tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35771402986644772512024-02-08T02:47:07.402+02:00Frontier CountryContact Zones in South African Visual CultureRat Westernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09539650696200793314noreply@blogger.comBlogger71125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3577140298664477251.post-62691539445643501512012-03-12T09:21:00.003+02:002012-03-12T09:46:39.945+02:00Deadline for Proposals: 19 March 12 noon<div style="color: #990000;"><b>The year is 2012. Let’s party like it’s 1999.</b></div><br />
There are many conspiracy theories which surround this date of 2012 which draw initially from an interpretation of the Mayan Long Count calendar, incorporate New Age beliefs and use pseudo scientific or actual science misconstrued and miscalculated for the purposes of predicting some grand event.<br />
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But that’s just an excuse. There is nothing quite like the heightened drama of a conspiracy theory to give human life that idea that there is something to look forward to – a Revelation! The truth will be revealed! And after that? How about…The End of Days.<br />
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</div><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYZHTIvpTeRxN7K78J-yCMFnO2LBMe4yajzxkXYYhyphenhyphenj3UF085NyJJ7zImV9XQdViOmOfDKU95qg9M1oXo67wJbcrxGlgG-8wCoBX_9y3cZkf1G_cMtdvXgDhpcoycgCdfywPenJC-VDM-X/s400/1.jpg" width="400" /><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjCKiiO6ieBVJwHhBISmDArVVSstgpOs6Mer_ZEzKmTRjAaU2hed7wRV0VD4j6oUP24uFOEFY0iCc8qzjJoILBzIIoOPWlhLtTN6hkfU-YuwVjhJ7o6w3AAPSdrqZisSfEa495JNw04iqI/s1600/waysmeans.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">It’s a marketing event!</div><br />
This is how the hysteria surrounding the possibility of doomsday has manifested not through complex signs and symbols - available only to those with arcane knowledge – but through mass media, popular culture and marketing endeavours.<br />
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Plotting our calendar, after Valentine’s Day and Easter there is quite a big gap before Eide or Yom Kippur. December 21 is the date for catastrophe prophesised…mmm…but that is too close to Christmas…<br />
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So, tell you what, we’ll do it midyear - late June/early July. Armageddon is not coming to Los Angeles or New York or London. Japan’s had enough mass grief. We can do it here in Grahamstown. It’s backwoodsy enough to convince a couple of alien aircraft to do a fly-by. Maybe we can even work in a few crop circles?<br />
<b><br style="color: #990000;" /><span style="color: #990000;">What are possible causes of mass disaster?</span></b><br />
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<div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKzBrH92rCPyQypkKsELglPO_tJfwZ_g2OZcLrjC5DnB_d1hRC5JiItq9gXFJafIIQgrQteaaZWu49QyiuQfDN2O6-U2ZJjLY_3B3uRTJJ1epBxG054QIC-r2eCWo3tY5yNVLnEcr34xM1/s1600/waysmeans.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKzBrH92rCPyQypkKsELglPO_tJfwZ_g2OZcLrjC5DnB_d1hRC5JiItq9gXFJafIIQgrQteaaZWu49QyiuQfDN2O6-U2ZJjLY_3B3uRTJJ1epBxG054QIC-r2eCWo3tY5yNVLnEcr34xM1/s1600/waysmeans.jpg" /></a><span id="goog_841713794"></span><span id="goog_841713795"></span> </div><div style="text-align: left;">So we will take these ideas, package them nicely, and present our concept. We’ll get everyone we can in town to be involved – we can sell plague masks from broken trolleys; some guys with donkeys can be the four horse men of the Apocalypse.</div><br />
But so many here already live the Dystopia..... and it’s none so evident than when Festival rolls around. Doomsday must have come and gone. Damn, the devolution was not televised!<br />
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Okay change of tack, it’s not an apocalyptic narrative we’ll be packaging but a post -apocalyptic one. We, the Grahamstonians, are the survivors of some grand catastrophe. We have survived because we live away from the main centres. We are forewarned and pre-armed. The apocalypse has shaken us but we have not been destroyed. In late June/early July 2012 the last shuttles of survivors from major metropoli will arrive….<br />
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Now we just need to work on what they will experience….<br />
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</div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.facebook.com/events/127494017378586/?ref=notif&notif_t=event_invite#%21/groups/222750991156217/">The facebook group</a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">If you would like the complete document, outlining the call for proposals please <a href="mailto:rat.western@gmail.com">email</a> me and I will send you one.</div>Rat Westernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09539650696200793314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3577140298664477251.post-55268617042751954492012-03-05T13:49:00.001+02:002012-03-05T13:51:10.869+02:00Presentation, Call for Proposals<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkfBvsjD5hfac-H9OqCnERAp6r_FxuYGP0lj4tDqCIsSkHIJzkJ-IS2zDlVKQDKpO7v-8-nswmQUDTpMLDULARUIg9yOEnsdCL9L8Ng2mAk6DGKvdAer6h1gmFEKohXo9lI1tA3pWvKylb/s1600/poster+web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkfBvsjD5hfac-H9OqCnERAp6r_FxuYGP0lj4tDqCIsSkHIJzkJ-IS2zDlVKQDKpO7v-8-nswmQUDTpMLDULARUIg9yOEnsdCL9L8Ng2mAk6DGKvdAer6h1gmFEKohXo9lI1tA3pWvKylb/s400/poster+web.jpg" width="281" /></a></div>Rat Westernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09539650696200793314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3577140298664477251.post-86956142828739834192011-07-13T13:54:00.002+02:002011-09-30T13:03:00.861+02:00Editorial: Synthetic Dirt<span style="font-size: x-small;">by Rat Western</span><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggDiKyAfvnK0ZHw09V0H60NJGGeiQkhSFYK-wSnZcNntWcA_JaaLCJyyx5Ecbz3nGLg71pU9tKDWgCUuXtYR84F0ugU2cpj2O0UuWEG8QXIzQKkt1xCRcXmBmNp0gjBrdx61DgiR0Sq73B/s1600/johan-thom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggDiKyAfvnK0ZHw09V0H60NJGGeiQkhSFYK-wSnZcNntWcA_JaaLCJyyx5Ecbz3nGLg71pU9tKDWgCUuXtYR84F0ugU2cpj2O0UuWEG8QXIzQKkt1xCRcXmBmNp0gjBrdx61DgiR0Sq73B/s320/johan-thom.jpg" width="320"></a></div>In Phillip Pullman’s trilogy His Dark Materials, the reader is introduced to a concept known as ‘dust’. This fall-out or static is varyingly attracted to beings and objects. With people, it is those past puberty who are more magnetic for this ‘dust’ and so in this fictional universe, whose authority structure is strongly linked to Christian Dogma, the ‘dust’ is attributed to sin. Children are more innocent of ‘dust’. Those who have been in the world longer carry a stronger taint. The age of an inanimate object, in this narrative, may also be determined by this ‘dust’. However, man-made objects - and more strongly those of an artistic nature – attract more ‘dust’ than natural ones. The synthetic is therefore more dirty.<br>
Synthetic Dirt is, from many angles, an oxymoron. The synthetic is generally perceived to be clean and clinical, manufactured and therefore, perhaps, more sterile. ‘Dirt is Good’ may be the tagline of a certain brand of washing powder but only because said company can prove how we get things clean again. Dirt, if we think of Kristeva’s abject is pollution, is taboo, when out of place. And how much more out of place can one get than to manufacture dirt? <br>
