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In a review by Alex Dodd in Art South Africa Autumn 2011 of Brett Murray’s Hail to the Thief at Goodman Gallery Cape Town, he is quoted saying in response to the idea that he runs the risk of tainting people outside the ‘thievery Corporation’: “Don’t shoot the messenger. The message that I am trying to convey is that the powers that be are pissing on the graves Of everyone who struggled, everyone who died for the struggle. They are tainting their reputations, their senses of who they were. What they did. How they did… I am saying this is the knock on effect of corruption – every cent you steal, you’re pissing on the graves of The heroes.”
I sent Zanele Muholi an SMS today, perhaps she didn’t get it. Perhaps she found it insensitive. I would have. I wouldn’t have responded either. Zanele is a photographer who has been photographing gays and lesbians and who in her own words (New Yorker) has embarked “on a journey of visual activism to insure that there is black queer visibility.”
I asked her today (22 May) via sms if she’d like to comment on the national reaction to Brett Murray’s painting of Zuma, The Spear. Perhaps in relation to her theft, I said.
Actually, what a cheek, this woman is a victim of what could be a targeted attack last month, in which her hard drives were stolen. Hard drives containing all her work over the last 5 years, reports the New Yorker. Work that has sensitively portrayed people who are under constant threat of attack or corrective rape as it is known, and marginalization.
Instead of writing a story about Zanele’s own experience, I’ve asked her to comment on someone else’s work.
I wouldn’t have responded to an sms request like mine either.
Brett Murray who isn’t speaking to the press on record, earlier today sent me these images of a sculpture he made in 1990/1991. He wants his explanation of ‘The Voortrekker’ – an attack on Afrikaner patriarchy – to be made public. This work speaks, I believe, for itself with regards to Brett’s intentions and to the fact that we have come full circle politically. Here is his explanation:
“The title is Voortrekker. It is an obvious play on words. A direct translation is Front Puller. The implied vernacular translation to English would be Wanker. The intended visual metaphor presented is being one of self satisfaction and self indulgence, with the protection of a gun. In this case the attack was on the Afrikaaner patriarchy of the time. The point being, I use the image of an ape indiscriminately and apply it when and where I see fit and this is not determined by race. I have used animals as signifiers of metaphorical meaning for quite some time. The earliest, in this volumetric form , are the works attacking the patriarchy of the predominantly Afrikaaner state of the Apartheid regime which formed part of my Masters dissertation.
Pre- 1994 I have used pigs, snakes, monkeys, donkeys, elephants, rats, teddy bears,dogs, sheep, rhino, various buck, cheatas and zebras.etc
Post 1994 I have used monkeys, pigs, dogs, lions and eagles etc
The size is approx 900mm tall and approx 700 deep and 700 mm wide.”
I’ve been reading Mrs Moneypenny’s book Careers Advice for Ambitious Women. I’m reading it because I’m a fan of her column in the Financial Times, not because I’m particularly ambitious (why not?). It’s good food for thought on women, work, the balancing act and how to self-promote. I am not big on self-help books but this is written by Mrs Moneypenny aka Dr Heather McGregor. She’s an impressive woman: runs a headhunting company in London, pretty ruthless about what she wants and has a spunky attitude to getting ahead. One of the things she does well is to keep on reminding the reader throughout the book what/how men are doing.
There is a chapter dedicated to ‘doing your own PR”. Self-promotiong is something we shy away from, don’t we? It’s immodest, arrogant, showing off… But we don’t criticise a man for doing his PR, do we? He probably understands that (research quoted in the book) “moving into leadership roles… takes more than doing things right.” If you’re good at your job, “you need to make sure people know that you are.”
Every woman should spend 5 percent of her time doing her own PR, advises Mrs Moneypenny.
A little skeptical, and perhaps a little lazy, all I’ve done about my own PR since reading her advice is to have a picture removed off a website of me drinking a large cocktail. It was quite a lovely picture – but I am not sure if it was meant to be of me or the big bottle of vodka in the same frame.
Then tonight I read this, Why Don’t Women Act More Like Men at Work? on The Atlantic and the point is again made. Take it:
Two of the biggest barriers for women in advancing their careers are failure to make their achievements known and to find people who could help their careers, according to a survey conducted last year by Catalyst, a nonprofit group that presses for workplace opportunities for women on three continents. “When women were most proactive in making their achievements visible,” the report states, “they advanced further, were more satisfied with their careers, and had greater compensation growth than women who were less focused on calling attention to their successes.”
Now for a bit of self-promoting: I’m going to tweet this blog post now.
The John Phalane exhibition, Malete, is on at GALLERY OAP in Milpark till 28 January. Not to be missed I don’t think.
Joburg
South Limpopo
Here is the gallery’s press release. Read More…
Late last year I wrote a column about women shaving their pubic hair. There was some interesting response to it. Some said women shave for sport reasons- it’s healthier and more hygienic to be shaved. I am not sure if it’s necessary. My hair has never got in the way of a run or a swim. But then I’m not an Olympic gold medal winner. There might be something to this.
