Bubblegum Club

Tag: spiritual

  • Cathrin Schulz – a poetic approach to image-making

    Cathrin Schulz – a poetic approach to image-making

    1. photography. a merge. inevitable, it feel to me.

    These words are the opening of photographer Cathrin Schulz‘s bio on her website. They speak to her approach to image making, pointing to the idea that her camera has become part of her. Schulz’s description of her relationship with the camera reads as a kind of spiritual connection, as if the first time she pressed the shutter-release button was a moment of serendipity, an invitation from the universe to find her passion. The poetic introduction to her work from her bio is continued through the titles of her works and the layout of her site.

    The text that accompanies each series of images reveals sensibilities that see the work come full circle when presented to the viewer.

    Her series UN[DOMESTICATED] sees women photographed with wild animals as a visual signal to a kind of surrendering and undoing of the idea that women need to be “tamed”. The different animals come across as representations of their spirits, and the closeness between the women and the animals points to the idea that they are intimately engaged with their spirits.

    ‘UN[DOMESTICATED]’
    my motivation is to share my vision with the intention to leave the viewer changed. touched. intrigued. provoked. curious.

    Shadows, blurs and capturing intense gazes from the people she photographs directly articulates her motivation. One is pulled in, wanting to find out the story being told through the images. The delicacy and sensitivity with which her work comes together is evident in the balance between light and dark, creating mystery and evoking a sense of nostalgia all at once. It is as if each image is a paused moment from a romantic movie or a snippet of a dream that you remember in the middle of the day. The series 8 FT [UNDER]  alludes to this evocation.

    To check out more of Schulz’s work visit her website.

    ‘8 FT [UNDER]’
    ‘UN[DOMESTICATED]’
    ‘8 FT [UNDER]’
    ‘CRYING WOLVES’
    ‘ANXIETY TO BREATHE’
    ‘ANXIETY TO BREATHE’

  • Bubblegum Club mix Vol 8 by Hlasko

    Just over a month ago we featured Hlasko on the cover of Bubblegum Club. He described music as “a calling” and even a process of divination. Today he opens up a portal into his future through a stirring 11-track mix which includes 5 new Hlasko productions.

    For a little more insight we spoke to Hlasko about the mix and what’s influenced the development of his sound.

    Why did you choose to place your tracks alongside the other songs in the mix?

    The arrangement of the songs was to me an interesting way to create contrast and give a teleporting (back and forth) feel to a series on similar moods/themes expressed at different times.

    There seems to be a development in your sound from ambient, drum driven patterns to more percussive rhythms – would you agree? whats influencing it?

    Yes, this is a thing now for me, I feel like there is an urge to zoom in lately, I’ve become less interested in the patterns but rather into the forms within the patterns  so I guess it becomes more rhythmic, and I’ve listen to a lot more West African drum music lately.

    Your tracks have always had a very spiritual feeling and some still do but there is also a more menacing feel, is this your way of reflecting or commenting on the state of the world in 2016?

    Possibly may be reflecting and projecting, yes. And also 2016 has been menacing.

  • Noirwave; reflecting alternative black identities

    Noirwave is telling the story of black glory, of Africa, through art. The creative collective of Petite Noir and RhaRha Nembhard form the heart of Noirwave and their collaboration with Lina Viktor reveals the beauty and diversity of experience that is being African.

    While the immorality and brutality of imperialism perpetuates much pain and suffering on the continent, its people and geography are more than elements or victims of an imperial agenda, or beneficiaries of international aid. Africa, Africans and the African diaspora make incredible contributions to the world’s culture, colour and creativity. From the Americas to Europe and the islands through which black people are positioned, we make the music that the world dances and drones too. And while our images are often used against us, the beauty of black people, the potency that melanin projects is undeniable, despite the hegemonic mission to make mockery of it.

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    Blackness progressively makes strides, against the forces that oppress and divide us. And as black people continue claiming our right to be ourselves without apology, there are black artists working to create reflections of blackness and Africa that are based in a perspective that educates and empowers. Enter Noirwave, a movement and collective making strides  towards progressive representation and integration of black identities. Synthesizing politics, art, fashion and music to tell a story about the incredible beauty of Africa and the diversity of experience black people exist in on the continent and beyond.

    Noirwave breaks the boundaries between the stereotypes and archetypes of Africa, projecting images that are progressive and positive. Africanness and blackness are not monolithic constructions of colonialism but shifting, complex identities and cultures that are also subject to the influence of the internet and form an important part of the international community. All of the above should go without saying, but the hegemonic powers that determine what we see and hear and consume would erase this unalterable truth if they could.

    In 2015, Petite Noir, RhaRha Nembhard and Lina Viktor produced images and sounds that subverted the status quo and offered a view of blackness that reflected Africa, Europe, America and Asia, that vivified the experience of walking the world in black skin while being a global citizen, reflecting the progressive forces that are working to unify humanity, as well as the historic fact that Africa is the home of humanity.  The video for Best, touches on the striking and emotive themes encapsulated in La Vie est Belle, Petite Nior’s critically acclaimed debut album. The artwork and music video for the album are rooted in Africa and use influences from artists and cultures the world over to tell their story. Noirwave offers the world beautiful music and visuals to enjoy and admire from a creative consciousness that upholds black beauty and promotes black love. The importance of these ideals cannot be underestimated in a world that tries to erase and divide us. So the struggle continues with new sights and sounds to take us into a noir future.

