A Letter To Us, The Disenfranchised Artists

With the vanishingly little being done by government to tackle issues affecting artists during this global pandemic, a sprouting crop of disgruntled creative continue to fight for the rights of custodians of social conscience – artists.

And while our present minister has embarked on a rampaging blame game directed at artists, which has sadly gained a foothold carved by a complacent media structure, we observe a further isolation that impedes progressive creativity being fashioned to strangle to the arts in the country.

The chasm between the art community’s purported aims and those of “social cohesion” as a mandate for the department of arts and culture is ever widening, with artists opting to work in silos and independent of support from the powers that be.

But there is the general vitriolic disparagement meted at artists’ demands by the ministry, and the blatant ignorance of our plight that is characteristic of agencies meant to foster the growth of the arts.

To date, the majority of artists occupy an economic spectrum that marginalises them and further stacks a plethora of challenges against them. Poverty, homelessness, lack of health care resources, let alone infrastructure for creative output are but a few of the challenges we face daily.

And whilst we encounter rampant corruption at each turn, artists seem already predisposed to corrupt dealings with patrons and agencies, and this disheartening realisation has bred a despondency and complacency that borders on complicit behaviour with those who hold the keys to the vaults.

For instance, the indignant responses to IAM4Arts activists by the NAC authorities when interrogating financial mismanagement of funds allocated the arts, is but one example of how trivially artists grievances are taken by government, and this common and dim-witted technique has actually worked to disrupt and frustrate the course.

Dodgy subscribers and group members working (trolling) to derailing discussions through inflammatory remarks, pushing all limits of human decency, have become common-place occurrences around forums aimed at discussing challenges faced by the artists, thus sublimating the gravity of their demands. 

So, how can artists choose to insulate themselves from the rampaging machine of structural corruption glossed with Technicolor sheen of respectability?

Should artists abandon all prescriptive versions of radicalism and fashion an art weaponised against society?

Should conceptual artists craft derogatory depictions of our current oppression, sculptors carve obscenities of our leaders, while painters splatter disparaging imagery on walls of authoritarian enterprises that govern all platforms of expression?

Shouldn’t our music now become slogans of rage against a monstrosity of anti-art sentiments we observe among this desensitised chorus of ageing ministers burying themselves beneath fluffy pillows of nostalgia about their love for culture?

Are artists to remodel protest culture of the past, towards a reactionary, extremist art movement, pelting spears to frustrate all concepts of social cohesion espoused by charlatans and ideologues in power?

And how are we to go about sabotaging institutions that are fundamental to societal norms to our benefit and defacing memorials and renaming streets by names of corrupt leaders?

Are they truly concerned about corruption in the industry if they view artists as perpetually offended victims, who are always biting the hand that feeds them, and continually obfuscating their sinister plot to eradicate art in the country?

Exaggeration and moral self-defence by authorities further escalates when the reshuffling of parliament seems to have been a slap in the face of offended artist activists.

As though the arts required policing, the self-same executioners of Marikana victims worked hand in glove to keep the status quo intact, where arts and culture are mere décor for the decaying decadence of the elite.

Many artists are now inundated with mass campaigns to discredit their works, all this happening through a large number of tactics aimed at terrifying them into silence or withdrawal.

Social media profiles are stalked and mainstream hashtags that haunt and taunt targeted persons, go beyond racialist rhetoric, pitting various demographics against each other, with the prevailing public notion being that black artists suffer more than the rest.

And the actual danger of a segregated and fragmented artistic assault on the disempowering system of government funding and support for the arts and culture practitioners, is likely far fetched an idea, but we are here still confronting the brutal denialism of power.

We, as artists, still forge a unity beyond unionised dogmatic bodies, instead of resorting to racial stereotypes and tropes used to divide social collectives since time immemorial.

And together, even at the risk of alienating the powers that be, we need find a new lexicon for our rage, and work to dismantle our reliance on the scraps thrown at an entire population of memory-keepers, storytellers and preservers of collective memories.

Khahliso Matela  

Water - A Khahliso Matela Video Poem

 

Reflections On Residencies By Khahliso Matela

A vast array of inquiries are being undertaken by various artists around the world, most of these efforts are constrained expressions of art works produced during a time of ecclesiastical uncertainty. 

Through this unprecedented isolation, many have found and modeled new portals of self-proclamation. The digital sphere is filled with individuals glued to devices, yearning for connections that go beyond the normative.

Creative practioners are dissecting societies now confined in isolated spaces, they, like surgeons or psychologists are conducting experiments on a populace feeling the pangs social exclusion. These experiments are intersectional, in that a plethora of disciplines are used to interrogate interlinked situations within a transformed public life. 

And seeing how in the course of approximately three years, a pandemic has brought devastating socio-economic changes across the globe, it has become pivotal to find methods of transforming anxieties into fruits of research and artistic practice, where the widespread suspension of social and economic norms also opens up a space to rethink our values and ways of life. 