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<a href="http://frontiercountry.blogspot.com/2011/07/editorial-synthetic-dirt.html#more">Read more »</a>Rat Westernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09539650696200793314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3577140298664477251.post-16908302176316944952011-07-12T11:14:00.000+02:002011-09-30T12:58:51.048+02:00Living in a quake<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">by Ashraf Jamal</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEY3vWQGvjrm8I1CaeUuVDEdRiTMf90GZj8Q__bBzfX43TGFhbhrIsVNYF6IfIv7kBS5kapjsOUwuPp085c_eiDie2tc8MQvC-mLv51-_aZ_Odn43xVDCTLMBV39VI8JONEU_5Zp76RRQT/s320/JapanQuake.jpg" width="320"></div><div style="text-align: center;">I</div><br>
Published 22 years ago, Michel Serres’ Le Contrat Naturel – The Natural Contract – prophetically reminds us of the dark consequences of urban densification and the interior life, a life sound-proofed, locked in chat rooms, the better to affirm our blithe yet catastrophic separation from the world all about us. Trapped within the yeah-saying language of science, the normative language of bureaucracy, and the sensational language of the media, we, today, “communicate irrepressibly,” notes Serres. “We busy ourselves only with our own networks. We have lost the world. We’ve transformed things into fetishes or commodities, the stakes of our stratagems; and our a-cosmic philosophies, for almost half a century now, have been holding forth only on language or politics, writing or logic.” <br>
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<a href="http://frontiercountry.blogspot.com/2011/07/living-in-quake.html#more">Read more »</a>Rat Westernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09539650696200793314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3577140298664477251.post-36464686478800029442011-07-09T12:37:00.002+02:002011-09-30T12:46:27.926+02:00Sounds dirty: earth/water/wind in Lindi Arbi’s Last One Standing<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7TZxTVmimMNLUMwROgGbr6eH125-60qNOtlvF_xt12ZH-PpwItkazAlxTfCTdHtVA2_KFxmiTTNlHueXQYVnluDUtxuxAkWSqLz-EtL2w2C-nDmBtLzJCIUG9ouvx_NVO4xUEy0Jk3r36/s1600/Arbi+LOS+from+video.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div><span style="font-size: x-small;">by Maureen de Jager</span><br>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7TZxTVmimMNLUMwROgGbr6eH125-60qNOtlvF_xt12ZH-PpwItkazAlxTfCTdHtVA2_KFxmiTTNlHueXQYVnluDUtxuxAkWSqLz-EtL2w2C-nDmBtLzJCIUG9ouvx_NVO4xUEy0Jk3r36/s1600/Arbi+LOS+from+video.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7TZxTVmimMNLUMwROgGbr6eH125-60qNOtlvF_xt12ZH-PpwItkazAlxTfCTdHtVA2_KFxmiTTNlHueXQYVnluDUtxuxAkWSqLz-EtL2w2C-nDmBtLzJCIUG9ouvx_NVO4xUEy0Jk3r36/s320/Arbi+LOS+from+video.jpg" width="320"></a><br>
Frustrated by the bureaucracy impeding her South Korean residency, 2010 Spier Award-winner Lindi Arbi threw her materials down the stairs. Picture it: 40kg of expanding polyurethane bubbling and puffing, filling out the negative spaces like an abject Rachel Whiteread. Then she took this inverted staircase to the beach for her altogether uncanny performance, Last One Standing. In the resulting video – a collaboration between Arbi and Korean film-maker, Junebum Park – we see Arbi and her assistants tethering and securing the ominous wrapped staircase. The tide comes in and the parcel is adrift. The tide goes out and the parcel is beached in glutinous mud.<br>
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<a href="http://frontiercountry.blogspot.com/2011/07/sounds-dirty-earthwaterwind-in-lindi.html#more">Read more »</a>Rat Westernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09539650696200793314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3577140298664477251.post-68198138326057563822011-07-09T09:37:00.000+02:002011-10-07T09:45:32.776+02:00Don’t think, look!<span style="font-size: x-small;">by Josh Ginsburg & Francis Burger</span><br>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">1.</span></b></span><br>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBwrJOGOdzYAE_oeYy3UOj0saoqNBok3BjsqyEU_I_1udmCnfuZMfihzYp9wzVfNU1pzKkcpLiTCzEf31Zr9aL1Uhg9xzcaQeU5Hz7V9SQyjQI000-kSUaRMIVhFNfgD26ewXvC6WwbWCT/s1600/SD_Ginsburg_Burger_dont+think+look.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBwrJOGOdzYAE_oeYy3UOj0saoqNBok3BjsqyEU_I_1udmCnfuZMfihzYp9wzVfNU1pzKkcpLiTCzEf31Zr9aL1Uhg9xzcaQeU5Hz7V9SQyjQI000-kSUaRMIVhFNfgD26ewXvC6WwbWCT/s400/SD_Ginsburg_Burger_dont+think+look.jpg" width="400"></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Click to enlarge</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>2.1.</b></span><br>
‘Don’t think, Look!’ is an experimental text produced collaboratively through a series of conversations. The primary aim of the exercise was to map out a region of intersection between our respective artistic practices, where each of us attempt to create structures that facilitate the dynamic play of an excess of ideas. Marked by a shared interest in complexity, language, and the activity of thought, a mutual territory was generated through the creation and performance of such a structure as an emergent strategy. On a technical level, emergent strategies are processes that stage and manage systems within states of free play, harnessing the creative capacity of contingency through the use of reflexive feedback mechanisms. In this way, emergent processes are inherently circular: the mechanism as a whole is refined as a result of the activities it propagates within. Every action contributes not only to its independent end, but also to the development of the system at large. <br>
<a href="http://frontiercountry.blogspot.com/2011/10/dont-think-look.html#more">Read more »</a>Rat Westernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09539650696200793314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3577140298664477251.post-79799460139775999822011-07-08T15:48:00.001+02:002011-09-30T12:55:47.818+02:00Distorted Echo<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">by Charles Maggs</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLdib_X5Tz3SdGm0808C54Qydi4GxMo5v821K_mUrQiTqKqY784zX1hwi4cwXRhkms7LEbyiPeuuBVzzT1AFw06Z0gFNjhYnV4C6NpFA-N9lMPK1-3QyjxgHUczSoqAesw1RiWNYVvVqm7/s320/Charles2_twofingers.JPG" width="320"></div>In our ultra-mediated societies today, constructed behaviours and actions from popular culture are increasingly reflected in day to day reality, like a powerful feedback loop between the synthetic, processed or constructed world and that of the analogue, human or ‘real’ world. The medium may be the message, but the question is what happens when you hold up a giant mirror to this signal.<br>
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This paper is concerned with the politics of imitation, real-world mash-ups and other accidents of ultra mediation in contemporary society. It is less about Elvis impersonators or people who act out scenes from Star Wars in their back gardens, and more about how these imitations and coded behaviours have began to invade the mechanisms of state. <br>
