Throughout the history of art, artists have appreciated the versatility that fabric possesses. Viewed as clothing, skin and a source of identity, it can be manipulated and molded into an object (or subject) with conceptual depth. It allows for the creation of soft sculptures, or be used as aids in performance, but does not deny artists the ability to project a sense of hardness, scale or visual weight. Textiles can also be used as a presentation of and reflection on colonialism and global trade, as with the work of UK-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare with his investigations of political and social histories. Fabric also offers a way to think about personal histories, as with the case of Accra-based artist Serge Attukwei Clottey‘s work My Mother’s Wardrobe.
‘My Mother’s Wardrobe’ by Serge Attukwei Clottey
Clottey’s work generally examines the power of everyday objects. However, the above mentioned work is potent in the way that it gives an avenue for thinking about the use and signification that fabric offers artists and viewers. Through this work he explored the connection that fabric can create between mothers and their children. In this work he used performance as a way to interrogate gender roles along with notions of family, ancestry and spirituality. This was a personal work inspired by the death of his mother, and the performance unpacked the concept of materiality with the intention of honouring women as the collectors and custodians of cloth that serve as signifiers of history and memory. Clottey presents a vulnerability in the way that he brings across his own experiences, while inviting viewers to think about their own personal connections to his subject matter.
While is broader practice involves photography, installation, sculpture and performance, this work highlights the significance of fabric when thinking about personal and collective cultures, histories and intimacies.
Artwork by Turiya Magadlela
Johannesburg-based artists Turiya Magadlela uses fabric as her primary medium, cutting, stitching and stretching it over wooden frames. Her use of commonly found fabrics, such as pantyhose and uniforms brings the past life of the fabric into the exhibition space, where it’s very presence creates animated associations in the minds of viewers. Her use of familiar fabrics allows her work to oscillate between abstract art and a collection of memories interwoven with articulations of experiences of womanhood, motherhood and narratives from Black South African history.
Looking at the work of Clottey and Magadlela the significance of fabric as a container of history and memories becomes clear. Its physical and conceptual malleability highlights its ability to be a tool for preservation, reflection and identity.
In search of a meaningful way to stay intellectually charged and creatively engaged, Jason Storey said goodbye to his corporate law position in New York and followed his dream of becoming a full-time designer in South Africa. He now explores fashion creatively in its various conceptual forms with the label he started with his sister – Unknown Union.
When the label was launched in 2010, it took root in a retail store on Kloof Street in Cape Town, and it housed a collection of international brands alongside their own small capsule collection. 2014 saw the siblings open a design studio in Salt River. The same year also saw the inception of a larger collection that reflected upon the art, history and culture they encountered on the African continent. And in 2015 their brother Oscar left his job in the US to join the team. In their newest location on Bloem Street in Cape Town’s CBD, Unknown Union blends art, fashion, literature and music as a way to stay a “community of people that dig the arts.”
Their latest offering is a collaboration with photographer Cathrin Schulz titled The Wanderer – Stability through Movement. This body of work is a crisp exhibition of Unknown Union’s garments and Cathrin’s extraordinary command of lighting. An additional layer to this visual treat comes in the form of a short fashion film shot by Anna Schulz. With a behind-the-scenes feel, the film opens with the model getting camera ready accompanied by the soothing tone of James Blake’s voice breaking free as the music starts, bringing one into the Wanderer’s journey. I had an interview with Jason to find out more about the project.
Tell us a bit about The Wanderer – Stability through Movement and how it came into being?
The Wanderer can be seen as a pilot for an upcoming series and a fruitful collaboration between Unknown Union and Cathrin Schulz. A team of creatives sat down and brought in their expertise as a form of creative exchange. The cultural diversity of the creators brought up a colourful mix of ideas, leading to the story of The Wanderer. The result is the art directed and photographed edition by Cathrin Schulz and a complementary film by Anna Schulz.
What was the inspiration behind it?
The source of the collaboration is to merge the creative languages into a synergy. Unknown Union weaves ancestral knowledge into fashion, while Cathrin Schulz infuses spirituality into her visual medium of photography. The red thread is to connect the respective visions and create an effect greater than the sum of their separate effects.
The series found inspiration in conveying the concept of Human Design, a science of differentiation. The Wanderer is a primal aspect found on both of the artists’ work, to convey a deeper message – a message of interpreting experience, emotions and stories – into a stimulating form of expression.
What is the message you wanted to convey with this film?
The medium of film visualizes and highlights the project’s aspect of ‘Stability through Movement’. Its purpose was to portray the creative flow of the shoot, as well as giving access to the different angles of the scenes. The intended message is simple: the beauty of creative collaboration.
What sparked the collaboration with Anna-Marie Schulz?
The collaboration was sparked by Unknown Union’s openness to provide Anna Schulz with a creative platform of expression within ‘The Wanderer – Stability through Movement’. It is rooted in creative exchange.
