kagablog

David Goldblatt tells Mary Corrigall about his desire to capture every facet of reality

David Goldblatt has a discreet presence. A habitual observer of South African society, it seems appropriate that his physical attendance is understated.

I follow his diminutive and wiry frame, which is concealed under a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, to a cluttered study at the back of his Fellside, Johannesburg home. The passing of time has taken its toll on Goldblatt; his back is faintly curved and his face is suitably leathered and lined for a 77-year-old. However, his gleaming, cerulean eyes speak of a mind still actively consuming, engaging and interpreting the world.

It is through these crystal blue eyes that this distinguished South African photographer has been surveying reality to reveal the nuances inherent to the South African consciousness since the 1950s.

Exploited miners toiling under the earth, national monuments, Afrikaans society, municipal bigwigs, the subject matter of Goldblatt’s oeuvre has always been highly politicised but it is not politics per se that he represents.

“I am concerned with the polis, the people,” he says.

The minutiae of South African life that defines his imagery denies the universal value of his work, he asserts.

“As a photographer I am always concerned with particulars. Bernard Shaw said that a painter can paint Rebecca at the well, but when a photographer does, it is Mary Smith. And you can never get away from Mary Smith. Universal truths are for me things I steer carefully from.”

The overriding impulse that compels Goldblatt, however, is not specific to an environment; it is an objective common to any artist.

“What drives me is the impossibility of conveying in one small piece of paper the whole complexity of reality.”

While Goldblatt acknowledges that it is impractical for photography to articulate the complete nature of reality - embracing past and future contexts in the way that the human mind can - he seems bent on a course that ultimately challenges photography’s limitations.

“The camera is fixed in time and space and can only reveal what you choose to put in front of it. By its very nature it cannot reveal that complexity, but that is what I aspire to do,” he declares.

Goldblatt’s latest exhibition, entitled Intersections/Intersected, currently on show at the Michael Stevenson gallery in Cape Town, certainly makes inroads in this regard. Juxtaposing his past and current oeuvres Intersections/Intersected creates a dialogue between these bodies of work, which has allowed Goldblatt to view his work as a cohesive whole, rather than as a sum of rigidly compartmentalised parts.

Goldblatt’s most well-known photographic essays such as The Mines (1973), Some Afrikaners Photographed (1975) - the narrative that caused such a hullabaloo - and In Boksburg (1982) reflect not just his habitual interest in the contentious aspects of South African life, but follow a pattern whereby different echelons of society are treated and read as separate bodies of work. Similarly, distinctions have been made between his monochrome photography of the apartheid era and his colour photography of the post-apartheid era. Intersections/Intersected disrupts this routine.

“When it came to selecting work Michael Stevenson put recent colour work with things from before and the images started resonating and doing interesting things. It has kind of broken a mould for me and freed my mind a bit. There is a strong continuity which has been blurred since I started working in colour.”

Since Goldblatt started experimenting with photography, first as an obsession when he left school in the late 1940s and then professionally from 1962 following his father’s death which freed him from the shackles of the family business, the aspect of South African society which he as found most compelling has not shifted.

“My concern has always been with values. I was concerned during apartheid with our values, our ethos and the crazy and appalling things that we did and tried to look at the conditions that gave rise to those values and how they were expressed.

“And in post-apartheid South Africa this is still what I am doing. We obviously have a new dispensation and that has brought up new values. I am particularly interested in how we express values.”

When Goldblatt first embarked on a career as a photographer, he wasn’t interested in creating nuanced images that divulged societal conventions. Believing that he needed to alert the international community about the conditions of apartheid, he was compelled to snap overtly political photographs.

“I set out as a missionary [photographer] in the early 1950s; I felt that the world had to know what was going on out here.”

When Goldblatt became aware that his photography would not alter the course of history, it was a painful realisation.

“I failed miserably, I was a hopeless reporter. I had no skills, it was futile. More importantly, I realised that if I was going to engage in photography that meant something to me that I would have to accept that these photographs might go into a box and never see the light of day. So I would be doing it not because I wanted to spread the word but because I wanted to do it for myself.”

This shift in his thinking marked a significant change in his evolution as a photographer; it liberated him from being a straightforward documenter generating explicit imagery.

Some Afrikaners further marked Golblatt’s progression into a new realm of photography. His subject matter was highly contentious and so was his approach; he demystified and humanised the Afrikaner, the oppressor.

“I knew then while doing that work that it wasn’t popular to look at white people. We know they are shithouses, immoral hypocrites, why look at them?”

Coming to terms with the Afrikaner and what that community represented wasn’t just a political statement. It had personal relevance for him. He grew up in Randfontein, a town dominated by Afrikaners.

“They [Afrikaners] were an important part of my growing up and experience of my life. Growing up in Randfontein there were a lot of Afrikaners, many supporters of rightwing groups. I experienced anti-Semitism and observed the treatment of black people in the town by the official structures.”

Working in his father’s shop, a men’s outfitter, Goldblatt had to come to terms with the fact that he would be dealing with those people.

“It wasn’t an easy ride, I began to enjoy the language and began to lust after its earthy idiomatic quality. I began to like many of these people, while at the same time I knew that for some of them racism was in the blood.”