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<a href="http://frontiercountry.blogspot.com/2011/07/distorted-echo.html#more">Read more »</a>Rat Westernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09539650696200793314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3577140298664477251.post-16455791881789399662011-07-08T15:45:00.000+02:002011-09-30T12:52:32.947+02:00Photography’s Disaster: Reproducibility and Ruined Origin(al)s in Andy Warhol, Guy Tillim, Richard Misrach, and Christo Doherty<span style="font-size: x-small;">by Gerhard Schoeman</span><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4pp2ytp5ddCv1w2a5U6K8QdgxWesJTYPe7zlS3yr4nYVrUIELcE-8YzIC5RUADGGGepqbq_17-BOS6taMbz0oLewuzqMG-2wZ4RVxAXo9ujig5uCe1_ZmgUytw_wM9VYLue2EeIUih05i/s1600/Christo+Doherty%252C+Cassinga-Kassinga+2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="142" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4pp2ytp5ddCv1w2a5U6K8QdgxWesJTYPe7zlS3yr4nYVrUIELcE-8YzIC5RUADGGGepqbq_17-BOS6taMbz0oLewuzqMG-2wZ4RVxAXo9ujig5uCe1_ZmgUytw_wM9VYLue2EeIUih05i/s320/Christo+Doherty%252C+Cassinga-Kassinga+2.JPG" width="320"></a></div>Let me begin with a story about fame. An Andy Warhol screen-print of Mao Zedong, which the late actor Dennis Hopper shot up during a wild night in the 1970s, sold for R2.137 million at Christies in January of 2011. According to Christies, Hopper, who directed the cult film Easy Rider (1969), shot the print twice when he mistook it for the actual Chinese leader. Once ruined by the infamous film star, the print increased dramatically in value. Hopper’s aura augmented Chairman Mao’s as well as Warhol’s aura. In contemporary vernacular this is called remixing.<br>
<a href="http://frontiercountry.blogspot.com/2011/08/photographys-disaster-reproducibility.html#more">Read more »</a>Rat Westernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09539650696200793314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3577140298664477251.post-60254689782641351372011-07-08T10:38:00.000+02:002011-09-30T12:59:20.693+02:00(Not) Everything counts in large amounts: Dusty Realism and the productive ‘archive’ of the in between<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">by Alexander Opper</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir_npfyIr88OwxwdUi6EPqc3vZbJ2_u97vcrvuxrsdBootFa63jzQqKQPMNGuxFqC_gdzzi1wJf3cAIpdhSxyzVF-QvUUk0sAIcLGeoqed1fxz9YDnt6qb5SgwzxA0vrxm_IfvwZJNWPG6/s320/alex.jpg" width="320"></div>This paper addresses two recent conceptually linked works by the author, employing dust as vehicle and metaphor for the challenging of established values and meanings attached to the museum archive. The horizontal cornice surfaces of the Johannesburg Art Gallery’s (JAG) exhibition halls bear testimony to the fact that dust – in its cumulative, undisturbed presence – physically and conceptually bridges and deconstructs the constructed divides between colonial, apartheid and post-apartheid space. Dust is unsettling in its main characteristic, its invariable tendency to settle. The settled state of dust is deceptive though, as it implies an ongoing, quiet and thick mobility of infinite settling. In its stubborn omnipresence it prefers the horizontal position of rest to the vertical surface of display. The non-linear and Dusty Realism, as I refer to it here, of this fugitive and permanent museum ‘resident’ overrides and overwrites the futile attempts of museum curators to neatly and chronologically categorise the contents of any museum archive. It embodies the Deriddean notions of margin and centre and reversal and doubling: in the two works discussed here, the ostensibly residual nature of dust is catapulted onto the museum’s centre stage. Here it operates simultaneously as a destabilising catalyst for new readings – and as an unsettling mirror – of the archive as we know it. Although museum dust remains relatively dry, due to the strict rules of control around temperature and humidity in such buildings, it retains an inherently sticky quality. Like glue, it clings to, binds, and is itself a constituent element of the synthetic archive it tenuously holds together.<br>
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<a href="http://frontiercountry.blogspot.com/2011/07/not-everything-counts-in-large-amounts.html#more">Read more »</a>Rat Westernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09539650696200793314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3577140298664477251.post-15771617935806799872011-07-07T16:13:00.001+02:002011-09-30T12:52:49.958+02:00am I a victim of this wicked game: synthetic dirt vs. aesthetic clean<span style="font-size: x-small;">by Bettina Malcomess</span><br>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmVgHqj5C2ySkzg5ENL96VTpO3FmALIwKc9kOet_fdB2eYExMjrrQ8AjvyeAEoTJReokrkHy4oI8oEatesX_xbVRZQRxVvsbmTpPTYGEIcBaljKzX-elarJaWYAv-Q3O23RMTDobf0kG-t/s1600/bettina5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmVgHqj5C2ySkzg5ENL96VTpO3FmALIwKc9kOet_fdB2eYExMjrrQ8AjvyeAEoTJReokrkHy4oI8oEatesX_xbVRZQRxVvsbmTpPTYGEIcBaljKzX-elarJaWYAv-Q3O23RMTDobf0kG-t/s320/bettina5.jpg" width="320"></a></div><br>
<b> </b>This paper begins with a series of images. The first is of Julius Malema walking with Winnie Mandela in front of Johannesburg high court, escorted by his bodyguards wearing black suits and red ties and carrying Dashprod SAR M14 rifles (used for urban street combat). The second is from the music video of New Wave Kwaito-Elecontronica musician, Spoek Mathambo. Directed by Pieter Hugo, the image is of Mathambo lying on his side on the ground, his head and most of his torso covered in a white, chalky powder, his knees drawn up close to his body, being beaten with what appear to be tyre inner tubings by children covered in a shiny black liquid. The third is a photograph, in the catalogue for ‘Endgame’ by Michael McGarry, of a figure in a ‘wooden mask of Hu Jintao (President of China), a ghillie suit (US military camoflauge) and an ‘AK47’ (an adapted toy gun). The caption reads: ‘The person in the photograph is my girlfriend’s parents gardener…I paid him R100 for a three hour shoot’. The last is an image by artist Gerald Machona, a still from a film shot in Harare, which shows Machona dancing on a rooftop ledge, wearing a mask made out of Zimbabwean dollars, some of which he throws into the air. <br>
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<a href="http://frontiercountry.blogspot.com/2011/07/am-i-victim-of-this-wicked-game.html#more">Read more »</a>Rat Westernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09539650696200793314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3577140298664477251.post-60469187273783250842011-07-07T16:10:00.001+02:002011-09-30T12:57:08.005+02:00The Paranoia of Ron T Beck<span style="font-size: x-small;">by Chad Rossouw</span> <br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKT5ulbGNmpQgqXa7OVqjpb1kWPsFEo0_9JYq8O3RbYRLOQc5-Av4W8fiGj-v29XKZGCXzG8nsVp4HtFqfWEFtb57VaKc38bOE70h_ZxS_FKXyh1biJgb1IN7-6wvLMwzLJ9bgIG9hn55h/s1600/Chad2_Screenshot15.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKT5ulbGNmpQgqXa7OVqjpb1kWPsFEo0_9JYq8O3RbYRLOQc5-Av4W8fiGj-v29XKZGCXzG8nsVp4HtFqfWEFtb57VaKc38bOE70h_ZxS_FKXyh1biJgb1IN7-6wvLMwzLJ9bgIG9hn55h/s320/Chad2_Screenshot15.JPG" width="320"></a></div> Ron T Beck is corrupt, international and invisible. Ron is the doer, the producer, the enabler. Moving from dodgy mining deals in Russia, to dealing arms in Iran, Beck is multi-talented, nonchalant, and enormously immoral. He embodies the filthy underbelly and maneuvering that enable gross corporate profits. He is also an artwork, an invention of artist Charles Maggs, and probably your friend on Facebook. Beck only exists through images and abrupt statements on social networks and blogs, making him seem autonomous and self-generating.<br>
