What was the situation at the time? What were the impulses, what wrongs were being righted? It featured artists from Durban who felt unrepresented by local institutions — black artists.
In some ways you seem to have maintained a very focused approach, with a real belief in the potential for art as a political and social force. How do the projects manifest themselves and how do you judge their effectiveness? Sometimes there is a need to fulfil and then betray the mission. These tensions are necessary.
Coconceptualising and then cofounding CHR during and after my studies at Bard College was the only way I could imagine a reentry into the South African cultural space, and I was fortunate to find myself working with two artists I have great respect for — Donna Kukama and Kemang Wa Lehulere.
For two years the CHR space functioned as a collective experiment or a rehearsal of the kind of creative gestures we were interested in seeing happen around us. We are not so much into filling voids — that would be dangerously presumptuous.
For us it is also an opportunity to rewrite the mission statement as a desire for an existence that haunts obsolete systems that continue to condition present life. With our projects we strive for an approach that allows for a judgement biased towards the affective before the effective.
CHR is not so much into filling voids — that would be dangerously presumptuous. There were audience-orientated questions that were critical during the early years, shortly after the transition from apartheid in , especially those that were activated by the two versions that were to be the first and last Johannesburg biennales, in and respectively. For example, the question directed by the critics and media at the second biennale — who was it for?
Indeed, the question begs for a re-posing, a rearticulation and a reversal. Experiences and relationships we wish to have with this question are those that are skewed; that is, they need not look at the obvious but rather at what the obvious obscures.
Our projects are meant for us, collectively and in our individual practices as well as the people and institutions we have collaborated with thus far. The South African artistic landscape remains uneven and characterised by hierarchies. The national project of commemoration for example is fraught with hierarchies that are also linked to other political imbalances, especially — but not limited to — the economies of gender, race and sexual freedoms.
What is experienced when one walks into our projects is an attitude to art that is focused on a kind of knowledge activation not far removed from tensions, contradictions, misunderstandings and spaces of mutual recognition experienced every day. Have you and your colleagues considered resuscitating the idea in some form? What conclusions did you come to? The second version of the biennale, Trade Routes: History and Geography , remains one of the most important biennials of the s.
It is remembered and evoked by many wherever we go. Its questions, which remain relevant, follow us like a memory of a disappeared relative — not dead but not alive. The exhibition makes space for these questions and contradictions to happen within its space in order to pose questions about the often-overlooked estranging quality of exhibitions and their grammars in the context of Johannesburg.
In the interview with the Goethe-Institut, I was not suggesting that the Biennale will be messy but rather suggesting that, more now than ever, a self-reflective Berlin Biennale is necessary, and the disorder or a different order is therefore unavoidable.
EK: This issue of the journal is about decentralised art practises. The Biennale itself is one of the most established within the Western sphere of art. In what ways do you feel your appointment as curator of the Biennale may redefine or shift the boundaries and consequently the centre of the established art world?
GN: I would like to think that I come from one of the centres of the universe. This means that I value my life experiences and perspectives and use them as a vantage point from which I begin to make sense of the world. Art is no exception.
Therefore, we cannot ask certain institutions or the Western art historical canon for approval but have to make room for experimentation as we embrace the unknown or the fact that it will always be impossible to know everything.
The only way to refresh the art world is by taking bold and practical approaches. EK: In the year of European culture, European leaders have frequently raised the need to create a shared narrative.
As a South African working within the European arts scene, what is your reaction to this desire for a shared narrative? Insofar as you will be a part of shaping this narrative through the Biennale, how do you define it personally? It is mainly that very early in my practice, in collaboration with others, it became clear that this way of approaching the world enables us to imagine a vision of our futures that would otherwise be stifled, or, at worst, impossible.
I am interested in art that possesses a power to stir conversation and renegotiate the systems of exchange, when different narratives clash, creating confusion and uncertainty rather than one-dimensional stories. EK: You've mentioned the need to "guard terms" [6] that are used in relation to specific marginalised groups. The Global South is a term used to refer to what were formerly called Third World countries, which was popularised in an artistic context by the documenta publication South as a State of Mind.
Although it sidesteps numerical ranking, it is nonetheless directional and hierarchical, employing a productivist language that fixes the subject. How do you feel about the use of this term? I do not agree that thinking from the South is proposing a different order of hierarchies. Such views are dismissive and expose centuries of an age-old fragility of the West. It is this same fragility that led to many atrocities being committed in the name of enlightenment and racial superiority.
The South is one of many proposals of action against the disorder caused by how narratives have been arranged to favour Western perspectives. These narratives remain undisturbed and continue to be oppressive when other perspectives are overlooked. For example, there, the practice and understanding of Ubuntu is becoming arguably less commonplace. In your opinion, in what ways do these forces interact with the practices of globalised Southern African artists?
GN: Ubuntu is a concept that has been hijacked by the ruling party and used as a nationalistic and often oppressive tool. The current political situation in South Africa shows that the ruling party is getting less and less support, especially from a younger generation of people.
0コメント