Given his liberal outlook, it had always been difficult for him to reconcile his affection for Afrikaners with his disapproval of their worldview. This contradiction gnawed at Goldblatt’s consciousness and photography allowed him to explore the dichotomy, and, later, find catharsis.

The end of apartheid provided a different kind of release for Goldblatt. The socio-political dimension of his work no longer took precedence.

“During the years of apartheid I tended to suppress some things that I wanted to do or things that seemed at the time to be almost unthinkable. I thirsted for some lyricism and found it.

“Strangely, in some of my more hardegat photographs from that era I think that there is some lyricism - but it is quite private.”

Goldblatt’s desire for lyricism has found an apt outlet in photographing the landscape. Intersections/Intersected features a number of photographs that meditate on the textural and tactile qualities of the natural environment. Although the historical, social issues tied to the land faintly hover in the recess of the mind, it is the sensuousness of the land that seems to be informing Goldblatt’s gaze.

Goldblatt frequently travels around the country in his 4×4 camper van observing rural life. He talks of being “steeped and marinated” in the South African context.

“I am not interested in travelling outside South Africa. I don’t feel that sense of involvement that I do here. I feel at ease in my knowledge in the place.”

Goldblatt’s fixation with the landscape has also seen an interest in humans’ interaction with their environment; the ways in which we leave traces of our existence on the land.

From grand political structures to the plastic flowers tied to a fence to mark someone’s death, Goldblatt is fascinated by monuments.

“Monuments are all of the same order; they are an expression of values. We find it necessary to mark our time on the earth, we are all like dogs pissing on poles.”

Goldblatt has returned to a site near Sutherland three times, photographing a makeshift memorial to Nicoleen Van Wyk on the edge of the road.

“I haven’t got it right, I will be going back again,” he says. “I know that there is something there that I need to bring (into focus).”

Living, breathing subjects present a different set of challenges. Goldblatt says there is no furtive skill in getting a subject to “reveal” themselves to the camera.

“I tend to be rather tough. I don’t make it easy with the subject. I am not concerned with making my subjects comfortable. I want some tension but not an awkwardness where they end up revealing themselves in ways that are perhaps self-denigrating. Although I did exploit that quite deliberately when I photographed some politicians.”

Reiterating his supreme purpose, Goldblatt says the goal with any subject is to articulate the plurality of existence.

“The ultimate portrait is one in which the whole past of somebody and what is imminent and immanent in their future is laid bare.”

Goldblatt has yet to achieve this.

“It’s a bloody hard thing to do, to make a photograph that is going to be somehow evocative of that person’s past and future.”

No doubt he has set himself such an unattainable ambition so that he will forever remain on a path of discovery.

# Intersections/Intersected is showing at Michael Stevenson gallery in Cape Town until March. Goldblatt will also show a collection of photography of Johannesburg at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg from April 26

this article was first published in the sunday independent on 17 feb 2008

by mary corrigall

This was the week that the Dumas circus rolled into town and the media bandwagon jumped in head long, kicking up hype. On Tuesday Dumas gave a walkabout tour of her exhibition at The Standard Bank gallery during the press preview of the show. Having already interviewed her over the phone before Intimate Relations opened in Cape Town last year I had good grasp on Dumas, but it was nevertheless rewarding to see her in person. The voice that I bonded with over the phone from Amsterdam was easily reconciled with her physical presence; warm, reflective, playful and unpretentious that appears to be her character in broad brushstrokes as one watching from afar. Like most famous folk I think Dumas struggles with the public pesona that is ascribed to her. She loathes not being able to control what is said and written about her work. At the conclusion of the walkabout she looked out at the sea of faces - all media - sizing her up her and no doubt shuddered at the thought of what their conception of her and her work might be. “Please don’t put words in my mouth,” she urged.

keep reading this article on mary corrigall’s art blog art in jozi

The regeneration of Johannesburg’s inner city has yet to be realised. The middle classes are hesitant and the impoverished are fighting to stay put, writes Mary Corrigall

Commissioner Street is a good place to locate an inexpensive lunch of slap chips and Russians. This bustling city street is flanked by budget shops flogging clothing, cheap tupperware and faux gold clocks and is lined with informal traders purveying polished red apples displayed in tattered green plastic plates. It is a hub of crude commerce that seems an unlikely place for a contemporary art gallery with allusions to wealth and sophistication. But it is in this incongruous setting in Jozi’s inner city that Charl Bezuidenhout established Worldart nearly a year ago.

The bare concrete floor and exposed pipes that adorn the walls of his gallery visually root the gallery in its urban landscape. Downstairs is an empty basement that was once home to Jameson’s, a club that found favour with suburban whites in the eighties. A thick carpet of grime and dust covers the bar, the only trace of its former incarnation and the city’s illustrious past. Across the road is another icon of the city’s history, the Rand Club. A hungry fire gutted the landmark edifices’ interior in 2005 but like a persistent phoenix that won’t accept its demise this grand old edifice remains a swish destination and a permanent reminder that Joburg’s colonial history cannot be eradicated. Adjacent to the club are indications of Jozi’s future incarnation; a dusty construction site earmarked for a Vida e Caffe, a coffee shop chain associated with trendy shopping mall culture. Bezuidenhout is jubilant about the coffee shop’s expected presence. “It will change this little part of the city, it is a small thing but it will make a difference,” he observes.