But most importantly I was horrified – my sensitive liberal PC conscience went into guilty overdrive – to find out that shaving pubic hair is a Muslim tradition. Had I been religiously insensitive by suggesting that this fashion is driven by a male paedophilia fantasy? No says my Muslim friend. She believes her religion’s tradition possibly comes from the same place. I felt better after that conversation.
But I was further comforted about my rant when I read Caitlin Moran on the issue in her hilarious feminist book, “How to be a woman”. She writes:
“I can’t believe we’ve got to a point where it’s basically costing us money to have a fanny. They’re making us pay for maintenance and upkeep of our lulus, like they’re a communal garden. It’s a stealth tax. Fanny VAT. This is money we should be spending on the electricity bill and cheese and berets. Instead we’re wasting it on making our Chihuahuas look like a skanky Lidl chicken breast. God DAMN you, mores-of-pornography-that-have-made-it-into-my-pants. GOD DAMN YOU.”
William Kentridge and Dado Masilo rehearse Dancing with Dado
The kind folk of the FNB Joburg Art Fair have made a block booking at the Market Theatre for Dancing with Dada this Saturday 17th September. The work is the play part of the Wiliam Kentridge Refuse the Hour festival. And it is a collaboration between the artist, choreographer and dancer Dado Masilo and composer Philip Miller. According to the programme, it “wrestles with our changing ideas about time, the history of the standardisation of time, and resistance to a linear construction of time and space. It includes dance, live music, strange machines, and projection.”
To learn more read this.
Tickets are available at a reduced price.
To buy tickets, click on the information on our website www.fnbjoburgartfair.co.za, or go straight to https://www.webtickets.co.za/event.aspx?itemid=3762123
What a strange day. Talk about the surreal nature of the tragicomedy that is South Africa. Christopher Hope, the novelist, recently told me in an interview how he is interested in “the surreal quality (of Brett Kebble’s life). It was this quality that seemed to be most like us.”
Today, I think, would have fascinated him. There were ANCYL leader Julius Malema’s supporters creating chaos in town juxtoposed with a gentile brunch with the young and dashing blogger, Bryan Boy.
When I left the office today to join bloggers and journalists at The Salvation Cafe, Stanley Avenue in Milpark, to meet Bryan Boy, images of youths trashing Johannesburg city centre were hogging the flat screen TV. Malema had bussed in supporters from wherever for his disciplinary hearing at Luthuli House. An interesting show of support. Read More…
Last Friday in the Jewish Report I saw an ad for Glenn Beck’s appearance in a synagogue in Cape Town last night (Thursday). This is the man who once had a TV show on Fox and is well known for his controversial views, and his “classic anti-Semitic tropes.” He recently attacked George Soros as a manipulative puppet master who is deliberately destroying America’s economy so as to impose a totalitarian one-world government.
Fresh from a trip to Israel where in the newspaper Haaretz, Yossi Sarid called him a “charlatan-entertainer-mediaman”, he came to SA to deliver an address called “Why I stand with Israel”.
In Israel he held three rallies designed said Michelle Goldberg in The Daily Beast to recast himself as a great champion of the Jews, united with Israel in a coming global war with the Islamist and socialist hordes.
Did anybody attend the Cape Town event? Can somebody report back on his content, delivery and integrity? I am curious.
On his website he was quoted saying:
“We are in Cape Town, South Africa. South Africa, unfortunately, in the past, probably best known for Apartheid over the world. No longer. They have corrected the mistakes of the past and are moving forward as a new country united and they shook this evil without revolution, a remarkable people and a remarkable land,” Glenn said.
“Apartheid is going to play a role in the conversation of the world again, but they’re going to blame Israel for Apartheid and we’re here to set the record straight on what Apartheid was and what it is and is it happening in Israel or not. That’s why we’re here and then tomorrow we’re going to be in South America.”
“By the way, Apartheid solved in South Africa peacefully,” he added. “We should figure out how South Africa did that. Huh? People classified into population groups including skin color, their classification determined their wages, their pensions, their jobs, their schools, and their living area. That was South Africa.”
This is the ad for his Thursday night speech: Read More…
I am about to interview José. Wish I had known sooner that he was in town. I perchance met him last night. I now have a copy of his novel, Blank Gaze, but haven’t yet read it.
In the meantime there’s this. It’s beautiful.
slowly, time turns everything into time
José Luis Peixoto (b. 1974)
slowly, time turns everything into time.
hate becomes time, love
becomes time, pain becomes
time.
the issues we thought deep,
the most impossible, permanent, and unchanging,
slowly become time.
by itself, time is nothing
the age of nothing is nothing.
eternity doesn’t exist.
however, there is eternity.
the moment of your eyes idle on me were eternal.
the moments of your smile were eternal.
the moments of your light body were eternal.
you were eternal until the end.
