kagablog

being forced to fight is good
especially for me.
i feel like i’m coming to terms with the
lesson that fighting is a responsibility
not a choice.

From this blog you would think that January was Lerato Shadi month but it was kind of in Joburg. It definitely was one of the hottest shows on this month. Sean Slemon opened at Brodie/Stevenson but it was open for such a short time that it closed before I got to see it, which I am really dissapointed about, the images that David posted on FB looked fantastic. Minette Vari’s Parallax opened at the Goodman and was there yesterday to check it out. She had some really cool video artworks (as usual), she really is one of a few artists who exploits the digital film medium. Will be reviewing for next week in the Sunday Indy so won’t go into much detail. BTW: The Goodman Gallery in Joburg is expanding; Liza gave me a short tour yesterday. There will be permanent photographic section, with a sort of archive of photographic prints. There will also be a coffee shop and a sort of library area where members of the public will be able to peruse through the gallery’s extensive collection of art books. This has to be a first for a South African gallery and I think it is a wonderful addition to the gallery, it will encourage people to spend more time at the gallery and it will hopefully encourage the public to read about art, a neccessary activity if they are to appreciate it to its fullest extent.

My Shadi review:

LERATO Shadi is an old-school performance artist in the sense that she is physically invested in her works. Her works are lengthy - Selogilwe (Setswana for “woven”) is seven hours - and, therefore, require a high level of physical commitment. So, on a very basic level she explores perpetual actions and how they impact on the body. There is always a sense with Shadi’s work that she wishes to identify those acts that are fundamental to human existence.

Shadi uses a neutral canvas for her performances by employing a white palette for the background (in the video performances), her outfit and the metal cubes, which she crawls through in Se Sa Feleng (reference to a Setswana idiom that refers to an eternal state of affairs). This decontextualises her actions, allowing them to exist as abstract expression. It also establishes an imaginative plain, encouraging the viewer to attach their subjective interpretations to the works.

The repetitiveness of her actions also locks viewers into a meditative state, which can simultaneously free them from thought altogether. No doubt, while performing Shadi too vacillates between serious contemplation and mindlessness - both equally empowering states that allow her to either completely inhabit her physical being or to altogether detach from it. And this is the dual function of repetitive movements.

As Shadi navigates her petite body around the metal cubes in Se Sa Feleng one could surmise that it is not just the manner in which architecture shapes movement or our experience of reality, but refers to the psychological/emotional and ideological boundaries in which humans operate. The cube’s structure is reminiscent of a jungle gym, alluding to a type of playful action that becomes habitual, ingrained and eventually banal. Selogilwe and Se Sa Feleng both consist of repetitive actions but they are never uniform. Over time the simple movements Shadi employs gradually transform as she becomes weary, implying that even the most mundane actions undergo an evolution - or devolution of sorts. This obviously has ideological significance vis-224-vis human existence, which primarily consists of recurring actions and behaviour patterns. These patterns, from cleaning our teeth to the kind of relationships we are locked into with ourselves and others, undergo subtle changes. But the illusion of uniformity they create suggests they offer control and set order in the face of external chaos.

In Selogilwe, a video performance work, Shadi is pictured knitting a long red string. Every moment of this seven-hour-long task is captured for posterity - as such, no ordinary moment is overlooked: Shadi suggests that it is not in the dramas of life that the human condition is best observed but in those quiet everyday patterns that appear insignificant. This is one of the characteristics of Shadi’s brand of performance: she creates art from futile activities. This lends an air of absurdity to her work but one that underscores the senselessness and irrationality of self-constructed and/or socially imposed rituals. Her work does not follow any obvious narrative. Yet because her performances are so drawn out and physically demanding, the subtle changes in her movements are designed to discreetly assert a beginning, middle and end. Of course, it is only a patient and devoted follower of her work who might detect this inconspicuous transformation.

