DANDANO is a digital platform that focuses on highlighting the incredible work of African filmmakers and musicians. With the aim of presenting classic creations and new productions produced on the continent, their platform is a collection of musical innovation and cinematic inspiration through interviews and opinion pieces. I had a conversation with founder and Creative Director Hakeem Adam about the platform and its significance with regards to contemplating older genres and pushing forward creative endeavors.
Tell our readers more about you and the work that you do?
Our work at DANDANO is mainly critiquing and documenting African film and music. Through interviews, reviews, in-depth analysis, DJ sets and screenings, my hope is that DANDANO can help consumers of film and music on the continent and in the diaspora make connections to the amazing and intriguing work African artists put out. I also hope that it will help them recognize the intrinsic value [of these productions], especially in the way that those mediums shape social behavior. In addition to this, we seek to help musicians and filmmakers receive constructive criticism so they can learn and improve the overall quality of their work.
I am a writer who manly functions on poetry and recently completed my studies at the University of Ghana in English and Psychology. I also freelance from time to time focusing on African culture and arts. So most of my life focuses on storytelling and I hope to put out a collection of poetry soon.
What is your relationship with music and film? What made you feel as though you want to create a platform dedicated to these two creative outlets?
Growing up, film and music was always around me. I have not had any formal training in either of those fields. However, I naturally gravitated towards music when I started out as freelance writer and taught myself to understand it and know how to write about it. That love extended towards film as I discovered that it is quiet similar to music in construction and utility.
I decided to focus the platform on film and music because I found that there was an absence of accessible critical analysis on new and old work. It is almost impossible to know what album was top of the charts in Ghana in 1975 unless you lived through the era or why Bubblegum pop emerged in South Africa in the 1980s. Access to this knowledge is quickly disappearing. I’m a firm believer in creating the change you want to see in the world. So I decided to start something as a way of sharing my opinions on new music and knowledge I discover as I [do] research. DANDANO in essence is a space where [an] understanding of African film and music is forged, and an accessible knowledge bank created.
Tell me more about the name ‘DANDANO’?
The name ‘DANDANO’, is the Hausa word for taste or flavor. I decided to go with that word because it perfectly sums up the ethos of the work that the platform seeks to do, which is basically to present a vivid description of the flavor of African film and music. The word also has a nice melodic ring to into, making it quite memorable.
In your words, explain the significance of the platform?
Well, I found out that most platforms on the continent documenting African culture do not have a specific focus on either film and music. They are mostly documenting activities across the arts from painting to fashion. So I decided to create that voice just for film and music and fill the void. Ultimately, the impact that DANDANO should have on the African film and music scene is to go beyond the surface and interrogate the content being put out. We try to make our readers understand trends, patterns, stylistic choices and other decisions that might for example, shape the African music soundscape. I feel as though that is important knowledge that we, the primary consumers of African art, should have rather than waiting for western media and academia to analyses our work. The significance DANDANO seeks to have is in shaping the narrative, ensuring that the true value of African film and music is revealed, especially as those two fields begin to gain more influence outside the continent.
What has been the response to the platform?
The response to the platform has been very encouraging even though it has [only] been operational for just over a year. I’m surprised by the level of interest it generates on and outside the internet from people all over the world. So far we have had artists, filmmakers, publicists and labels doing interesting work reaching out to us, as well as the thousands across our social media platforms who connect with us. We were also very fortunate to speak to Brenda Sisane of Kaya FM in South Africa on what it is that we do. The response is also a reflection of the good work that we do. For example, on interview we did on FESPACO [Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou] and why it is losing relevance on the African film festival circuit gained a lot of traction. Hopefully this generates conversations that contributes to shaping how film festivals on the continent are organized so we all benefit from them, and not just the film producer and director who get to attend.
Who is part of the DANDANO team? Are your contributors all people from the continent?
The DANDANO team is quite small at the moment. I am still responsible for a majority of the content published on the website. However, I do work with three other contributor based on the continent and in Canada and Europe who routinely assist with curating and other administrative and behind the scenes tasks. We do plan to expand the team to represent various interests in the coming year, so we can have some variety in our content.
What is the vision you have for the platform?
The dream is to see DANDANO become a completely independent cultural institution with roots all over Africa so we can pay attention to almost everything that is happening. At the moment, due to budgetary and personnel restrictions, we are not able to expand beyond our niche audience. We’re currently in a transitional phase, seeking assistance to help setup a music and film archive and gallery in Accra. As a small organization, we still have a lot learning and work to do. However, it is an exciting challenge and we look forward to being able to provide critical content that impacts the artists and audiences.
Is there anything you have in the pipeline that you would like to share with our readers?
2017 has been an amazing year of growth for DANDANO. One of the many things that we learnt was how inaccessible information on film and music festivals is. We’re currently working on a series to be updated every quarter that will share information on film grants for African filmmakers seeking funding for their projects. This we hope will help increase the quality of original storytelling on Africa by Africans. We’re also looking to collaborate with film festivals and provide concise guides on films and sessions to see at festivals.
Anything else you would like to mention about yourself or the platform?
It has been an incredible journey for me personally, having to combine running DANDANO with my school work. I’m still encouraged by the potential it has to serve the interest of African artists and audiences. Hopefully, I will be able to build on the traction it is gaining and expand beyond the current niche audience with content that can make an impact, as well as workshop sessions that will benefit emerging artists. We’re still a very tiny organization, but that does not stop us from having a powerful voice. And if at least one person hears that voice and is challenged by it, then we have succeeded.
The brand Born Out Of Boredom is a relatively new baby in the South African fashion scene, having only started early last year. Thinking back to the first set of tees and the lookbook he put together, BOOB founder Shakes describes it as embodying who the brand imagines as its fans – the “young, careless and laidback.”
Shakes hopes to take the brand to all parts of the world. “Boredom is a universal language,” Shakes states, “I just happened to think of it as a brand name for absolutely anything that I wanna do.”
The BOOB AW17 collection was inspired by Childish Gambino’s latest studio album Awaken, My Love! and the Quentin Tarantino crime thriller, Jackie Brown. Taking a different direction with the presentation of the lookbook, BOOB has created a video which will be screened at Hectic on Hope (Evol) on the 24th of June. There is no official name for the collection, but Shakes would have called it “come vibe with me”. This invitation comes across clearly in the images put together in their lookbook, with models photographed hanging out, acting young and carefree. This mirrors the clothes in the collection – comfortable but cool.
In addition to the video lookbook, BOOB has created a zine which attendees will also be able to check out on Saturday. “I really dig print,” Shakes explains, “It just has a way of making things seem more intimate and I reckon print comes with some form of sentimental value.”
Shakes left me with the words, “It’s my party. Come do what you want.” So the 24th is sure to be a good time.
To keep up with BOOB check them out on Tumblr and Instagram.
Tight-fitting leather pants and jackets, accessorized with headlights, futuristic visors and car logos. This is the work of young designer Mowalola Ogunlesi who has grabbed the attention of fashion critics globally with the collection she put together for her grad show at Central Saint Martins.
Being surrounded by the fashion world from a young age, with both of her parents being designers in Nigeria, Mowalola has always found the transformations that fabrics can go through enchanting. “I would go watch [my parents] work, and even try to create things myself as a child,” Mowalola expressed while reflecting back on how she knew fashion was what she wanted to invest in creatively.
“I am playing on the relationship between African standards of male sexuality, bold energy and explosive prints,” Mowalola expressed when asked about her designs. Embracing Pan-Africanism, and its emphasis on cultural awareness and pride, her designs covert fabrics into a celebration of Nigerian heritage, a stylistic approach which is central to how she is building the identity for her label, Mowalola.