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<a href="http://frontiercountry.blogspot.com/2011/07/paranoia-of-ron-t-beck.html#more">Read more »</a>Rat Westernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09539650696200793314noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3577140298664477251.post-7270846112179709932011-07-07T14:33:00.000+02:002011-09-30T12:53:52.103+02:00Spatial tourism: ‘Interspatial Commerce’ within Contemporary South African Art<span style="font-size: x-small;">by Mary Corrigall<i> </i></span><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh18FzChIScvyywEXrG7SOOr9tLNdzDpbSKGdxduKUDe8KKuKRRO3SiskWdASYfEIo8KQjZvyWhyTzojdVk6M-akvgbXKFu7tSYpU45XkYKtUaz2NJ9M0wxkj6kZZ4TbmUBNzFFedbIKVr2/s1600/si+inhouse4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh18FzChIScvyywEXrG7SOOr9tLNdzDpbSKGdxduKUDe8KKuKRRO3SiskWdASYfEIo8KQjZvyWhyTzojdVk6M-akvgbXKFu7tSYpU45XkYKtUaz2NJ9M0wxkj6kZZ4TbmUBNzFFedbIKVr2/s320/si+inhouse4.jpg" width="320"></a></div><br>
<i>“A schizophrenic out for a walk is a better model than a neurotic lying on the analyst’s couch,”</i><br>
- Deleuze and Guattari <br>
<br>
“You could tell your mother you were going on a package holiday to Kabul, with a stopover in Haiti and Detroit, and she wouldn’t bat an eyelid. But tell her you’re going to Joburg and she’ll be absolutely convinced that you’ll come home with no wallet, no watch and no head,” observed TV personality and journalist Jeremy Clarkson . After a short stay in this notorious South African conurbation Clarkson discovered it wasn’t quite the “lawless Wild West frontier town paralysed by corruption and disease”. This prompted him to amend his attitude and declare that Joburg was in fact a city “for softies.” <br>
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<a href="http://frontiercountry.blogspot.com/2011/08/spatial-tourism-interspatial-commerce.html#more">Read more »</a>Rat Westernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09539650696200793314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3577140298664477251.post-41646247244157415392011-07-07T13:55:00.000+02:002011-09-30T13:00:35.976+02:00Digital sh1t: Mobile website Outoilet, the mobile phone and the marking of space<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>,by Alette Schoon</i></span><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3dagAxSAXRnGXLotRsLuovOeYdTwarVLrQGWJQgRmidyiiFCAKCJaQJZRRm8s9FZROtGwRwVElykEqrHPLvRrtCAusnKWOiAt-YLR_TAP5K19gLKP6zzQS46GNGfZ7hvX-oI4aI3UdBJ2/s1600/alette1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3dagAxSAXRnGXLotRsLuovOeYdTwarVLrQGWJQgRmidyiiFCAKCJaQJZRRm8s9FZROtGwRwVElykEqrHPLvRrtCAusnKWOiAt-YLR_TAP5K19gLKP6zzQS46GNGfZ7hvX-oI4aI3UdBJ2/s400/alette1.jpg" width="392"></a></div>In November last year the mobile phone website Outoilet (Old toilet) shot to notoriety as it was associated with the distribution of an amateur video of a statutory rape at Jules High School in Jeppestown. Since then mobile phone networks have blocked access to the site, and the Film and Publication Board has attempted to persuade its Russian hosts to close it down. Outoilet responded by urging users to bypass the blockages by using the unmonitored mobile browser Opera Mini, took down their school chatrooms, displayed an age restriction and cheekily added ‘as seen on TV’ to their header. However, despite its links to various porn video and photography sites, Outoilet itself is text based, a low bandwidth free-for-all bulletin board, which boasts in its header ‘the only place where you can gossip without anyone knowing who you are’. <br>
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<a href="http://frontiercountry.blogspot.com/2011/07/digital-sh1t-mobile-website-outoilet.html#more">Read more »</a>Rat Westernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09539650696200793314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3577140298664477251.post-87602809513536902142011-07-07T13:40:00.001+02:002011-09-30T12:57:51.368+02:00SPORT THEATRE AND “PLAYING DIRTY”: A performance experiment on soccer<span style="font-size: x-small;">by Athina Vahla </span><br>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBQF2apobWIjvsXnbKChR1jom7Bvy4frD5mMJEX1Si7hEHMHmw3BBRS9GLrUksuMPhWdIsGrw2ZhThyxaKY1YrN8T5FqyGMtdFVrPBSW2mGIFwZX8r1kfywNOMisReI50tf_6ip-1BDnaQ/s1600/football+006-4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="112" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBQF2apobWIjvsXnbKChR1jom7Bvy4frD5mMJEX1Si7hEHMHmw3BBRS9GLrUksuMPhWdIsGrw2ZhThyxaKY1YrN8T5FqyGMtdFVrPBSW2mGIFwZX8r1kfywNOMisReI50tf_6ip-1BDnaQ/s200/football+006-4.jpg" width="200"></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr>
</tbody></table><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHdP0BVlmylyAhgxgCaQnYFfkBvaIGv1w_IJ5aheeUl_B3cN5MvpqVe34eN1nS4U3n14JuGT1WYnnczWB-9qrUzwfSzkLiiI9VnRJ_RKnoIYlx0VazAzkiSYGAt2YBQcTdEzSHAwd-BI82/s1600/football+007-18.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="112" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHdP0BVlmylyAhgxgCaQnYFfkBvaIGv1w_IJ5aheeUl_B3cN5MvpqVe34eN1nS4U3n14JuGT1WYnnczWB-9qrUzwfSzkLiiI9VnRJ_RKnoIYlx0VazAzkiSYGAt2YBQcTdEzSHAwd-BI82/s200/football+007-18.jpg" width="200"></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Images courtesy Mark Wilby</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br>
<br>
<br>
This paper aims to introduce a hybrid form of performance named Sport Theatre. The first part of the document is about defining Sport Theatre as a concept through discussing its constituent elements, purpose and potential, while the second part discusses a performance experiment called Playing Dirty, part of the Synthetic Dirt Colloquium which aimed to test the practical application of Sport Theatre in performance. <br>
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<a href="http://frontiercountry.blogspot.com/2011/07/sport-theatre-and-playing-dirty.html#more">Read more »</a>Rat Westernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09539650696200793314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3577140298664477251.post-52014129753231892272011-07-07T12:48:00.000+02:002011-09-30T12:53:08.628+02:00Infospherics and a new South African psychogeography.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1g-o0VGf87FvhmsMWrVJPCAGRP6glNAgVHbgONVljUqaVQcdQ7o7z8PiI0OVooowRp8nRdvikrVmYi1TJBt_K1KjBeuVLTiePxnikuL9CbmYpdusLah4ELNVY8mI4DCncy4pT24AIPgXG/s1600/meistre.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1g-o0VGf87FvhmsMWrVJPCAGRP6glNAgVHbgONVljUqaVQcdQ7o7z8PiI0OVooowRp8nRdvikrVmYi1TJBt_K1KjBeuVLTiePxnikuL9CbmYpdusLah4ELNVY8mI4DCncy4pT24AIPgXG/s320/meistre.jpg" width="320"></a></div><span style="font-size: x-small;">by James Sey</span><br>
