Bubblegum Club

Tag: urbanisation

  • Mpumelelo Buthelezi documents Dryhook recyclers and explores the politics of labour

    Mpumelelo Buthelezi documents Dryhook recyclers and explores the politics of labour

    Cities are complex and incomplete, they have the potential to be key organising units of our time where people, jobs and ideologies are brought together— vessels through which hopes and dreams can be realised; and yet most of the time they fail us. Our cities remain exploitative, exclusionary, coercive and classist, with little regard for those struggling to make ends meet.

    The United Nations (UN) projects up to 68% of the world population will live in cities by 2050 (currently; 55%), with rates increasing fastest in low and middle-income countries. Every wave of urbanisation brings to the fore questions around quality of life and livability with work as a critical component of these questions.

    Our notions of ‘work in the city’ are very deficient; what counts as work, what is ‘important’ work and who is dignified through that work?

    In an ongoing project, Mpumelelo Buthelezi documents waste pickers and recyclers, particularly from the Dryhook area near Devland, Soweto. Through his work he is giving visibility to one of the most important ways of creating work in the city.

    Buthelezi is a Soweto-born photographer with a background in engineering. He started this project after engaging with some recyclers who would come to collect waste around his neighbourhood. One conversation led to another, resulting in a visit to a few waste collection sites and a deeper understanding to the workers journeys and stories.

    “I’m hoping to document the waste pickers’ daily journey and communicate their stories around how they make a living through this work” explains Buthelezi.

    Waste pickers collect recyclable material around the city (scrap metal, plastic bottles, paper, cardboard etc.). They sort and organize the collected material into their various groups for the process and resell what they have collected to recycling companies. Typically, they receive R3.20/kg for plastic containers and R2/kg for cardboard boxes, making anywhere between R40 – R60 a day. Through their recycling methods these individuals are earning a living while also contributing towards environmental sustainability.

    Individuals, organisations and governments the world over are currently considering and conversing about ‘the future of work’. Most of these conversations place emphasis on automation and artificial intelligence as solutions —with the promise of more time for leisure and “higher order thinking”.

    Very few of these conversations are centred around economic threats towards those who contribute and create a livelihood through the informal sector. The politics of labour and leisure are inextricably linked to the current capitalist system that produces and perpetuates poverty. The same system used to oppress and exclude millions of citizens from participating in the fruits of a productive nation.

    The lifelong processes of allyship and activism are incredibly powerful in fighting for and contributing towards sustainable change. Buthelezi’s work is at an important intersection between documentation, storytelling, allyship and activism.

    When asked what he hopes to achieve with the project he replies: “I’m using the work to educate society around the important function that waste pickers play in society, most of whom are using this work as a way to uplift themselves and feed their families.”

  • Io Makandal – To Meet The Threshold

    Misconceptions about being an artist abound within society. Most people think we just sit around aimlessly until inspiration strikes. But if To Meet The Threshold has shown me anything, it’s the value of the dogged persistence of an artist striving to fulfill their vision. The installation enveloping the viewer is just one of a series of what Io Makandal calls “tactile drawings,” made over the last two years as part of her multidisciplinary creative practice. In the past however, these frame-shattering drawings have usually been restricted to a single wall or a corner. At No End Contemporary Art Space, Makandal had the entire space to work with. The long narrow structure of the gallery unsurprisingly caught the artist’s eye, a concept took hold and the necessary arrangements were made with the gallery to hold a show.

    In a previous article I observed how, for me, No End had begun to read as one of Johannesburg’s many alleyway’s, albeit, with good lighting and artworks on sale. It is this feature that I again felt was highlighted beautifully through Makandal’s intervention. The single corridor pulled the viewer in one direction, and gave no opportunity to tip toe around the installation, or view if from a distance. From the onset it outlined clear rules of engagement with its audience; enter and experience. Be engulfed. What were we asking to experience though? There was clear evidence of urban existence: broken chunks of concrete, dirty traffic cones, piping, housing insulation, and refuse, windswept around the gallery, suspended in mid-air, littering the floor. Alongside this urban debris were signs of natural life, or what was at least once alive; dead leaves, dead palm branches, twigs and a skeleton, which I assumed had once belonged to a cow. The tension set up between the natural (in its deceased and decaying state) and the urban, which for us in the twenty first century is our area of primary habitat, was striking.

    But it didn’t simply end there. If it had I might be writing how the installation was a reflection of the overwhelming urbanisation and the effect this has on nature. However, the third element (if I can so crudely group them like this) that I picked out was that of pure line and colour. Coloured string hung from the walls and the ceiling, draping down onto the floor. Neon duct tape covered the surface of the gallery, supporting objects on the wall or cutting through the harsh geometric surrounds. And little fluffy balls were pinned everywhere, little splashes of colour that then expanded when a balloon or party plate came into view. Makandal’s work makes me imagine what might have happened had Joan Miro worked in Johannesburg as an artist. There is the grunge and grit of this urban stew mixed in with transcendental moments of colour and form that seem to have jumped in from another dimension.

    Makandal’s work has a formal consistency that, even in three dimensions, reads similarly to one of her painting or drawing works. This similarity is not however where the work ends, for through the reference to the two dimensional works, a tension is set up. A tension between two dimensions and three that starts to bring to the foreground materiality, spatial concerns, and probably most intriguing for me, the human body. In a world of overwhelming complexity, detritus and structure, there was a single direct reference to the human body, a curled finger protruding from the wall, beckoning to the viewer. Asking to make the most solemn of vows, a pinky promise; we are invited to reengage with the possibilities that art present for our present reality.