Nigerian psychedelic rock from the ’70s and ’80s, the main source of inspiration for her grad show collection, quite fittingly, was also influenced by the Nigerian social landscape. This comes across in the songs by some of Mowalola’s heroes, Fela Kuti, Steve Monite, The Funkeez and Ofege. Explaining that she is “carving out [her] own futuristic signature” while paying homage to these artists and rock movement they pioneered, the collection is a direct translation of the wild guitar riffs and sweaty club scenes that she admires. “The collection is all about the celebration of the black African male – his culture, his sexuality and his desires,” Mowalola explains.
In continuing with the powerful sonic energies that inspired the collection, the images for the lookbook created in collaboration with stylist Ib Kamara and photographer Ruth Ossai comes across as if vicariously taken in the ’80s, with the spirit of Fela Kuti from the past and future providing artistic direction.
Mowalola will be taking her talents from the runway to a music video that she will be working on in Nigeria in the Summer.
To keep up with her work check her out on Instagram.
Describing herself as “culturally hybrid” and an “accidental nomad”, Mauritian born Nirma Madhoo moved to South Africa in 1998. She was based between the UK and South Africa for 2 years, studying fashion photography and fashion filmmaking. Now based in Durban, her work continues to think about how fashion environments are shaped by digital tools.
Her latest fashion film ‘Labtayt Sulci’ showed at this year’s Berlin Fashion Film Festival, and combines a natural landscape with the digital, creating a dreamy, “otherworldly” visual and sonic experience. The futuristic and the surrealist amalgamate. The graceful body movements of the models in her film are transformed into glitchy movements, allowing models to take on an alien or robotic characteristic. However, Nirma manages to maintain a softness and humanness in these characters. With her work being informed by posthumanist and futurist thinking and aesthetics, I interviewed Nirma about her exploration of digital aesthetics.
On your website you stated that you originally studied fashion design, and worked as a design educator and digital fashion media producer. Could you let us know more about your background in fashion and the digital?
I am trained as a fashion designer at Durban University of Technology (DUT) and did the young designer ‘thing’ for a while before starting to lecture fashion theory in 2007. Then in 2013, I went off on a sabbatical to train as a fashion photographer and fashion filmmaker at the London College of Fashion (LCF). My interest in the digital stems from my upbringing – my father who was a science teacher got the family one of the first personal computers to be commercialized, the ZX Spectrum and I grew up surrounded by cameras and gadgets. I think these were incredibly formative in who I became although my passion for the digital crystallized only when I undertook my second Masters at LCF – an institution spearheading research in digital fashion.
How did you get into making fashion films?
My first Masters at DUT researched aspects of construction of the fashion image so the interest was always there. The definitive trigger was watching the fashion films broadcast via digital platforms such as SHOWstudio in the early 2010s. I realized there was something new and exciting that was happening in the fashion world and I wanted to be part of it.
Could you please provide some context on the fashion film world you are a part of?
The fashion film world is open and accessible to anyone with a cellphone and internet connection. Submission to fashion film festivals are equally accessible to everyone from anywhere in the world. In my case, I have found that the LCF network is especially supportive of its alumni and I am slowly developing a network in South Africa where there are small circuits of progressive thinking. I must say that Johannesburg is at the forefront of this especially in terms of digitality.
Looking at your fashion films ‘Future Body‘ and ‘Labtayt Sulci’, they have a similar look in terms of the colours used and the kind of flow created through your direction and music. Do you have a particular style you try to stick to aesthetically?
I am glad that this is noticeable. I am trying to explore a particular sensibility and aesthetic that will hopefully become something of a signature across my portfolio. Having trained in fashion, I understand it very well and for the productions that I am now conceptualizing and directing, I have a very definite idea of how they should look and feel. For my personal projects I try embed a futuristic feel as well as create fashion identities which are alternative but at the same time relatable in a wider context.
Image from Future Body
On your website you state that ‘Future Body’ was about exploring digital aesthetics with your fashion films. Could you please expand on this? Is your current work a continuation of this?
My personal projects all explore digital aesthetics. Our times are defined by the wider macro technological changes. Very much like how the Age of the Machine in the 1920/30s engendered a whole new aesthetic and design language that defined the fashion of those eras. The tools that the digital provides for both producing and viewing media undoubtedly affect how we both construe and project ourselves. My work interrogates how we conceptualize fashion and fashion identities in environments shaped by these tools. There are significant ontological and epistemological questions that have emerged with innovations in digital imaging and ultimately the concept of aesthetics – these I hope to investigate via further studies andmy current personal projects which are also practice-based research.
On your website you also state that you work “explores discourses of the future and digital aesthetic in fashion new media” – could you please expand on this?
Fashion media is not about representation anymore. It has become about interactivity and embodiment with technologies such as Virtual Reality, Augmented reality and Mixed Reality. We understand that historically fashion has not been just about the clothes on our bodies, it was and still is about ways of beings and serves to takes us to different places and different times. With these new media tools, these capabilities are surely augmented, extended..In what ways? My work speculates on that.
Your latest fashion film ‘Labtayt Sulci’ showed at the Berlin Fashion Film Festival 2017. Could you please reflect on the experience. Was the first time you were part of a fashion film festival?
It was exciting to have Labtayt Sulci show at a public screening at BFFF this month. I have previously shown at London Short Film Festival and Aesthetica Short Film Festival (UK);but also Melbourne Fashion Festival along with the work of artists such as Bart Hess and Hussein Chalayan whose work I look to for inspiration.
Labtayt Sulci has a dreamy, surrealist and slightly futuristic look and feel. Could you please expand on the kind of direction you wanted for the film?
Labtayt Sulci is inspired by NASA’s explorations of Saturn’s moons by the Cassini expedition. Digital renders of Enceladus by NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute are the most evocative ice-blue textured surface with accounts of this being an icy crust over a warm ocean that may have hold extra-terrestrial life. These images of Enceladus (one of which opens Labtayt Sulci) are digitally rendered, not entirely realistic, but really captured my imagination. I remember then also seeing Mann’s World,which was shot in Iceland in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, and making the visual link between Enceladus and this. Labtayt Sulci was therefore partially filmed in Southern Iceland’s glaciers. I wanted the landscapes to be natural (as opposed to the synthetic world in Future Body) and to tap in the natural sublime while still looking digital. Keywords for art direction included ‘otherworldly’, ‘atmospheric’, ‘exobiological’, ‘ice moon’.
Image from Labtayt Sulci
It’s incredible how you are able to transform the graceful body movements of the model into these glitchy movements while still maintaining a softness. Could you expand on how you achieved this?
A combination of video and sound editing possibly provides the alchemy to translate movement such as this in the fashion films. Casting and directing of actual fashion models for live action filming ensures that is there is inherently grace. Strategic post-production manipulation / VFX help achieve cyborg/alien sensibilities that challenge traditional ideals of beauty. The identities are open to interpretation – they retain anthropomorphic qualities for most and are therefore relatable and accessible in the context of popular fashion but then also encode sub-text which provide alternatives to stereotypical womens’ identities in fashion media.
The music elevates the mood you create in these films. Could you please expand what informs your sonic choices for these films, particularly the film you showed in Berlin?
The sonic landscape sometimes informs the way in which the fashion film is actually cut. In my case I select the audio in preliminary stages and use it as a guide but then also simultaneously edit it to fit the non-narrative structure the productions take. ‘Labtayt Sulci’ in particular utilizes 4 electronic soundtracks, which immerse the audience in an ambient surreal environment on an elemental journey from ice, atmosphere and mist to aquatic and subterranean on a hypothetical Enceladus.
Image from Labtayt Sulci
Your work appears to be informed by posthumanist and futurist thinking and aesthetics. Am I correct in saying this? What particularly about these frameworks do you find interesting and how do you think your films help you to explore these?
