Archive: Issue No. 117, May 2007

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Dineo Seshee Bopap

Dineo Seshee Bopape
Naughty boy (detail) 2007
mixed media installation

Willem Boshoff

Willem Boshoff
SKOOB (detail) 2007
mixed media installation

Anawana Haloba

Anawana Haloba
Sound shower (detail) 2007
installation


Cape '07: Less is More, more or less
by Bettina Malcolmess

How do you begin a round-up review of the whole of 'Cape '07'? With exhibitions scattered around several smaller and larger venues often a 45 minute drive apart, it is difficult to decide where to start. Perhaps, the question is not where, but when. To get a sense of the whole of this event is difficult: it has a history and almost everyone in the small South African art world has a personal history with it. It was often as difficult to keep up with its name changes as the turnover of staff. Between 'Not-another-Bienale', 'TransCape' and finally 'Cape 07', are we really talking about the same event, or even the same organisation?

First of all let me say that overall the event called 'Cape '07' was, and still is a successful event. The small team that finally saw this show through to completion must be congratulated for co-ordinating the disparate spaces, as well as presenting an often engaging body of work. The same goes for the artists, many of whom paid for themselves and their work to be here, such as Willem Boshoff who drove down from Johannesburg with his artwork in the boot of his car. And finally, credit is due to the many performances, interventions and exhibitions that came through on the fringe, often with little or no budget. The history of the event called 'Cape '07', however, begins with a different name in very different circumstances.

My first experience of Cape Africa Platform was at the Cape Town International Convention Centre on the controversial closing day of its 'Sessions eKapa'. Following the vitriolic Rose-Goniwe-Geers 'debate' of the morning was a strange question-and-answer session between participants and organisers that pretty much sums up Cape Africa Platform's initially 'non-transparent' communication policy: there were no answers. This feeling was compounded by the absence of director Gavin Jantjes, due to a previous international engagement. While Jantjes' major curatorial decisions remained in place for 'Cape '07' (the ones who actually made it), absence and foreign engagement continued to be his Modus Operandi. Major sources of funding remained obscure and the objectives vague, with implementation and the role of the art community more so. All we knew was that this was to be 'not-another-bienale'. These words would ring all too true.

At follow-up press conferences certain things became clearer, others less so. The event would be called 'TransCape', and the Airports Company of South Africa (ACSA) would play a major funding role, as they had in the initial research for the event. I remember a certain ACSA apparatchik replying to a question concerning logistics for fringe events, that there would be 'no hand-outs'. With the ultimate failure of all major funders, including the Lottery, ACSA was not even able to provide for the transportation of the artists' works. A similar mixture of defensiveness and arrogance accompanied many of the Cape Africa Platform's press conferences, and I remember the climactic release of selected artists' names raising many questions about how the 'Lions of African Art' were chosen. Between expensive lunches at Heritage Square, and slickly edited marketing videos, all branded with Cape's signature yellow, it was often difficult to figure out where the art community stood. It sort of felt like being in a relationship with someone very good-looking who never calls you back, and whom you suspect is seeing other people but will never admit to it. And then when it became clear that funding would not come through, the entire event was postponed.

While many of the fringe exhibitions went ahead, a lot of overseas curators and artists lost interest, cancelling travel plans and pulling out of the show. While it became increasingly difficult to take the organisers seriously, the honesty about the cancellation of 'TransCape' saw a change to a more transparent communication policy. Many members of the original team, including the CEO, left, and it was a much smaller team that produced the event 'Cape '07'. Many of them have not received salaries for the last three months. With VANSA on board to co-ordinate the fringe and the involvement of many of my contemporaries and myself on 'XCape' there has been a sense of the need to pull together, and a do-it-ourselves attitude has shaped 'the lower-key' 'Cape '07'.

For me the biennale's biggest success lay in co-ordinating the separate venues across such vast distances, both physical and ideological. With art as passport we travelled the giddy distance between the National Gallery, the Castle, Khayelitsha's Lookout Hill, Spier Estate and Stellenbosch in a single afternoon on the official opening day. The opening day was characterised by an amazing energy and excitement.

Not all the venues met my expectations, but some outdid them. Returning to Lookout Hill and the US gallery in Stellenbosch, I have been repeatedly impressed by the work of South African artists, even though already familiar. There was a new emphasis on video work. The display of Dineo Bopape's Naughty Boy on a 50s kitchen unit bought on the side of the road in the township, decorated with stage lights and bubble wrap, was the most memorable site-specific installation. One wonders whether the quantity of video work was part of the initial curatorial concept or a contingency based on its easier transportation. The co-ordination of the three rooms at the Castle, with Anawana Haloba's haunting sound piece leading up to Mustafa Maluka and Thando Mama's work, was one of the most effectively curated spaces on the second art-route held on the night of April 4.

However, on returning for a daytime visit, with some of the ceiling speakers off, and the room less than dark, the Castle seemed strangely empty. The lack of attendance at venues on the non-art route days was one of the drawbacks of the work not being concentrated in a single space. Whether this scattering of work achieved its aim in bringing art to South Africans who are not usually part of our relatively small art-going public remains the question. In fact, it was often hard to tell the main event from the fringe and perhaps, given the scaling down of the main shows, the separation of 'XCape' from the official CAPE busses scattered attendance even more. Organisers who had taken schools on tours definitely drew in participants from the communities around them. Participation is however difficult to measure. During the official opening speech, many of the art-crowd had wondered down to a shebeen for lunch, while many Capetonians outside of art world circles could not interpret the yellow signage in the city, which was rather cryptic unless you were already familiar with Cape's brand.

On the official March 24 opening I was overwhelmed by the amount of art I'd been exposed to that day, and in the preceding week, but mostly I was overwhelmed by how separate these spaces remain. Asking pedestrians for directions in Khayelitsha, no-one had seemed to know of the Lookout Hill venue. There are two possible reasons for this: Lookout Hill is somewhat out of the way of main taxi and walking routes making it a not so 'public venue', or possibly it has another name. The successes and failures of 'Cape '07' must be thought of in the context of South Africa's, and particularly Cape Town's, divided landscape and the particular bias of arts funding towards community versus fine arts. We have a long way to go to create a taste and a profile for the place of contemporary art with the larger South African public. Perhaps the Biennale that made a false start as 'TransCape' should have begun with a more modest sales pitch. For me, the event called 'Cape '07' is a decent beginning.

Opened: March 24
Closed: May 2

CAPE Africa Platform
71 Buitengracht Street, Cape Town
Tel: (021) 488 3064
Fax: (021) 488 3061
www.capeafrica.org


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