kagablog

Kaapstad, 2006.

Als jaarringen liggen de sloppenwijken rondom de metropool.
Wie de stad vanuit het binnenland over de pijnlijk nauwkeurig onderhouden snelweg nadert, stuit reeds tientallen kilometers voor het stadscentrum op de jongste en meest povere aanwas van deze stedenbouwkundige kanker.
De hutten zijn schameler, bouwvalliger, geimproviseerder en vrijer geplaats dan die van enkele kilometers verderop. Hoe dichter men de stad nadert, des te meer orde er in de schijnbare anarchie komt.
Plotseling staan er tussen de eindeloze huisjes lantaarnpalen en lopen er over de daken heen elektriciteitsdraden. Tussen de verschillende blokken hebben zich in de loop der jaren hoofd en zijstraten gevormd.
Nog weer dichter bij de stad staan er tussen de krotten af en toe kleine huizen die opgetrokken zijn uit steen. En plotseling, na kilometerslange, adresloze bebouwing daagt het besef dat deze sloppen, in weerwil tot hun geimproviseerde vormgeving, niet tijdelijk maar permanent zijn. Ze zijn hier, als de afgekoelde afzettingen die een mensenvlees spuwende vulkaan over het land heeft doen stromen, en ze gaan niet meer weg.

Zoals haar kleinere broeders in de vrije velden dienen ook deze uitgestrekte sedimentvelden als compost en menselijke brandstof voor de metropool. En wie zich probeert voor te stellen hoe iemand die in dit veld van krioelend en woekerend leven is terechtgekomen, er ooit weer uit moet ontsnappen, denkt zich blaren op zijn verbeelding en erkent tenslotte de almacht van het toeval en moderne wonderen.

Ondanks het enorme achterland waar een ieder met gemak en met ruim uitzicht zou kunnen leven trekt de metropool als een een architectonisch zwart gat onverbiddelijk meer en meer menselijke materie aan. En daar eenmaal aangekomen vermenigvuldigd het leven zich kwadratisch, de mechanische wetten van de genetica en hormonen volgend.
Het achterland blijft, als door fysische krachten leeggezogen, ontzield en betekenisloos achter.

Dezelfde processen zien we terug in de metropool zelf waar de hypermarkets en de als themaparken vormgegeven shoppingsmalls van de omringende wijken een even betekenisloze overnachtingsplaats hebben gemaakt waar men leeft achter gesloten deuren, met de buitenwereld verbonden via virtuele en hygienische communicatiekanalen.

Dit alles is in zoverre een abstractie van een ooit gekende werkelijkheid geworden dat het bijna onmogelijk is het werkelijk te kennen, of er een oordeel over te vellen. De enige inhoudelijke referentie die de beschouwer, naast de fysica, ter beschikking staat is die van de pornografie. Wie dit pornografische sjabloon over deze werkelijkheid legt, herkent in alles dat door deze op hol geslagen wereld wordt geproduceerd de signatuur van ’s werelds grootste en snelstgroeinde industrie.

Geisoleerd van het zachtgolvende perspectief van de seizoenen en bevrijd van de blinde terreur van de nacht, meet de werkelijkheid zich voornamelijk nog aan het ritme en de snelheid van de impuls. Alles moet op dit moment gebeuren. Het moet NU waar zijn. Als het niet onmiddelijk kan worden gezien, geconsumeerd of verkocht betekent het niets.

Wanneer men vanuit de metropool, langs de sloppenwijken heen naar het binnenland afreist wordt de wildernis reeds na enkele kilometers rijden aangekondigt door het geleidelijk afnemen, en tenslotte geheel verdwijnen van de buitenreclame. De billboards met stijlvolle toekomstdromen worden, alsof wij bij het beklimmen van een berg langzaam de boomgrens naderen, schaarser en kleiner.
Voor de mensen die hier wonen worden geen produkten gemaakt. Zij zijn geen markt. Ze zijn brandstof. En ze zijn derhalve, in zekere zin, vrij.
Wanneer je over de eerste culturele schok heen bent, en nog eens om je heen kijkt, zie je niet de allergrootste ontevredenheid. Integendeel. Veel mensen lachen. Lijken niet echt een groot probleem te hebben met hun leven. Een van de voordelen van het leven buiten de stadsgrens is – naast dat men geen huur hoeft te betalen – het feit dat men niet aan allerlei opgeklopte sociale verwachtingen hoeft te voldoen. De bewoners van de sloppenwijken zijn in die zin vrij dat zij niet door de media worden aangeraakt. Ze komen in de reclame en de verslaggeving van de werkelijkheid nauwelijks voor en hoeven zich er dus ook niet toe te verhouden. Ze leven buiten het overspannen beeld dat diezelfde verslaggeving van de werkelijkheid genereerd. De nobele wilde van deze dagen is iemand die geen ipod in zijn oor heeft hangen en geen eigen website heeft.