Yes that is correct. As a consumer of fashion images, I became tired of normative sexualized or decorative roles that women have in mainstream fashion editorials. I could not relate to these on a personal level. As an image-maker I therefore went on to use my areas of experience in teaching fashion / contextual studies to underpin my fashion media work with theory. I have a subjective interest in science fiction as genre; fashion identities that are constructed in my projects therefore hinge on notions of a cyborgian or exobiological other. Hybrid identities – human/machine discourse projected onto the ‘other’ or on the female body is transgressive. Perhaps not overtly, but it certainly goes against the entrenched norms stemming from a ubiquitous but invisible patriarchic system. We read that in theorist Donna Haraway’s work, and experience it in daily life where ‘tech’ and ‘space’ are gendered as masculine. I suppose that what I find interesting about these frameworks is that their rejection of hegemonic structures of power via fiction, speculation and futurism literally provides uncharted territory to create compelling and aspirational narratives.
What are you working on at the moment?
An exciting transmedia project that looks at (pan-)African digital identity and futurism.
Check out Nirma’s latest fashion film ‘Labtayt Sulci’ below
Credits for Labtayt Sulci (2016)
Photography and Direction: Nirma Madhoo
VFX: Alastair McColl
Model: Maxine at Anti-Agency | Akhona Sibisi at Ice Durban
Styling: Hangna Koh
Fashion: Yun-Pai Liu + Siwon Lee + Sasha Louise + Lien Lieu
Costume: Shari Akal Fowles | Shoes: Iris van Herpen x United Nude
HMUA: Holly Jordan + Kat Krupa-Ringuet + Wadene Ngubane
DP + Camera: Kit McKenzie + Nick Morris + Jimmy Reynolds
Additional Camera: Hung-Chun Wang + Shayne Chipps
Production assistant: Khristopher Morgan
Video Editing: Nirma Madhoo
Image Credit (Enceladus): NASA | JPL | Space Science Institute 2008
Special thanks to:
London College of Fashion, Global Outlook Award 2015
White Light Ltd London | Arcanum Glacier Tours Iceland | Arcanum Guesthouse Iceland
Credits for Future Body (2015)
Photography and Direction: Nirma Madhoo
Featuring Alice Hurel from First Model Management, London
CGI | 3D modeling | animation: Jenne van der Meer | Devon Fay | Joy Fay
Costume Design: Adriana Restrepo | Leanne Broadway
Fashion: Dioralop
Shoes: Iris van Herpen for United Nude
Stylist: Hangna Koh
Make-up Artist: Kat Krupa Ringuet | Josie Chan
DP: Nick Morris | Nicholas Stylianou
Camera Operators: Nick Morris | Nicholas Stylianou | Hung-Chun Wang
Grip | Gaffer: Hung-Chun Wang
Production Assistant: Yang Ruijia
Audio Technician: Andrew Sutherland
VFX | Post-Production: Alastair McColl | Nirma Madhoo
“Growing up on the Cape Flats I often found myself living amongst the residue… Whether it was commercial, industrial or social detritus, its presence was formative. ”
Giving new life to discarded material and combining this with the painting of human figures and familiar packaging, visual artist Vivien Kohler reflects on socio-economic issues. With faith, hope and overcoming difficulties as the foundational inspiration for his work, he attempts to restructure the residue he witnessed growing up through his works.
Embruon, 2016
The human condition is the larger theme at the centre of his artistic practice. Previously exploring our ability to dream, the perspective from which he depicts his figures directly brought across his fascination with what happens when we close our eyes or imagine a life beyond our current circumstances. The process of photographing models for these dreamlike paintings “allowed the process to prescribe the image.”. The power of his paintings comes in their ability to draw you in, taking you on a dreamlike journey with the figures he paints.
His more recent work stems from the idea of Pareidolia, referring to the ability to see a specific image within a vague pattern. Kohler transfers this concept to we try to make sense of the random patterns and events that occur in our everyday lives. “It is a lucid dream state if you will. Imagining possibilities. Our entire world is constructed this way. From the microscopic to the macro universe, sense has been made out of darkness.”
Those who dream, 2014
The spectrum from deficiency to authenticity is discovered along the journey of being. Aspects of the persona gleaned from the volume of time. Each page an individual. Each letter an idiosyncrasy. Characters discovered along the opera of life, each playing a role of a lifetime. – Vivien Kohler
The title of his solo show Clay Opera references the idea of life as a stage and people as actors made of clay, playing their part in relation to one another. Each one of us plays a specific part which fits into a larger story. Mimicking this, each artwork in the exhibition has its own story which is connected to the overall narrative of the exhibition. “The exhibition space then becomes the stage upon which my characters are free to tell their stories as the viewer experiences the opera.”.
His exhibition on until the 24th of June at the Sulger-Buel Lovell Gallery in London.
Now 33 years old, visual artist Haythem Zakaria grew up in the north east of Tunis in a town called La Marsa. “It is a very beautiful town with a privileged cultural environment compared to the country but also other Tunisian towns.”. When he was 15 he already had an interest in some kind of creative outlet, which saw him playing guitar in a rock band. Later he began studies in audio-visual film making. I interviewed Haythem about his multifaceted art practice and why he refers to himself as a “Plastic artist”.
Tell our readers about how you figured out that you wanted to be an artist, specifically a digital artist?
Actually, I wasn’t particularly aiming to become a digital artist at first. I was very interested in filmmaking and cinema but I was quickly disenchanted with the reality and slowness of the cinematographic economic model especially by its relation with the creative and artistic aspect. Thus, I started looking into other ways of more autonomous creations. I was also driven by a strong desire to work using pictures and more experimental writings, more spiritual maybe. Digital tools allowed me to build my artistic universe.
Tell our readers about how your move from Tunisia to France has influenced your approach to your work, if at all?
When I decided to follow the digital path, I started feeling more and isolated. I spent a lot of time on internet forums specialized in the creation tools I’ve been using at that time. My frustration also started to increase proportionately. In my local environment, I did not have the possibility to exchange with colleagues or at least these exchanges were rather rare.
My fields of interests gave the status of an outsider unwillingly. This is why I made it so that my end-of –studies internship I was supposed to have during my academic training would take place in France, specifically Paris. It was the French artist YroYto who opened the doors of his structure “Les Pixels Transversaux”. It was located in a place called “La Générale en Manufacture” which no longer exists, and which served as artists’ workshops, residency places and headquarters for different associations.
I arrived there at 25 years old and it was my first experience outside my homeland. This place presented me with the opportunity to meet other artists from different nationalities, to exchange with them and to learn. I would say that for me Paris, through its dynamism and international outreach, is an open window on the world which keeps on inspiring me.
All this synergy and my multiple experiences in France allowed me to better structure my intellectual and technical skills, thus in a certain measure to professionalize my work.
How do you like to describe your work?
This is a recurrent a question but hard to answer to because both our work and our personality are in a constant evolution and redefinition. I would like to start by saying that I do not consider myself as a digital artist. I prefer to define myself as a “Plastic artist” even though the terminology does not really exist in English. Generally, we’d rather talk about visual artist despite the fact that these terms are totally opposites. A “Plastic artist” is a multidisciplinary artist who will “reshape” different tangible or intangible materials. Therefore, my work takes multiple forms – performance, installation, video, photography, drawings, sculpture, intervention, etc. I try to systematically interlock different layers of reading levels. The one is esoteric and the other is exoteric. Some of these layers will unveil only to those who will make a genuine effort to access the work. From this perspective I would rather talk about participant rather than spectator. Another important dimension of my work is the necessity and obsession of equilibrium and complementary connections between the aesthetic experience and the conceptual dimension of the work.
How has your work evolved over time? How do you describe your creative process?
In a way, I’ve nurtured and developed a severe critic towards my usage of digital tools. Which lead me to a formal rupture point since 2013 in the tools I’ve been using and the way I used them.