Having inhabited metropolises across Europe and America, the Afrikaans-speaking Capetonian is a self-confessed serial city dweller, who feeds off the energy and buzz that accompanies city living. But his desire to dwell in the heart of Jozi’s inner city is rooted in a more complex matrix of human endeavours than simply an obsession with urban aesthetics.

Many progressive middle class South Africans like Bezuidenhout have bought into the vision of a revitalised inner city that the City of Johannesburg has propagated just prior to the turn of the millennium. When Thabo Mbeki launched a new vision for the area in 1997, dubbing it the Golden Heartbeat of Africa, it galvanised a plethora of development programmes by the Johannesburg Development Agency to uplift and revitalise a city that businesses had escaped a decade earlier, leaving it for dead. Since Mbeki’s grand gesture Jozi’s city centre has attracted a ruck of opportunistic entrepreneurs, looking to turn a buck while participating in the noble pursuit of re-erecting a flailing city. Like the thousands of prospectors who once flocked to Johannesburg to claim a chunk of the gold-laden reefs of the city, Bezuidenhout wanted to acquire a piece of a city rumoured to be ascending. It also made fiscal sense to embrace the vision while the city’s property was still going for a song.

“Joburg obviously has that allure for a businessman, the market is bigger. It’s the ideal place to come if you are looking for a challenge. I have been coming to the city for a number of years and noticed it getting cleaner and safer. The phase that the city is in now, rent is still affordable.”

“There is a definite optimism in the air I think it is because City council bought into the whole thing and a few people who were willing to try it. I don’t think it was rocket science it was a question of ‘this is too good to be true’ it was in line with international trends and few people willing to put their head on the block on going for it while the rest are just following their lead, slowly.”

Participating in the resurrection of a grand city, Africa’s most infamous conurbation, also offers a frisson of anticipation that is unquestionably seductive to financial daredevils.

“It’s exciting to be part of something special and I am playing my role in contributing to changing perceptions about the city,” says Bezuidenhout.

Jozi’s inner city promises more than just a pot of gold at the end the rainbow; it caters for a new breed of South African entrepreneurs who are socially engaged. Melding business ethics with a social conscience may sound contradictory but it just such an ethos that drives many entrepreneurs in Jozi’s inner city.

For Bezuidenhout setting up his business in this locale facilitates relationships with a wealth of African artists who he would never have encountered in the northern suburbs of the city. It also puts him in contact with a cosmopolitan society that takes its cue from African culture.

“I really wanted to put myself in the position where I am in contact with a more African experience. In Cape Town you don’t have that. You have to be proactive about striking up relationships with people from other backgrounds while at the same time you should not try too hard either, where the relationship is superficial. So the best thing is to put yourself in the position where it can happen to you.

“I think that you are cheating when you live in Cape Town and claim that you know anything about South Africa. I am not saying that everyone must live in Joburg but for me it is nice to know that I am gaining a certain understanding of (the country) by living here.”

Bezuidenhout’s desire to become part of an urban African culture hasn’t taken off yet; he is only gradually being absorbed into the bustling activity that takes places on the other side the thick glass windows of his gallery.

His clientele remain typically affluent whites - not the usual patrons that the inner city attracts. Not the market in town, expecting his market will change.

Some of Bezuidenhout’s clientele are afraid to come into the city. Bezuidenhout tries to allay his patrons’ misgivings about Joburg by relaying his own experience of the city or, failing that he sends a taxi to fetch them and bring them to the city.

“The streets have become cleaner and safer and there is a feeling that the city is being managed but people are not that convinced yet.”

It has been over a decade since Joburg acquired its new moniker, but Bezuidenhout believes that it is not yet the “Golden Heartbeat of Africa.” Optimistic investors have snapped up all the luxury apartments in town – Urban Ocean, one of the city’s most prominent property developers, have sold all the luxury apartments in the five odd buildings they have revamped in the city so far. But Bezuidenhout says that these swish lofts are sitting empty, indicating a lack of confidence in the city’s regeneration.

“A lot of people have bought in town but people haven’t moved into the apartments and started living in them. It is slowly beginning to happen once the retail side of things has picked up and you have more restaurants and bars and shops then things will change,” he asserts.

“The city thing is happening but it hasn’t reached that tipping point yet.”

Pockets of affluence

While Jozi’s inner city has yet to rise from the ashes, the establishment of Mapungubwe, a four star luxury hotel situated between Anderson and Marshall Streets, is being viewed as a sign that the ramshackle city is unquestionably upwardly mobile.

Once inside its slick, sophisticated Afrochic décor it is hard to believe that one is minutes away from the masses that pound the pavements on the hectic streets outside. The sepia photographs of rural African settings that decorate the lobby’s wall complete the fantasy but it is the hotel’s urban setting that makes it one of the most unique hotels in the country. Aside from a few dives that offer accommodation elsewhere in Jozi’s inner city, Mapungubwe is the only establishment that offers four star accommodation in the area. Since the Carlton Hotel and the Johannesburg Sun’s closure, there has been nowhere for tourists to rest their weary legs. Until now, it hadn’t occurred to hoteliers that tourists would be interested in spending time in Jozi’s inner city.