  • Watch Fight Master, the surreal video from Agord Lean’s collaborative EP “WU”

    Agord Lean spent Feburary recording his upcoming EP in the Bubblegum Club project space at Workshop Newtown. He describes the residency as, “strenuous but fruitful” and provides insight into the creative process, emphasising the importance of, “making work and cultivating your own voice”. And realising the incredible scope of creative expression while embracing the changes that come from creating and collaborating.

    From an exhibition of zines and paintings, Lean has taken a creative journey through his residency in the space. Through collaboration with other creatives and a mindful, open attitude to art marking an EP, WU, has been produced. Fight Master is the first taste from WU and it is a glimpse into Lean’s esoteric and ethereal soundscape, reflecting space and time of this age and beyond.

    WU will be available online this month, it features production from Uncle Party Time, with some creative luminaries on the mic including Dokta Sypzee, Boogy and KillSmith. Lean was kind enough to let me jump on as well; my debut as a recording artist.

    Cava the tracklist below, WU drops later this month.

    1- Intro,in time (Ft Boogy x Viva)

    2- Iyanishiya Ft Dokta Spyzee x KillSmith

    3- Find me

    4- Illumination prod Uncle Party time

    5- Interlude

    6- Fight Master

    7- Outro

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  • The unsettling of JHB’s necropolitical reflections in Zandile Tisani’s Highlands

    A police van veers around a corner, a loaf of bread is placed inside a box, leaves crackle and turn in the ambiguity of words; “In my third life, I learnt about mortality”. Zandile Tisani’s Highlands is a kind of forensic infrastructure, unfixing and unhinging the masculinity and certainty of Johannesburg’s necropolitical reflections through the opening and closing of pores, architectures of light that pull in- and out-of-focus, and the slow movements of water carving rock.

    Sun-dizzied camera shots sweep and descend to give Highlands an alien quality of defamiliarisation while the ubiquity of water stands strange and sputnik in its Yeoville towers. Is the ‘clean air’ up there supposed to descend in the same way water does? Are there ways that we can structure our own sermons, self-designate the sacred? And what could that mean in relation to the way a reef is formed, the way boreholes now honeycomb beneath the surface of the city?

    Tisani beautifully unsettles what constitutes ‘the documentary’ in a layered interrogation that blurs just where the edges might be. There’s a kind of quiet delirium in obscured hyperrealism, sedition in the spatial rendering of the mysterious narrator who stands somehow beyond the trinity of spirituality, commerce and survival. Dialogues form between soil and skin as the ground moves to meet those who traverse it, those who would both regard and disregard it in the instant of lifetimes.

    The experimental format that Highlands engages reclaims the physical space in which it is shot from the violent patina of Hollywood glitz, from the blunt force of linear narrative and the designation of ‘history’; opening up breathing-room for questions that speak incredibly intimately to the complexities of existence within, and to the side-of, JHB as a ‘post-colonial, post-apartheid, modern, African, metropolis’.

    Tisani’s Highlands is a co-production between GoodCop Productions and the Encounters Documentary Lab and even if I wasn’t writing about it, I couldn’t only watch it once. Check out the South African kick-back against stasis below. #MbokoLead

  • Agord Lean is An Artist Making Introspective Synthpop

    Agord Lean is one of the most slept on artists in Johannesburg. Since dropping his first mixtape “The Ghost and The Machine in 2012 Lean has quietly but consistently released a series of independently produced projects including his debut album “Time Loopers Directory”, the “Space Impact” Ep and his latest offering, another Ep titled “The Flight of The WU”.

    The way Lean sees it, his projects so far have been “experiments”, which may be the reason why each track feels so introspective like a moment of truth and self discovery. On tracks like “The Gords Introduction”, “Experience in Falls” and “The Invite (Fire On The Mountain outro)” Lean flexes his talent for combining minimal drums with atmospheric soundscapes and visceral cries.

    The emotion Lean transmits through sound is just as powerful in his paintings, prints and videos. Even before he started making music he operated in a space between art and popular culture, between the physical and the spiritual. It is the elusive nature of his practice that is partly the reason why he has, rather than slotting in, had to boldly carve out a space in Johannesburg’s cultural landscape.

    Listen to Agord Leans latest EP “The Flight of The WU”

    https://soundcloud.com/agord-lean/sets/the-flight-of-the-wu

     

     

     

     

  • FAKA Release New Track

    FAKA, the performance artist pairing of Fela Gucci and Desire Marea, has dropped a new single. In their role as pioneers for sexual identity and style the duo have named the track ‘Isifundo Sokuqala’, (the first lesson) and it described as Ancestral Gqom-Gospel. The song is ethereal and exquisite, listen to it here.

  • BUBBLEGUMCLUB NIGHTS – AGORD LEAN