What can we expect to see from Unknown Union in the future?
We are going to dig further into current themes as well as unveil some new themes at this year’s runway show on February 10, at SAMW (AW18). In March, we’ll open our newest location in Johannesburg – in Maboneng.
With The Wanderer – Stability through Movement as the pilot, Unknown Union’s partnership with Cathrin Schulz promises to bring about sheer viewing pleasure. To watch the film go to their Instagram.
The project BORN::FREE Next Steps was conceptualized as a poetry exchange involving artists based in South Africa and the UK. This three-part series of events and workshops explores themes including gender, race and spirituality, among others. The most powerful impact of the project has been the forging of relationships between South African and British live literature practitioners – specifically womxn of colour working in and outside of the diaspora.
BORN::FREE, a poetry night co-founded by writer and educator Belinda Zhawi, began as a community project in the UK with the aim of creating a space where emerging writers and well-established writers could inspire one another and share their work with one another. With the first part of the project taking place in the UK, Johannesburg and Cape Town will see Belinda travel to deliver her poetry and share her literary passion together with South African poets.
The first of the two South African poetry sessions took place at Johannesburg’s African Flavours Books store on the 5th of January. As I walked into the venue, the chatter of the attendees hummed the tune of excitement that comes with a new year, and a new experience. Although the audience was mainly made up of Joburgers, there were a few British visitors woven between those seated. Belinda began the evening by reciting poems that share experiences from her childhood in Zimbabwe as well as poems that express a mix of lessons she has learnt about life and herself. South African poets, writers, social commentators and academics Katleho Kano Shoro and Lebohang Masango shared their poems, and information about their latest published works. Katleho has recently published her debut collection of poetry,’Serebulele‘. Lebohang has recently published a children’s book titled ‘Mpumi’s Magic Beads’. Both of these are available at African Flavours Books.
BORN::FREE will then travel to Cape Town on the 11th of January and will be hosted by Ahem Art Collective. In addition to Belinda’s performance, South African poet, performer & spoken word educator Toni Stuart as well as London-based poet and drummer Remi Graves.
Check out the Facebook event for more info about the Cape Town event
German/Ghanaian artist living and working in Accra, Zohra Opoku captivates viewers using multiple mediums including installation, photography, sculpture and video. Her thematic investigations revolve around Ghanaian traditions, spirituality and family lineage and how they relate to self-authorship and her hybrid identity. Material culture often forms the foundation of these investigations, with textiles woven together in how these thematic investigations manifest.
Image by Zohra Opoku from the series ‘Unraveled Threads’ 2017
The images that she prints on fabric speak to the intimacy and history that textiles can come to contain. In her series Queenmothers 2016, the centring of female figures is a reflection on matriarchal systems and women as creators of a sense of community among people.
Her more recent work Unraveled Threads 2017, comprised of screenprints on cotton, canvas & linen, connects to her exploration of her family lineage. Opoku did not know much about her father or her Ghanaian heritage during her childhood. In Unraveled Threads, she uses the kente cloth as a way to enhance her family history. Kente cloth varies in design, colour and pattern, each carrying stories and meaning. While the cloth is worn by different kinds of people today, it is historically associated with royalty and sacredness. It is believed that the origins of this woven cloth is that two farmers came across a spider. Amazed by the way the spider creates its web, they tried to imitate thus creating the kente design.
“Identity is always, for me, based in textile,” Opoku explains in an interview with OkayAfrica.
Image by Zohra Opoku from the series ‘Unraveled Threads’ 2017
The stories and proverbs associated with each kente design makes this form of woven cloth a carrier of ethnic history. Quite fittingly, Opoku was inspired by the kente cloth that she found in her late father’s wardrobe as the canvas on which to present her father as an Asante leader, as well as to print images of herself and her siblings. Here she not only pays homage to a father she barely knew, but also embraces the significance of kente as threaded history. This allows her to engage with her Ghanaian roots as well as her familial history. She explores her experiences growing up in the West, and what it means to confront blackness and Africa as an artist later in her life.
Image by Zohra Opoku from the series ‘Unraveled Threads’ 2017
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.
Moya is a phrase used to define a spirit, a soul or other presence. Woza Moya is an expression used to summon or call Moya to one’s presence.
Corrugated paths connect piles of sand – remnants of earth peppered throughout the city. Collected and congregated, dimed lights cast shadows on the hallowed ground. Plastic silhouette suits are suspended beyond a transparent membrane as the summer rain trickles down, beyond the white cubic walls.
Initiated by Marie Fricout and Mbali Dhlamini, Woza Moya is a creative conduit in which to explore manifestations of spirituality in Johannesburg. The exhibition emerged from the experimental project space – Goethe on Main in Maboneng – and engages with neighboring areas. The site-specific project locates itself within research as praxis and explores notions of spirituality in an urban space. “The project investigates what spirituality is in the city and how its inhabitants convey it through visuals, sound and performance. Woza Moya invites its audience to engage with experimental elements that mediate spirituality and usher transcendence.”