But it is not tourists that make up most of Mapungubwe’s clientele.

Tour companies that service foreign visitors are reticent about bringing groups to the city centre for an overnight stay, according to Carberry.

“They stay in Sandton or Rosebank and prefer to see the city from a tour bus. They don’t even get out of the bus; they just move quickly in and out of the city,” observes Carberry.

Mapungubwe doesn’t need tourists to stay afloat; the hotel can barely keep up with the present demand, says Carberry.

Primarily they attract businessmen who are in town to do business at one of the large corporations that have remained in the city, according to the hotel’s manager, Martin Carberry. Standard Bank, Absa and First National Bank’s headquarters compel people to visit the inner city and have kept Mapungubwe in business. Gustav Holtzhausen, managing director of Circlevest Properties, the company that owns Mapungubwe, says the presence of these corporate headquarters is what compelled him to look at investment opportunities in the city.

As with Bezuidenhout the affordability of the acquisition provided an extra incentive to purchase the defunct French Bank building and turn it into a reasonably priced luxury destination.

To make up for the limited range of activities nearby for the hotel’s guests to amuse a swish and trendy whisky bar is being built in the old vault located at the basement of the hotel, which will no doubt provide an oasis of luxury for those who live in the city.

Mapungubwe is not the only isolated patch of lavishness in Jozi’s inner city; there are pockets of affluence dotted around the city – sometimes one has to head into town on foot to discover them.

Newtown has been a mainstay of entertainment since the mid nineties with its funky bars and Afrochic eateries around the Market Theatre. The last year has seen the scene expand to include bars and an art gallery on Quinn Street and No 1 Central Place has become a must-do lunch spot with Capello’s and The Sophiatown Restaurant now attracting a trendy clique. A large amount of the patrons might well be suburbanites wanting to sample urban living without having to commit to it in practice but nevertheless they are contributing towards creating the impression that the inner city is cutting edge.

Main Street is now also offering what property developers call “the lifestyle element.”

Now a paved street with decorated with public art, it too is lined with fashionable eateries that show signs of an emerging street café society in the making.

Though a shopping mall is rumoured to be on the cards and a Woolworths food outlet will be open by the end of the year, further extending that ever illusive “lifestyle element” into the thick of the inner city, for now this brand of consumerism is restricted to just a few locales.

Home away from Home

Apart from the colourful mosaiced patterns that snake along the pavements in the so-called Fashion District, there is little evidence of rejuvenation in Doornfontein. In fact some say the suburb has degenerated since a number of clothing factories closed down during a downturn in business in the 1990s. Where once bottle stores and dark café’s sold greasy vetkoeks to seamstresses on their tea breaks stood, now stands vacant, unkempt properties with broken windows held together with caked fabric off cuts.

Amidst the grime, crime and decay, however, Lawrence Lemoaona has established a comfortable and roomy abode in End Street. An artist by trade Lemoaona was initially seduced by the ample space that his Doornfontein loft boasts. No matter what fantasy realms his imagination may transport him too, the vistas of Jozi’s concrete jungle that beckon from the expansive windows of his apartment will forever keep him rooted in an urban African reality.

Although Lemoaoana feels at home in his sparse loft, he has yet to reconcile himself with the world that exists from the pavement outside.

“I haven’t really been able to integrate with community here,” says Lemoaona.

He feels like a stranger in a strange land.

“I feel foreign to the space. There are lots of Nigerian shops that have opened and there is a resistance (from my part) to integrate. I feel like a I am dealing with an unknown quantity; I cannot place the people I meet.”

Until a over a year ago Lemoaona has lived in Soweto with his parents. In Soweto Lemoaona was used to being part of a tightly knit community, where he felt looked after.

“It is so different from Soweto. Soweto is so communal and there are always so many people around you that you know.”

He chose to live in Doornfontein because he wanted to access to the northern suburbs without having to pay the high rentals that living in those neighbourhoods commonly entails.

Initially Lemoaona was reluctant to move to the inner city.

“Living in Soweto I viewed the city as just a passageway to go to somewhere else, it wasn’t’ a place you lived in.”

Dwelling in Doornfontein took some getting use to.

“I couldn’t sleep properly for the first couple months. The city comes alive at 5am. That is when the taxis starting to hoot. Now I take comfort in those sounds, they have become familiar to me.”

Lemoaona sums up his association with his adopted home as a love/hate relationship.

The poverty that he is constantly surrounded by and the fear of crime have kept his optimisim for the city in check.

“Crime is a factor. I was mugged on Nugget Street on the same street that Gito Baloyi was shot,” says Lemoaona pointing out the window.

“They have installed cameras, which has made it a bit safer but my safety is one of my main worries.”

The building in which Lemoaona lives is somewhat of an artist’s enclave. Nicholas Nhlobo, Usha Seejarim, Gordon Froud, Jackie Mc Innes are just a few of the high profile artists who rent studio space in the building.

“This building feels like a bubble almost, its like living in Sandton and there is all this poverty around us. It is the sort of environment where you are safe inside but not outside.”

Lemoaona travels to Melville or other northern suburbs of Johannesburg to socialise. Most of his friends are reticent about visiting his Doornfontein loft.