<br>
Alongside the readable structure of the city, the mappable territory which organises and arranges, lies the other structure of contingency – the structure of the city produced by its users, its inhabitants. This one evokes, determines and produces behaviours, styles, attitudes, values, pathologies. Each city therefore has at least a double character, and a double narrative, and its inhabitants play many roles within them. <br>
<br>
The surfaces and depths of the city’s structure, its being – from the towering replications of its skyscrapers, to the hollow aortas of its undercover car parks, to the secret somatics of its circulatory systems of tar, wire, cable and pipe – all form a paradigmatic sign system, a primary cybernetic machine. Seen as such a sign system, the city should be the true locus of modern media – and aesthetic - philosophy. <br>
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<a href="http://frontiercountry.blogspot.com/2011/09/infospherics-and-new-south-african.html#more">Read more »</a>Rat Westernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09539650696200793314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3577140298664477251.post-61685875289654245972011-07-07T12:35:00.000+02:002011-09-30T12:53:30.310+02:00Dirty hands or hands-off? – the printmatrix in a mediated milieu.<span style="font-size: x-small;">by Dominic Thorburn</span><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3qB0N2pzeG5CzshcRtYgBAUUcQMYEg0l0VqYzvZfL_lbLmGIkp6Af_s3Wv1mvXgUJGVVOa1_wyj0YDx7WjzknMYKRcgDWE6dS1IJM18L6A1vvYAY-34Fl57oQLByvSiTC7npd1zCtyISt/s1600/Picture4+Nathaniel+Stern+-+Compressionism.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3qB0N2pzeG5CzshcRtYgBAUUcQMYEg0l0VqYzvZfL_lbLmGIkp6Af_s3Wv1mvXgUJGVVOa1_wyj0YDx7WjzknMYKRcgDWE6dS1IJM18L6A1vvYAY-34Fl57oQLByvSiTC7npd1zCtyISt/s320/Picture4+Nathaniel+Stern+-+Compressionism.jpg" width="320"></a></div><br>
Since the very first images were made by dipping hands in natural pigment and pressing them on cave walls in Lascaux and Altamira artists have been getting their hands dirty to make their mark. These simple images have to be some of the most economical, powerful and evocative symbols known to us. I believe it helpful to revisit visual images of this nature, to regain perspective and seek solace in them - especially at times when contemporary questions abound such as those being asked at this colloquium.<br>
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<a href="http://frontiercountry.blogspot.com/2011/09/dirty-hands-or-hands-off-printmatrix-in.html#more">Read more »</a>Rat Westernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09539650696200793314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3577140298664477251.post-80289703103727160452011-07-07T11:36:00.000+02:002011-09-30T12:51:16.571+02:00Dirty Alien Shadow-selves: Synthetic Dirt in District 9<span style="font-size: x-small;">by Cheryl Stobie</span><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_oB9HcpbJ9jPhbQem4OYURTKqxNRAFfb7jZYlCirMgAECeGHgmDm7gQoMPT7L_q1iNq2q5M3p0zyCytFwMX3D7RPmB5BY1nIHxEg9qCI9piYZJ-zk66kT8V_w8XSZqwar9jl3AljeQFkV/s1600/district9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_oB9HcpbJ9jPhbQem4OYURTKqxNRAFfb7jZYlCirMgAECeGHgmDm7gQoMPT7L_q1iNq2q5M3p0zyCytFwMX3D7RPmB5BY1nIHxEg9qCI9piYZJ-zk66kT8V_w8XSZqwar9jl3AljeQFkV/s320/district9.jpg" width="320"></a></div><br>
<b></b><br>
<div style="text-align: center;"><i>Art was intended to prepare and announce a future world: </i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>today it is modelling possible universes. (Bourriaud 2002: 13)</i></div><br>
In this paper I triangulate three theoretical strands, using Nicolas Bourriaud on aesthetics, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay on science fiction, specifically representations of aliens, and Mary Douglas on anthropology. Although Bourriaud privileges the art exhibition, many of his comments on contemporary artistic practice and its cultural potential are suggestively applicable to the film District 9 (Blomkamp 2009). Bourriaud refers to a contemporary trend in the art world of “learning to inhabit the world in a better way, instead of trying to construct it based on a preconceived idea of historical evolution” (2002: 13). He elaborates that “the role of artworks is no longer to form imaginary and utopian realities, but to actually be ways of living and models of action within the existing real” (13). Further pertinent concepts of Bourriaud’s include the city model of cultural forms (14), and the shift from art as a space to be traversed to “a period of time to be lived through” (15), like a film narrative. Bourriaud also notes the semiotic power of the image to generate empathy and connection. He places contemporary art in the zone of the interstitial, and within this zone he emphasises the significance of human gestures of connection in representations, in dialogic relationships with prior formations, in ethics and as expressions of desire. <br>
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<a href="http://frontiercountry.blogspot.com/2011/07/dirty-alien-shadow-selves-synthetic.html#more">Read more »</a>Rat Westernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09539650696200793314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3577140298664477251.post-9831597506405163782011-07-06T11:00:00.000+02:002011-09-30T12:58:21.167+02:00The Dirt is Real – The Rest is Synthetic: The Rough Works of Aryan Kaganof<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3dt5hDas_UiMWaxgKzS1OYDxqSWUYed_x5fylqEoJzWKhhBjHm7foXVkCGkzl6bEhp3QtDjqUr8455aEqY0kkndTfOxlRAghELtoxjypDi8aqzbRraSd3cy8d1jCagOUzLrs6zmkQgOk1/s1600/dirt+is+good.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div><span style="font-size: x-small;">by Anton Krueger</span><br>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3dt5hDas_UiMWaxgKzS1OYDxqSWUYed_x5fylqEoJzWKhhBjHm7foXVkCGkzl6bEhp3QtDjqUr8455aEqY0kkndTfOxlRAghELtoxjypDi8aqzbRraSd3cy8d1jCagOUzLrs6zmkQgOk1/s1600/dirt+is+good.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3dt5hDas_UiMWaxgKzS1OYDxqSWUYed_x5fylqEoJzWKhhBjHm7foXVkCGkzl6bEhp3QtDjqUr8455aEqY0kkndTfOxlRAghELtoxjypDi8aqzbRraSd3cy8d1jCagOUzLrs6zmkQgOk1/s320/dirt+is+good.jpg" width="320"></a><br>
Aryan Kaganof, was born Ian Kerkhof in 1964. He grew up in Durban and left for Amsterdam in 1984, because, in his own words he didn’t feel like “running around in a uniform shooting at blacks”. He moved back to South Africa in ‘99 to meet – for the first time – his biological father, who was terminally ill. Aryan lived with him during the last months of his life, an experience recounted in Uselessly (Jacana, 2006). His father was a Jewish man called Caganoff. Kagan is a Russian equivalent of Cohen, and the “off” means “descended from”, so Kaganof is the son of Cohen. And then Ian renamed himself Aryan, (from the Sanskrit arya, meaning “noble”), because Hitler said that no Jew would ever be an Aryan, and he thought that might be kind of funny. So that’s where Aryan Kaganof’s peculiar name comes from. <br>
