Archive: Issue No. 44, April 2001

'My Generation' is a unique programme of video art from the beginnings of video in the late 1960s to the present day, which will last 24 hours from 6 p.m. on April 20 to 6 p.m. the following day. The venue is the Atlantis Gallery in London's trendy East End, and the curators are Mark Nash and Alexandre Pollazzon. From different generations, the curators decided to approach the history of the medium as a dialogue between ongoing individual perspectives and experiences.

The idea is to break from the sometimes over solemn museological presentation of video art which is becoming increasingly common and to restore some of the founding energy and excitement of the medium. The 24-hour cycle makes similar demands of the audience to a dance club and indeed will share some installation elements. The installation is dominated by a single screen (8 x 5 m) on which video work will be seen in the best possible projection conditions using new equipment of a brightness and intensity hitherto reserved for commercial outdoor projection. It will be supported by comfortable furniture for relaxed viewing, as well as ancillary services such as a bar, toilet and washing facilities etc. to look like the lounge of a modern airport by night.

Through this kind of initiative, (Trans)position is aiming to encourage the production of a whole new scope of time-based projects. The idea of time is crucial for the spectator's experience. During a twenty four hour period, the amount of information absorbed will be immense, a total reversal from the characteristics of a traditional exhibition where one is left to ponder on a fixed object. Here, the viewer is invited to surrender to the flow of moving images in an informal and engaging environment.

For the first time in the UK, a video installation by Candice Breitz (South Africa) will be staged, previously installed at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York and 2000 Ta�pei Biennial, and also on the programmed is a world premiere of Breitz's 'Soliloquy' a new series of three videos.

The following are some of the better known artists from the hundred or more Others who will take part: Vito Acconci, John Baldessari, Vanessa Beecroft, Sadie Benning, Dara Birnbaum, Christian Boltanski, Sophie Calle, Douglas Gordon, Damien Hirst, Pierre Huyghe, Isaac Julien, Abigail Lane, Nam June Paik, Philippe Parreno, Gilbert and Georges, General Idea, Thomas Hirshorn, Tracey Moffat, Bruce Nauman, Arnulf Rainer, Pipilotti Rist, Martha Rosler, Carolee Schneeman, Richard Serra, Georgina Starr, Rosemarie Trockel, Gillian Wearing, William Wegman, Lauwrence Weiner, Hannah Wilke, Cerith Wyn Evans, Candice Breitz(South Africa), Olaf Breuning (Swiss), Ellen Cantor (US), Hsia-Fei Chang (Ta�wan), Claude Closky (F), Brice Dellesperger, (Sweden), Fabrice Gygi (Swiss), Sigrid Hackenberg (US), Pal H�llender (Sweden), Marine Hugonnier (F), Bernard Joisten (F), Takehito Koganezawa (Japan), Delphine Kreuter (F),and Elke Krystufek (Austria).

During the programme, information on each piece will be projected on a wall included name of the artist, title, date and duration of the video.

Over a period of 24 hours, up to eight hundred visitors are expected to relax in a comfortable environment where they can enjoy a drink while watching a stream of videos, projected onto a large screen of 8 x 5 mlong. Many sofas, tables and chairs will be rented in order to welcome people as long as possible.

Opening: April 20, 6pm
Closing: April 21, 6pm

The exhibition 'in the meantime ...', put together by the Curatorial Training Programme of the De Appel in Amsterdam, presents videos, installations and photography by Mark Bain, Yael Bartana, Sebastiín Díaz Morales, Angela Ferreira, Ksenia Galiaeva, Tracey Rose, Bülent Sangar and Jun Yang, eight artists focusing on narratives of site and movement.

All art works are derived from a particular situation and consciousness, extracting observations and private histories from the artists' archive of personal experiences. This consciousness prompts the artists to deal with the political, the geographical and the everyday in a non-didactic way. No conclusions are drawn, however. Rather than a single obvious reading, several readings are available. A constant oscillation between reality and fiction, fiction and documentary, the communal and the private realm of the individual is offered.

An exhibition catalogue and website (www.inthemeantime.nl) accompany the exhibition.

Opening: April 6 at 6pm
Closing: May 27

Known for his quirky small scale paintings,Johannesburg artist Karl Gietl has been living and working in Europe for the past two years. On March 25, an exhibition of fifty of his small (15 x 15 cm) square paintings and four larger pieces opened in Antwerp, Belgium, all reflecting the artist's personal experience and memories both in Europe and South Africa.

An email sent to the artist from a friend following the opening described the work like this: "Little 'tranches de vie', always observing, sometimes 'voyeuristic', sometimes full of humour, sometimes 'naturalistic', sometimes with a touch of cruelty, then a little sad or with pity. Loose, short impressions, as if you're driven around on a bus in the head of the artist, viewing his processed images of life - or something like that� the dancing general, the café scènes, the 'terrasse' of the Paris bar, the tourists in South Africa (wishful thinking?), the metropolitan (especially the one where the figures are black shadows), the Johannesburg skylines,your dreamy selfportrait."

Opening: March 25
Closing: May 20

Young Cape Town artist Mustafa Maluka will have a short solo exhibition of paintings entitled 'Hard Living (an enthnomethodological approach)' at De Ateliers, in Amsterdam, opening on Tuesday, April 3 at 6.30pm. The exhibition can subsequently viewed between 11am and 6pm from April 4-7.