While keeping and developing a particular thinking and reflection of the digital, I’ve started to fear being conditioned by the very tools I’ve been using in my creation. Computer programming, rapid prototyping board, sensors, etc partly determines the work, and I refused this. This is how I started to develop lowtech/no tech works. There was a true will to free my artistic practice and my conceptual approach.
As far as my creative process is concerned, it revolves around my hyper instinctive approach. I often have a vision in the form of a flash of what I must do and then there is an entire process to try to get closer to the initial vision. I really feel the impression of sensing a reminiscence which I tempt to materialize into a work of art. It is only at a later phase that I rethink what I’ve accomplished and apprehend it from an intellectual perspective.
Opus ll
What are the themes you like to work through?
I like to intersect and question systems which at first sight seems completely different but converges and interconnect in an “infra-thin” way.
In a way, I am looking for a recurrent matrix primary schema. This schema would be at the origins of all these visible reminiscences as much in the techne and the logos.
Tell our readers more about Sufi spirituality, which has a strong presence in your work.
Sufism is a mystical path in Islam. This path can be schematized as trip from the circumference of a circle towards its centre. It’s the visual and diagrammatic aspect present in the writings of Ibn Arabi, one of the most important thinkers of this mystic as well as the universal dimension of its precepts which immediately seduced.
Do you feel exploring Sufi spirituality through digital art techniques and mediums offers a new avenue for exploring spirituality? Or exploring what the digital offers? Or both?
Undoubtedly both. Digital with its various tools explore and nourish mystical ways and inversely. However, I would like to stress a point which I find very important. I don’t think that digital thinking is something recent. For example, the notion of algorithm can be traced back to antiquity. Myth and antique greek theatre played the same role as the actual innovative medias. I can keep on naming other examples. This relationship between digital and spiritual (in a larger and none particularly specific to Sufism manner) gets complicated, I would say, when we examine the question in depth. From different aspect we find computational process in a lot of mystic, thus, once again very digital. A microchip or an electronic circuit resembles talismans in its functional aspect. Everything is fundamentally linked. The comprehensiveness of the relationship becomes obvious from the moment we decide to analyze it further.
Opus l
There is often a conflation of the terms ‘Black’, ‘African’ and ‘Afro’. How do you view these identifying terms, specifically in relation to art? What are some of the recent conversations around these terms? How do you like to describe your own work when thinking about these terms?
At first, these three terms reminds me of the Black Arts Movement of the sixties in the United States. It also makes me think of the metaphor by sociologist W.E.B Du Bois: “the problem of the 20th century is a problem of the colour line” referring to racial segregation which is still ongoing since then.
There is an actual interest and popularity from the occident for contemporary African Art. For instance in France, we can list an important number of fares and exhibitions which took place in the last recent years. Rare are the events and the programs that do not form amalgams and do not confuse everything.
Unfortunately, there is a persistent cliché which consists in thinking that the generic term (which is completely senseless) African Contemporary Art could signify something, but worse that it contributes to sustain in the audience’s mind that there is only one African Artistic Scene.
Of course at this level, the terms “Black”, “African” and “Afro” support the clichés of exotic expectations of this very audience and how it conceives the African artist.
Recently, I visited the exhibition Afrique Capitales of curator Simon Njami and I found it very rich and diverse, which is the image of and in accordance with the multiple artistic creations coming from the African continent. Simon Njami is cautious when it comes to this question and doesn’t hesitate to be critical towards these actual tendencies and these intellectual short cuts regarding the African scene and the way it is perceived by the European continent, particularly France.
Il y’a un rapport important et sincère dans ma création artistique au continent Africain qui ne se dévoile pas forcément aisément. Il faut pour cela voir l’ensemble de mes différents travaux et chercher le liant.
I have a strong desire to unveil the universal and to trace back to the sources, to the Khôra* but always through the means of a cultural singularity.
As a Tunisian, I claim to be part of a multi-cultural background and even more being an African. Many times, I have been told that my work wasn’t very “Tunisian”, or not very “African”. In our present times, we tend to normalize and rationalize things, artists and their work. Nuances and variations are not really accepted because they are complicated to classify, thus to apprehend.
To some extent, it has affected me in a negative way in the art field.
Even if I claim an intellectual coherence in my methodology as an artist, I don’t want to carry labels nor stay in a comfort zone.
Digital art from various African artists has been associated with Afrocentrism. What is your opinion on this? What are some of the other terms that you feel offer an understanding of art from the continent outside of this framework?
Of course, there are multiple aspects to the question of Afrocentrism. The romantic dimension and the deconstructivist prism of this ideology as well as the fantasy repossession or not by some artists is very interesting. Clearly, it is a poetical stand and a form of artistic activism.
As it is the case for every serious artistic approach assuming a political or even hyper political posture, it is normal to see debate or dialogue around the works of these artists.The real question is to know in what conditions this debate will take place and in what comprehensive or incomprehensive proportions it will occur.
We have to question the role of the artist within our actual society. His speech and the vision that he is carrying is not always soft or in accordance with the majority. He must not be afraid of being on the margins. The notion that immediately comes to my mind is “Afrotopia” of the author Felwine Sarr.
There has been a lot of discussion around the difficulties in displaying and selling digital art within traditional gallery spaces. What are some of the conversations you are involved in or have experienced in relation to these difficulties? What are some of the attempts to re-think traditional art display and selling that you think could be built on for solutions?
Exhibiting and selling digital art work is a very prominent question. The issue of continuity is strongly bound to it. Paradoxically I think the major problem is not technical but rather intellectual. If the artist has the opportunity to collaborate with an open-minded gallerist, it is always possible to find an economic model that is coherent with his work despite technical and logistical complexity. For this, the artist must make some concession while staying in ethical and intellectual sincerity.
As far as I am concerned and in my personal practice, I favour the project to everything else, even to the detriment of financial aspect. Without falling into victimization but I think that many artists go through a long period of financial precariousness subjacent to their choices for qualitative and artistic intransigence.
The temporality of the art market and its extreme codification makes the artists path very hard and complex. There are of course exceptions and some quick ascent but it is not my case nor my rhythm. As I previously mentioned, I use different mediums depending on the project, thus, some of my works are more classic (drawings, photos, video, etc.). After a while, I understood that a few gallerists really take risks with a young artist but wait until he gets labelled.
Being in France, I notice important mutations, notably, in the role of art gallery and their perimeter. The entire landscape is being perturbed by the fairs, selling houses but also more and more by the website specialized in selling work of art online.
The tendency is towards privatization, thus foundations are the new tenors of the market. My point is that there will be fewer places to classical galleries which will not adapt and reinvent themselves, anyway.
Tell our readers about your solo show “Ruthmos”.
“Ruthmos” is my first solo show exhibited at the Tunisian art gallery Aicha Gorgi. The project is based on famous article by linguist Emile Benveniste on the semantic origins of the word rhythm. The hypothesis of Arafat Sadallah who is a curator and philosopher is founded on the rapprochement between the greek root Ruthmos and the arab word r.s.m which means “drawing”.
An important part of the solo show is made of drawings named “dessins au métronome”. Thus, I developed 3 work protocols based on metronome [a device used by musicians that produces a sound at particular intervals] and the goal was to experience the rhythm differently. The drawings were taking form in a generative and performative way and the whole created an aesthetic experience. On other drawings I used a stamp pad to get close to the invocation mystical mechanism. The arab word that was stamped was “howa” which means God in the Sufi glossary.
By constantly repeating it I ended up abstracting the verb which was transforming and transmuted.
Dessin au métronome, protocole III, #1, 2016
In the about page on your website you mention the project Alif. Is this project of particular importance to you? Could you tell our readers about the project?
The Alif project is my first series of drawing. I would like to emphasize the fact that I do not consider myself as a drawing artist and I think I wasn’t really interested in learning how to draw in an academic way. It is more an issue of interfacing Man/Tools/Surface drawing which interested me in the first hand.
