April
Friday, April 1:
A project designed to link like minded art initiatives is introduced to me today by Dorothee Albrecht of Germany, who arrives at All Star with her video camera to take short statements from me about ArtThrob and Public Eye. Albrecht started working on Videoatlas in Europe, then India, then South Africa, and her next stop is Brasilia. She will make a DVD platform and an internet based archive. Contact: Netdoro@gmx.de
Sunday, April 3:
An exhibition several years in the planning is coming to fruition. Tosha Grantham, Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Art in Richmond, USA, is here to talk about 'Darkroom', an exhibition of South African photography and video based work to open at her institution, and then to tour.
We have coffee on the upstairs verandah of the trendy Metropole Hotel, accompanied by loud Sunday gospel singing from the top floor of the building across the road, and follow this with a studio visit.
Monday, April 4
Supposed to be leaving for Egypt on Wednesday for a workshop leading up to the 2nd Imagining the Book Biennale at the Alexdandria Library, but as yet there is no sign of the airticket which should have arrived by courier by now. Actually this is a relief. Extra time before I go would be a gift from heaven.
Interview at the SABC Studios in Sea Point with Nancy Richards of Fine Music Radio on the ArtThrob:the Archive 1998-2003 CDRom. (Every art lover needs one! Ask at your local bookshop or order through Editions for ArtThrob)
Next, swing past the National Gallery where Rosenclaire are finishing off the installation of their two up-ended bronze soap boxes on the lawns of the National Gallery. The concept is that these will provide a permanent platform for poets, performers, artists, singers, or whoever wishes to step up to the plate. The activities will be filmed by a camera and displayed real time on a screen within the gallery.
The boxes have been cast by the Stone Age Foundry in Simonstown from real corrugated cardboard cartons, old ones, showing signs of wear and tear, and on the green grass of the gallery lawn, they look humble and inviting enough for anyone to feel free to make use of them. A third element in the installation is a group of three gingko trees which have been planted in the centre of the lawn.
The opening is on Wednesday but I (probably) won't be here.
Veteran maestro Robert Hodgins opens tonight at the Joao Ferreira Gallery. The gallery is lined with his brilliant canvases and soon red spots start appearing next to them like mosquito bites on a steamy summers night.
Tuesday, April 5
The ticket arrives. So I have to go tomorrow.
Wednesday, April 6
The airline is Emirates. Quite comfortable. More legroom than usual. Land in Dubai in the early hours, and we are transported to a hotel for an eight hour stopover.
Thursday, April 7
Up to now, my impression of Dubai has been: white skyscraper with curved sail shape on beach, new city with sand just outside, no alcohol, good shopping, lots of expats. Expand on this mini knowledge with Cape Town artist Norman O'Flynn, also en route to Alexandria, by taking the local ferry up the 'creek' which splits downtown Dubai. Chug past the skyscrapers in gold and blue reflective glass and cross to the old part of the city, an area of shops and souks. Visit the Dubai museum, which pictures the city as a small trading town before oil changed its essential nature for ever.
The Sharjah Biennale opened yesterday, a short drive away, but the hotel advises against trying to make it over there - apparently the traffic can set like concrete, trapping cars for hours.
Arrive at the Kaoud Hotel on the Alexandria beachfront late at night.
Friday, April 8
I imagined the workshop would be taking place in the Alexandria Library, but it's in an art centre in an industrial area of the city. Each artist has been given a materials budget, for the purpose of making one piece for the Biennale, and processes available include metalworking, ceramics, mosaics, printmaking, bronze casting ...
Metal working? The intricate grilles and ironwork on Alexandrian buildings are one of the most attractive features of the local architecture. Ever since I was here last September, I've had an idea in my head of making a piece around an old hotel I saw then. Called the New Hotel Rich, its grand foyer indicated an illustrious past, but the outside of the building was streaked with ancient filth.
I ask if the metalworkers can make up a panel of three windows which match the curlicues of the Hotel New Rich. They can. The theme of the Biennale is 'Imagining the Book', so I am thinking of these three windows as pages in a book...
The other South African artists are Norman O'Flynn and Sonya Rademeyer. Norman will cast small sculptured oxen in bronze, and Sonya is making books of sand to lie between two video projections of her mouth emitting breath.
Saturday, April 9
So today it's off to rediscover the New Hotel Rich with my assistant Hany as interpreter and facilitator. No one has heard of it, and it's not even in the phone book, but we get there eventually. By a stroke of great good fortune,
Captain Atef Kosbar, a resident for thirty years is happy to talk about the hotel, which turns out to be one of the first two in Alexdandria, dating from 1905, built at the same time as the famous Cecil Hotel. Many famous people stayed here, and the summertime parties on the roof, overlooking the harbour, were legendary. Old press cuttings, which Hany translates from the Arabic for me, confirm this history.
One of the great values of artists' workshops are the opportunities of meeting ones peers from around the world. Each evening after the workshop sessions, two or three artists make short presentations on their work.
One evening, the genial Viye Diba from Senegal shows images of his finely realised abstract paintings. On another, the Ethiopian/Swedish artist Loulou Cherinet, currently exhibiting on 'Africa Remix' shows stills from a video in which she invited black men living in Sweden to sit around a table (after cooking them a very good dinner, says Loulou) and asked them to share their experiences concerning white women. Loulou's father is black, her mother, white. "You dig where you stand", says Loulou, explaining her choice of subject.
