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News Bytes
- New Directors at the Bag
Factory
- Joachim Schonfeld At Art On Paper
- Diana Hyslop and the Famous Five
- David Koloane's VANSA Speech
- Resident Artists' Presentation
- Residents' Exhibition
- The Parking Gallery, New Experimental Space
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Opportunities
-Santua Residency 2006 at Porapara
Art Space, Chittagong
- Fabrikken for Kunst og Design, in Copenhagen
- Videochannel Invites Submissions
- Soundlab calls for submissions
- Enter The M-Net Edit Online Film Festival
- Call for application for a residency at Triangle France (Marseille)
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June
The recent debate over the pros and cons of the biennale structure
seems to still be dominating the contemporary art scene in South Africa
at the moment.
With the Biennale in Dakar, Dak'art 7, last month and the upcoming
'not-a-biennale' Trans Cape large-scale art project (http://www.capeafrica.org)
happening in Cape Town in September this is of course not surprising.
The debate seems to focus on the western centricity of this biennale
concept and whether or not we as African practitioners should be
seeking representation on these European and American shows.
Mario Pissarra's website article Death to Venice! A South African perspective
on the irrelevance of representation at the Venice Biennale advocates
that Africans should boycott a 'guest' position at events like the
Venice biennale and instead set up a platform with the 'marginalised'
at it centre.
'Our marginalisation as South/African visual/artists will not be
addressed by a guest place at "the centre", it will be
addressed by shifting the centre, decentralising it globally so that
the fortunes of most are not subjected to the whims of a few.' (Pissarra
http://www.asai.co.za/forum.php?id=32)
The Cape project speaks similarly of
relocating African contemporary art practice away from this Western
centre.
'Because perhaps, even in the face of globalisation and the
international art circuit, we can reorient the gaze, relocate our
selves, without moving from where we are.' (http://www.capeafrica.org/about_overview.html)
In the light of this ongoing debate, I am left to wonder if the
conceptual or cultural framing of large scale events is really what
we should be focusing on. I am amazed that, considering the various
economic constraints we experience on the continent, that we feel we
have the luxury to argue about such relatively trivial issues as an
imagined homogenous African identity and where we draw the lines.
It is not the 'Africaness' of these contexts that we should be
examining. Exposure at a large scale international event is important
for any artist and merely a 'guest' place on such an exhibition, I
believe, has more to do with a lack of funding than any curator's
deliberate attempt to marginalise an already poorly represented
continent.
In the May edition of the free publication The South African Art
Times, Cobus van Bosch has written a short piece on how several South
African artists, who had been invited to participate in fringe
exhibitions at the Havana Biennale, were forced to stay at home due
to a lack of funding for the transport of work or themselves.
Funding for transportation of work and artists is something that is
crucial to the success of any large scale exhibition or conference
and provided that an event receives this funding upfront, the event
needs to prove some measure of self sustainability - either through
sales or audience attendance - in order to ensure the event can be
repeated.
The general public's support is not something that is closely
scrutinized in many of the ongoing debates surrounding large scale
art events. The Venice Biennale is a particularly important event not
only because of its profile as the oldest event of this type. It is
so largely successful because it is a tourist magnet and many people
visit the city for the sole purpose of viewing the exhibition.
A lack of local support from casual visitors was one of the major
failings of the Johannesburg Biennale and, I think, had there been
greater attendance and the funding continued, many of the conceptual
issues that were debated in smaller visual art circles might have
been ironed out.
But I am not advocating that arts events should cater for the mass
public's tastes. We may end up with Leon Schuster movie marathons.
Instead we should be researching why these events are generally
poorly attended by local audiences and until we do I can not begin to
speculate on the reasons.
These failures to examine the role visual arts play in the lives of
the local public is summed up effectively by Joseph Gaylard in his article
'The Retreat of Creativity: Reflections on the Role of the South
African Visual Arts in Social Development'
'Fundamentally, we have not really engaged - as a community of
practitioners, curators, administrators and organisations - in
organised debate and action around the role that the visual arts
might play in society beyond the gallery opening, the art journal and
the arts academy: the world of the crèche, the school, the prison,
the old age home, the HIV/AIDS hospice, mental health facility, and
so on. Instead, as with many other areas in South African life, we
have subsided into a rather unimaginative and self-interested
business-as-usual approach to what we do in the context in which we
do it.' http://www.vansa.co.za/Gaylard%20article%20artthrob.doc
Instead of investigating a means of engaging the general public we
end up with the situation that Lesego Rampolokeng coined at last
year's Sessions eKAPA, "we don't have a culture of criticism,
just a tradition of bitching." This situation seems to stem out
of the fact that the local financial support is so limited and when
one group or event gets the biggest piece of pie we scrabble and poke
holes to ensure that that bit of pie is up for grabs next year.