Surrounding Signs: A Symposium was the second event of the processed-based engagement. It investigated how spirituality manifests itself in the city through different aesthetics. Marie and Mbali’s exploration of the surrounding space had concluded that local stores in the area were in some ways akin to museums – some having survived the last eighty-six years. An institutional epitome of the cityscape. At the heart of their project lies the question, can spirituality be embodied? This challenging inquiry was at the crux of the conversation.
The panelists included photographer, Simangele Kalisa and Emma Monama, a researcher at the African Centre for Migration and Society. Each of which shared their work in relation to the notion of the materiality/non-materiality of spirituality and the relationship between the two seemingly polarized constructs. Spirituality projected and imbued in the physical sphere. Emma described them as being both complementary and contradictory, operating in a dialectical dynamic. She went on to say that spirituality is the, “pursuit of being” and appears in a spectrum of form and ephemeral reality. The project runs until the 20th of November – continuing with public programming events and an immersive research practice
Bogosi Sekhukhuni consolidates millennial media technology and inherited cultural practices – creating complex modes of identity in the digital age. Although geographically located in Johannesburg, the web of his reach extends far beyond the metropole. “I was raised to understand myself as an African first, and secondly as a South African. My grandmother is from Botswana and I grew up regularly visiting Gaborone. From a young age I was surrounded by my mother’s peers, a lot of whom were visitors from around the continent.”
Aspect of heterogeneity precipitate through other elements of his life too. Over the course of his career Sekhukhuni has constructed a visual language matrix. He refers to this process of historical excavation as “throwback visual culture mining”, drawing on his own subjective experience as well as a larger discourse of popular culture. Influences are drawn from his experience of the “black aspirant middle class” and growing up with early South African social media technologies such as mxit. “I mainly draw influence from other artists or people through the attitude they present their ideas in more than the content itself.”
As a conceptual artist, his practice orbits around notions of dismantling oppressive and outdated knowledge systems. “It’s tragic that our curriculums pay homage to the ideas and histories of others more than our own. To me, this is a fundamental problem. Our obsession with the future is based on a materialist approach to space-time. I’m interested in learning about how my ancestors understood reality and applying that to my practice and life.” Sekhukhuni aims to amend the Pan African agenda and shift its focus to spiritual development. “I think we need to draw more from African spirituality and realise the potential for social transformation that’s inherent in it. We need more right brain female energy in African leadership.”
Sekhukhuni engages with the information economy in his work. His recent launch of Open Time Coven serves as a new platform of access and intervention. As a manifestation of his online presence, the site is a direct conduit to share his ideas to a global audience. Art products and a store will be hosted on the website by Sekhukhuni and his collaborators every new moon. He will also be participating in an annual studio residency exhibition at the Bag Factory – exploring the trauma culture in Johannesburg. Restore the Feeling opens on the 28th of July.
The Cuss Group, co-founded by Bubblegum’s own Jamal Nxedlana just released an invitation for “Solution Night” an event they are hosting at the TOPIC project space in Geneva, Switzerland. The Cuss Group is comprised of Jamal Nxedlana, Ravi Govender and Zamani Xolo who founded it, along with Lex Trickett and more recent addition Chris McMichael. The invite is accompanied by a series of celebrity testimonials together with an ominous text which you can read below.
“Daily life is a space of intense contradiction. The promise of infinite self-actualisation and attainable dreams runs alongside the constant coverage of violence and panic. People are constantly told they can become and achieve anything while seeing evidence of the depths humanity can sink too. The latest fashions and music next to the latest atrocity footage. Glaciers of jewellery on Instagram, melting glaciers in the artic. Drone selfies, drone assassinations. Gangs post pictures of money, kidnappings and executions on facebook. Social media, Narcomedia, Necromedia. Livetweeing from the back off the bus while it rolls off the highway, lighting for the disaster provided by etoll grids.
The surface is chaos which threatens to tear the individual apart. But this is an appearance which disguises another reality. The individual now has more power than ever, to build or destroy, from behind a screen. No need for constant doubt, just pure focus. We understand only ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Only ‘black’ and ‘white’. No ambiguities. No half-tones. No equivocations. Pure will, pure power for those who dare to grasp it”.
The Cuss Group, co-founded by Bubblegum’s own Jamal Nxedlana just released an invitation for “Solution Night” an event they are hosting at the TOPIC project space in Geneva, Switzerland. The Cuss Group is comprised of Jamal Nxedlana, Ravi Govender and Zamani Xolo who founded it, along with Lex Trickett and more recent addition Chris McMichael. The invite is accompanied by a series of celebrity testimonials together with an ominous text which you can read below.