This period has also resulted in an experiment of video poems I have dubbed Projections Of/In Isolation, which entail a variety of visual compositions projected on corrugated steel wall of shacks that are common forms of residential architecture for vast communities of South Africa. During the pandemic, most of the visuals projected entailed service delivery protests as symbolic of an expression of resilience for squatter camp based peoples from various walks of life.  

And being always engaged in enquiry that interrogates the interwoven nature of art and its sources, I wondered what symbolic resonance would be felt through projecting these images of squatter camps on walls of a European Metropolis such as Leipzig or Berlin. 

In my neighborhood, people have discovered that art can heal us in these sordid times, and know that creative practitioners are devising practical responses to this pressing need to rethink relations in the world. This awareness has allowed many to marvel at some of my Projections, even though the concept is undeniably foreign to many people.

But, in this same environment, isolation is felt and expressed in a variety of ways. Isolation from economic activities and therefore exclusion from social affluence has left many venting out extremist sentiments which have simmered even more excruciatingly during lockdowns.

These video poems are an interrogation of what emotional impacts does isolation have on a society whose places of residence allow not for luxuries such as social distancing and sufficient health care. The projections are both testament of a cluttered life forced into smaller spaces that confine and hinder our projections of fear, awe and mere discomfort. 

And in reflecting on my participation at the Radical Film Network Berlin Meeting, as well as the Quarantine Residency, where during this highly engaged period within a global art world isolation is a topic of much consternation, I feel that I have indeed been afforded an invaluable opportunity to participate in a collective exploration of confined persons in often impersonal spaces, or rather de-personalizing spaces such as crowds of protesters.

During the course of the residencies I have engaged in discussions with renowned artsist working at the fringes of radical expression that merges all disciplinary aethetics, and they all echo a deviousand curious poetry that should be the sound and sight of our paralyzing present futures.

As a video poet, therefore, I intend to continue crafting more projections of new imaginings and video compositions, most of which are already being created quietly, and evidently slowly due to national lockdowns and quarantine protocols that govern our present social and artistic activities.

Through this introspective gaze into possibilities ushered by exposure to people confronting transformation within their own isolation, persons coming to terms with their inner voids elsewhere on the planet while I am confined by some existential powerlessness, yet another journey commences. 

This journey is an inter-disciplinary approach to producing video art, which will remain my fundamental method of expression throughout this new journey, and this chosen line of enquiry is about the permanent effects on isolated persons within a collective model of a nature that has indefinately rendered all of us useless and yet radicalized towards extreme reactions to our rages and surging anxieties.

The forth-coming series’ clinical approach will allow for chance operations that will be improvised image manipulations and reintepretations of inner turmoils of selected persons projecting the hostage nature of their situations. These bizzarely video activist interventions from a vantage point of individuals shuttering an age of decaying decadence, will form a narrative exclamation of a reclamation of humanness in the face of disconnection. 

Fashion Statement - A Khahliso Matela Video Poem

Listening to monotonous sounds of sewing machines rattling in a dressmaking studio nearby, I am left wondering what effect would such a constant supply of auditory assaults have on a child threading their nimble fingers through consoles whirring in dim hums that never leave ears even during sleep.

And having observed just how the garments manufacturing industry is so inundated with exploitative labor practices, one can only wonder how did such a beautiful art find itself at the heart of modern day slavery, which spans its tentacles from cultivation of cotton, throughout production chains that strangle all sphere is life on tour fragile planet.

But how or why did our species end up needing clothes? 

Another thought rears its gaze and asks: “Were garments reactionary crafty devices to help our fragile bodies in times of inclement weather? 

Did climatic conditions solely determine the evolution of garments within human groups living is disparate conditions?

And considering various epochs of our evolution and humanity’s progressive development of tools to carve a civilization that would include garments, how did gender become a determining factor for specific designs?

Why did most cultures that developed outside of the European colonial canon, seem to have evolved different utilization methodologies for garments that were not rooted in gender?

Are these divergent utilitarian purposes of garments in various cultures deterministic of identities and their orientations in regards to sexuality, religious inclinations, gender and age?

It has been evinced that many Oriental cultures have donned “twin-legged” garments for ages, and not on gender basis, as much as certain European males wore heels to elevate their or posture or perhaps stature.

This then further leads me to ask: “When did the masculinization of trousers in western culture occur, for instance, within the overall history of garments?

Were garments created to conceal our nakedness as a species that was growing ashamed of itself?

Did genitalia determine these “genderized designs”, now applied and implied tools of bodily concealment?

What determined which genitalia deserved more concealment, for instance?

And how did this separation of garments through gendered lenses evolve a more deviant misogyny as evident in a masculine culture that associates men with trousers and women with heels?

How did this subordination of one sex by another through garments evolve further to exploit the very craft of garment production through employment of child labor?

I always found it intriguing that in most ancient cultures making of garments was central to familial bonds, thus garments were made by nurturers of each unit, as opposed by factories full of blistered hands of underpaid workers. 

Therefore, how did such an art that embraced identity differentiation fostered by collective efforts become usurped to become a ploy for self-gratification; when a privileged other finds expensive shoes made by a child slave as symbol of their success?