Although Trans
Cape's plans
have their problems, a large scale event in this country can only
benefit local artists who can not afford to be seen abroad. Trans Cape apparently has plans to
extend its platform beyond the traditional gallery space and, in so
doing, hope to capture a larger audience. The extent and success of
these plans remains to be seen. Let's just hope that the criticism
after the fact is based on adding to and promoting future large scale
local events and that there is some solid engagement with the issue
of audience participation rather than the sour-grape,
boycott-advocating conceptual nit-picking.
We can not be so self important as to think that a local event can
some how 'move the centre.' But it can provide a platform that is
more economical to obtained then appearing in Venice. Baby steps.
Rat Western
Bag Factory Newsletter Editor
rat@bagfactoryart.org.za
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News Bytes
New Directors at the Bag Factory
Kagiso Pat Mautloa and Sam Nhlengethwa have been appointed as new
directors at the Bag Factory. They will now be joining Robert Loder and
fellow Bag Factory artist David Koloane in this role. Congratulations to
them both.
Joachim Schonfeld At Art On Paper
Bag Factory artist Joachim Schönfeldt most resent show was opened on the
6th of May at Art on Paper in the gallery's new venue at 44 Stanely Avenue,
Milpark Johannesburg.
Schönfeldt's show, entitled 'The life and times of Roar', takes the form
of an extended happening. A series of events are being staged over a
period of two weeks in the north window of the gallery. For these events,
Schönfeldt has established a company, Ditta Buon Paese (the Italian for 'Company
Good/(Schön) Field'), complete with sculpted furniture, such as tables,
shelves and a coffee shop, to host tea parties and lunches.
In addition to the custom built furnishings for these series of
happenings the exhibition focuses on Schönfeldt's well known sculpture in
lacquered wood entitled Roar: lioness who's history and travels have been
extensive. Also included are wooden panels with deconstructed landscapes
in oil paint of places in South Africa he has visited with his family,
various wooden maquettes, The death face of Neil Goedhals in painted
wood, a series of four full colour vacuum-formed styrene panels and new
work on paper. Schönfeldt's show ran separately but concurrently with
Luan Nel's exhibition 'New Redruth, revisited' which takes small plastic
hobbyist figures as its starting point to examine perceptions of scale
and installation.
Exhibition closed 3 June.
Diana Hyslop and the Famous Five
Diana Hyslop's group exhibition, The Famous Five, opened at Gessau art on
the 9th of May. The group, who have taken more then one art related road
trip to Polokwane and as a result decided to have a collective show,
consists of Hyslop as well as Wayne Barker, Samson Mnisi, Karl Gietl and
Maria van Rooyen.
David Koloane's VANSA Speech
While we are still waiting for VANSA (Visual Arts South Africa) to
publish their results of their conference hosted in February - their
website still advertises the conference as upcoming - a script of David
Koloane's speech from the conference, A Perspective Of The Visual Arts In
The Past Twelve Years Or So, is available for your perusal from the Bag
Factory web site news page.
http://www.bagfactoryart.org.za/html/news.htm
Resident Artists' Presentation
The Bag Factory's current artists in residence Coster Mkoki from
Zimbabwe; Petros Ghebrehiwot from Eritrea and Sergine Andre from Haiti
gave a presentation of their work at the Bag Factory on Monday 15 May
2006. Each of the artists' presentations gave a bit of perspective on
there mother land. Ghebreiwot spoke about Eritrea's
war for independence, Andre presented a film which featured documentary
type shots of Haiti
superimposed with her own work and Mnkoki discussed his new work based on
his experiences in South Africa of Xenophobia.
Residents Exhibition
An exhibition by our artists in residence: Sergine Andre (Haiti); Petros
Ghebrehiwot (Eritrea) and Coster Mkoki (Zimbabwe) opened at The Bag
Factory on Wednesday 14 June 2005 at 5:30 pm. Ghebrehiwot exhibited a
number of paintings examining the theme of crowds. Mkoki presented
several sculptures constructed from found objects, teak and serpentine
stone. Andre created an installation, entitled Guedes Gateway, which
draws from Haitian iconography and a series of paintings in Gouache or
oil.
The exhibition was well attended and a number of works were sold.
Thanks to:
The WK Kellogg Foundation; The National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund;
The Royal Netherlands Embassy and The Ford Foundation
The Parking Gallery, New Experimental Space
A new experimental project space opens in Johannesburg in May, with an
inaugural show by Doung Anwar Jahangeer, of recent Mira Mari fame. 'The
End of Architecture; Scale 1: Now' is the title of the Durban-based
architect and self-styled psychogeographer's show. The venue is located
in Johannesburg's
inner city.
http://www.parking-gallery.net
for more details on up coming shows.
