Bronwyn Law-Viljoen joins the David Krut Arts Resource
by Robyn Sassen
Bronwyn Law-Viljoen, the newest addition to the staff at David Krut Publishing (DKP), spoke to ArtThrob two months into the job of Managing Editor. After an eight-year long sojourn in New York, where she read for her PhD, Law-Viljoen has returned, to confront a career turnabout.
'I arrived [back in South Africa] on a Friday, and started working here on the Monday', she explained. Holding a PhD in English Literature from New York University, with a specialisation in 20th century literature, Law-Viljoen has no formal training in art history or fine art, but comments that her literary training and her photographer husband provide a dynamic insight into visual philosophy and the discourses informing aesthetics.
'When you do a PhD you are grooming yourself for an academic career,' Law-Viljoen conceded, 'I had assumed that that was what I was going to do.' She had taught from the time of her fourth year at university. But working on the PhD nurtures a passionate love for research. Granted the opportunity of working with the rare books collection at New York University, she gained some valuable training in archiving and exhibition strategy - 'I enjoyed the physical labour and the kind of research that it involved'.
Part of her work in this capacity was with the archives left by the American photographer Robert Alexander. He'd been fairly well known during the 1980s for his work with avant-garde dance and the Happenings movement, but had drifted from prominence in subsequent years. 'The process of creating a narrative on this person was based on documents. I learned in this work that archiving can be a very creative process and that creativity plays an intrinsic role in positing histories'.
She had first met David Krut in South Africa, after he'd responded to a review on Zwelethu Mthethwa that she'd written for ArtThrob and the Mail and Guardian, some years ago. They maintained contact ever since, on line and in person. This job represents a professional association coming to meaningful fruition.
As a formal academic, she enjoys the immediacy of the arts media. Within the ambits of her job, Law-Viljoen is learning to straddle the distinctions between different types of arts writing, and compares them cheekily to the difference between a one-night stand and a long term relationship. 'It is exciting to write to an editor, propose a story, write it and see it in print 10 days later', as opposed to the considerably lengthier process of writing articles in academic journals.
David Krut Arts Resource (DKAR) occupies a small shop front which doubles as a bookshop/gallery, with a large print workshop behind it, in Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood. When I visited, the shop front next to DKAR gallery had just been shelled and freshly painted, and an interleading doorway between the two shops had been created. This will be the new home of DKP.
The path ahead for her is exciting, but also rather unpredictable. Law-Viljoen looks forward with enthusiasm, but is aware of the sacrifices she might be making: 'My biggest challenge will be to try to continue to write'. Writing about art is very different from writing about literature, however, she acknowledges.
On DKP's agenda at the moment are two Taxi Art Books - the first on Willem Boshoff, which is due out during April, and which has been selected for the Exclusive Books' Homebru List. The second book is on Sandile Zulu. Following in the pattern established by Brenda Schmahmann's Through the Looking Glass published last year, DKP is currently working on a publication about the architecture of the Constitutional Court.
Law-Viljoen keenly acknowledges her role of translator to David Krut's visionary ideas. He has a reputation for brilliance in his ideas, and she fully appreciates that it is her job to capture as much of that brilliance on paper as she can.
