Zavick & Ulric's washline fire burns brightly - South African Art Times

Rip, Stitch, Mix and Burn: Zavick Zaroff Botha and Ulric Roldanus set fire to a washing line piece,
entitled “Fresh Laundry”, Llandudno Beach, 21 November 2008
Rip, Stitch, Mix and Burn -
Zavick and Ulric Remix Sculpture
y David Robert Lewis
HEN early 20th Century
ritic of psychoanalysis Karl Kraus
roclaimed, in his attack against
reud and the Austrian school:
From now only piracy will be
ermitted,” he was merely answerng
the terrifying problematic which
merican, Ralph Waldo Emerson
ad previously delineated: “It
s as difficult to appropriate the
houghts of others, as it is to
nvent,” consequently all forms of
ppropriation, whether they be the
utright theft of the remix pirate,
he anti-hierarchic nomadism of
he schizophrenic or the mashup
ulture of the hip-hop musician,
re all really just comments on the
rtistic process we call invention.
o be alive in the maelstrom
f today’s insanely literary pop
ulture, to write about art, is to
isk offending highbrow critics
ho maintain theory is the sole
rerogative of the academic, that
ny discourse is invariably that of
he Western Canon vs the Other
nd all activities, including the
ctivity of art should, and can only
e, understood from within the
ealm of polite bourgeois society,
hrough a lens provided by doestic
homeland safety security
egulations, 2010 soccer stadiums
nd a city by-law prohibiting urinaion,
belching, farting in public and
oxious odours?
ake Zavick Zwaroff Botha and
lric Roldenaus’ recent collaboraive
excursion into the public art
rena. A series of washing lines
hat have appeared across the
ity, from Gugulethu to Thibault
quare, The Kramat to Slave
onument on Church, echoing
he earlier interventions by Garth
rasmus and Victor Peterson,
ho erected a simple Washing
ine over a decade ago, during
he 1996 District Six sculpture
estival: “The need to remember
very detail of what has been lost
aunts those who have lost it: the
nstinct of the amputee to exercise
he absent limb. The urgent desire
o re-establish the security of what
s known and familiar; of that which
eminds you of yourself, and says
o others that you exist.”(1)
Fresh washing” by the non-existnt,
the absent stage like Jan Van
chalkwyk’s landscape entitled:
For more info and review: http://davidrobertlewis.wordpress.com
‘Kassiesbaai Washing Line’, a poor
imitation of an earlier Constable,
who no doubt would also have
issues with who did the laundry
when, and in what order. Servant,
worker, waterman, thief. Looking at
art through detergent is like examining
the proverbial water closet.
How much has changed, in power
relations and the strength of OMO,
since the first troglodyte dreamt
up this most laborious of practices
and then proceeded to paint and
sculpt the end product - forgetting
about our rights to a living wage,
or the problem of not owning the
means of production which in turn
produced what we like to refer to
as visual art?
“In the Netherlands we don’t have
laundry lines, says Ulric, over
an Amstel at the Obscafe, here I
encountered these lines again...”
My carefully crafted notes are
rendered into meaningless laundry
list by a group art exhibition
held later at Michael Stevenson,
requiring the writer to decipher
hieroglyphics, code by Sun Ra. “I
have vandalised my work,” offers
Zavick who expresses a penchant
for quilting and embroidery.
Incisions into the cultural landscape
of Cape Town that beckon
us all to take cognisance of the
process of bricolage, elucidated
by the grand semiotician Roland
Barthes in the Empire of Signs
- the artist as revolutionary DIY, an
eternally recurring and everpresent
‘nowever’amidst a clusterbomb of
found objects or objets trouves.
When all one has is a box of
lion matches, and an Amstel, a
bonfire will do. Rip, Stitch, Mix and
Burn, with the type of arson that
is required to turn theory of the
haphazard, into chance, extraordinary
aggregate of molecular
love, incendiary performance
art, nocturnal emissions of toxic
fumes, the nightly annihilation of
self practised by practitioners of
Butoh and advocates of Zen.
I encounter the quilty duvet
inspired: “Washing line”, (there
can only be one, all of the rest are
replicas) strung between two poles
on Llandudno beach. Zavicks laundry
is caught up in moral exegesis
on the joys of igniting the Atlantic
sunset with gaseous plumes,
offending a bunch of art directors
who are trying to shoot a Thomas
Cook travel commercial. I am a
tourist trapped in a Swedish movie
by Russian film director, Andre
Tarkovsky, you know the one
– Sacrifice – all time best picture &
f-ck Ingmar Bergman.
Supa’dog’s underpants are now
being sacrificed with a long slow
burn that is caught on multi-dimensional
digital chips and filtered
back to those of you who live
in the future – Ozzy Osbourne
burning a guitar like Jimi Hendrix
in a remix scene from Francis
Ford Coppolla’s Apocalypse Now
-- the attack on bourgois art theory
has begun, still we are living in
a pastiche of cross-referential
excess. What one desires, or
needs is 50seconds of WaWaWa,
how many WWWashinglines were
set on fire? According to Wikipedia
Washingline fires have started to
catch-on. The fire department is
worried. The mayor is no longer
taking calls, but wants a ban on
laundromat bonfires in place
before 2010.
With all this laundryline sampling
art, what next? A soap commercial
from Pears and Mary Quant?
Could soap become the next
bubble, as highbrow executive art
galleries are doomed to reproduce
in comic detail the artefacts of
the day, (mortgage bonds, class
traitors) what could be considered
theatre in the round dished up to
the well-healed, the sartorial few
who live on sushi lunches and
demand easily digested, and saleable
pap for bread.