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Opportunities
Santua Residency 2006 at Porapara Art Space, Chittagong
Santua Art Foundation is an artists'-led organisation based in
Chittagong, Bangladesh is now calling applications from International and
local artists for a month long residency in 2006 at Porapara Art Space
that is situated near the Karnafuli river and Patenga Sea Beach in
Chittagong. Artists are requested to arrange their own expenses for
this residency. Santua do not provide anything but organise the
programme. Santua and Porapara would ask for an allowance of rent and
coordination fees of 200 US $ for a month long residency from the
international applicants.
Deadline : Ongoing
Fabrikken for Kunst og Design, in Copenhagen
The Factory of Art and Design - Fabrikken for kunst og design - is an
old industrial laundry, 10 min. by bike, or by metro, from the centre
of Copenhagen.
They are offering a new artist-in-residence programme open to
international artists. The Factory is artist run with app. 50 studios.
It has a 1,000 square meters hall for large-scale construction, and
offers the possibility of working in photography, wood, iron, textiles,
stereographic, and ceramics. The Factory houses artists of all
disciplines including designers, set-designers, magazine editors and
web-designers.
Deadline: Ongoing
For more information please visit: www.ffkd.dk/1069253203
Videochannel Invites Submissions
VideoChannel is looking for digital films/videos dealing with the
interaction of image and music, a theme which is referring to the
character of the festival of sonic art (KlangDrang).
Film and video are basically visual media, and even music is used and
recognised as an important component, it is used mostly in its
colouring and atmospheric capacity. The films/videos VideoChannel is
looking for should treat image and music as equal or allow music even
to dominate. This may be done in several ways - music as the theme of a
story, films reflecting music through images and vice versa, or the
visualisation of music. There are no restricting categories; the
submission of experimental works is encouraged. Artists are invited to
submit up to three proposals.
Deadline is 1 July 2006.
Videos should be preferably available online and be submitted as URL
for download and be between 1 and 10 minutes long. After a positive
review, the artists/directors may be invited to send the video as data.
For more information email videochannel@newmediafest.org
with 'image vs music' in the subject line.
Soundlab calls for submissions
http://soundlab.newmediafest.org
is invited to launch its 4th edition in the framework of the
Cologne-based soundart event KlangDrang Festival www.klangdrang.org
which takes place from October 6 - 7.
SoundLab is looking for soundart works of:
a) experimental character
b) electronic music
c) Voice/sound/music integration
d) and other forms
The theme of Soundlab is 'Memoryscapes', incorporating memory and
identity. The submission has to be posted on a webpage for download,
please do not send it as an email attachment. Submission format: .mp3,
Size: Max 5MB, exceptions possible, but on request.
The authors/artists keep all rights on their submitted works.
Deadline: June 30
An entry form can be downlaoded from http://netex.nmartproject.net/index.php?blog=8&cat=54
Enter The M-Net Edit Online Film Festival
If you are a film or video maker wanting some exposure for a completed
film, enter the M-Net Edit Online Film Festival now. A first prize of R
50 000 is at stake. Second and third prizes of R 25 000 and R 15 000
will also be awarded.
During July and August 2006, the festival will feature short films in
six different categories. Viewers will be able to view and vote for the
films on-line. The most popular entries will be broadcast on M-Net
during September 2006. An award ceremony in October will feature the
winning films in each category, and also award prizes for best
performances in categories such as script and sound.
Categories:
Short films (Drama)
Documentaries
Music videos
Animation
Extreme
On-line video
Criteria: Only original short films that are ready for broadcast will
be considered. This can of course include previous entries and winners
of M-Net's existing Edit competition. Duration: No minimum duration, no
longer than thirty minutes.
Format: DV Cam, Betacam SP (only PAL) or DVD.
Release form: Only films accompanied by a signed release form will be
considered.
Final Deadline: 30 June 2006
Call for application for a residency at Triangle France
(Marseille)
Triangle France (Marseille) are looking for artists to attend a Three
to six month residency which starts in September 2006.
If you would like to apply please submit portfolio before June 25, 2006
Your portofolio should include:
- images, a text about the work, a cv + CD or DVD if you are doing
videos
- availability of the artist
- a stamped envelope to send back your portofolio
Conditions :
- free studio
- accomodation for 100 euros/ month/ artist (shared appartment with the
other two residents)
- production grant on project (maximum 1000 euros on presentation of
invoices)
The artist are required to pay for their own travel expenses.
Triangle France,
Friche la Belle de Mai, 41 rue Jobin,
13003 Marseille
Tel: 04 95 04 96 14
Email: triangle@lafriche.org
www.lafriche.org/triangle
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