OPINION
Storm Janse van Rensburg interviews Gavin Jantjes, appointed artistic director of the Cape African Platform in November last year. Jantjes' brief at CAPE is to direct a major international art event in Cape Town later this year.
As well as an artist who exhibits internationally, Jantjes was a council member of the Arts Council of Great Britain from 1986 to 1990, during which time he was responsible for the development of the Arts Council's policy on cultural diversity. He served as a trustee of the Whitechapel Gallery from 1986 to 1994 and was an adviser to the Tate Gallery in Liverpool, from 1992 to 1995 and a senior lecturer at the Chelsea College of Art from 1986 to 1998. From 1989 to 2003, he worked as the artistic director of one of Scandinavia's largest contemporary galleries the Henie-Onstad Kunstsenter in Oslo, Norway.
Jantjes will curate the Cape Platform's special manifestation in September of 2006. Prior to this appointment, Jantjes was artistic director of the Henie-Onstad Kunstsenter in Oslo, where he lives. He remains curator of contemporary exhibitions at the National Gallery of Art Architecture and Design in Oslo, Norway.
Storm Janse van Rensburg: Criticism surfaced during the SESSIONS eKapa last year regarding your appointment as artistic director of the Cape Africa Platform, with the reasoning that since you have spent most of your career and adult life outside of South Africa you are out of touch with the realities of a local context. It implies a 'foreignness', and this somehow disqualifies you from leading an event such as this. What is your response to this perception?
Gavin Jantjes: The only thing I can say is that people who have those impressions are misinformed.
SJvR: What is your impression of the debates during the SESSIONS eKapa specifically, and more generally, of the state of the visual arts in South Africa today?
GJ: The impression I have of SESSIONS eKapa is that it was a missed opportunity and I think that reflects the state of the South African art. I think there were some important debates and contributions from the speakers, many of whom really worked hard and put forward important material, the majority of which people maybe felt was over their heads? I didn't think so.
I thought there were important ideas which we should have tackled. Even if we felt we hadn't entirely understood them, we should at least have tackled that aspect. So I think we missed the opportunity and that is an indication that there is a huge need for many more debates so that we actually become familiar with talking to each other, with extracting information, exchanging information and developing ideas for ourselves.
We need to make sure that if somebody puts the skeletal framework of an idea on the table, we are ready to react to it, to put some flesh to the bone of that skeleton and develop something constructive for ourselves.
I also think that the way we reacted to some of the issues that were raised, particularly in the hectic third day, was perhaps not the best way forward. I think the issues that were raised on that day are very real concerns of South African art and we shouldn't undermine what was being raised, despite the way it was done and the reaction that it got from both the floor and other speakers. I think again it was a question of carefully listening through what was being said and analysing it and using the information that was being put forward in strategies... but we didn't do that. So yes, a missed opportunity.
SJvR: During the Visual Arts Network of South Africa (VANSA) conference held recently in Cape Town, you criticised the Department of Arts and Culture for the lack of visual arts policy, amongst other things. In a conversation we had in Durban last year I got the impression that you have a very good relationship with the current minister of Arts and Culture, Pallo Jordan, and enjoyed good access to the Department. How do you see your role as artistic director in light of this - i.e. would you use this opportunity for advocacy and lobbying, or are your concerns at this point event-specific?
GJ: I've always lobbied ministers, whether they are ministers in South Africa or in England, in Germany or Norway. Wherever I've worked I've lobbied them and some ministers have been wonderful. Jack Lang, for example, was an extraordinary arts minister who had an enormous amount of power and therefore could do lots of things, as his particular structure allowed him to do that.
But by and large ministers are individuals who run departments and ministers may have ideas and may put forward plans but those plans are executed by departmental workers and in that area we are lacking. There is a lot that can be done and a lot that can be changed. The ministries are lacking expertise and I think what we can do - and it's not just up to me, I'm not here to solve the problems of the South African art scene - is give constructive criticism to the Ministry.
