Archive: Issue No. 102, February 2006

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Diary

Comfort Zones installation detail The Light Factory

Diary

MoMA visitors listen to Janet Cardiff's Forty Part Motet

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Marina Abromovic's Balkan peasants acting erotically

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Jeff Koons' bronze lifeboat afloat at Mary Boone

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RoseLee Goldberg

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Lisa Brice and Wilderness


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January

Tuesday, January 3

Christmas and New Year usually signal a time to wind down and lie in the sun a bit. Not this year. The holiday season whizzed by in something of a blur as I struggled to edit, re-edit, balance sound etc. for Comfort Zones the new interactive video piece for 'Fabricated Harmony' at The Light Factory in Charlotte, North Carolina. The show opens January 13.

Now I'm leaving Cape Town and getting on to a plane, along with all the bronzed holidaymakers in their short shorts, speaking many languages and carrying wooden giraffes back to new homes in the northern hemisphere.

Wednesday, January 4

Charlotte is a banking town, the headquarters of Bank of America, the country's largest bank, as one is frequently told. The Light Factory is a non-profit organisation, a complex housing a theatre, three gallery spaces and a number of workshop areas. Our show is in the Knight Gallery, a good sized space of about 75 x 30 metres. The gallery specializes in photographic and video work, and Bill Viola was a recent exhibitor.

I've never spent much time in the South before, but there really is a difference, apart from the accent which I keep wanting to imitate. Waiters in restaurants call you 'sweetie' as in, 'how you doin', sweetie?' and they really seem to care. People on the street engage you in conversation. It's definitely not New York.

Thursday, January 5

Pat Ward Williams is my co-exhibitor on the show. South Africans might remember her from a teaching spell she did at Wits, from the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale, or from her residency at Greatmore.

We have a radio interview this morning about the show - Pat and I will talk, along with Charles Thomas, the Education Director at The Light Factory. Charles came over to South Africa last year, and initiated a 'Freedom Box' project in which three schools from Soweto and Cape Town took part.

Kids were given cameras and asked to take images which to them symbolized either integration or segregation and paste them on to the outside (segregation) or the inside (integration) of white cardboard cartons. These are on exhibit in one of the galleries along with boxes done by local students. The project sounded a bit didactic when I first heard about it, but actually the kids have worked really hard on it, and the results are inventive and perceptive.

Live radio interviews are not my favourite publicity exercise - one so often gets caught in mid sentence wondering what on earth one is trying to say, and what the end of the sentence can possibly be. The interviewer talks about the effects of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on South Africa. At one point he says, 'Justice aside, how do whites feel about having their land given back to blacks?' But there is no time to answer this, because the interview is over.

Pat is fuming afterwards. 'How do you put justice aside?' she comments.

Friday, January 6

The company who shipped my work from South Africa, Kuehne & Nagel, have been hopeless. The work was picked up in November for air freight and it finally arrives only today. They were supposed to build a crate for my work, which was in two cardboard boxes, but they have not. The work arrives in the very same cardboard boxes that they picked up. They are off my list for ever.

Monday, January 9

Opposite The Light Factory is The Levine Museum of the South, with tableaux of old Charlotte and a reproduction of a milk bar in the days of segregation. North Carolina was a centre of Ku Klux Klan activity in the 60s. Pushing buttons brings old timers up onto a television screen reminiscing about the bad old days when even waiters were always white, even though everyone knew it was black hands that were preparing the food in the kitchen.

Johannesburg's Apartheid Museum has a parallel exhibition here, and tonight there is a reception for that followed by excellent speeches in an old church by ex US ambassador to South Africa, Jim Joseph, and Derrick Moyo, South Africa's Deputy Chief of Mission in the US, on the subject of truth, transitions and transformation.

This takes place in an old church, and afterwards there is a 'soft' opening of our show at The Light Factory. Meaning, everything is not up yet. The new piece, Comfort Zones is not yet operational.

Tuesday, January 10

Comfort Zones is a conversation, of a kind, about the difficult question of race, and how people really feel about it, when they are being honest. Pat and I interviewed a number of people each, and have alternated these video clips to form a dissonant 'discussion'. Ticker tape text runs across the base of the tapes, and should one get tired of listening to a particular person, one can use a glowing blue disc to speed forward or backward through the clips. This speeding up brings up other text, which is only visible at the accelerated rate, and disappears again when the video resumes its normal speed.

The problem is, Pat and I both work on Mac, and the computer supplied by The Light Factory is pc, and the transfer of material from one system to the other is not easy. Especially since this pc, an old Dell, has a microchip that keeps jiggling loose and shutting the machine down. Programmer Andries Odendaal, back in Cape Town, is getting lots of phone calls as we struggle to get the programme up and running.

Across the street from the hotel is a pizza place called Fuel which advertises that it's been voted best pizza maker in wherever, and they're right, the crust is classic but somehow a little flaky and utterly delicious and this week I get totally hooked on slices of cheese and tomato with pepperoni (yes, I know I'm supposed to be vegetarian), usually bought on the run at about 11.30 pm, when I'm afraid they are about to close. Plus these slices are $2.45 each, and since we are on a per diem of $25 for all three meals a day, this is affordable.

Wednesday, January 11

The rest of the 'Fabricated Harmony' show is looking good, but we are still trying to complete Comfort Zones. Turning into a bit of a nightmare. Charles Thomas had promised me his personal tour of Charlotte, which I have been looking forward to taking, but there's only time for work.

Friday, January 13

Opening night. My good friends Joe and Annie Bacal have flown down from New York for the occasion, and curator Tosha Grantham of the Virginia Museum of Art has driven down.