“They have got a barrier about coming to town. Also when they do come they display this tourist mentality; when you take them to the roof they gasp at all the poverty, take out their cameras and start taking photographs and these are Joburgers.”

It is tricky living in such close proximity to the impoverished, says Lemoaona.

“You really see the poverty, surrounded by it. Looking at it makes me feel claustrophobic because it is so many people living in such close quarters, it is not very freeing.”

Though Lemoaona recoils from the poverty that he is faced with everyday, experiencing it first hand has shifted his attitudes.

“I was very judgemental at first; thinking how can these people live like that. But then I tried to dissect their mentality and realised that people don’t’ treasure space that doesn’t belong to them.”

Lemoaona has noticed the effect of regeneration programmes in the city and while he does believe that the physical structure of the city needs to be altered to shift negative attitudes he is simultaneously sceptical about which communities will benefit from the revitalisation.

“Newtown has become a very upmarket place in town. For me it represents the Black middle class. The establishments around that area don’t actually cater for the people who live around there. So you have a lot of northern suburbs people and tourists going to that part of town to places that have a menu that is “black”. But they are such expensive restaurants that people who live in town can’t afford to eat there. But there is a vibe there so I do like going there.”

Witnessing the Red Ants, the inner city’s notorious task team charged with removing people from “bad buildings”, have further challenged Lemoaoa’s conception of regeneration. “When it is happening right in front of you, you find out first hand what regeneration means.

When I was walking through Hillbrow one evening I noticed that the Red Ants are now coming at night and they have got these big trucks that move people away. And you start to think what does ‘away’ mean and where is it?”

The more positive thoughts he has about the city are founded in its future possibilities rather than its current status quo.

“I like it for what it potentially has,” admits Lemoaona.

The rich versus the poor

Near what was once the Financial District (and still is, depending on who you talk to), near Rissik and Market Streets are quite a different brand of loft apartments created by Urban Ocean, a property company headed by Alfonso Botha and Duan Coetzee. The duo snap up dilapidated architectural gems, return them to their former glory, fitted them up with all the best mod cons before selling them off for decidedly large sums of money. So far they have revamped five buildings in the inner city. And they haven’t exactly scrimped on fittings; from the best wooden flooring money can buy, designer sanitaryware, stainless steel appliances, oak veneer and solid oak carpentry, in-door coffee bars, spas and wellness centres, these two mavericks have caught the attention of the moneyed classes, compelling them to return their gaze to the inner city. Some of their deluxe penthouses – some of which have access via helicopter - have fetched as much R4-million – an unprecedented sum for living space in Jozi’s city centre. Not too surprisingly Urban Ocean’s successes have caught the attention of the media, engendering the impression that Jozi’s inner city is no longer the mainstay of the impoverished.

However, many say that these opulent abodes were snapped up by investors who had no intention of living in town in its present state.

Botha refutes these claims.

“In the beginning investors did buy into a lifestyle that did not exist yet, now that is not the case.”

Holtzhausen believes that Urban Ocean jumped the gun with their super deluxe apartments. He says that the city’s revitalisation has a long way to go before the affluent will happily settle in the city.

“We have a long way to go before we get there,” asserts Holtzhausen, “Revitalising a city is long drawn out process, which often creates the impression that little is happening the in the city, says Botha.

“People aren’t taking into consideration the technical processes and lag time that is involved in converting a building.”

Botha says the public should remember how far the city has come in the last decade.

“People forget that the whole city was like a slum, it has been a long process of changing behaviour. But there have been massive changes.”

More parks, schools and upmarket retailers would be needed in order to coax the well-heeled to settle in the inner city, suggests Holtzhausen.

Though Lael Bethlehem, chief executive officer at the JDA, says that all these kinds of facilities are on already on the cards, she suggests that the real focus has been to create residential developments for the low to middle income groups.

“That’s where the real action has been. The upper end of the market is a small niche market, it’s the lower income groups that need housing. One property developer will be building 3000 new units this year in the city and that is just one developer,” says Bethlehem.

The Inner City Charter, the document outlining the objectives for regeneration developments in the city for the next five years, looks set to put more revamp projects in motion, starting with infamous no-go areas as Hillbrow and Berea, where so-called “block by block blitzes” and the upgrading of public property will be set into motion.

While everyone agrees that Jozi’s inner city needs to be revamped and upgraded, regeneration strategies aimed at this part of the city have not been welcomed by the city’s current residents – mostly the poor, who are under constant threat from the municipality.

Mostly it is the City’s approach to dealing with “bad buildings”, which tends to entail forcibly removing its “bad” residents out of the city., that has drawn criticism from among others, the Centre for Applied Legal Studies (Cals) at Wits University, an organisation that have tirelessly battled the municipality on behalf of Jozi’s disenfranchised, fighting for their right to remain in the city centre.

Assumed to be criminals and the like, engendering a negative impact on perceptions about the city centre, it is thought that Jozi’s regeneration cannot be fully realised as long as these “bad” elements continue to inhabit and flourish in the city.

Stephen Hobbs and Marcus Neustetter, of the Trinity Sessions, a company that manages public art projects in the inner city, and have been commissioned to oversee the erection of R3,5 millions worth of public art in Hillbrow, in an effort to change the face of this notorious no-go area of the city are all too aware of the implications that regenerating has for the city’s apparent undesirable inhabitants.