Most interesting is the temporal relationship between Selogilwe and Se Sa Feleng. The red string which Shadi is seen knitting in the former is used in the latter performance: it is released from a discreet pouch that is part of her white outfit. So, while we see the red string being made we also see it in its finished state and serving its intended purpose. In this way Shadi collapses time as the past and the present occur simultaneously. It is an interesting proposition given that her performances are so time-bound - in terms of the way that they mark time passing. The red string has much importance too in expressing a central characteristic of her work. A string has no in-built ending to it; it can be as long or as short as the maker deems necessary. In this way the string refers to a perpetual action that has no predetermined conclusion. Thus Shadi’s act of releasing and tying the string around the cube also has no real end to it - albeit that the performance ceases after three hours. The string is looped over the bars of the cube to form another pattern - hinting at the way in which one pattern gives way to another and another. Thus existence is simply a series of interlocking patterns.The string is housed in a back pouch, which summons all sorts of metaphors: most obviously emotional baggage comes to mind. But it’s more stimulating to think of the red string as a life-line that unravels over time and whose length no one is able to truly ascertain. Another interesting aspect to Se Sa Feleng is the manner in which the work exists after the performance: the cube and string are in installation that convey the residue of performance, action and existence.

This is an invigorating exhibition from an astute artist, whose work is becoming more and more visually refined. Those who missed Mmitlwa, which Shadi performed at Brodie/Stevenson early last year, will be able to view a video recording of the work, which in this format repositions the work in an interesting way, making the point that video recordings of performance art bring a different element to the work, while silencing some of its other more visceral characteristics. -

published in The Sunday Independent on January 24, 2010.

read mary corrigall’s blog here

Goethe on Main, 245 Main Street

Opening on Thursday 14 January at 6:30pm

Performance artist Lerato Shadi’s proposal was one of the first eight projects selected earlier this year by an independent jury of arts professionals for the new space Goethe on Main in downtown Johannesburg. The show is now scheduled from 14 January to 6 February 2010 and comprises of three works: the video performances ‘Mmitlwa’ and ‘Selogilwe’, and the opening night performance of ‘Se sa Feleng’, along with its remaining sculptural installation.

As the artist explains, ‘The video works ‘Mmitlwa’ and ‘Selogilwe’ as well as the residual sculptural installation ‘Se sa Feleng’, explore themes around self-reflection, spirituality, and unseen life processes. The performances look at life as an act of creation, consider that every moment leaves behind a memory, a trace, something tangible or ethereal that refers to it, or marks its passage.’

In ‘Mmitlwa’ (meaning thorn referencing a Sestwana idiom) Shadi appears naked on a white plinth – making reference to the Gilbert and George concept of the ‘living sculpture’. She proceeds to wrap her entire body in white masking tape. This is followed by the painstaking process of unwrapping, or freeing herself. The action, which takes about 30 minutes in total, alludes to the idea that we are each responsible for our own experiences, both creators and destroyers of our various self-imposed constraints.

‘Selogilwe’ a Setswana word meaning ‘woven’, is the title of a video performance featuring Shadi on a white plinth, this time seated in the Lotus position. Here she knits a red woolen string, and seems to pull the thread from inside her belly. At the end, a pile of woven string lies on the gallery floor – the only evidence of the seven hour long process.

The third work – ‘Se sa Feleng’ meaning ‘that which does not end’ is short for a Setswana idiom which states : ‘that which does not end is an abomination of nature’. The entire ritual, performed on the opening night, takes about three hours to perform. Here Shadi crawls repetitively around and through twelve metal cubes with a red crocheted string which appears to be pulled from her back, forming an infinity sign on the central bars of her self-constructed cage, whose dimensions were made specifically to fit her own body.