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<a href="http://frontiercountry.blogspot.com/2011/07/dirt-is-real-rest-is-synthetic-rough.html#more">Read more »</a>Rat Westernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09539650696200793314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3577140298664477251.post-83382764545930611952011-04-14T15:18:00.000+02:002011-04-14T15:18:09.667+02:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1WkvVXjt_7ji5tn4OpD74Fexgd_ZT-E8BVfMnzRMzUN-IAjH7m0gHrGl8drW_smeedE4PutWBoMrPbHPiY2WYtQIv0BM0IzixWYOWTvUaFmIa4LioCYwL7SJzNw1aOc4hsKSnvUNP_q0J/s1600/poster_small.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1WkvVXjt_7ji5tn4OpD74Fexgd_ZT-E8BVfMnzRMzUN-IAjH7m0gHrGl8drW_smeedE4PutWBoMrPbHPiY2WYtQIv0BM0IzixWYOWTvUaFmIa4LioCYwL7SJzNw1aOc4hsKSnvUNP_q0J/s400/poster_small.jpg" width="220" /></a></div>SYNTHETIC DIRT Programme <br />
Rhodes Fine Art Colloquium<br />
St Peter’s Building, Room 34 &35, St Peter’s Campus, Rhodes University, Somerset Street<br />
Saturday & Sunday, April 16 & 17<br />
<br />
Saturday<br />
8:45 – 9:00 Welcome, Rat Western<br />
9:00 – 10:00: Bettina Malcolmess & Alette Schoon<br />
10:00 – 11:00: Rael Salley & Maureen de Jager<br />
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11:00 – 11:15: TEA<br />
<br />
11:15 – 12:15: Francis Burger & James Webb<br />
12:15 – 1:15: Anton Krueger &Josh Ginsburg<br />
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1:15 – 2:00: LUNCH<br />
<br />
2:00 – 3:00: Paulette Coetzee & Cheryl Stobie<br />
3:00 – 4:00: Gavin Krastin & Athina Vahla<br />
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6:00 Exhibition Opening, Albany History Museum, Somerset Street<br />
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Sunday<br />
9:00 – 10:00: Ashraf Jamal & James Sey<br />
10:00 – 11:00: Matthew Partridge & Mary Corrigall<br />
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11:00 – 11:15: TEA<br />
<br />
11:15 – 12:15: Alex Opper & Dominic Thorburn<br />
12:15 – 1:15: Chad Rossouw & Charles Maggs<br />
<br />
1:15 – 2:00: LUNCH<br />
<br />
2:00 – 3:00: Imraan Coovadia & Sean O’Toole<br />
3:00 – 3:30: Wrap-Up Rat WesternRat Westernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09539650696200793314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3577140298664477251.post-61980183255156692492011-04-14T13:50:00.000+02:002011-04-14T13:50:48.814+02:00Athina Vahla: Playing Dirty - An Arena Project<i><b>A practice - led experiment in collaboration with Rhodes women’s soccer team for the ‘Synthetic Dirt’ Colloquium (Rhodes University Fine Arts Department, 16-17 April 2011). </b></i><br />
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<i><b>This presentation will be preceded by a workshop performance on 15 April at 8pm at the Rhodes Theatre. All Welcome.</b></i><br />
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Arenas are performance case studies based on the notion of agon [Greek meaning conflict, struggle]. Taking place in spaces configured for contest Arenas raise a fundamental question, namely, whether the space defines the contest or whether the contest dictates the space.<br />
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The women soccer event is one case study within the broader Arenas project, the aims of which include:<br />
1. The development of Sport Theatre a new hybrid form of performance which uses the language of sports in theatre.<br />
2. The value of sport theatre for the local and broader cultural, social and political arenas. <br />
3. Audiences’ development; bringing sport fans and art audience together.<br />
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Project goals<br />
- To challenge the liminal space between sport and art performance, the functional and the aesthetic <br />
- To create a ‘distinct’ artistic voice by ‘mixing’ two different physical practices performed by sportsmen and women rather than athletically trained actors.<br />
- To promote collaborative exchanges between different academic disciplines in order to observe what emerges from this synergy.<br />
- To ‘dirty’ sports, arts, science, and possibly ‘dirty’ the ways we tend to view structures of different types of systems and models.<br />
- To define new territories…<br />
<br />
Audiences at the colloquium will be part of a ‘staged experiment’ which will include the following aspects:<br />
A pre-performance routine which ‘pushes’ the mental and physical skills of each player prior to the game . <br />
Subtle ‘interventions’ to subvert the game rules and ethos. The dislocation of the playground, the shifting of goal posts, the reduced number of players, the use of text, all challenge the team’s training as well as the performance experiment.<br />
<br />
The ‘dirtying’ of the game becomes apparent in that expressed human effort is revealed rather than concealed. The safe terrain of a highly structured sport is deliberately ‘sabotaged ’. A number of idiosyncrasies is highlighted; the playing field becomes an enclosed theatre, and, perhaps most importantly, the borderland between the private (training) and the public (game) is challenged and exposed. The conference as a hosting structure becomes an arena in which these interventions are played out.Rat Westernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09539650696200793314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3577140298664477251.post-45554837560943463802011-04-12T18:52:00.002+02:002011-04-13T12:28:25.197+02:00Alex Opper: (Not) Everything counts in large amounts: Dusty Realism and the productive ‘archive’ of the in between<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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</style> <![endif]--> <div class="MsoNormal">Alexander Opper</div><div class="MsoNormal"><strong><i>Accumulation #1</i></strong> (2010), Detail (photo by Leon Krige)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif";">(Found dust on paper)</span></div></td></tr>
</tbody></table>Two recent conceptually linked works by the author, employing dust as vehicle and metaphor for the challenging of established values and meanings attached to the archive, form the basis of this paper. The horizontal cornice surfaces of the Johannesburg Art Gallery’s (JAG) exhibition halls bear testimony to the fact that dust – in its cumulative undisturbed presence – effortlessly bridges the constructed divides between colonial, apartheid and post-apartheid space. The first work (Accumulation #1, 2010) was made for the 2010 show, Time’s Arrow: Live Readings of the JAG Collection.<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">1</span></b> It uses the pervasive ‘apolitical’ nature of dust – specifically the more or less 100 year old accumulation of dust on the above-mentioned museum cornices – to interrogate and undermine the traditionally measured and ascribed notions of value attached to the contents of the museum archive. Further the work embodies a response to the exhibition curator’s interest in notions of ‘excavation, doubling and reversal.’<br />