“There has been criticism that this is an exercise to spruce up the neighbourhood so that one day the property developers can move in buy up all the buildings and kick the community out, which is a realistic threat wherever you go and you are working in these kinds of environments,” says Neustetter.

Revitalising a city automatically has consequences for the poor.

“The regeneration is not for the people that are there; the upgrade is pushing the value of the property up so that it has to be marketed to a middle class that is afraid to go there,” says Hobbs.

Bethlehem insists that regeneration programmes are meant to benefit the all echelons of our society. She says that the inner city is a diverse area that can accommodate a variety of economic groups.

The R170-million that has been set aside to spruce up Hillbrow, Berea and Yeoville – the city’s next big regeneration programme – is designed to benefit its current occupants as well as potential residents.

“It is about making their quality of life much better.”

One must not think of the regeneration of Johannesburg as course of action that necessarily pre-empts a struggle between rich property developers and the poor, according to Bethlehem.

“It is a false dichotomy. It is not about property developers versus the poor. We need property investors; they are able to service working people.”

The Wrong side of the Tracks

The name “San Jose” conjures up visions of an exotic Spanish holiday home. The infamous building that stands in Berea on the border of Hillbrow that goes by the same name is by no means a pleasurable haven. There is no electricity, running water or working toilets. Most of the window panes of the 10-storey building are broken or missing. Graffiti is sprawled across its dirty walls and the heavy stench of urine permeates the air. For all sense and purposes it is the quintessential “bad building” that has given the inner city its pejorative reputation.

Fifty-five-year-old Nelson Khethani has been living here for over five years. Unemployed and destitute he moved into San Jose after the municipality cut off services to the building - a move engineered to coerce residents to move elsewhere. But with limited finances, Khetani and the other 600 odd residents of this derelict eye-sore had nowhere else to go and have had to fight the municipality– with the aid of Stuart Wilson, a researcher from Cals – to keep their foothold in the city.

“If it wasn’t for Cals we would have been on the street,” says Khetani.

Even thought it is a bright and sunny day, inside Khetani’s flat it is dark. In contrast to the dilapidated interior of the building, Khetani’s home is a well kept, tidy space. even during a sunny day no electricity, it is sparsely furnished but spacious flat with a lounge, bedroom, kitchen and bathroom.

“This is a home Even if I don’t like to stay here I am forced to stay here. I would like to live somewhere with lights but I don’t have money so what can I do.”

Khetani uses candles and oil lamps at night and must trek outside to a portable toilet when he needs the toilet. Having lived without electricity and other amenities most of his life he is resigned to an impoverished living standard.

“It is not strange to me I am coming from the village and I am used to this life. It is not new to me I have grown up inside this (poverty).”

Khetani moved to Johannesburg from a small hamlet in the Eastern Cape in 1970. After losing fulltime employment in 1992, he has eked out a living selling a variety of goods on the city’s streets. Although the municipality would have it that Khetani and his ilk, lived on the outskirts of the city, Khetani has to live in Jozi’s inner city to survive – he says transport costs to and from the city “would kill me.”

“They are pushing the poor out of Joburg (inner city) they even said they want us to go. They want us to go to Soweto, Kliptown. We are too poor to stay in town.”

He also believes that it is in only this bustling metropolis, brimming with opportunities, that he still may have the chance to alter his fortunes and change the course of his life.

“Everything is here, close to everything, if you want to change your life you must change it here. In the village you will never change your life.”

So far the regeneration programmes in the inner city have not had any impact on Khetani’s life, or his outlook for the future. He believes that transformations in the city are not designed to benefit the poor.

“I have seen the buildings that they have fixed. It is okay for them but not for us. It is not for us and I cannot manage to live. I feel neglected.

Khetani disputes the idea that “bad people” live in purported “bad buildings”.

“It is not the case at all,” he sighs.

The residents of San Jose are at pains to curb criminals from inhabiting or operating in the building, according to Khetani, who functions as the chairman of the residents association. A set of strict house rules were drawn up by the inhabitants of San Jose to ensure that a “bad” element cannot flourish in the building.

One such rule stipulates that no resident may park a car in the garage on the ground floor.

“If we allow that then we have a problem because people could be bringing stolen cars and we don’t want that here.”

San Jose may not have been maintained since the managing agents of the building stopped reicieving remittances from the owners of the building to pay rates and services since the early nineties but the residents of the bulding seem determined to do what little they can to maintain the building.

At 4.30am on Sunday mornings San Jose’s residents wake each other up so that by six am they can begin their weekly clean up of the building, , according to Khetani.

Though they mop up the sewerage that fills ground floor, which is responsible for the stomach churning stench of urine that permeates the air, it has been a losing battle since the municipality cut services to the building.

If regeneration programmes had a positive impact on any of Khetani’s acquaintances at San Jose or in the environs, it would restore his faith in the regeneration of the inner city.

“I would like to see changes in my life and the lives of other like me. Even if it (regeneration of the city) doesn’t make my life better, if I came across someone I know that has struggled and I see that things have got better for him that would give me hope.”

For now, however, Khetani believes that revitalisation plans are profiting the rich.