We should work with it rather than simply bash it over the head. You don't want to have a ministry that is so afraid to interact with the arts community that it becomes frigid and therefore does all the wrong things yet again. I think they should be aware that, yes, if they approach arts institutions such as VANSA, we will not only point out what is critically incorrect and ask them to address those bad policy ideas but also help them to find ways to correct them. So I think that the partner aspect of that relationship is vital.
SJvR: What impact do you think the Cape Africa Platform could have on the visual arts sector? Why do we need events such as this?
GJ: I don't really know what it will do at the end of the day. I hope it will show what is possible with limited resources because even though people may think that there are vast resources for this exhibition, by comparison to what I'm normally used to working with, the resources are actually very, very limited. I have made exhibitions for individual artists for the same amount as we are spending on the entire manifestation.
So this is something that one should be aware of. It's about seeing what we can do with what's available and how we can make the best of it instead of just saying we can't. The things we can't do, we can't do full stop, but the things we can do, let's do them very, very well. Perhaps that's the impact CAPE can make.
SJvR: What has your process of working and research entailed to date, given the short lead-up to the event in September?
GJ: At the moment I'm trying to find spaces and trying to get a sense of where we can place this exhibition and that'll take some time. I'm also trying to build teams: curatorial teams, international advisory teams and trying to work out where we are going to travel to for our research and how we are going to capitalise on the information that this research produces. These are essentially the things we've been doing in the very few weeks since I arrived.
We have also been refining our concept and we'll make an announcement outlining that concept soon.
SJvR: The name of the event implies participation from the rest of the continent. To what extent will it be realised within the framework of your vision?
GJ: I think what I'm really trying to do is to look at this vast continent of Africa, the largest continent on the planet, and simply be realistic and say that we cannot address all of it. It is impossible for any one exhibition to do that.
What I will try to do is to select from what I know and what my colleagues and advisors and curators know to be the best contemporary results in the arts world of Africa and bring those to Cape Town and present them in a way that allows people in this city to learn something about the African continent as a whole. I think - I hope - that what will be surprising is just how differentiated Africa really is. How highly complex it is. In certain moments it is utterly modern and utterly up to date and in other moments it simply isn't that and I think that complexity is what we hope to reveal.
SJvR: The SESSIONS eKapa attempted to articulate other forms and spaces for the mega-exhibition. Firstly, will the Cape Africa Platform be a mega-exhibition, and secondly, will it challenge the format of the traditional large scale biennale-type event? If so, in what way?
GJ: I don't want to say too much about that right now as a lot of that will be revealed at our press launch, (in mid-March) so people will have to be patient. I will say that we have the desire to do two things: to show the best contemporary African art that we can and to show it in such a way that the city of Cape Town becomes the carrier of the exhibition.
That alone is a shift away from what I would call more conventional exhibitions that you generally see in South Africa. This convention, however, is changing in the rest of the world where these sorts of experiments have been done, largely on a smaller scale.
The last one was the Istanbul Biennial that looked at the city of Istanbul, in fact it was simply called 'Istanbul', and I think there are a lot of comparisons between what they were trying to do and what we are trying to do in terms of using the city as the vehicle for the exhibition.
SJvR: You bring considerable expertise and international contacts to this country, and I see your role as pivotal to the next phase of development in the South African visual arts sector. Is your tenure as artistic director of the Cape Africa Platform your only commitment to working here? Do you plan to return permanently or are there other South African projects in the pipeline?
GJ: That's a lot of questions to which I can possibly provide just a few answers. I am contracted to the CAPE Africa platform for 9 months to complete this exhibition. Then I have one other concrete plan which relates to South Africa and that is to develop a long term digital cultural archive for contemporary visual art which is currently being supported by the Ministry. Should this project take off I could find myself back here next year doing more of that.
There are many other options. I have many other commitments outside of South Africa, some of which I have to fulfill because I'm contracted to do so, then there are other projects which are being developed and which I will try and fulfill in someway. So my future is wide open and I like it that way.
Storm Janse van Rensburg is an artist and independent curator, and ex director of the KZNSA Gallery in Durban.