The second work discussed here (Accumulation #2, 2010), unpacks the initial work and continues an ongoing engagement with alternative readings and probings of conventional definitions of the archive situated within the author’s current and broader interest, of a critical-spatial pursuit of the ‘undoing’ of site-specific architectural spaces. Dust is not selected or selective – it is uninvited and invasive and forces its way into every nook and cranny of the recognisable and recognised archive. It is uncannily unsettling in its main characteristic – its tendency to settle. In its stubborn omnipresence it prefers the horizontal position of rest to the vertical surface of display. It is in and of the world and, in the Bourriaudian sense, relational to the core. Ironically, its unstoppable, accumulating and viral presence is the most alive aspect of the dead museum and dead archive. In a sense, it represents a permanently persistent homage to Kasimir Malevich’s 1919 call (in On the Museum) for the reduction of museums and their collections to space-saving powder (via his suggested burning of everything old and outdated, to make way for the new). Dust is ambiguously and simultaneously peripheral and central. It is not to be underestimated: its mostly marginal connotations recently slipped into a radically central position – in its ashen Icelandic form – inflicting prolonged global paralysis on the world’s transport systems. Dust ‘reminds’ the increasingly synthetic world that it is real, and longs to make the virtual world more real – perhaps, through its particle nature, it could ‘learn’, through the ultimate nth degree of pulverisation, to infiltrate the virtual and in so doing, at last, alchemically link the two realms.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">1 For an overview of the exhibition, visit: http://www.timesarrowatjag.blogspot.com/ </span>Rat Westernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09539650696200793314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3577140298664477251.post-58474380699091673672011-04-12T18:16:00.000+02:002011-04-12T18:16:44.793+02:00Francis Burger: Squaring the magic circle<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivud8FALv1nrl98MYAQgKghAU6Mo0dJAc02si5h_6LMcC-kR1flLtMw8R2Okc-9uhjuVu9YRyvBV-r7dEPnAVlKYn5W63Wn5G-A8kKKm2x_dkMGrMEquWhoe4YRVfnrXNDNJzJ1i3ZMQSI/s1600/francis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivud8FALv1nrl98MYAQgKghAU6Mo0dJAc02si5h_6LMcC-kR1flLtMw8R2Okc-9uhjuVu9YRyvBV-r7dEPnAVlKYn5W63Wn5G-A8kKKm2x_dkMGrMEquWhoe4YRVfnrXNDNJzJ1i3ZMQSI/s320/francis.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Willem Boshoff, <i>Nothing is Obvious</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>How do spaces of play become delineated?<br />
<br />
How does one draw on weak logic to erect a flexible line that allows for rather than inhibits emergent thoughts, ideas, objects and inventions?<br />
<br />
How does one cultivate and harvest spaces of emergence, of freedom? Spaces like Archimedes’ bathtub and Jean Philippe Toussaint’s bathroom, where eureka’s, both loud and soft, fast and slow, mark the arrival of the truth as an event, effervescing all at once across tight networks of people, things and places.<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">1</span></b><br />
How does one solicit the unsolicitable, say the unspeakable, fix, formalize, or commission the impossible?<br />
<br />
Focusing on experimental artistic research strategies the proposed paper will investigate the above questions through a discussion of merging the estranged bedfellows of quantitative and qualitative research. Taking advantage of the intersection of post-structuralism and complexity studies within contemporary critical theory, the theoretical base of the investigation will extend to include samples from an orphan genealogy of abstract engineers.<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">2</span></b> The paper will pivot around the illustration of practical strategies evidenced by artists and other practitioners within a localised community.<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">3</span> </b>Functioning as a performance, the paper will be presented in conjunction with video and sculptural works from two or more of the above-mentioned artists (See Notes).<br />
<br />
Backed by previous attempts at researching the quiet histories of lesser-known South African artists and other intellectuals or eccentrics, the discussion will aim at the articulation of a shareable, ‘sayable’ method that interrogates and intervenes in the writing of current histories via a combination of actions that are simultaneously radical and responsible, independent and gregarious.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: x-small;">notes</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">1. The ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes is known anecdotally for screeching ‘Eureka!’ and running down the street naked after solving a problem of volume and weight in his bathtub. Toussaint’s (2008) The Bathroom narrates the story of a man who moves into his bathroom in an attempt to secure the ‘quietude of [his] abstract life’.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">2. Taken from a comment on Deleuze’s philosophical family tree by Brian Massumi (1987), the idea of my own ‘orphan’ genealogy could emerge here to include anyone from Diogenes to Nietzsche, from Chief Bambatha kaMancinza to Eugene Marais to Enoch Mgijima to Krzysztof Wodiczko, Stacy Hardy or Bp Nichol.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">3. Namely Josh and Jared Ginsburg, Anja de Klerk, Christian Nerf, Willem Boshoff and Doung Anwaar Jahangeer as well as practitioners from conservation (Paula Hathorn and Tanya Lane) and complexity studies (André Zaaiman).</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">sources cited within this proposal:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Massumi, B. 1987. ‘Pleasures of Philosophy’ in Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus; Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by B. Massumi. Minneapolis: Minnesota. (p. x)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Jean-Philippe Toussaint, 2008. The Bathroom. Translated by Nancy Amphoux. Illinois: Dalkey Archive Press. (p. 7.)</span>Rat Westernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09539650696200793314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3577140298664477251.post-66667257247368015102011-04-12T17:53:00.002+02:002011-04-12T17:54:28.504+02:00Ashraf Jamal: … living in a quake …<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhx4CR5ze2TEBrbuzThFuKTu3JvXkxv1Z7Zco4JOK37S_gH8hp28yDWlabM1XB6xkQbP5kcMSlZFws1s3NG4fyCNcnu1YkxHUuoHuuPIBxWf5Y3fpyQCGOlUQ72mDMZ7EUDhyphenhyphen8JsAtoWGm/s1600/ashraf.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhx4CR5ze2TEBrbuzThFuKTu3JvXkxv1Z7Zco4JOK37S_gH8hp28yDWlabM1XB6xkQbP5kcMSlZFws1s3NG4fyCNcnu1YkxHUuoHuuPIBxWf5Y3fpyQCGOlUQ72mDMZ7EUDhyphenhyphen8JsAtoWGm/s1600/ashraf.jpg"></a></div><b>I</b><br>