The element of time and physical endurance is of particular significance to Shadi – all works take place over long periods of time, and seem to condense lifelong processes into unspoken parables, with ritual activities that push her beyond her own levels of physical comfort
The exhibition runs until 6 February 2010

at Goethe on Main,

245 Main Street

Opening May 20 2009, 6.30pm

Press Release

‘The Double Body: being in space’ is an exhibition of new and recent installation and performance art by South African artists and explores the implicit relationship between physical performance, or presence, and architectural spaces. Drawing from a body of recent writing that makes a case for a corporeal “knowledge” of space, the works in this exhibition are invested in how the body locates itself in space and develops a sense of place, how installation environments may bear the traces of bodily presences and the different levels at which a viewer experiences an artwork. Many of the works, Alexander Opper’s installation, Auseinandersetzung, in the upper-level of the gallery, for instance, consist in an immediate sensory encounter for the viewer that takes place prior to a formal or analytical engagement with the work.

Nevertheless, each contribution to the exhibition has been rigorously conceived and carefully chosen to create an immersive network of spatial environments that exist in a carefully hewn poetic conversation with each another. This conversation will ring most clearly at the exhibition’s opening event, where Lerato Shadi, and Bronwyn Lace will present performance works and new video work by Nina Barnett, Same Seine, will be projected onto an outdoor “screen”. This exhibition has been designed to read best after dark, and uses unconventional lighting selected to meet the display demands of each work individually. In this way, the exhibition breaks with the temporal conventions of gallery viewing and relies on its external environment to determine the conditions of its legibility and meaning.

Participating artists are Marcus Neustetter, Bronwyn Lace, Alexander Opper, David Andrew, Nina Barnett, Johan Thom, Lerato Shadi, Phillip Raiford Johnson, Murray Kruger and Rodan Kane Hart.
Curated for the FADA Gallery. Johannesburg, by Anthea Buys.
A digital catalogue will be available from May 20 on the FADA website.

Opening: Wednesday May 20, 6.30pm.
Contact: Andthea Buys
antheabuys@mweb.co.za; 082 460 3427

jump especially when there is
no evidence of a net.

forget the road less traveled
head in to the woods.

i have none of the things
that “count”
no money
no food
no resources
no internet
but
lots of faith
in me and where i’m heading.

Psalm 139 v 13 - 16
(a psalm of david)

For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.

to those that fly high
beyond the skyline
of their combined
night time and daytime dreaming

the agony of truth
reflected on a mirror
will point back toward
their own void.

Waiting for Google to upload
the moment passes,
words vanish
as quickly as they had appeared

You with a ready pen,
paper the divine prostitute
laying bare awaiting your inscription
upon her soul.

You with a ready pen
able to pluck the mythical fruit as it
dances between this world, and the one
the eye won’t see.
For fear of recognizing
the nakedness that clothes us
and Eden within our mist.

You with a ready pen
who hears a voice
whispering beyond our internal monologue
“Eden is with-in you, seize your searching”
while I wait for Google to upload
reply back
“Yes this is a garden but where is the gardener”

The thought crossed my mind a few weeks ago to do a performance of 4′33″ using digital technology, modern sound equipment, and music production software. A recent event focusing on performance art at the Bag Factory, called RE/Action, gave me the opportunity to take advantage of this happy idea.

4′33″ is an experimental musical work by former Fluxus member and avant-garde composer John Cage (1912 - 1992). The original piece was composed for piano and consists of about four and a half minutes of silence with an introduction by Cage saying: “I have nothing to say, and I am saying it”. Even though its first manifestation was for piano, Cage had originally composed 4’33” for any instrument, giving me allowance to perform a digital version in two parts in front of an audience at the Bag Factory in Johannesburg.

Cage structured 4’33” in three randomly selected movements, depending on the action, performer, and setting. Thus, the beginning an end of each movement is not dictated by the composer. Despite this premise, I decided to compose the digital version in two parts, the first part being the original piece, and the second part taking the form of a remix. Cage did, however, stipulate that the title should reflect the timings for each movement, which is why my performance of 4’33” began at about 19:15 (after all the other performers at the event had finished). Unknown to me this was also about the time that the Imam calls the faithful into prayer at the nearby mosque. The original sub-title of 4’33” was “A Silent Prayer”, which was referred to by the presence of Lerato Shadi, suspended with cloth in a messianic pose on the wall opposite to me, giving the entire room a religious atmosphere of Christian and Muslim, East and West undertones (or overtones; whatever strikes your fancy).