The only solution lies in a total denial
of any form of representation.
In the same way it is impossible
to identify the water that forms a
river because a river can only exist
by the grace of its movement. The
sphinx has spoken. To the death of
art and an ode to its destruction.
(1) Emma Bedford and Tracy
Murinik Re-membering that place-
public projects in District 6. District
6 Public Sculpture Exhibition 1996.
[David Robert Lewis has written art
reviews for the Cape Times. His
involvement in visual arts includes,
Gallery Mau Mau, Sub Liberation
Underground, Invisible Graffiti,
Human Etchings, amongst other
things]
Nicola Danby, director of Artinsure – former head of BASA; Dr Fred
Scott, well-known art collector and speaker at the event; with Gordon
Massie, MD of Artinsure who has brought his international expertise to
South Africa and partnered with Hollard to deliver specialist insurance for
investors in art.
Bottem: (left to right) Lee-Ann Dobrescu, Operations Manager of Hollard
Insurance Partners; Clive Kellner, head of the Johannesburg Art Gallery
and Gordon Massie, MD of Artinsure
Art is big business and growing
steadily despite financial world crashs
There has been an unprecedented
growth in the value of art globally
and South Africa is keeping pace,
said Nicola Danby, director of Artinsure
– formerly head of BASA.
She was speaking at a recent
event held by Artinsure and Hollard
in Johannesburg to discuss
the ‘value of art in the South
African context’ with leaders in
the field who gathered to hear art
insurance expert, Gordon Massie
and well-known collector Dr Fred
Scott talk on the subject.
“Latest annual figures of global
art sales are $25 billion with a
19% increase in value last year,
particularly in contemporary pieces
created from 1960 onwards,” MD
of Artinsure, Gordon Massie, said.
He pointed out that the last time
the financial world crashed in the
80s the value of art crashed with it.
“But this time the development has
been different with the art world
being bolstered by investors from
Middle East Royal Families and
BRIC countries: Brazil, Russia,
India and China who have been
buying high value works in spite of
the shaky situation in the financial
world.” An example of this, he
said, was the fact that Damien
Hirst opened his solo show the
day after the Lehman Brothers
crash and AIG rescue plan and
netted himself a profit of $200
million. “Whilst there is evidence
of a correction taking place, Art
continues to sell as evidenced in
recent sales. At a major sale I was
at in early November an investor
said to me ‘You would not believe
there is a credit crunch going on
out there!’”
Massie says good news for local
investors is that well known South
African artists are also becoming
international brands and the local
market is experiencing significant
increases in values.
As an example, he explained
that if a South African investor in
art had spent 100 Euros on an
Irma Stern work in 1997, today it
would be worth 1500 Euros. “As
art develops into a truly attractive
investment, owners need to be
sure that their insurer appreciates
the true value of their art works.
There have been recent examples
where claims were inexpertly handled.
For instance in one specific
example, a R12 million painting
by a well known South African
artist was stolen and due to lack
of expertise, the insurer offered to
replace this premier painting with
another painting by the same art
ist. The trouble was the intended
replacement painting only had
a market value of R500 000.
Underwriting and evaluating art
is a specialist area and collectors
need to be sure they are protected
effectively against loss by people
who understand the art world and
true market values.”
Massie also demonstrated by
using true examples that fire is the
biggest risk to artwork followed by
accidental damage and then water
damage. “Whilst theft is a risk the
probability of a theft is lower than
these three risks,” Massie said.
Photo: Ryszard Kasiewicz
Artistic Director of
Documenta 13
Announced
The curator Carolyn Christov-
Bakargiev, and author of the
very first monograph on William
Kentridge, has been selected as
the artistic director of Documenta
13, scheduled for June, 2012, in
Kassel, Germany.
The CEO of Documenta and the
Fridericianum museum, Bernd
Leifeld, announced that the
supervisory board of Documenta
unanimously agreed to her appointment,
following a proposal
by the international ‘finding’
committee.
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev
is one of a new generation of
international curators and art
commentators on the fast track.
She is familiar with South African
art, mainly through her association
with William Kentridge, whose
local retrospective of 2004 she
co-curated.
She has just had a major
international success as artistic
director of the Sydney Biennale,
but is based at the Castello di
Rivoli museum of contemporary
art in Turin as chief curator. From
1999 to 2001 she was at the PS1
contemporary art centre in New
York.
Christov-Bakargiev graduated
magna cum laude from the University
of Pisa, Faculty of letters
and philosophy, in 1981. Her
master thesis was on the relation
between contemporary poetry and
painting.
Her appointment to the highly-visible,
globally-influential post as
director of Documenta 13, comes
with high kudos. The ‘finding’
committee reads like a who’s-who
of the contemporary art world:
Joseph Backstein (director,
Institute of Contemporary Art,
Moscow), Manuel J. Borja-Villel
(director Museo Nacional Centro
de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid),
Kathy Halbreich (associate director
Museum of Modern Art, New
York), Paulo Herkenhoff (formerly
director of Museu Nacional Belas
Artes, Rio de Janeiro), Oscar
Ho (Chinese University of Hong
Kong), Udo Kittelmann (director
Museum für Moderne Kunst,
Frankfurt), Kasper König (director
Museum Ludwig, Köln), Elizabeth
Ann Macgregor (director Museum
of Contemporary Art, Sydney) and
Rein Wolfs (artistic director of the
Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel).