kagablog

“Out, damned spot…”
Blood is thicker than water. And it stays under your nails.

I only saw Aryan Kaganof’s short film “The Promise of Water” once, about two years ago, and I don’t recall many specific details, although I have listened to the eponymous Angels of Light song that provides the soundtrack many times before and after seeing it. The sense I got at the time of viewing was that the film concerned moral neurosis. To me, it expressed a desperate thirst for redemption, along with an abject knowledge that all the water in the world can never be enough to wash away the stains from a guilt-ridden conscience.

Deepened by the slow, menacing chanting which propels the song, the film’s drone of internal anxiety felt relentless. In the imagery of running water I saw a restlessness of the spirit rather than revival. The woman’s drinking and smoking were morbid physical manifestations of inner pollution, which provided no relief beyond surface distraction.

Trapped between denial of conscience – “there’s nothing to fear because nothing here’s real” – and dread of the dark repercussions of sins past – vengeance from those wronged – transcendence or separation from the degeneracy is not possible. “They live in your head and they travel your veins”…”Let their hate fill your mouth”… The horror is embedded within, deterministically, at a cellular level. With every breath it is sustained. “If you kill them enough they will look just like us”. There is no distance between “them” and “us” – brutalising another brutalises us. Rational apprehension is drowned out, drains away, surrendered in a flood of dumb terror and compassion. One is forced to go with the flow and submit – “Just as it was is just how it will be”. “The promise of water”, of escape and absolution from this violence, is a delirious mirage.

I experienced the film in its entirety as a meditation on the inescapable weight on the spirit of a sense of culpability: as a quietly chilling commentary on living with the legacy of racist oppression in South Africa, but also as a species of morality tale, one bearing a more universal meaning about the toxicity of guilt on a personal level.

Ce court métrage de 5 minutes réalisé par Aryan Kaganof en 2008 est encore une enigme cinématographique, ou plutôt un film à multiples interprétations. Il commence par un plan général flou en noir et blanc : on aperçoit un forme féminine de loin en train de boire et fumer. Les plans suivants deviennent plus rapprochés. On voit le visage en premier plan de cette belle femme qui est incarnée par Mika Le Roux, la galeriste de Johan Thom (voir notre article ancien sur “Les racines grecques des performances de Johan Thom”).

Les plans qui suivent sont aussi très rapprochés ou des détails même de cette eau d’un ruisseau en train de couler paisiblement. Il n’y a aucun souci de pénurie d’eau dans ce film joyeux et bref. Tandis que quelques pays africains sont marqués par ce grave problème, Aryan Kaganof surpasse grâcieusement toute référence pejorative et nous livre un essai vital, un essai baigné par la sensation fluide d’eau fraîche et vivifiante.

La chanson de “The Angels of Light” contient des vers métaphoriques sur l’eau, on dirait un cadeau divin. Kaganof aimerait suggérer métaphoriquement que son pays l’Afrique du Sud est une exception par rapport à la plupart des autres pays du continent, que son pays n’affronte pas directement ce problème crucial.

Tout est palpitant de vie dans ce film. Une nouvelle vie se prépare afin d’inonder le monde.

écrit par Dionysos Andronis

my earliest use of what might be strictly defined as “noise” music is in a piece called REQUIEM made in 1990 and featuring music by NON (boyd rice).

prior to that I had used thrash noise by John Zorn in a piece called STATIONS OF THE CROSS

i had been listening a lot to various industrial noise outfits (as they were called back then) in the eighties but really fell in love with the MERZBOW sound for its single-minded clarity of purpose.

i think it was in 1991 or 1992 that I contacted Masami Akita and asked him for permission to use his music. he was very generous in allowing me to use his music as well as in producing and recording new music for my graduate film in 1994, THE DEAD MAN 2: RETURN OF THE DEAD MAN

I must honestly say that most people hate these noise elements in my films and I believe that if I had not chosen to include these elements the various films would have found a much larger, much more sympathetic audience. But then the films wouldn’t be the same films without the noise so that is really of no matter.

Noise is a loaded topic. One man’s noise is another man’s easy listening. I find most so-called popular music to be an unbearable form of audio pollution. Noise, by making us aware of the terrible predicament we are in, at least earns points for honesty.

I like very much what luis hernandez has written about “noise at face-value”. Whilst this works well for the cognoscenti of course, I always think there is more potential for waking people up by exposing them to noise “out of context” as it were, outside of the safety zone of the sub-cultural ghetto.

i do get hate mail and complaints but this has never bothered me. the dead man 2: return of the dead man was often singled out for its soundtrack – however, in that film the noise was somewhat out-noised by the opening scene which is the foremost reason that the film is written about and remembered. perhaps there is an interesting case for this scene as a “visual noise”.

i am listening a lot to adanowsky these days: hi-trash cinema soundtracks for films that have not yet been made. a different kind of noise but very elegant and glammy in an abjectly knowing post-everything way.

aryan kaganof

Whenever I film it is always in the present. (My present)

I frame time and space.

When I edit, this too is in the present.

I attach units of recorded space-time, of the past, to each other.

When the audience watches my films they watch them in the present. (Their present)

But what they are watching is the past, framed twice as it were, in the present of filming and the present of editing.

The past becomes present again every time a film is viewed.

Therefore film is a time machine.

The idea that the “real me” has a body of flesh and blood is ludicrous.

The real me is captured on film.

The real me never dies.

My flesh and blood body is merely a transporting vehicle, a biological device to be used in conjunction with the mechanical device of the cinematic apparatus in order to RELEASE the real me from the primitive mortal prison of my body.

The real me is endlessly rewinding and being played back in the present.

The real me has merged with infinity to become timeless, immortal, a god.

The voice you hear is not a recording of an original event that took place in the past, not a copy of something authentic. The voice you hear is me, speaking to you now in the present, your present. The face staring out at you from the screen is the real me, disembodied, freed from the limitation of dying.

The meaning of what you are seeing and hearing is true freedom.

aryan kaganof
malmÖ, sweden
22 june 2008

Pendant le dernier festival “Big 5 in Town” de Hague (Pays Bas), une sélection de court métrages sudafricains a été présentée au public par Aryan Kaganof. Le co-directeur de la Cinémathèque locale Leendert De Jong nous a guidé aux locaux du festival. C’est le Film Huis (Film House) cette Cinémathèque locale très bien équipée pour ce festival original, puisque le nouveau cinéma sudafricain n’est pas bien connu à l’étranger.

Aryan Kaganof avait une sélection personnelle de six court métrages récents. Aucun film à lui ne faisait partie de ses choix. Trois jours sont passés si vite (du 11 au 13 juin 2010) que nous n’avions pas eu le temps de bien regarder les autres séances du festival mais disons la moitié. Nous allons parler maintenant de la catre blanche Kaganof sans oublier à vous préciser que nous avons vu les films sous-titrés en anglais une seule fois.

“Imagine” (2005) d’Eran Tahor était le premier de la programmation et nous l’avions déjà visionné en 2006 au festival de Rotterdam, pendant la rétrospective “Post Whites Only” organisée par Kaganof. C’est un très bel exemple de fantaisie sous-marine onirique où Keren Tahor est la maîtresse d’une cérémonie surréaliste sur une musique de Frederic Rzewski et où Kaganof était le scénariste du film.

“Jesus et le Géant” (2009) était encore un film écrit par Kaganof et mis en scène par Akin Omotoso. C’est un film allégorique et biblique où le sexe des personnages est intentionellement changé. Ainsi la photo était sautillante et discontinue. Le film s’inspire de la fameuse phrase “je ne suis pas venu vous rendre la paix mais une épée” qu’on entend à la fin. Il comporte en parallèle des scènes très cruelles de torture humaine et d’abattage d’animaux.

“The Abyss Boys” (2009) de Jan-Hendrik Beetge est un film de 26 minutes couronné de plusieurs prix à travers le monde. C’est aussi un film cruel et macabre mais très réaliste cette fois. C’est l’histoire vraie de deux gamins qui vont essayer de fuir la misère et de partir loin de leur foyer. Au début ils se cachent dans un camion frigorifique mais le premier sera abattu par les mafieux qui sont en contact avec le chauffeur et le deuxième sera abandonné dans le frigo du camion pour y mourir gelé lentement.

“Welcome Nelson” (2010) de Craig Matthew était le film de cette année sélectionné par Kaganof. C’est lui qui a fait le montage aussi. Le travail du monteur est vraiment parfait mais le documentaire souffre d’une absence d’originalité exemplaire pendant ses 23 minutes. C’est sur les 20 ans de la libération de Nelson Mandela et utilise des scènes télévisuelles très banales et très massivement diffusées à travers le monde pendant ces 20 dernières années. Les seules nouvelles scènes sont celles où les opérateurs de 1990 nous racontent comment ils ont filmé leurs sujets et sous quelles conditions impossibles. Une femme evanouie pendant le premier discours en bain de foule de Mandela fait le tour des manifestants qui essayent de la transporter endormie chacun à son tour, d’une main à l’autre, loin de l’endroit de l’accident. Craig Matthew avait filmé en 2001 les indigènes de Namibie et de la région de Epupa qui vivent autour du fleuve Cunene. Le résultat est visible dans le documentaire “L’ocre et l’eau” qui fait 54 minutes en tout. La même année Kaganof a commencé ses tournages pour son chef d’oeuvre “Western 4.33″, également tourné dans le désert de Namibie.

Cette séance organisée par Kaganof est encore une preuve que ses choix esthétiques sont pluriels et riches et ne sont jamais limités vers une seule direction, comme chez plusieurs auteurs de court métrages. Kaganof est une exception par sa personnalité accomplie.

En attendant de voir cette programmation importante voyager ici ou ailleurs, nous allons souhaiter à tous ces cinéastes importants de continuer à créer sous l’abri de l’indépendance.

écrit par Dionysos ANDRONIS

the policeman and barbed wire is preventing access to a road leading to a statue of J.G.Strydom that was blown up in 2002. the bombers were never found and the bombing remains a mystery to this day. J.G.Strydom was one of the architects of apartheid. most of the statues honouring the apartheid regime are still standing today, 16 years after the so-called “advent of democracy”.

the man in the garden is a kenyan migrant worker. in south africa in the past decade there have been many explosions of xenophobia towards african immigrants. in making these associative links without any background information we hope to challenge the foolish notion that one can ever understand a country as complex as south africa with tools of political or social theory. the cluster of information that is always present in any south african scene is always too dense to be visually “read” and lucidly understood on any but the most superficial level.

aryan kaganof

this review first appeared here

IMAGINE
11min
2005
35mm

Taking a dive through layers of memory this is an exploration of consciousness and the medium of film.

The protagonist works and dreams in a bookshop. The film starts when an old lady gives him a photograph of a young woman he had never met. The black and white image of her arresting beauty triggers a sequence of memories in him and he breaks out of the womb-like, comforting space of the bookshop into a busy mid-day street. He chases after the old woman in attempt to construct a narrative from the fragments of his memory, but the further he runs the deeper he dives into his own mind.

IMAGINE is first collaboration of Eran Tahor and Aryan Kaganof, together they have created a symphony of stillness and form.

Kaganof and Tahor later went on to collaborate on sms sugar man which featured tahor as director of photography

POW Ensemble at the Unyazi festival. The first festival for electronic music in Africa. Johannesburg September 2005

This is a collage of two pieces, made by Kaganof.

Line up:

Luc Houtkamp, Matthew Ostrowski (computers), Burkhard Stangl (guitar), Marc Duby (bass), students from Wits Jazz department

Director: Aryan Kaganof (edited down because of youtube’s 10 minutes maximum)

this review first published on tubelight.nl

my dear Aryan………..thank you for the movie………..I need to ask a few things re this………obviously I was stunned to receive it (the same day I received the rough final draft from NY of “Fool in a bubble”)………so I have had much to think about and work through (with both movies)

my thoughts

your movie depicts me as a “tragicomical genius” filmed during one debauched afternoon in my life, selectively emphasizing essentially my disillusionment as an artist wrestling with the existential imaginations of his world and how my self-destruction and belief in Providence are the mechanisms for me coping with this………truth be told, on that day I was nervous to reconnect with you after so many years and used whiskey to buffer this………had I known you were filming me for an eventual documentary I would have been more circumspect in my presence on film……..I feel there is very little that introduces the viewer (who knows not of me) into the world that I have created in which I am regularly referred to as a “legend”……….your angle seems to be a focus on a particular single dark day in my life that is construed as indicative of EVERY day of my life……..the truth is not so…….I do not get drunk every day of my life (or smoke dope all day long) and I’m not as cynical as you portray every day of my life…….on the contrary, I’m very positive…..so my thought is that I am definitely not touted as a “legend” through the mythical tales of my excess that have somehow circulated through the community, but undoubtedly through my resilience in “hanging in there” and the quality of my craft as a performer, poet and teacher……..this is the essence of how I have ended up with the mantle of “legend”

your movie portrays me as an uncompromising, swearing buffoon………

………speak soon

Syd

Ce nouveau documentaire de 1h10 a été réalisé par Aryan Kaganof entre 2009 et cette année. Les prises de vues commencent le 28 mars 2009 à Durban chez Syd Kitchen, un guitariste original sudafricain et membre du groupe “New Music South Africa” auquel Michael Blake fait partie aussi. Kaganof est très heureux de filmer un concert de Kitchen puisque ce concert aboutira à une interprétation par ce dernier de la “G-String Blues”, une composition du premier. Le téléphone sonne et l’artiste dit “Je filme avec Aryan Kaganof”, en image figée.

Le film commence chez le guitariste et nous sommes informés au générique que Kitchen a des points communs avec John Cage, le compositeur préféré de Kaganof (voir “Western 4.33″), puisque lui aussi travaille avec un instrument “préparé” : chez Cage le piano et chez Kitchen la guitare. C’est de la musique expérimentale contemporaine alors.

Syd Kitchen nous livre devant la caméra de Kaganof un long monologue sur son parcours atypique. Il commence par “Je m’appele Syd Kitchen et je viens d’Afrique du Sud”. Il fume beaucoup pendant ses paroles et il nous raconte tout en montage parallèle. Nous sommes constamment amenés de chez lui à la salle de concert.

C’est un documentaire pluriel et ainsi on voit les musiciens qui ont précédé Kitchen lors du concert : un tromboniste pour une composition de Jérôme Naulais, le guitariste Guy Buttery, le pianiste Andrew Cruickshank, le saxophoniste américain Salim Washington et plein d’autres.

Le montage parallèle cette fois aussi est très vivant et palpitant d’énergie, dans l’immédiat de l’instant. Il est très frais aussi.

Malgré les paroles “enragées” du guitariste (le mot “fucking” va et vient) le documentaire de Kaganof est très calme et “cool”, dans la longueur d’onde d’un artiste serein avec lui-même et avec son art.

C’est une documentaire musical différent dans la filmographie de Kaganof puisqu’il n’a pas les excès formels de ses anciens documentaires sur Merzbow ou les témoignages argotiques et superficiels de “Sharp, sharp”, sur le courant kwaito. Les paroles de Kitchen sont simples mais assez profondes.

La durée du film passe inaperçue, grâce au brio du cinéaste. Et elle nous livre un portrait académique de grande qualité.

écrit par Dionysos ANDRONIS

I conceived the work as an interlocking sculpture in time – with all of the pieces reflecting each other in some way. An alchemical work founded on the principle that “as above, so below”. In that sense there is no traditional “development” in time. Many of the works that I made in the early and mid 1990s have still not been “released” and when they are released, will not be back-dated. In this way foiling and negating the idea that the art reflects any kind of chronological movement at all. The digital aspect of the work has not been explored in terms of surface (ie. “looking” computeristic), but rather foregrounding non-linearity as a discourse that one can pre-empt in time. Although the physical artefacts emerge, one by one (or in clusters) they have not been made in, nor do they make sense in, the chronological time that we experience moment by moment. Actually this non-linear sculpture was imagined before I had access to digital editing and thinking; it emerged after reading Henri Bergson. The digital tools made it possible for me to articulate an idea that I had received from Bergson and refined through Heidegger.

In terms of the reception of the works – what little reception there has been has been confined within “disciplines” (film, fine art, novel). The unsatisfactory quality of the individual works has been often spoken about by reviewers and perceived as a problem. It is the problematising of the disciplines that is of course the real nature of the work, that exists autonomously outside of these generic conventions whilst at the same time inhabiting, or disguising itself as, examples of these generic disciplines. This larger, over-arching goal of mimetically engaging existing disciplines I got from watching Invasion of the Body Snatchers (the original 1950s film of the novel). The novel had made a huge impact on me when I was a teenager and the film was a lightning bolt of clarity. One of the first works I made at the film academy, THE SOLIPSIST, in 1990, samples fragments from this science-fiction classic, and serves as an architectural blueprint for the entire sculptural process that my work is. One day some gnarly, hardened art critic will toil over the work, discover THE SOLIPSIST, and yell “Eureka, I have found it!”. Until then I will keep on putting the pieces out in silence and darkness. Perhaps it is better this way…

aryan kaganof

saw it. thought it brilliant. you should read Rob Nixon, Homelands, Harlem and Hollywood (1994). among other good points he suggests that the great De Klerk coup de theatre, upon which your piece brilliantly dwelt, turned around over the following weeks months and years, by making De Klerk look like the provisional jailer of the real president . . .

Today I watched “Welcome Nelson” – it was really extremely interesting, thematically of course, but also formally; I really liked the way you had edited it, how you managed to tell a story, no “THE” story, from this very specific deputy spectator perspective; how history was literally uncoiled before one’s eyes, not constructed the way you think it would be constructed, if you’d ever given it a thought – not at all in an epic or even narrative way, but utterly contested, fought for in the least glorious of ways – or perhaps not even fought for, but both manipulatively and randomly squeezed forward, at times haphazardly, at times cunningly, turning left when it should have turned right, and definitely not as reconciliatory as one would have wished…
Beautiful. Thank you so much.

welcome nelson
2010
23min
produced and directed by craig matthew
edited by aryan kaganof
sound design by daniel eppel
theme song written by croc-e-moses and sung by alice matthew