At 5 pm Pat and I stop work. At one terrible, heart-stopping moment half an hour before, all the folders with all the files for the piece had seemed to be empty and all the work lost. But that was a false alarm, thank goodness, and the piece is finally up, though there are small changes we will make later. Just time to dash back to the Holiday Inn and change for the opening.

Dinner afterwards with The Light Factory crew - director Marcie Kelso, artistic director Crista Cammaroto, video director Wendy Fishman, and all the others.

Saturday, January 14

Breakfast with Tosha to talk about a show she is curating for her Museum called Dark Room, which will open next year. A quick trip over to the gallery to take a few pictures of the Comfort Zones installation before it's time to head for the airport

. Leave Charlotte with Joe and Annie for New York. The weather is freezing when we get there, close to snow, and as we cross the Triborough bridge on our way into the city, the skyscrapers are all lit up the way I love them to be, and driving through Harlem, the cab radio starts to play Don Maclean's Bye Bye Miss American Pie, a classic eight and a half minutes of pure nostalgia, and my heart turns over for the city as it always does.

Sunday, January 15

Wake to a pristine layer of fresh snow covering the city. The Sunday New York Times is read over a late breakfast. Down at the MoMA, the best piece on show and one of my favourite pieces of all time is Canadian sound artist Janet Cardiff's Forty Part Motet. Forty black speakers on stands surround a gallery. Each represents one voice in five choirs of eight voices singing a choral work written in 1575 to celebrate the 40th birthday of Queen Elizabeth 1. Wandering from one speaker to the next, one hears the pre-performance comments of the singers, then suddenly the piece begins. In the middle of the room, the sound is unified, majestic, but by listening at individual speakers, one can also separate individual singers out, as if one was a part of the choir oneself.

Tuesday, January 17

Talk on the phone to Laurie Farrell and discover Penny Siopis and Colin Richards are in town, staying downtown at the Ampersand apartment. Last time Penny and I were in town together was for 'The Liberated Voices' show at the Museum for African Art in 1999.

Meet Penny and Colin and head for Chelsea, At Sean Kelly, we're amused by Marina Abromovic's Balkan peasants going through erotic exercises in which traditionally clad woman dash around wildly in the rain and hoist their skirts, and naked men hump the earth. At Mary Boone, the floor is now highly polished steel, which acts as a vast mirror for the 'Hiding in the Light' show and visitors alike. In one corner, a bronze inflatable life raft with oars by Jeff Koons looks magical.

Supper is at a middle eastern restaurant, and Laurie Farrell and curator RoseLee Goldberg join us. RoseLee, whose Performa '05 was the outstanding success of the current New York art season, and voted best of 2005 by the New York Times and TimeOut magazine, is already busy planning the next biennial of performance art for 2007.

For 17 days last November, people crisscrossed Manhattan to take in more than 60 scheduled events. Successful as this was, the next one, says RoseLee must be completely different to keep the level of excitement going.

Wednesday, January 18

Time to leave New York already - want to be back in Johannesburg for Lisa Brice's opening at the Goodman Gallery on Saturday. Before I go, though, I make a quick trip to the midtown area where Willam Kentridge is hanging his new show at the Marian Goodman Gallery, still smelling strongly this morning of William's chosen shade of grey paint on the walls. Some of William's charcoal drawings are up on the wall, but most are still on the floor.

The scale model of the stage of the theatre in Brussels where William's production of The Magic Flute opening in 2005 is under construction. William explains that there will be a 20 minute excerpt from the opera played out on this stage complete with lighting effects, projections and music.

The full production will come to Johannesburg at some time in the future.

Thursday, January 19

Reach Johannesburg at sunset.

Friday, January 20

Staying at Penny and Colin's house in their absence. Am too tired to move far, but Lisa tells me on the 'phone that there have already been a number of pre- exhibition sales of her work.

Remember Apollo, Penny's dog, the white bull terrier who bit the photographer? He eats my beaded sandal bought in the Masai market in Nairobi last year, sigh.

Saturday, January 21

This show of Lisa's has been a long time coming, and when I get to the Goodman Gallery around noon, there is something of a buying frenzy going on. Lisa looks bemused. I photograph her against my favourite painting on the show, Wilderness.

One London friend and art collector, Mary-Anne Brouckaert, has flown over from London for 24 hours, just to be at the opening. That's dedication for you. 'If I knew the opening was at lunchtime, I would have flown back this evening', says Mary-Anne, who has a baby daughter.

Monday, January 23

Fly back to Cape Town.

Monday, January 30

The artists from South Africa who have been invited to the next Havana Biennal (opens March 27) are Conrad Botes, Moshekwa Langa, Marcus Neustetter and Stephen Hobbs of The Trinity Session and myself. Doreen Southwood will do a fashion show.

How are we getting there? Dunno. The Biennal people have made it clear that artists, or the cultural department of the country they come from, are responsible for their own expenses, and with this in mind, I go to the National Arts Council to download the application forms. Closing date is January 31. Start filling out the nine page application, which will have to be couriered this afternoon to reach Johannesburg tomorrow. There's a 500 word motivation. A budget. At some point I phone Marcus to check when he and Stephen are intending to leave - and he tells me the NAC has postponed the submission date until February 28.

I go back to the website thinking I must have missed the delay announcement - but no, according to the NAC website the closing date is still January 31. I phone the NAC myself and a bored voice confirms the new date is February 28. No, she has no idea why the date has been postponed. Of course not, Why would she?

This casual postponement of a date without even a mention on www.nac.org.za is outrageous, and typical of the high-handed way the NAC handles what is virtually the only official source of funding for the arts community of South Africa.

Tear up the forms. The new date makes it pointless to apply. Lucky for me I hadn't paid courier costs yet.
 


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