The Alif series served as a base to the Poétique de l’éther series. I started experimenting the transcoding system of Arabic letters in the perspective of make them universal and normalize them. Abstract in appearance, these drawings are in fact some sort of anti-calligraphy that deals with an esoteric science which the hidden science of Arab letters.
It is very Kabalistic science in its basis which is part of digital thinking. The whole is, once again, performative because it is executed with a tubular ink stiff pen and any error would have been fatal. It would have meant starting the whole ten hour process from the beginning.
From ‘Alif’ series
Self Portrait #1 is also particularly interesting. Tell our readers about the decision to make a portrait that is a moving diagram.
S.P #1 is a self-portrait and is a bit special. I realized it when I was 29 and the video lasts 29 minutes (It is absolutely no coincidence…). I was interested in a particular scale relation, that of the infra-thin. The stroboscopic diagram we perceive and my fantasy vision of a synaptic zone with electric exchanges between two neurons. I have the hope to reproduce a self-portrait with more precise neurological instruments in collaboration with specialists.
What are you working on at the moment?
Since the beginning of this year I have been working on a new two series work. The project is named “Interstices” and the two series are named “Opus I” and “Opus II”. Both are made of a video piece and a series of photos digitally enhanced. “Interstices refers to the spatial interval but also temporal and rhythmic interval in the between”.
The project comes in direct continuity with the series “Dessins au metronome” conducted throughout 2016 but also follows the researches undertaken on the photographic series “Anamnesis”. Departing from landscape shootings underlying geometries unveil periodically. The landscape is holistically questioned through the prism of audiovisual apparatus in order to unveil a hidden and metric order. I have been able to tackle the Tunisian desert and the north eastern seaside. “Opus III” will focus on mountain landscape. I aspire to realize an experimental film (certainly, somewhere between metaphysic and science fiction) to conclude or begin this Opus cycle.
The short film MIXED SPACE by Zara Julius looks into the experiences of middle class, mixed race individuals, teasing out the questions they have received from others and the ones they hold within themselves. The film draws on Zara’s own experience as a mixed race individual. South Africa has a complex and violent history around race, with the four Apartheid racial categories still firmly embedded within people’s interpretative frameworks used when interacting with other people. In the film we see participants reflect on the moments they first had to look at themselves through the societal lens, and the encounters they had which forced them to do so at a young age. Interviewees speak candidly about the violent questions and inferences they have tried to process throughout their lives, as well as share their points of reference for their racial identities in the past, the reasons why they were able to identify with them then, and perhaps not now. We see raw discussions around other people transposing their discomfort, confusion or curiosity on to their bodies through stares and claims about what they look like. This film delves deeply into issues around racial categorization and the “blind spots” in South Africa’s racial conversations. The film is also a space for self-identification.
Having directed, filmed and edited the film herself, in our interview Zara explained that her background in Social Anthropology has formed an important foundation for her methodologically and has allowed her to see the value in investing in a long term project.
While the short film MIXED SPACE has only recently come to life, the foundations for it began a few years ago with a series of focus groups in her apartment. At the time Zara did not anticipate that these would manifest into a film. In these discussions participants would share their experiences of what it is like to grow up being mixed race or racially ambiguous. Zara recorded these focus groups. In between the chats, tears and laughter, and being mixed race herself, Zara felt as though there was something powerful in the way that people were opening up about how they grew up, the questions they have had to face, as well as the unpacking of racial categorization. This feeling was coupled with a desire to do something visual.
She started working on a photo series which involved asking participants where they would like to be photographed, giving them the ability to control how they are represented and the objects they would like to appear in the frame. While working on this photo series she started thinking about the idea for a film, and shot a pilot of the film with one of the participants in the project. Interest around the film has snowballed and has become a lot larger than Zara anticipated, and she is pleasantly surprised.
The experiences that the participants in the film share speak to understanding and unpacking racial injustice. They share the pain, violence and exhaustion that comes from macro level racial categorization as well as micro gestures that influence the way in which mixed race people have to try and navigate space and interactions with other people.
Directing, filming and editing the film herself allowed the moments with the participants to feel conversational, and well as a form of her coming to terms with the questions and experiences that she has had throughout her life.
Zara finds it important for her work to be interdisciplinary, and so the first screening of MIXED SPACE at the AVA Gallery in Cape Town was presented to audiences as an art installation. In discussion about this choice, Zara expressed that she “really wants to be able to make work that makes sense in a gallery space, but also in an academic space, as well as a populous space or like a non-hierarchical space. [It should be] applicable to all those areas”.
The second screening took place Goldsmiths College in London. Keleketla! Library in Johannesburg will also host a screening of MIXED SPACE on the 6th of July.
Credits:
Zara Julius – director, producer, cinematographer and editor
Daniel Gray – music
The film features:
Kyla Phil – film maker and performer
Brian Kamanzi – writer, decolonial thinker, engineer, educationist
The category digital art includes a wide variety of artistic practices. Digital artist and curator Jepchumba describes this form of art as encompassing artwork whose production and presentation uses digital technology as an essential part of the creative process.
Post African Futures, referring to an exhibition at the Goodman Gallery in 2015, and used in the title of a special issue of Technoetic Arts, is a term that has gained significance when discussing the work of digital art from Africa. Following on from Tegan Bristow’s research focusing on South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria, the term is aimed at highlighting the aesthetic mechanisms and critical engagements that stem from what she calls “cultures of technology” in Africa (2014: 169). The ‘post’ in Post African Futures is an invite to see past the immediate links that American and European critics ascribed to African aesthetic practices with technology, particularly those who simply assume that this is a version of African American Afrofuturism (Bristow 2014). Some African artists have been influenced by the mechanisms of Afrofuturism, however, Bristow points out the need to investigate how these mechanisms are being re-explored and what the intention is of African artists in choosing to engage with aesthetics similar to those of Afrofuturism, while at the same time stating that Afrofuturism does not necessarily define what it is they are doing with their work (Bristow 2013). Bristow has emphasized the need to explore uses of technology as an “embedded cultural phenomenon that has very particular aesthetic implications” (2014: 168).
In thinking about this, I had an interview with Jepchumba about her work, her relationship with the digital and the platform that she founded, African Digital Art.
Jepchumba, ‘My heart is in my Head’, 2016
Tell our readers about your own digital art practice – how has your own work evolved, what are the kinds of themes you enjoy working on, where has most of the inspiration for your own work come from?
I primarily have grown up in between spaces, and as a result I have always sought a home. The digital world has always felt like a home to me. For a long time the space between me and a monitor felt comfortable both creatively and personally. Through African Digital Art I came to realize that not only did the digital space allow me to explore such a range of artistry, it has led me to realize that I am a collector.
At heart I am a curator, a role that I avoided for a long time. I see this role spill into my own personal creative practice. Technology allows you to participate within multi mediums simultaneously. You can easily be a digital archivist/visual/audio/interactive story teller all at once.
What are you working on at the moment?
I am working on the future.
I feel as though we are living in a critical time before Africa looks and thinks of itself completely differently. But it is one of those things you wonder whether it is a critical time or if everyone has always felt this way. Well statistically we have an extremely young continent compared to everywhere else in the world. So in many ways I am interested in having conversations with that generation.
I hope to create work that would give them some reference of the world and questions we had at this time and bring some awareness to some of the conflicts that we had with ourselves.
Where did the idea for African Digital Art come from? How do you like to describe the platform? How has the platform evolved from its inception?
I began African Digital Art because I was told that digital art in Africa did not exist. This was about 8 or 9 years ago, so that is eons in online history.
