IT'S 'CAPE AFRICA' TIME

The Cape Town second biennale exhibition of contemporary African Culture started today and will run until the 21st June. I was in Long Street this afternoon but, unfortunately, couldn’t wait for the “Walk Into The Night”, one of the events scheduled for the opening:

“Borrowing its title from the acclaimed novel by Capetonian author Alex La Guma, A Walk Into the Night is an innovative project inspired by the history of the Cape Town Carnival. It is centered around a one hour-long procession with new work by visual artist Marlon Griffith, music composed by Garth Erasmus and curated by Claire Tancons. Inspired by the traditions of the Cape Town and Trinidad carnivals and West African shadow puppets it was conceived by Marlon Griffith as an "invisible masquerade". A Walk Into the Night is a processional shadow play, with various elements worn or carried by a multitude of a hundred participants, casting shadows onto horizontal and vertical planes along the itinerary of the procession, from hand-held white screens, to buildings, the sidewalk and the ground, participants and audience members.”


But one of these days I must make my way to Khayelitsha's Lookout Hill to see the work of my compatriot Antonio Ana, “Etona”, scheduled to feature in the Umahluko segment:

"Umahluko is a Nguni word, loosely translated as "difference". It is through the body, understandings of the self and its relation to time and space, that we can closely interrogate and celebrate that which is different.
The notion of identity remains a pivotal and prevailing theme in both social politics and contemporary art practice, as people express their concerns about who they are, who they have been, and who they are becoming in our society. Identity is however, never a unified or singular concept, it is rather a complex, fragmentary experience constantly in the process of being destructed and reconstructed, defined and redefined, while locating ourselves in a particular time and space.
As it has many implications, ‘Umahluko’ in terms of this exhibition, implies that which is not self and not like self in many respects but not limited to cultural, socio-economic, socio-political, gender, sexuality and personal experiences, on both individual and collective planes.
The binary opposites of "self/other", "‘black/white", "male/female", "urban/rural", "local/global" and "inside/outside", amongst others, are fundamental differences that constantly locate and dislocate us on various levels of social strata. It is this (dis)location that is inescapable, and more often than not, it becomes an imperative governing production processes for many artists.
In the same breath, this (dis)location provides a positive breakthrough. It becomes an assessment allowing for the appreciation of difference."

{Get more here}

The Cape Town second biennale exhibition of contemporary African Culture started today and will run until the 21st June. I was in Long Street this afternoon but, unfortunately, couldn’t wait for the “Walk Into The Night”, one of the events scheduled for the opening:

“Borrowing its title from the acclaimed novel by Capetonian author Alex La Guma, A Walk Into the Night is an innovative project inspired by the history of the Cape Town Carnival. It is centered around a one hour-long procession with new work by visual artist Marlon Griffith, music composed by Garth Erasmus and curated by Claire Tancons. Inspired by the traditions of the Cape Town and Trinidad carnivals and West African shadow puppets it was conceived by Marlon Griffith as an "invisible masquerade". A Walk Into the Night is a processional shadow play, with various elements worn or carried by a multitude of a hundred participants, casting shadows onto horizontal and vertical planes along the itinerary of the procession, from hand-held white screens, to buildings, the sidewalk and the ground, participants and audience members.”


But one of these days I must make my way to Khayelitsha's Lookout Hill to see the work of my compatriot Antonio Ana, “Etona”, scheduled to feature in the Umahluko segment:

"Umahluko is a Nguni word, loosely translated as "difference". It is through the body, understandings of the self and its relation to time and space, that we can closely interrogate and celebrate that which is different.
The notion of identity remains a pivotal and prevailing theme in both social politics and contemporary art practice, as people express their concerns about who they are, who they have been, and who they are becoming in our society. Identity is however, never a unified or singular concept, it is rather a complex, fragmentary experience constantly in the process of being destructed and reconstructed, defined and redefined, while locating ourselves in a particular time and space.
As it has many implications, ‘Umahluko’ in terms of this exhibition, implies that which is not self and not like self in many respects but not limited to cultural, socio-economic, socio-political, gender, sexuality and personal experiences, on both individual and collective planes.
The binary opposites of "self/other", "‘black/white", "male/female", "urban/rural", "local/global" and "inside/outside", amongst others, are fundamental differences that constantly locate and dislocate us on various levels of social strata. It is this (dis)location that is inescapable, and more often than not, it becomes an imperative governing production processes for many artists.
In the same breath, this (dis)location provides a positive breakthrough. It becomes an assessment allowing for the appreciation of difference."

{Get more here}