I introduced myself and the piece, and then I sat down in front of my Korg midi controller, MacBook Pro, Tascam audio controller, a marantz amplifier and Sony earphones; surrounded by condenser microphones, KEF monitors, lots of cords and about thirty five people. I readied myself, because in my experience sound equipment almost always has issues, not to mention computers. Each part lasted about 5 minutes, including the breaks between movements and live editing time. As mentioned, the first part consisted of Cage’s original 4’33”, with completely random beginning and ending points for each movement, and 30 second intervals separating the three movements. I thought part one was fairly successful because most people kept as silent as they could, except for some late comers who did not quite catch on to what was going on, but the Imam’s sound came totally unexpectedly, and almost perfectly.

After the piece had been successfully recorded in part one of the rendition, there was about a two minute respite before the commencement of part two. The chants of the Imam took up most of movement one in part one, so I decided to focus on that section of ambiance in the remix. I aimed the microphones at the monitors and left them to record whilst the remix was played through the speakers. In this way the remix was recorded as heard by the audience during its live production. Silence and noise was amplified, spliced and fragmented in a totally random manner, bearing no pattern except for some repetitive sections, with no interludes or pauses for about four and a half minutes. Part two was interesting because onlookers did not know they were still being recorded and felt free to speak there minds. Little did they know that I could hear their conversations very clearly with my earphones, with statements like: “what is he doing… Why is he just sitting there?”, and “is there a problem with his equipment?”

Once both parts had been completed, after about 10 minutes, the recording, re-recording, and remix was published immediately on an Ipod Shuffle and put up for sale for R2000. There was no buyer, which completely dumbfounded me, because I was sure that people would give anything for an Ipod shuffle with amplified, broken silence on it. Given this disappointment an edited and mastered version of the two parts will also be made available as a free download in due course.

The full title of this rendition has been settled on as: 4′33″ (a silent prayer for Darfur), piece for digital media. This title was influenced by the serendipitous event of the Imam chanting, and also by a friend who answered me when I told him about my performance: “…fuck Shane, why do you perform these meaningless acts when you could be saving people in Darfur or something…”

Thank you to Johan Thom for organizing the event, “RE/Action”. Thank you also to all the other performers, Rat Western, Lerato Shadi, Bronwyn Lace and all the rest, you guys were great. And, thank you to the Bag Factory for hosting the event.

shane de lange

this article first appeared on shane de lange’s blog

Below is a nice rendition of 4′33″ by David Tudor, a student and colleague of John Cage.

By Mary Corrigall

Reminiscent of Bernie Searle’s inimitable brand of performance/video art, Lerato Shadi assembles visuals that are stripped of all pretensions, preferring to present base impulses unadorned by superfluous expression.

But that is where similarities between the artists end; while Shadi’s aesthetic is centred on laying bare the primordial compulsions that drive our society, she is self-conscious of her expression. This compels her to analyse her medium and its limitations.

Though this adds another rich dimension to her practice, it is the manner in which she is able to articulate such a variety of concepts through straightforward actions and imagery that makes her art so compelling.

Hema (or Six hours of out-breath captured in 792 balloons) (2007), for example, sees Shadi striving to capture the bare essence of existence by storing each of her breaths over a six-hour period in balloons.

Significantly, she chooses an office setting in which to enact this performance piece. No detail is coincidental to this work; every element of her imagery is functional. Even the architectural structure of the office (the advertising agency Ogilvy in Cape Town), an industrial formation in which the inner workings of the building’s mechanics are laid bare, has been selected to enhance Shadi’s performance.