Sunday, April 10
Each day, a minibus leaves the workshop twice so the artists can drive around and get the materials they need. This driving around the back streets of the city, hunting down tools, glass, paint, brass letters, whatever, going into the small shops and rooting around is one of the most enjoyable parts of the day.
Monday, April 11
My piece needs glass, which will be engraved with the stories told by Captain Kosbar in English (by me) and in Arabic (by Hany). Get the glass today. Engrave it.
Tuesday, April 12
Go to the Library today for the first time to choose an exhibition space in one of the two large halls. A lot of the artists are already well into the installing process. Artistic director Mohammed Abouelnaga has chosen as a parallel theme to 'Imagining the Book', 'the Desert', which he sees as capable of being interpreted in many ways, physical or metaphorical. There is quite a lot of sand around.
Back at the hotel, read through the brochure on What to do in Alexandria.
Who could resist an entry from the King Mariout Motel which promises:
INTERNATIONAL SQWACH COORT
BELIARD ROOM
BUSINESE MEAL CENTER
ABILITY TO MAKE WADING PARTY, BIRTHDAY AND OTHER PARTY IN AND OUT OF THE MOTEL
Wednesday, April 13
By mid afternoon, I have finished my piece and take it over to the Library. Hang it. Lighting will be done first thing tomorrow.
Thursday, April 14
The opening is at noon, and is not marked, as such events so often are, by lengthy speeches. A band plays. William Wells of the Townhouse Gallery in Cairo arrives with a party of British curators and a group of Egyptian artists. Nelso Herrera from the Havana Biennale is here, and Simon Njami, curator of 'Africa Remix.'
The opening is followed by an amazing seafood lunch for the artists in an old part of the city.
At nights we have been going to the Portuguese club, the haunt of out-of- condition expat males playing darts, but it is one of the few places in Alexandria where alcohol is served, and we always have fun there. Tonight the karoake machine arrives with predictable ear-offending results.
The phone in my hotel bedroom rings at 4.30 a.m. Wayne Barker, from Johannesburg. Explain I am in Egypt but he is intent on discussing something I wrote about him. Can't remember it, and finally realise he is talking about a piece written nine years previously. Be careful to whom you give your cell number.
Friday, April 15
First day of the conference. I was taken aback some days earlier to be handed a programme and see that I was listed as one of two speakers on one of the main panel of the day - the other speaker being Simon Njami. My subject is to be the latest trends in contemporary art in South Africa. Unaware that this responsibility was going to be thrust upon me, I have not brought material, but the ArtThrob Archive CDRom rescues me and supplies with the visuals I need.
Simon talks most interestingly on 'Africa Remix' and its mixed reception in the UK. Salah Hassan was supposed to be here too, but he hasn't arrived.
Loulou's last night. Lots of dancing, first at the Portuguese Club, then at one of Alexandria's rare bars, Sheikh Ali, where it is once again reggae night.
Saturday, April 16
Day two of the conference, and there is a panel discussion on the Biennale, its strengths and its weaknesses. Simon says there are too many Egyptian artists on the show. He tempers this remark by saying he has had to say in the past in Bamako that the Malian artists should be standing back on that occasion. A biennale, says Simon, should be truly international, and only the best local artists should be showing alongside their colleagues from the rest of the world.
Eric van Hove is an artist who was born in Cameroun, studied in Belgium and now lives in Tokyo. His performance takes place this afternoon. Concerned with text, he has chosen one of the oldest parts of the city to write his poem for the city of Alexandria. Bending down on the narrow street, he starts to write in white chalk, a poem of one long sentence that continues for street after street. Eric never looks up or rises from his hunched and concentrated writing position, discarding each piece of chalk as it finishes, taking another from a pocket, writing round children who deliberately stand in his way, evading traffic, horses until after more than an hour, the performance is ended, and he stands at last and walks rapidly away.
Sunday, April 17
Everyone is going up to Cairo today to go to an opening at The Townhouse on their way out of the country, but I must change hotels, and will start a new project tomorrow in El Max, so am too exhausted to even contemplate the journey.
Wednesday, April 20
This week, since Monday, I have been working again in El Max, the fishing community which is a part of the city of Alexandria. Assisted by Mohammed Mansour who helped me last time, I have continued the project I started last September. I am working with local residents to write messages on the outside walls of their houses, expressions of their feelings of living in this embattled community. I have enjoyed renewing the acquaintances I made then. One day Egyptian photographer Nabil Boutros comes out to see what is happening in El Max.
Friday, April 22
Fly back to Cape Town.
Wednesday, April 27
Freedom Day. Young photographer Mikhael Subotzky is showing his own work and photographs he workshopped with prisoners at Pollsmoor Prison. Seems like the right kind of event to take place on this particular holiday, and certainly the process of being handstamped with the Pollsmoor stamp, handing in cellphones and being admitted through metal doors heightens the senses. All the prison staff seem excited that such an event could take place within the walls, and the opening programme includes speeches by prison staff and Ahmed Kathrada, and singing by the prison choir. All the while the hum of prison voices and sounds surrounds us.