Een wereld zonder ziel, zonder een geloof in iets dat groter is dan zijzelf en dat buiten haar innnerlijke beschouwing en wezenseigen driften ligt, is een wereld die zichzelf onherroepelijk veroordeeld tot de dictatuur van de pornografie, die de hanteerbare, in hapklare porties geserveerde verdoving is tegen de fantoompijn van deze auto-amputatie. De dictatuur van de horden en hormonen. Van koop- en kijkcijfers, van modekleuren, impulsen en lifestyle.

At the beginning of the year, Aryan Kaganof produced several significant short films and here we’re going to look at three of them.

“Suprematist Composition Number 36” is a gem which would fit well with Ron Athey or Johan Thom’s S&M performances – but in this film the naked star is the filmmaker himself – a fact which cannot go unnoticed! Extreme poetry, recited and filmed, produce this precious jewel of a short film. It is a sophisticated and intellectual film, introducing us to the pleasures of sadomasochism from a strictly artistic point of view. Kaganof admitted that the performance entitled “Shooting Gallery” (which was filmed in Grahamstown and Johannesburg) was a little difficult for him, but he accepted suffering for several days to leave us with this recorded document. Whilst suspended by a rope, naked and upside down, Kaganof recites one his poems called “The Funeral”. It begins “I went to my own funeral/they were playing that celestial music” and ends

So say “c’est la vie” to the broken-hearted
Say “bon voyage” to the newly-weds
Always say “I love you” to the one
You wake up next to
But o my sweet little darling
Don’t you ever say “forever”
Forever is a very short time *

* Aryan Kaganof “Drive-Thru Funeral”, published by Pine Slopes, 2003, Westhoven, SA, p.23.

While the poet recites his lines, suspended upside down, very violent images of war are projected on a giant screen, intersected with images of a baby (the poet-performer himself). As a metaphor for the naivety of every war ever waged, Kaganof’s short film offers us the most powerful pacifist allegorical visual poem of our times, and one that is also a vindication of extreme carnal pleasures – if regarded from a uniquely artistic-alternative angle.

A second performance set up and recorded by Kaganof took place in 2003 in Utrecht (The Netherlands) with the pianist Tomoko Mukaiyama, Kaganof and the plastic artist Dick Tuinder. All three of them star in another performance which is musical, literary and plastic (in the wider sense of its combining painting with the “happening”). “Trio Mental” is the title of an expanded performance which blends Kaganof’s occultist and metaphysical poetry (this time the poem “In the Beginning” from his anthology “Abraxas – The Prophet of Nothing” published by Pine Slopes, Westhoven, 2003, p.134) with Tuinder’s mock “childish” decors and paintings, and Mukaiyama on piano interpreting a free composition by Ramon Dos Santos (Dick Tuinder). Kaganof abandons himself to a hysterical interpretation of his hymn while Tuinder closely supervises the lighting of his plastic environment, rendering him an expert adult storyteller and fabulist.

The third performance is “Mechanicus” starring the hands of Tomoko Mukaiyama, interpreting on piano a Noise score in homage to her dead husband. The screen is split into two, three or, at the end, several parts, as the composition gets more and more complicated. In fact, the music remains repetitive but a climatic sensation is produced by this visual and acoustic symphony, due, principally, to the brio and interior energy of the pianist Mukaiyama.

translated from the french by lucy lyall grant

dear friends click here to watch dick tuinder’s documentary space, a portrait of the exhibition sanctuary mental space held at the centraal museum, utrecht, in november 2003

By Ramon dos Santos

1.

This is the age of Identities.
Of lifestyle, logo’s and intentions.
This is not the age of ideologies or a belief in something outside the Self.

1.1

In the past century Man has fought himself a way from the ideological to the conceptual. And from the conceptual into the virtual.
Now at the beginning of a new millennium, the only logical next step for man is to venture into the Mental.

2.

Ever since the ape stopped being a reptile and stood up and became Us, man’s perception has always been the subject of fashion.

2.1

The notion of fashion is the only thing that really separates us from other creatures. We are subject to fashion because we can SEE time. No other creature can SEE time like us. They might sense it. Feel it. Even hear it subconsciencely in whispering winds, but it cannot see time like us. So no other creature but us can see the difference between this and last year’s fashion and thus has no need for it.

2.2

Fashion is next to many other things the result of boredom. Boredom is the result of being able to see time.

2.3

Fashion has also been the number one engine behind civilization and progress. On occasions, in history, it became fashionable to be smart. To think and act accordingly. We now live in a time though in which the fashion is to be stupid. To not think and act accordingly.

3.

As the universe expanded through time, so did man’s brain. On scale, the human brain expanded with the speed of light.

4.

During the last century, while the universe kept expanding at its steady pace, REALITY has exploded into multiple big-bangs of facts, images, recorded time and space.

