Delinquent Outsider: Q & A with Cameron Platter
compiled by Carol Brown
Cameron Platter participated in a Q & A session at the KZNSA Gallery after the showing of his animated films The Stripper and the Zebras; Mr Muafangejo and the Lion; The Crocodile and God.
Some of the questions have been rephrased to the artist and his replies are below:
Question: Your first showing in Durban was with the Gallery Puta. Are you still part of this group and, if so, why?
Cameron Platter: I'd be open to the idea of a reunion tour. But only for the money.
Q: Looking at your films it seems as though you have borrowed unashamedly from African woodcuts and subverted their simplicity for different ends. Do you acknowledge this influence?
CP: I borrow lots of different things. And I enjoy subverting lots of things too. And I'm certainly not ashamed to reference artists who worked in that genre. I would argue that they produced complex works, which got their messages across very simply. This simplicity - minimalism - is what I try to 'borrow'.
Q: Your imagery is very much about contemporary society - drug culture, mind-altering music, intense experiences, blood, gore and sex, yet I see biblical references in images such as the cross, the Hellmotel, the butterfly etc. Can you comment on this?
CP: Biblical themes encompass all of the above - blood, gore, sex, drugs etc. Read 'moral' instead of 'biblical'. I can't help being moral, or amoral, seeing what goes on around me. I try to be true to interpreting these things, computing them, and spitting them out in my tongue.
Q: Why do you use animals and hybrid figures?
CP: It goes back to children's books I enjoyed when I was a kid - like How the Zebra got its Stripes - that use animals to tell simple stories of human truths: good vs. evil, humour, trickery, greed, kindness etc. It's also easier to draw a paw or claw than a hand, and less trouble to kill, cum on, shoot, and have kinky sex with fictional beings.
Q: You have used the crocodile in many of your previous works. In this one he dies: is that significant?
CP: It's debatable whether or not he dies. The ending references the final episode of The Sopranos, where we are left unsure whether Tony is killed or not. I think rather than dying, the crocodile is taking a rest, or has left the building for a while. I've no doubt he'll be back, though possibly not in the near, near future.
But he has left his shoes behind, though...
Q: The sound is very distracting - do you really need it, because it seems unnecessary?
CP: On the contrary, I find the sound concentrates the experience. My first videos/ films/ animations didn't have sound. People thought this was a reference to silent films, and that I deliberately used silence to emphasize the image. Not strictly true. I didn't know anyone who did audio, and who I could trust to do it with the same delinquent vision.
The sound is, by far, the most complex and sophisticated part of the work. The images, in my opinion, are propped up by the sound, and it's completely necessary.
Q: Tell us more about the sound - how was it done and who did it?
CP: Dean Henning did the sound. We've worked together since 2006, and have a good understanding.
For this project I wanted to use flavours of Journey, Ol... Dirty Bastard, Richard Pryor and Elvis. Dean listened to my ideas, shook his head and then added Napalm Death, recordings of choirs from the Eastern Cape, silences, Durban thunderstorms, and other things I've never heard of. He also instructed me to stay out late at night in coastal forests with a cassette recorder in my hand, recording frogs and crickets. This is all put together with hundreds of other parts, and when it sounds like something completely different from what we originally intended to do, it's ready.
Q: I see a strong influence of child art - children experience things in an amplified manner like your films. Can you comment?
CP: I am influenced greatly by children's and 'outsider' art. I consider myself an outsider who occasionally goes inside.
Q: You have recently shown this in Vienna - how did the installation differ?
CP: The piece/project was made especially for a gallery space in Vienna. The video is made up of three different, but interlinking, stories, all of varying lengths. Each story was projected cinema-size onto a different wall, with its own sound turned up loud. The viewer would arrive in the space, and be instantly assaulted by the three different projections with a mélange of sound blasting at them too. They could then be wrapped up in the planned chaos of it all, and let it envelop them. Or they could start to concentrate on one particular projection and its sound, and begin to pick up some sort of narrative. However, their attention would be, guaranteed, distracted by the movement and audio from the other projections. I also made each of the pieces cyclical so the stories would double back and double cross over each. To get the whole piece, the viewer would spend about 20 minutes in the space.
At the KZNSA, the stories are shown on one projection in a (roughly) narrative sequence.
Q: What's it all about?
CP: If I knew, I wouldn't tell you.
Q: What's next for you?
CP: Reality's stranger than fiction...