"I am my main subject," says Maluka, on his website www.mustafamaluka.com. "I change so much so fast. I think I am looking for the 'inbetween'."

Curated by Roberto Pinto and a curatorial team comprised of Vasif Kortun, Apinan Poshyananda, Anne Pasternak and Eugenio Valdes Figueroa, an exhibition entitled 'Short Stories' opens in in La Fabbrica del Vapore on March 28.

No less than 27 artists will be participating, including Fernando Arias Gaviria, Tania Bruguera, Alison Cornyn & Sue Johnson, Nick Crowe, and South African artists Kendell Geers and Minnette Vari.

Opening: March 28

For first time ever, a representative selection of works drawn entirely from the Permanent Collection of the South African National Gallery in Cape Town went on display internationally when 'Head North' opened at the BildMuseet, Ume'ring;, Sweden on February 25. The exhibition marks the first round in a series of initiatives between the countries designed to facilitate cultural exchange through visual art.

It started in 1999, when the South African National Gallery was invited by the BildMuseet in Ume'ring;, Sweden to participate in an international exchange programme titled 'Visual Cultures in Dialogue', focusing on an exchange between Swedish and South African partners working in the fields of art and museology. Participating institutions are Ume'ring; University, BildMuseet, University of the Witwatersrand, University of the Western Cape, Robben Island Museum and the South African National Gallery, and the exchange is funded by SIDA, the federal Swedish Development Agency. The goal is to develop a new understanding of how contemporary society is portrayed, how history is examined and how new target groups can be reached in both environments.

'Head North ', jointly curated by the BildMuseet and the SANG, aims to present a broad view of contemporary South African art and in particular a view of the work held by our national gallery. The works on show include Jane Alexander's 'Integration Programme: Man with TV', Lisa Brice's 'Make your home your Castle', Billy (Buyisile) Mandindi's 'Fire Games', Jackson Nkumanda's 'The Presidential Inauguration', Willie Bester's 'Head North', and Sue Williamson's 'Can't Forget, Can't Remember'. The exhibition links itself strongly with South African history and the way that artists have critiqued that history. It is also representative of the aims of SANG, which reflect the desire to break down barriers between cultures and modes of cultural production in order to become as inclusive and nationally representative as possible.

'Head North' is the first of a number of jointly developed projects between the South African National Gallery and the BildMuseet, that include education programmes, seminars, lectures and exhibitions which will be staged over the next two years, within the exchange 'Visual Cultures in Dialogue'.

BildMuseet is a museum of contemporary art and visual culture, located in the city of Ume'ring;, regional capital of northern Sweden. Founded and built by Ume'ring; University in 1981, expanded in 1994, the museum facilities comprise seven exhibition halls with an exhibition area exceeding 1400 m2. Over 100 000 visitors per year make BildMuseet one of the most visited art institutions in Sweden. In recognition of the quality and breadth of their work, the Swedish National Council for Cultural Affairs has assigned the museum a national role within the field of contemporary art for the three-year period 2000 - 2002.

Look out for further developments in this exchange.

For more information on 'Visual Cultures in Dialogue' as well as the exhibition and related programmes please contact Kathy Grundlingh at tel. (021) 4651628 or e-mail kgrundlingh@iziko.org.za

Opening: February 25
Closing: May 01

It is hard to imagine what kind of images South Africa would have of itself from the 50s and 60s were it not for Jürgen Schadeberg and his fellow photographers at Drum Magazine. In the years since, the photographs have been reproduced continuously, and provide an invaluable legacy of a vivid and vigorous culture which survived in spite of apartheid. Drum proved Black was beautiful. Schadeberg photographed the first black covergirls�one of his many arrests was on suspicion of sex across the color bar while photographing Dolly Rathebe in a bikini on the golden sands of a Johannesburg slagheap. Drum covered black beauty contests and boxing�even Mandela boxed for recreation�and reflected and brokered the emergence of a black urban style influenced by America and its movies. The zoot suit, the hat, the white or two-toned shoes, and the big American car were "in." Even the styling of crime was American. In Johannesburg's vibrant black township of Sophiatown, the biggest gang was called the "Americans." Their toughs had names like "Boston" and "Homicide Hank," and they favored Borsalino, Woodrow or Stetson hats, and drove black limos like Al Capone and Lucky Luciano. Just as the speakeasies of prohibition-era America had been centers of culture and entertainment, in South Africa the illegal shebeen became the core of nightlife, lubricated with illegal alcohol. Here gathered the gangsters and molls, the prostitute and the preacher, the labourer and the tycoon, and the stars of music, writing, and art.

All of this, what Schadeberg calls the "most dynamic and magical decade of South African history," is in Schadeberg's pictures, together with the darkening clouds of life under apartheid: the forced expulsion of Sophiatown's residents, to make way for a whites-only suburb called "Triumph," the first treason trials of Mandela and other leaders, and the massacre of Sharpeville in March 1960.

Drum's documentation and affirmation of black experience, beyond the margins of white control, was deeply threatening to the apartheid regime. As Okwui Enwezor, director of the next Dokumenta, remarks, "the work of the Drum photographers exists beyond the realm of the visual and assumes an important ideological function" of transgression and defiance (Enwezor 1996).

A show of Shadeberg's work, mainly from the 50s, opens at Gary van Wyk's Axis Gallery in the fashionable art district of Soho on March 20. The Axis Gallery is playing an increasingly important role in introducing South African artists and photographers to an American audience.

Opening: March 20
Closing: April 28

     See Reviews