“The poor are getting poorer and the rich richer.”

Khetani and the residents of San Jose will not be living in the building for much longer, Wilson has helped negotiate with the municipality to secure a new home for all of them in Hillbrow. Although their flats will be half the size, their new abode has electricity and running water.

San Jose will then fall into the hands of the property developers and be assimilated into the new vision of Johannesburg. No one is sure, when the new improved city centre will finally emerge. It is a work in progress.

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

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

this article first appeared in the Sunday Independent. published here by kind permission of mary corrigall

Like the spectral beings that haunt his art, Cyprian Mpho Shilakoe too appears an ephemeral character. Aside from his transient presence on earth - he died at the age of 26 - the supernatural abilities that are associated with him, and the title “mystic” that some ascribe to him, have all worked towards shrouding his persona and his talent under a veil of superstition.

Art world heavyweights have given credence to suppositions that Shilakoe possessed unusual psychic abilities. Linda Givon, proprietor of the Goodman Gallery, has suggested that Shilakoe foretold his own death; arriving at her Johannesburg gallery to bid her farewell a day before he died in a car crash. Fellow artist and friend, the late Dan Rakgoathe, was also open about Shilakoe’s telepathic abilities.

“Cyprian was like me - a mystic. We both used to communicate at a distance without being together,” Rakgoathe said in an interview.

Besides the anecdotes about his psychic abilities, factual accounts have focused on Shilakoe’s contribution to the incredible body of art that emerged from the Evangelical Lutheran Arts and Crafts Centre, known simply as Rorke’s Drift art centre, where he trained rather than his life story and unique aesthetic. So it is not too surprising then that the only portrait of Shilakoe that has emerged since his death in 1976 has been hazy, much like the indistinguishable, soft-edged figures that characterise his oeuvre.

However, a retrospective of his work now showing at the Johannesburg Art Gallery has allowed for a more comprehensive portrait of the artist to emerge. Research undertaken for the retrospective unearthed vital details about Shilakoe’s early life and lead to the discovery of a cache of undiscovered works by the artist that further prove that whatever supernatural abilities he may have possessed, they should not be allowed to overshadow his prolific output as an artist, and remarkable talent as an etcher and sculptor.

“Cyprian left an incredible body of work behind. He was extremely prolific. He was also a very skilled etcher. Not even etchings from the Michaelis (school of art in Cape Town) studio can compare,” observes Philippa Hobbs, one of the authors of Rorke’s Drift: Empowering Prints and manager of the MTN Arts and Culture portfolio, the sponsors of the retrospective.

Getting in touch with Emily Mahlungu, Shilakoe’s sister, widened the scope of the investigation into this iconic artist.

“Most of us in the South African art world had firmly believed that there were no members of the Shilakoe family still alive,” said curator Jill Addleson of her unexpected discovery.

Addleson and Hobbs wasted no time in meeting with Mahlungu at the Shilakoe family home in Dennilton, Mpumalanga.

When they arrived there, Addleson and Hobbs found a house untouched by time; since Shilakoe’s parents had passed away his siblings had rarely made visits to the family home. But more importantly, they also found a host of undiscovered artworks.

“When Emily opened the front door and led us inside to show us some of Cyprian’s works that were kept there, we were stunned. There were oil paintings - we had never seen any of his paintings - and numerous sculptures,” recalls Hobbs.

Shilakoe’s relatives had apparently reprimanded Mahlungu for hanging onto Cyprian’s “odd” sculptures. Mahlungu, however, couldn’t let them go and had even lovingly varnished some of the sculptures.

Although Mahlungu clearly valued her brother’s art, she was taken aback by the obvious enthusiasm of Addleson and Hobbs. “She had no idea that her brother was a famous artist,” says Hobbs.

“When we told her how famous her brother was in the art world, she burst into tears.”

Although one can attribute Mahlungu’s unawareness of her late brother’s standing to the gaping disconnection between rural and urban contexts in this country, the work from the Rorke’s Drift art centre and the artists who trained there have only recently gained prominence.

Owned by the Swedish Lutheran Church and run by Swedish art graduates, Rorke’s Drift was an independent arts institution that catered specifically for black students who had no access to formal art education.

“It was an international enclave that stood outside of apartheid,” said Hobbs.

The connection to the mission and the training of crafters at the centre also worked towards creating the impression that Rorke’s Drift was not a serious arts institution. The subversive nature of the work that was being produced at the centre, which appraised the social and political ethos of apartheid South Africa, also prevented Rorke’s Drift art from gaining acceptance in the South African art world in the Sixties, when the centre was established.

In fact, it was only in the early 1990s, when the exhibition Rorke’s Drift and After was staged at the Centre for African Studies, that art from the centre and its gifted graduates started to attract the attention of the South African art world. Hobbs implies in her book that the dissolution of the Nationalist government encouraged new readings of the art from the centre and the acknowledgement of the political undertones that characterised the art and elevated it to “struggle art”, a genre that is acclaimed in post- apartheid South Africa.

Shilakoe’s art covertly references the impact of apartheid on black South Africans.

Emotional trauma accompanying social disconnection is relayed through etchings such as Silence (1969), which features two forlorn ghost-like protagonists. A stream of dark tears stains the face of one, while the other figure’s head rests in his hands suggesting that he has accepted defeat.