I found the lack of awareness people had online about what we were capable of to be outstanding. At a time where we came to understand the importance of content I wanted to leave a sort of digital imprint of what we were all working on online. I guess I was afraid that we would start to believe that there was no digital art in Africa because we wouldn’t be represented online. The site’s function was purely archival. African Digital Art was not meant to be a perfect representation of contemporary African art but rather designed to inspired artists and creatives to engage in the world of digital art.
Jepchumba, ‘Boundaries’, 2016
How do you see your African Digital Art in terms of being a platform that allows various artists from the continent being able to share and archive their work on their own terms? Do you see this as offering a form of digital decolonising?
Wow. I have never thought of African Digital Art as a form of digital decolonizing. But I did make a conscious effort that I wanted to keep things simple. Let the work speak for itself and always highlight or showcase the artist by giving them the opportunities to speak for themselves. So the site is mainly visual, I rarely write because I find myself afraid to speak for an artist or label them or misrepresent them. I have experienced this misrepresentation as an African artist myself. So I hope at the very least the audience of African Digital Art will be curious enough to directly reach out to artists themselves.
Africa is often thought of as ‘one big country’. Tell our readers about the importance of recognizing and giving light to the different digital practices or cultures that have been founded and evolved in different cities on the continent.
I used to spend so much time arguing that Africa was not a country. I quickly realized that these arguments were mostly done outside of Africa. So I stopped. I am not particularly interested in having that conversation because I do not think it is necessary. Google is ‘free’ there is too much evidence out there for you to see Africa’s diversity and we are barely scratching the surface.
What I am truly interested in is to give artists and creators a reference for them to engage with. My work through African Digital Art is to provide resources, tools, ideas, connections, opportunities to artists who would be interested in the possibilities of creative technology. So for me it is essential to highlight and recognize the diversity of digital practices and African digital culture in order for us to prepare a new generation that will be at the global center stage in the advancement of technology, culture and ideology.
With most people on the continent being cellphone users, how do you think this has an effect on the way in which digital art is consumed on an everyday basis vs in the traditional gallery space?
Enough already with Africa’s cellphone usage! We have a tendency to fetishize technological objects. But I would advice you to think a different way. Yes it is true, there was a cellphone revolution in Africa that propelled us to the internet. But can we move past this, because technology is. Today we are having conversations about algorithms that control group think, artificial intelligence, humans embedding machines into their biology, the homogenization of expressions of culture and ideology on the internet and other huge themes. This is the truly exciting space to think of digital art in Africa. The traditional art spaces in Africa have never really work because they were foreign implants. We must not limit our thinking about art and our role in it in the confines of white cubed spaces. This is why this field is so exciting there are new opportunities for us to participate in art that were never available to us. I would encourage people to start thinking and stepping waaaaaaaaay outside the box.
There is often a conflation of the terms ‘Black’, ‘African’ and ‘Afro’. How do you view these identifying terms, specifically in relation to art? What are some of the recent conversations around these terms? How do you like to describe your own work when thinking about these terms?
This is such a big question. One that I have struggled with since the minute I bought the domain africandigitalart.com. I sometimes ask myself why couldn’t I have just called the site Digital Art and then just feature African artists.
“Africa” has become one big internet logo. It is synonymous with so many things and it is also not very clearly defined. I find this hazy muddle to be sometimes effective but dangerous. When we conflate “black, African, Afro” we can see, on one hand, a true exercise of digital pan Africanism, where you see diverse cultures who identify strongly within one identity. On the other hand, the “black, African,Afro-ism “can lead you to be pulled into different agenda’s, ideologies and contexts that you did not sign up for. This is even more disastrous , when there are large scale inequities in how much content is produced and shared in certain parts of the world.
The majority of African cultural websites are not produced within Africa. As a result the online space is able to facilitate anyone to become a global African cultural director. One can easily influence what is considered to be African, and through extension what is considered to be ‘Black’ and ‘Afro’
Ugh. this is a tough question. I do not know I have a direct answer.
Digital art from various artists on the continent has been associated with Afrocentrism. This has caused a lot of debate and frustration for some artists. What is your opinion on this? What are some of the other terms that you feel offer an understanding of art from the continent outside of this framework?
I completely understand this dilemma and I am also pulled into it. African Digital Art was actually just a descriptive term, digital art from Africa. And somehow when Africa is added to the mix it is very easy to be labelled and tagged in a certain way.
A few years ago I participated in an exhibition, Post African Futures, curated by Tegan Bristow. The exhibition was an attempt on expanding the definition of African digital practices. Not only were digital artist being pulled into the Afrocentrist label they were also being labelled as Afrofuturists. Digital artists were invited to use digital technologies as a means of resisting cultural predomination.
It is important for us to develop a broader way of thinking by encouraging growth within the creative sector in Africa. We will be able to provide nuanced conversations if we have more African artists participating in the space.
Jepchumba, ‘Sleepless’, 2012
There has been a lot of discussion around the difficulties in displaying and selling digital art within traditional gallery spaces. What are some of the conversations you are involved in or have heard/read about that tease out these difficulties? What are some of the attempts to re-think traditional art display and selling that you think could be built on for solutions?
I would argue that digital art in Africa was never meant to be within traditional gallery spaces. I would invite digital practitioners to think creatively about other models of financially supporting their practice. Most of African art institutions and galleries are funded and supported by the west, most of those institutions are seeing their budgets cut. This is trickling down to African art spaces. I would direct artists to think about creating experiences rather than objects to sell.
As a digital artist and a curator I have reframed my thinking on this. I am not necessarily interested in selling digital artifacts or objects but rather I am interested in creating experiences that people will support financially. We also need to invest in spaces. Spaces that will be centered around education and radical expression.
Ultimately, as a digital artist you now have the ability to control, the work that you produce and also the financial models that will enable you to support yourself. This is an exorbitant amount of pressure but it is the times that we live in now. Worldwide, no one really has any clue to remain sustainable in the arts and creative industry. But we have no choice to figure it out through trail and error.
Are there any particular artists, movements or platforms that stand out for you at the moment?
Yes. I have been mesmerized by the evangelical christian movement in Africa. I think it is one of the movements that is largely ignored by the often secularized art industry. My obsession came because I realized that the church remains Africa’s greatest cultural influencer. Mega churches across the continent have become leading innovators in the digital arts sector. They produce large scale digital content, large scale crowdfunding, they offer digital healing and digital materials that is spread throughout Facebook and Whatsapp. They are also very well funded institutions often with entire production companies at their disposal. I find this absolutely fascinating and I hope that it is talked about more rather than just ridiculed by our own biases.
Anything else you would like to mention about your own practice and African Digital Art?
I started VJiing. It is the worst term ever. I am looking for an alternative term because I cannot come to terms with calling myself that. So please find me on twitter or instagram with a better term. Or just say hi. Also if you are digital artist yourself please make yourself known to us we would love to get to know you.
Katherine-Mary Pichulik, owner and designer of PICHULIK, enjoys going through her great-grandmother’s trousseau. It allows her to connect to her female lineages and understand the journeys that have informed the woman that she is today. One particular photograph that she found became the foundation for the direction she took for PICHULIK’s FW17 collection. It was a photograph of a woman her great-grandmother had met in the ’50s in Japan. On the back of the photograph were the word, “Mother”. This forensic investigation into the kind of woman her great-grandmother was, and this connection to Japan, inspired Katherine-Mary to look to Japanese aesthetic practices for this collection.
The culture and sense of community among Japanese Ama pearl divers was one main source of inspiration for the jewelry collection. This 2000 year old practice of women free diving in the ocean without protective gear or oxygen has an immediate connection to the PICHULIK brand. The women tie rope around their waists during their dives and rope is the main material for PICHULIK accessories. Originally a practice to forage for shellfish, over the years the practice has become one which involves diving for pearls. “What was so inspiring is the bold courage of these women to go deep under the ocean,” Katherine-Mary explained, “What I also found exciting is that these pearls also symbolically represent women.”. Katherine-Mary also explained that there is an association between pearls and the moon. The Ama collection brings an awareness to the connection between the moon, the ocean and the feminine.