The most commonly used phrase in Japanese, expressed in moments of parting, is ganbatte kudasai – “please endure it.” Testimony to a human condition at once gritty and staggeringly inconsolable ganbatte kudasai nevertheless clings to a collective empathy and connectedness in the instant of a rupture. Despite its austerity, therefore, the endurance which the phrase appeals to reminds us that life is nothing without mutual care. That this care is at once human, cultural, industrial, and technological is both fitting and strange given the complex interconnectivity that informs and defines contemporary global life. In the case of Japan, a society, culture, and current catastrophe, we find an in-road into our debate on matters technological and mortal. While this essay turns on the current disaster that afflicts Japan, it is the global impact which this disaster invokes which, primarily, informs this rumination. To live in a quake one need not suffer the specifics of that world; nevertheless it is that world, which is also our world, which allows for the empathy, connectivity, in short the experience which accounts for a radical unsettlement experienced worldwide. Japan functions, therefore, as a coda for the sheer gravity that informs this discussion: a discussion that happens after, because of, and within the trauma that exists as I speak. <br>
<a href="http://frontiercountry.blogspot.com/2011/04/ashraf-jamal-living-in-quake.html#more">Read more »</a>Rat Westernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09539650696200793314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3577140298664477251.post-23467786096415336402011-04-12T17:45:00.000+02:002011-04-12T17:45:13.495+02:00Matthew Partridge: The Everyday and The Extraordinary Dave Southwood’s ‘Milnerton Market’<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfBVGxZvymRixUP3_TS_kf0__a54yfuw36iw_h5lziRRNQXAVNtBbZ74vZ8Tuxjb4-ZehJDuWzElS2GsXrRLrVB3plAYYP0QDJyrUtjmaJxCfLkGarH8Cn29AIp-iBxie0rtH0dblGI5ob/s1600/MM-BlackDecker-2003.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="260" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfBVGxZvymRixUP3_TS_kf0__a54yfuw36iw_h5lziRRNQXAVNtBbZ74vZ8Tuxjb4-ZehJDuWzElS2GsXrRLrVB3plAYYP0QDJyrUtjmaJxCfLkGarH8Cn29AIp-iBxie0rtH0dblGI5ob/s320/MM-BlackDecker-2003.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dave Southwood – <i>Black & Decker</i>, 2003</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Milnerton Market, on the periphery of Cape Town is a virtual treasure trove of the discarded, the no longer wanted, the second-hand object. Erected every Sunday this zone becomes a site of economic trade peopled by a mass huddled among green balustrade fences, searching for paths of existence cast in the junk of others. <br />
The photographer Dave Southwood has explored the characters that filter through such a trade in his artist editioned book titled simply ‘Milnerton Market’. Launched at the AVA in November 2010 with a photographic series of works contained in the book Southwood has explored the aesthetic relation of people to objects.<br />
<br />
As Ivan Vladislavić describes in his text:<br />
<i>Wittingly or not, in setting out their stalls the sellers create small tableaux of domestic life. These scenes evoke the absent worlds from which the objects have been banished. They are as moving as photographs of forced removals or evictions, where household effects standing out in a field or on a street corner, stripped of their privacy and exposed to the elements, call to mind the walls and roof of a lost home.</i><br />
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If supermarkets are orderly suburbs of commodities within the gated communities of the malls, then flea markets are informal settlements on the margins of exchange.<br />
What this paper intends to discuss is the indexical relation of photography to the typology of people that Southwood explores. The banal and the quotidian, rendered in the visible in the photographs of objects and stalls, serve as intricate traces of the extended lives of their sellers. <br />
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In this sphere of lasped commodification nestled in the margins of exchange, emerges portraits that celebrate the everyday, the dirty and the synthetic, whilst at the same revealing the raw humanity that finds its definition in such objects.Rat Westernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09539650696200793314noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3577140298664477251.post-37546595888315443472011-04-12T17:38:00.003+02:002011-04-14T12:41:02.309+02:00Sean O' Toole: Death of a Critic: the who, when, where and how of Ivor PowellIn his slender but influential 2003 volume, What happened to art criticism?, James Elkins offers that, “Art criticism is not considered as part of the brief of art history: it is not an historical discipline, but something akin to creative writing.” The evidence of contemporary criticism does not entirely bear out this statement. In the context of the wholesale disassembling or dematerialisation of art practice across the span of the twentieth century, it is surprising, at least to me, that much of what is understood as art criticism remains Catholic, hidebound and formally conservative. I think in particular of the review, a standard editorial device that functions as a sort of eye away from.<br />
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In a 2010 lecture, curator Tirdad Zolghadr remarked: “The review is by now the most musty of master forms, the oil painting of art writing.” However, unlike painting, which has brokered an understanding with its anachronisms, art criticism has, for the most part, refused to inhabit art’s “expanded field”, to repurpose Rosalind Krauss’s famous phrase. And so the review remains the prevailing mode of engagement, a rhetorical device that defuses the "creative writing" latent in art criticism in favour of something approaching a bland, descriptively inclined interpretive text. This is particularly pronounced in South Africa where art criticism's ontological fuzziness has only been tentatively been engaged by a handful of writers.<br />
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This paper will focus on the work of art critic Ivor Powell, an influential if furtive critic whose writings chart an epochal shift in South African art and its critical reception. Literate, argumentative, undisciplined, Powell was closely associated with Possession Arts, an early 1980s neo-Dadaist group of artists, dramatists and writers. In the late 1980s he was appointed as art critic for the newly launched Weekly Mail, a position he held until the mid-1990s. After the failure of Ventilator, a short-lived post-apartheid art magazine launched in September 1994 and edited by Powell, he started concentrating on investigative journalism, which eventually led to his appointment as a senior investigator with the now defunct Scorpions, an arm of the National Prosecuting Authority. His arrest on January 22, 2008, on charges of driving under the influence of alcohol and resisting arrest after he sped away from police attempting to arrest Igshaan Davids, leader of the infamous Americans street gang, then wanted for car theft, forms an interesting sidebar to a career that, at least in writing, is marked by its commitment to a critical eroticism, to borrow from Sontag.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Sean O’Toole</b> is a culture journalist, art critic and writer. A PhD candidate at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, he formerly served as editor of the magazine Art South Africa (2004-10), writes regularly on photography for the Sunday Times and contributes a bi-monthly art column to frieze magazine.</span>Rat Westernhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09539650696200793314noreply@blogger.com0