Tuesday, September 28, 2010

View from the Churchhaven cottage

How beautiful is it to be tapping out this blog gazing out over the turquoise waters of a lagoon, the sun warming my legs and binoculars at my right hand to focus more clearly on a long pink drift of flamingoes wading on the other side. A little stripey mouse has just run right in front of me, but must not be allowed to enter the cottage as other members of his/her family have already chewed chunks out of a sheet, a sarong and a crocheted bedspread this weekend. I am at Churchhaven, 90 minutes up the west coast from Cape Town, and will post some pix when I get back to town tomorrow. If I can tear myself away.

Friday, September 17, 2010

O.K. So no more travelling for a while.

I got back into my apartment after the long flight back from London via Dubai at 6.30 p.m. on the Saturday before last, and by 7.30 p.m. I was in the Africa Café, having dinner with Emma Bedford, Johnnetta Cole, director of the Museum of African Art in Washington and chief curator Chris Kreamer. Powerhouse Johnnetta had also flown in that day and was actually leaving again the next – her trip had been cut short by an invitation for Tuesday from Michelle Obama, but today she and Chris have had a tour of the SANG ‘Pierneef to Gugulective’ show with Riaison Naidoo. An excellent way to get an overview of South African art.

Mary Sibande and Mustafa Maluka at the SANG

It’s a week of curators. On Thursday it’s dinner with Colin Richards, Penny Siopis, Rory Bester and Okwui Enwezor. Okwui is making a start on a new show of South African photography for the New York Institute of Contemporary Photography. I tell Okwui I have recently refused an invitation from Performa to be on a panel with him in New York in October because I won’t be there then.

“Why don’t you participate by Skype?’ he says. ‘I recently delivered a whole lecture at the Tate Modern by Skype’. Trying to answer questions from a well informed New York audience while staring at a screen? The idea is totally unnerving.

Saturday is the 9th anninversary of 9/11, and at Kathryn Smith’s serialworks, forensic artist William Scarbrough is opening a new show, entitled 'The Forgotten'. A faded newspaper column tells the story of a terrorist attack which demolished two gas towers in Brooklyn earlier on that fateful day … television news footage of the time tells the story of this event which soon became overshadowed by the attack on the Twin Towers.

William Scarbrough’s ‘The Forgotten’ (video detail)

‘The Forgotten’ (installation detail)

There are eerie photographs of the reconstructed photographs of the dead. Scarbrough’s presentation is masterly.

Definitely worth the trip up the four flights of stairs to serialworks.

Friday, September 10

Berlin … an amazing city. It has a real energy, but also a looseness, a laidback feeling. Berliners don’t like to look they are trying too hard.
The line that came up in the workshop as the one which best expresses what it really means to live in Berlin, is, IT’S A BIT SUSPICIOUS IF YOU HAVE TOO MUCH MONEY. It feels right, but it’s a very long sentence to photograph.

The first attempt at the shoot is on the steps of the tower on Alexanderplatz. But the light is not good. And there are other problems.

A test shot on the Alexamderplatz

The rest of the week is spent looking for a better location.

One night I visit Berlin-based Candice Breitz, in her studio, and she interrupts her marathon editing of her twins project long enough to head out for a supper of Chinese dumplings at her local.

Candice Breitz

On my last day in Berlin, we shoot again, on the steps of the Reichstag.
The rain stops just in time, and everyone shows up for the shoot. The only problem is … the security police, who half way through the shoot, object to us holding up letters.

After intense negotiation, they allow us to continue. Except that we may not hold the letters up. We may, however, stand there empty handed. Pretending we are holding letters up. It’s going to be interesting working this one out …

Box lunch with Lisa Brice in the Tate Modern members room.

So it’s on to London. It’s great to catch up with Lisa Brice again, and the Alice Neel portrait show at the Whitechapel is fantastic. So is the Francis Alys, at the Tate Modern. And the sun doesn’t stop shining.

Francis Alys’ rubber mat installation at the Tate Modern

Thursday, August 19

Art writer Sean O’ Toole and I take the night train from Bern to Berlin. When the train seems to have reached rocket speed, Sean takes a photograph of a screen showing we have hit 250 km an hour.

Friday, August 20

I am in Berlin to give a talk at the Daimler Gallery, where curator Christian Ganzenberg is presenting Ampersand, current performative and contemporary art from South Africa juxtaposed with work from the Daimler Collection. My own piece from 1990, For Thirty Years Next to his Heart starts off the show, together with a section of Willem Boshoff’s classic Blind Alphabet and from there the visitor moves on to view new work from such artists as Robin Rhode, Nicholas Hlobo and Nandipha Mntambo, along with their European counterparts.

Under the auspices of the gallery, I will also do a Berlin version of my Other Voices, Other Cities series, in which I run a workshop with a group of local residents to try to establish what it is exactly about living in that city which is unique, and not quite like any other.

Christian, photographer Abrie Fourie and I breakfast together at one of the charming pavement cafes in Prenzlauer Berg to discuss the planning of the project. The workshop will be tomorrow. So today Abrie and I will cycle around Berlin looking for possible locations for the shoot, at which some days after the workshop, participants will hold up letters spelling out the message they have decided on.

El Anatsui’s hanging at the Alte Neuegalerie

The location will depend on the message, but I need to look around for possibilities first. En route around the city, we pass El Anatsui’s extraordinary hanging, which is cladding the columns of the Alte Neuegalerie as part of the Berlin wide ‘Who Knows Tomorrow’ series of exhibitions by African artists.

A possible location shot

Or should we risk the participants being run down by a tram? Abrie Fourie is the man in this shot.

By the way, I am lucky enough to be staying in a most gorgeous apartment, so spacious, with high, high ceilings and a red couch in the kitchen backing a long table, opposite the very contemporary stove and gleaming stainless steel kitchen equipment.

A beautiful kitchen

As I entered the apartment for the first time, in the early hours of Friday morning, I was seized with an immediate urge to invite friends known and unknown to dinner, to sit on the couch and talk to me over wine, while I, of course, would be cooking something delicious for us all to share.