycho-geography of the new virtual worlds through exploring earlier analogue precedents?

This line of questioning led me into the worlds created by railway modelers in South Africa. These modelers construct physical worlds which they inhabit imaginatively. Unlike other kinds of modelers – such as military or domestic modelers – the railway modeler aims to creates a complete and coherent world based on working systems of rails and trains. As defined in the authoritative British guide, “Railway modeling is the art of creating in miniature a working replica of a full size railway.” (Simmons, Norman. Railway Modelling. 8th Ed. London: Patrick Stephen Ltd., 1998.)

the internet has made imagined worlds ubiquitous, but it did not invent them. many aspects of virtual digital worlds have roots in older analogue versions, such as the model railway worlds. this project looks at these small worlds in order to understand the psycho-geography of virtual worlds. this project also examines how these worlds are imaginary representations, often bathed in poisonous nostalgia, of South African rail landscapes, and explores the idea that industrial landscapes have been under-represented in south african landscape art.

1. small worlds. “in my thoughts i could not sufficiently wonder at the intrepidity of these diminutive mortals, who durst venture to mount and walk on my body, while one of my hands was at liberty, without trembling at the very sight of so prodigious a creature as i must appear to them” - gulliver’s travels, a voyage to lilliput. jonathon swift.

Hi All,

This is a event that you shouldn’t miss! As part of the exhibition of 40Years of Video Art which is currently on at the Goethe-Institute, Johannesburg -

There will be a panel discussion on VideoArt in South Africa on Tuesday 12 February at 18:30. The speakers are:
Minnette Vari – South African and International Video Artist
Warren Siebrits - Joburg avant garde gallery owner
Churchill Madika – South African and International Video Artist
Clive Kelner – Director of Johannesburg Art Gallery
Oliver Sann/Beate Geissler - Guest German Video Artists

The panel will be chaired by Prof Christo Doherty and will feature a group of top artists and curators to talk about the topic. This discussion will be followed by drinks/snacks and an after party
featuring really exciting DJ and VJ talent. See below for visuals and more information.

The Goethe Institute has secure parking and is easily accessible off Jan Smuts Avenue, in Parkwood.

Hope to see you there!

photo christo doherty

trisha brown

andreas siekmann

here are a bunch of photos from the last days of documenta 12 in
kassel, germany. launched in 1955, the exhibition was intended to
“reconcile a demoralised German civil society with Modern Art”. since
then it’s been staged every 5 years, and has become one of the most
important exhibitions in contemporary art.

hi aryan,

a really evocative film. thanks.
driving away afterwards, i felt the city had been changed . . . that’s
always the effect of powerful art. those hellish panelled rooms lit
up in buildings all across johannesburg; the bitter scenes going on in
cars and hotel lobbies; and a whore’s beauty the only treacherous
relief . . .
as you know, i’ve been long intrigued by the idea of this cellphone
feature. i expected the abstraction in the visuals, although the noise
had more interesting variations than i imagined, not just pixelating
but blossoming and throbbing underneath the narrative. but what i
didn’t anticipate was the intimacy of the cell phone movie. an
intimacy that was intensified by blowing the image up to big screen
proportions. it really knocked me out. and worked so well with the
eroticism of the performances and the tragic pathos of the story. by
the time that the father has discovered the truth about his paternity
- he’s already dead.

best
christo

Just to let you know that my exhibition opens tonight at the
Schaufenster Gallery in Potsdam. It’s an installation using 150 of my
photographs with sound design by Lukas Ligeti.

with professor christo doherty, noodle bar opposite john vorster square