Shadi positions herself at the centre of a symmetrical steel staircase that forms a diamond motif that looks much like a clock, alluding to the measuring of time. This creates the impression that Shadi is not only a cohesive element of the architectural space she is situated in, but also that her performance echoes the activities that habitually take place in the setting.

In a work setting where time is exchanged for money, existence has a tangible value; it is equated with the realisation of end products. In leisure time this is rarely the case; it is valued for its lack of productivity and its “timelessness”. Therefore, in the office environment existence has purpose and meaning. Shadi’s video proves, however, that such worth is subjective and work creates the illusion that existence has meaning.

From afar, the actions of the office workers seem arbitrary and pointless; people go up and down in lifts, cross the office, stare at their computers and type. Ultimately, in a philosophical sense, their preoccupations are as absurd and futile as filling balloons with air.

But Shadi’s repetitive and seemingly tedious performance isn’t simply engineered to highlight the meaninglessness and tedium of daily existence; it also articulates a compulsion to capture the bare essence of physical subsistence.

If Shadi is able to capture each breath that she exhales, then she will have a grasp on what it is to be a living being.

Instead of measuring time/being with a mechanical man-made contraption such as a clock, she relies on each inhalation and exhalation as a marker of time. Shadi chooses a frivolous receptacle to contain her exhalations; balloons have a short life span and are associated with frolicsome celebrations rather than a philosophical quest.

Shadi’s objective also appears to conflict with her final product. She has purposively set out to capture every moment yet the finished product sees her six-hour balloon blowing marathon edited down to an eight-minute video. Why go to such lengths to document each living moment only to discard these “precious” seconds/minutes/hours of existence?

Ultimately, though, Shadi’s tactics are driven by perceptive logic; experience is fleeting and intangible and our physical experience of living is divorced from how we process it psychologically. In our minds our experiences aren’t remembered in full detail; we cannot recall the minutiae of our existence. Instead, memory is composed of edited versions of experience.

Shadi also suggests that the compulsion to capture reality can only ever offer superficial results. The vehicles or mediums, such as video that artists employ to capture reality, remove real-time experience from the equation, imparting a sense of timelessness that contradicts the nature of being. So although Hema is visually rooted in an ordered, concrete context that assumes that time/experience can be measured, she suggests that existence cannot be quantified because it is an ethereal concept.

Aboleleng (2007) sees the artist engaging in another fruitless activity. In this video artwork Shadi is seen going through the painful experience of giving birth, however, what emerges from her womb is a long, narrow crotcheted scarf, signifying an umbilical cord, rather than a baby.

Employing a green screen – a neutral background that film-makers use to enable computer-generated imagery to be integrated at a later stage – Shadi draws the viewers’ attention to the act in which she is engaged, rather than an external condition that shapes action. It is the pure act of creation that Shadi is referencing.

Yet the object Shadi brings to life, the long crotcheted scarf that is also displayed under a spotlight adjacent to the screen, has no purpose. The scarf/cord may be fashioned to resemble the detailing on a baby’s booties and clothing but it is not a living, breathing being; it is a lifeless entity that refers to a newborn.

Shadi suggests that although art objects may not be living, breathing entities, they exist in ways common to living beings. Just as humans give birth to children so too can they bring ideas to life. Shadi obviously shares a deep connection to her art that she likens to offspring.

l Lerato Shadi’s exhibition is on at the Johannesburg Art Gallery until the end of January

this article was first published in the sunday independent of 13 january 2007

Hema or: Six hours of out-breath captured in 792 balloons
2007
Digital video projection with sound
Duration 5 min 26 sec
camera - tam wege
editor - tamsyn reynolds
sound design - warrick sony

Aboleleng
2007
Digital video projection, and wool installation
duration 4 min 59 sec
director - amichai tahor
camera and lighting design - dusko marovic
editor - aryan kaganof

you write like i want to live
like i want to make art.
tear open my own skin no matter how it hurts
and subject the world to the beauty of my despair.

thank you

for being you
for your life
and for writing your truth

thank you

Love
Lerato