Women are always the protagonists in the conceptualization of PICHULIK collections, and so the story of the divers, the pearls and the brand amalgamate perfectly. PICHULIK is about, “using jewelry and ornamentation, the oldest modalities from the Neolithic period, as a conduit to share empowering messages to women as well as to share stories cross-culturally that show female self-inquiry, bravery and alchemy of sorts.”.
In addition to their main material, the collection uses base metals such like brass and bronze. Katherine excitedly explained that these materials oxidize due to exposure to salt water or exposure to oxygen, and the PICHILIK pieces embrace the true nature of these materials. “So the pieces are not only dripped with pearls but they also age with time and take on the qualities of Wabi-Sabi”; an aesthetic practice that shows appreciation and acceptance of imperfections. Wood also features as another elemental force which can be seen in their Haiko earrings and Pagoda neckpiece.
The Japanese flower arranging practice of Ikebana is another source of inspiration for the collection, which can be seen directly in their FW17 lookbook.
Under the PICHULIK umbrella is the fashion side designed by Nadya von Stein. Having grown with the brand since graduating from fashion school, Nadya combines her Italian-style tailoring with the creative direction of the brand. For the FW17 collection they worked with fabric from Mungo, a hand-loom company based in Plettenberg Bay. Re-imagining their Mungo’s first run of patterns, Nadya designed power suit combinations that reference ’80s maximism. The rest of the garments are constructed from hand-dyed hemp in rich colours such as deep reds and maroons. The fashion and jewelry collection speak to one another in the way in which they are designed to celebrate ideas of self-love and feminine energies.
Looking at classic and non-traditional Ikebana arrangements, and referencing beautiful portraits of Ama pearl divers, the lookbook has a slightly cinematic feel, marrying ’80s opulence with Japanese minimalism. “[We wanted] you to feel as if you had gone on a journey or process of some kind,” Katherine-Mary explained. Contrasting elements were compiled together, with satin gloves and Ikebana arrangements alongside over the top embellishments. Shots by the ocean connect back to the influence of the ocean and create a dreamy, sci-fi feel.
The evolution of PICHUIK over the years has seen the team pushing towards building a community around the brand’s message. Encouraging empowering dialogues and authentic conversations with women, “supporting and celebrating ideas of self-love, self-actualization, self-inquiry, [and] self -nurturing” continue to be the foundation for PICHULIK’s creative direction.
Lookbook credits:
Stylist: Gabbi Kannemeyer
Photographer: Alix-Rose Cowie
Videographer: Maxine Thaysen
Ikebana specialist: Cynthia Fan
Model: Gwen Lu
Make up: Sandra Bensoussan
Jana Babez did a performance in the Company’s Garden with the aim of highlighting the tricks that womxn need to employ when navigating ‘public space’. The the trajectory of preparation, performance, and aftermath of the performance was documented by photographer Jonathan Kope and compiled into a photo essay. I interviewed Jana about this performance in relation to the increase in stories about womxn being abused, abducted and murdered in our country.
Tell our readers about how you like to describe your art practice? Some of your past performances appear to mirror the effects of the structural operations of patriarchal society as a way to highlight their absurdity. Would you like to elaborate on this?
I create characters, moments and parodies that mirror the beauty and terror of our lived experiences. I’m constantly trying to highlight the absurdity of the roles we are coerced into playing through exposing pre-existing power structures. My performances exist in a space between representation and parody. I create characters that on one level can be read as representative of women in society, but on another level have pushed identity production beyond what is deemed acceptable and are thus considered caricatures of themselves.
In my previous work, Miss Debutante, I created a calendar with a female character so drenched in nostalgia and hyper femininity that she can be described as a product of memory and toxic patriarchal society. My work puts female identity production and the complexities thereof front and centre. As Barbara Kruger famously illustrated for us, “Your body is a battleground”. Our bodies are the sites where wars over religion, sex and power play out.
In these times I think the role of performance artists is to confront the underbelly of our society head on. Our bodies are tools that can be wielded to enact political change. What makes the body such a powerful tool is that no one can take it away from you. They can try, but we bite back.
In the opening line in the write up for Nightfall you state that “Navigating space is never neutral”. I think this is such a powerful statement. Can you elaborate on the assumptions about space being neutral when people refer to a space as ‘public space’ and how this negates the “tricks” that womxn need to use to navigate ‘public space’?
Public spaces are often considered neutral spaces where all people can interact on a level playing field. This could not be further from the truth. Nightfall is an intervention where I aimed to challenge the neutrality of space and highlight the discord between how men and womxn experience public spaces. Company’s Garden is one of the most used public spaces in central Cape Town. It connects many different areas of the city, but as with many public spaces after nightfall it becomes more dangerous for womxn to navigate. This limits womxn’s ability to move between spaces thus restricting their ability to move freely. Public spaces enforce wider social prejudices. Nightfall at once challenges this discrimination by boldly placing a female body in a public space after dark, but also it highlights the dangers (potentially fatal) of womxn navigating public spaces.
I think it is also important that you mentioned that these tricks have to be learnt. Would you like to say something about how this is a reflection of South African society’s attitude towards womxn and the normalization of womxn constantly feeling unsafe? Perhaps you could expand on your statement that this “hyper-awareness is a form of oppression” in discussing this?
In Nightfall I want to show the fundamental difference in how men and womxn access space. Large, open spaces can quickly become claustrophobic as womxn employ certain tricks to avoid entrapment.These tricks can be a matter of survival. Womxn move through public spaces deliberately and with all their senses heightened. We swerve from side to side trying to avoid potentially harmful encounters. We tug at our skirts, pulling them down and squirm as if we want to crawl out of our own skin. Many of us use the Good Ole’ Earphone Trick to avoid having to make contact with men around us. As if these earphones could magically act as shields against their unwanted advances. Usually there is no music playing – their use is just a silent prayer to be left alone. We live in a constant state of fear, and this fear is so interwoven in daily lived experiences that it begins to feel normal.
The double-edged sword is not only are we unsafe in public places, but also are blamed for not keeping ourselves safe. We’re told our dresses are too short, that we are asking to be harassed, that we should’ve been more vigilant when all we have been is relentlessly vigilant. This hyperawareness oppresses us in that it prevents us from living freely and fearlessly. We are somehow always told we’re complicit in our exploitation. Not even the burden of hyper awareness can save us from our bodies being sacrificed to maintain and strengthen patriarchy. It seems all spaces that are not specifically marked for women (toilets, baby changing rooms) by default become male dominated spaces. Nightfall is a direct affront to this domination.
Tell our readers about the decision to translate this into a performance piece in which you use bricks as a physical representation of this oppression?
Bricks symbolise heaviness and the immovable. I wanted to focus on the psychological heaviness of being a womxn. We navigate the world aware that we are unwanted and that we will face challenges at every corner – a persistent heaviness on our psyches. The four bricks, two tied to each foot, represent the weight society places on us to survive. Every move we make is scrutinised. Our oppression is our burden to carry. I wanted to give the invisible weight we womxn carry around a physical manifestation. Once we see things we are more likely to believe them. It’s easy to ignore the invisible, but harder to ignore a female body being literally being weighed down with bricks. The performance needed to be physically challenging to adequately represent the challenges womxn face. And let me tell you trying to walk around with bricks attached to your feet is no mean feat. I couldn’t walk for 3 days after that! I fell down many times and this again is a metaphor about how women face challenges but are expected to carry on to survive. During my last fall about 20m from the intended “finish line” I cut my knee open with blood gushing down my leg. How poignantly accurate of how grueling a womxn’s journey can be.