4.1.

Also. With every picture taken, with every sound recorded, reality doubles. For even if this picture is one of the smallest detail, the humblest grain of sand, we cannot think this grain free from its surroundings, and thus not free of the reality it represents.
So with every picture taken of a reality of which already pictures have been taken, reality quadruples. This gigantesque multiplication of realities has already long ago reached its perceptional limit. And so it became fashionable not to think.

4.2

The more we copy reality in art or thought, the less reliable she becomes.

4.3

Our immediate surroundings resemble the outskirts of the universe: neither can be comprehended without either a filter or a key. As we do not possess the key, and are not too keen on becoming mad, we adjust a filter, and thus we become stupid and insensitive. This is called maturing.

4.4

To block out the ever changing and ever brighter light of reality, man has adjusted many different filters in the last century. We have changed the ideological filter for the conceptual one. And exchanged the latter for a virtual sunblock.
But no filter is strong enough to block out entirelythe burning light of exploding realities. So in order not to go collectively insane, as we are well busy trying to do, we have to search for the mental key.

4.5

To get hold of this mental key man has to develop a third half of the brain. A bridge between both sides of the brain. A bridge between the alpha and the omega of an infinite number of big-bangs.

4.6

The Big-Bang was not a moment in time, or the beginning of time. The Big-Bang is a continuous proces. It IS time.

4.7.

Perception is a parasite of the senses.
As reality doubles, so does perception.

4.8.

Perception defines who we are. Or who we think we are. Or who other people think we are. In any case: if perception doubles, so does our identity. We are no longer one. We have never been just One. “Being oneself” is either a technical, psychological and philosophical impossibility or just a plain lie.

5.

A true philosopher questions the manifestations of reality. And thus, a true philosopher does not think with his mind.
For his mind is full of fixed ideas that do not reperesent reality, but a mental mask blocking the true philosopher’s view and thoughts.
A true philosopher therefore, like a true artist, thinks with his eyes and genitals.

5.1.

You cannot think about writing and write at the same time. You cannot make music and think about making music at the same time.
The writing IS the thinking.
The music IS the thought.

5.2

All art is recorded thinking.

5.3

All art is pain, in search of its cause.

6.

I can be anyone I choose to be. In fact I am many. I can say fart and kill and tender things on the side and see no conflict in their assembly.

6.1

As morality is tightly connected to the notion of identity and perception, it changes as the latter two change. The fact that we are more than one identity suggests that we also have more than one set of morals. This cannot be. For a moral is always on its own. Therefore, once we recognize our other identities and let them grow, we have to abandon every notion of morality.

6.2.

This is how we will learn to understand the universe. For there are no conflicts in the universe. There are no opposites, and no ‘forces’ or counterforces. There is no morality in super-nova’s.
The true universe is what is Not. The vacuüm. The stuff we are, mainly, made of.
Only the tiniest percentage of the space we occupy with our bodies is not one hundred percent vacuüm.

6.3.

Imagine two bottles. One is filled with wine. The other only carries the tiniest – actually invisible – drop of wine.
When the question is aked: “Which one of these two is a bottle of wine?” everyone will give the obvious and correct anwser.
Yet, when the same question concerns the so-called reality that surrounds us, we choose the empty bottle.

6.4.

In making art, in searching for the lost bonds with the universe, we learn to recognize the vacuüm as the main substance of reality.

6.5.

This leads to the inevitable conclusion that there has never been, nor ever will be, a big bang. We were never on our marks, ready and set to go. There is no beginning, for there is no time.

7.

All that I had to say about the artworks in this book, and the mental masks by which they were seen for the first time, I have said.
It should be noted though that, just as each person cages a million identities, each word is the prison of a million thoughts.

Introduction

In his poems Kaganof sings of a world he’d rather not live in, but to which, at the same time, he feels emotionally and morally connected. He imagines himself schizophrenic. But it is not his mind, but his heart that is doubtful about the now and the here. Divided into two equal moments of love and disgust. Leaving him forever now - and heartbroken. The poetry is therefore not meant as a cure - for his displacement is incurable - but serves as diagnostic solace. To reassure himself, line after line, verse after verse, that this haunted feeling is not a mad - but a sadness. In between these sad and angry lines he seems to be having - from time to time - a rocking great time. Living like a god, albeit for a drug drained second. His poetry gives him a reason to be amongst - and breathe in the same air - as his subjects. The poem and the field on which it grows - his notebook - is his mental dug-out. An excuse not to look up from the pristine white paper and face once again this grimmest of realities. And thus, although Kaganof is amidst his people - and lends their smallest talk his keenest ear - the poetry itself is his sanctuary. A garden of words. A raison de non-etre.

Dick Tuinder

yes, finally, the long awaited return of carlos suntana is a reality. click here