Shilokoe’s childhood was marked by an early loss: the death of his grandmother, whom two-year-old Shilokoe was sent to live with in 1950. According to Mahlungu, Shilokoe was devastated by her death; he thought of her as his mother. His grief however, found a productive outlet in art, which he took up after her death. He was 16 when he returned to live with his parents at the Dennilton home.

Mahlungu noticed early on that Shilakoe was an unusual personality. He shied away from other children, preferring to immerse himself in making art. His artistic talent was obvious to all and caught the attention of his teachers at Paledi Secondary School, who advised his parents to take him to an art school. Soon after, Shilakoe was introduced to Rakgoathe, a school teacher and artist. Rakgoathe encouraged Shilakoe to join him at Rorke’s Drift.

By all accounts Shilakoe bloomed at Rorke’s Drift.

The Swedish tutors followed a “non-interventionist” approach to art education.

“The Swedes were squeamish about imposing ideas. While they introduced the students to new materials and techniques they preferred to encourage them to find their own expression,” explains Hobbs.

Despite this pedagogical approach, the Swedes couldn’t resist imposing some ideas on the students, which perhaps accounts for the subversive nature of the art that came from the centre.

“During art appreciation classes they showed the students images of labourers sweeping at a ‘whites-only’ beach and other provocative images that they hoped would encourage discussion, give them agency and develop them as individual thinkers,” says Hobbs.

While it might have been idealistic for the Swedish instructors to believe that they could create the ideal environment for art production, Shilakoe nevertheless flourished in the setting, developing a unique aesthetic that would set him apart from his fellow students and later international artists.

It was Shilakoe’s deft grasp of his medium, an intaglio process of creating spitbite acid plates, that allowed him to achieve subtle transitions of light and dark, engendering drama and conferring poignancy to his imagery.

Although he produced a low number of prints during his first year at Rorke’s Drift in 1968, attributed to intensive experimentation, a year later he had become not only a prolific printmaker, but he exhibited at the Durban Art Gallery and garnered much attention from art buyers and international visitors who frequented the centre.

Aside from excelling professionally at the centre, Shilakoe forged a close bond with Rakgoathe.

“Both men carried with them a deep sadness: an inner longing for relief from an ever-present restlessness, a rootlessness which could possibly be traced back to childhood loss,” writes Donvé Langhan in The Unfolding Man: The Life and Art of Dan Rakgoathe.

Shilakoe and Rakgoathe’s strong connection was not only based on shared experiences but the two friends also eschewed the moral and religious ethos of Rorke’s Drift, preferring to develop their own spiritual belief system, according to Langhan.

“Cyprian and Dan shared an essentially mystical view of the world. Both believed in extra-sensory perception, extraterrestrial life and reincarnation.”

No doubt Shilakoe’s spiritual philosophies must have infiltrated his art. The protagonists that fill his etchings certainly have an otherworldly presence; there is scarcely a dividing line between them and the environment in which they are pictured, so while they appear to surrender to the thick darkness that surrounds them, they are not rooted in it either.

Art historians have differing opinions on the abstract significance of Shilokoe’s oeuvre. Langhan proposes that the loss of the maternal figure of his grandmother explains the sense of solitude that pervades his work. In a 1990 Goodman Gallery catalogue, Karel Nel suggests that Shilakoe’s art manifests the effects of a migrant labour system and a harsh, alien urban environment.

Whether Shilakoe’s art expresses his mystical leanings, provides socio-political commentary on an apartheid South Africa or articulates personal tragedy, what is certain is that his art resonated with art lovers here and abroad.

As such a shining example of the Rorke’s Drift approach to art education, the centre invited him to stay on as an artist-in-residence after he graduated at the end of 1969. After clashes with the matron at the centre, Shilakoe left after two months and moved into St Angsar’s Mission in Roodepoort where he set up a studio with an etching press given to him by Rorke’s Drift.

By all accounts Shilakoe wasn’t a struggling art graduate looking for direction; he was a focused, confident and self-sufficient artist.

Givon, who describes him as a “serious young man”, recalls that Shilakoe arrived at the Goodman Gallery, put his work down in front of her, and politely informed her that he had selected her gallery to represent him in South Africa. Givon accepted and in 1971 he held his first solo exhibition at the gallery. In the same year his prints were shown in Belgium, Holland and West Germany.

Shilakoe’s career looked set to soar until his untimely death on September 7 1972 when he and Rakgoathe climbed into Shilakoe’s brand new Volkswagen kombi and drove through Soweto on route to see The Beatles’ movie Let it Be.

During his last visit to Rorke’s Drift, Shilakoe had done an etching of a tombstone entitled Time si (sic) Gone.

Of course, Shilakoe could have been grieving over the end of a fulfilling time spent at the art centre. However, for many of those he left behind who continue to lament his passing, it is perhaps more comforting to believe that this was a premonition and his way of coming to terms with his death.

• Cyprian Mpho Shilakoe Revisited: A Retrospective Exhibition is on at the Johannesburg Art Gallery until January 31 2008

watch unyazi of the bushveld right now on the web for free! courtesy of de witte doos online gallery. click here