Tell our readers about the clothing choices for this performance and their significance?
As someone who is well acquainted with certain areas of the sex work industry I wanted my clothing choices to reflect as sex worker positive. Fishnets have long been associated with sex workers and the aim here was to reclaim them as a positive symbol of powerful, resilient womxn. I’m a proud “nasty woman” (no thanks Donald Trump). Sex workers, especially WOC, often experience grave violence enacted on their bodies. As a society we need to protect and uplift sex workers. Sex workers also often wear items to mask their identity and protect their anonymity; it is a performance. The eye popping pink and leopard print bodysuit paired with the elaborate platinum blonde wig references stage performances and highlights that femininity is performed. This exaggerated performance points to the instability of gender identity. On an aesthetic level the bricks reference high heels sex workers often wear. Often in my performances (see Hollywood Cerise) I choose to be hypervisible yet incapacitated to a certain degree to call attention to how women are hypersexualised, but prevented from accessing power. Hypervisibilty is where we are constantly watched but not seen. Being seen implies validation, while being watched is an unwanted gaze. This gaze is exploitative and does not seek to empower womxn. Nightfall exposes this unwanted gaze and manipulates it so the viewer is forced to interrogate their own motivation for looking.
The name of the performance Nightfall also reflects on the increased hyper-awareness that womxn need to engage in to be out at night. Would you like to say something about the experience of the performance, particularly how you felt as the day was turning to night and knowing the kinds of anxieties that darkness can bring for womxn.
Womxn’s anxieties are often compounded. Say for example a womxn is walking through a public space, this in itself can already be considered dangerous, but add to this the element of nightfall and a group of men and suddenly her chances of being preyed on are maximised. Nightfall started in the early evening while it was still fairly light, and as the performance progressed nightfall descended. With the darkness comes increased awareness, and increased opportunities for womxn to be preyed on. It was on a night like this that Nokuphila Kumalo was brutally murdered by well known South African artist Zwelethu Mthethwa. Nightfall is a requiem to all the womxn who have been silenced.
There has been an increase in the number of stories of womxn being abducted and murdered in SA over the past few weeks. I think your work speaks to the need to address the kinds of structures that continue to be at play that allow for such tragedies. How do you situate your work within these kinds of conversations?
Female visibility in the media is always strictly controlled and we have to ask ourselves, are these kind of stories more prevalent at the moment or are they just more visible. Womxn are always stuck in this endless limbo between being invisible and hypervisible. Nightfall is a direct response to the violence womxn face daily. My work aims to open up a dialogue where those who are often silenced can finally speak and be heard. I look to the work of female performance artists like Emma Sulkowicz who after experiencing sexual assault on her campus carried her mattress on her back until the end of her semester (including to graduation). This endurance performance involved in Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight) speaks to me and relates to the burden of the bricks in Nightfall. Our bodies are both the weapon and the battlefield in this gender war.
These stories have been accompanied by ongoing #menaretrash and #notallmen debates on social media and in person. Reflecting on your performance and the premise that it is based on, what is your take on the directions that these conversations have taken? Perhaps you would like to refer to specific comments you have heard or social media engagements you have seen/been part of?
Women face micro-aggressions every day. From so-called flippant comments online, slut-shaming, victim blaming and of course my personal bête noire mansplaining. Many of the comments that I have seen from men in this online space (#menaretrash) is that women need to “learn to take a joke”, or not take themselves “too seriously”. What we need to understand is that there is a direct correlation between words and actions, and they can’t be separated. Words, so called “jokes”, directly lead to violent actions against womxn. There is no way around this. It saddens me that some men have no understanding that misogynist jokes and microagressions are the premise on which greater hate against womxn is built. So, yeah, #menaretrash.Really what I’m looking for when men engage in these conversations is accountability. Accountability for the violence against us, and holding their peers accountable for objectification. The #menaretrash conversations is an affront against rapists, murderers and misogynists, but also against those who stay silent while we suffer. Nightfall creates a space where I have full-ownership over my body and can wield it how I choose to, unlike in the daily identity performances where womxn are sidelined.
Lastly, would you like to say something about the use of ‘womxn’ and the momentum of its political power?
It’s 2017 and we all need to work together and demand more inclusivity in our media and representation. The use of the term “womxn” is just a small way we can be more inclusive of our trans sisters and assert that we are not merely extensions of “men”. These are our stories and we’ll use our language, please and thank you.
Anything else you would like to mention about yourself or your work? Any particular links you would like to share?
I don’t see this performance having a start and end date. I would like to take this performance to more public spaces, as I feel the message is powerful and is something especially men need to be confronted with. I want to use my body to advance conversations. Our work is never over until women stop being unnecessarily persecuted. Our bodies, our performances, our words, our art can be a catalyst for social change. I have to believe that to survive. I’m not giving up and neither should you.
First released in 1972, the Nike Cortez was the first Nike to offer visible technology and has become a pop culture icon. Over the years the shoe has been worn by champion sports people and has been embedded in west coast hip hop street style. The Cortez has blended well with low and high fashion trends, and connects generations through the memories associated with its long history as a pop culture icon. This year Nike celebrates 45 years of the Cortez allowing wearers to ‘Just Do It’.
Nike celebrates their classic Cortez with a new campaign. The concept for the campaign shoot draws inspiration from the ’60s and ’70s, and the territories of the Nguni peoples. Looking at how traditional and contemporary cultures collided during that period and place, the shoot also contextaulises and draws parallels with South Africa’s current fashion and cultural trends; namely identity and gender fluidity. Channeling autumn colours and moods, the Cortez is placed within a futuristic gold tinged landscape.
Electric South and the Goethe-Institut present the South African premiere of New Dimensions – Virtual Reality Africa, a selection of Virtual Reality productions from Kenya, Senegal and Ghana. These works will show within the Virtual Encounters section of the 2017 Encounters South African International Documentary Film Festival.
With more people on the continent taking an interest in creating VR productions, Electric South is funding and incubating virtual reality and interactive media in Africa. Supported by Big World Cinema, Blue Ice Docs and the Bertha Foundation for New Dimensions, Electric South and Goethe-Institut are invested in making African artists and filmmakers part of the foundations that direct the way VR technology goes in the future.
Co-founder of Electric South and curator of Virtual Encounters, Ingrid Kopp has been a curator of interactive and immersive media at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York. With this experience she has come to recognize that it is difficult for people to understand what the fuss is about when it comes to VR unless they attend a festival or exhibition. “My aim is to get people excited about what story-driven VR can do – all the different approaches and styles,” Ingrid explains. With this year’s festival taking place in Johannesburg and Cape Town, Ingrid is excited that, “more people will get a chance to see the work and I hope that it will inspire more African creators to make VR.”.
Selly Raby Kane – The Other Dakar
New Dimensions – Virtual Reality Africa offers a view of the continent’s diverse cultural landscape. Included is Ghanaian science fiction author and founder of the Afrocyberpunk website, Jonathan Dotse’s ‘Spirit Robot’. This is an exploration of the vibrant Chale Wote Street Art Festival in Accra. Viewers can also experience Kenyan photographer Ng’endo Mukii’s layered live footage and animation city poem ‘Nairobi Berries’. The surrealist work of Senegalese fashion designer Selly Raby Kane ‘The Other Dakar’ will provide attendees with a magical 360 piece in which a girl is chosen to discover the invisible Dakar. Kenya’s The Nest Collective provide a futuristic thought experiment with their interactive work ‘Let This Be A Warning’ that presents a group of Africans who have left Earth to create a colony on a distant planet.
Virtual Encounters shows from 2 to 4 June at the Goethe-Institut Johannesburg, and from 8 to 10 June at The American Corner (Central Library) in Cape Town.
For more information checkout the Encounters website and the Virtual Encounters event on Facebook.
