Project
by Chad Rossouw
Hijacking the Real World Online: Touching Moments by the Young Curators Workshop
http://southafricannationalgallery.blogspot.com/
Cape, the organisation, earned a bad reputation after the Cape '07 disaster. But, even though they landed that event on a wing and a prayer, they haven't given up yet. Rumour has it that there may indeed be a Cape '09. Regardless of any judgement on the proficiency of that organisation, one the things they have been doing well is their Young Curator's Workshop, originally facilitated by Gabi Ngcobo, and now run by Robert Weinek, it seems to be training its five members well and with variety.
One of their most recent workshops saw them inviting bad boy artists, collaborative pair Douglas Gimberg and Christian Nerf, to facilitate a session. Gimberg and Nerf have been active lately with several box-shifting projects such as the interactive symbol destruction Carpentry 101, the myth-building boat-building One More Day to Regret, and the devilish group show Hell Yeah. Inviting them was bound to produce something interesting, even if it's not the education the Young Curators' mothers would want them to have.
One of the myths of Internet art is that it has to be interactive, or about the Internet to be considered Net Art. However, one the Internet's best qualities is its ability to store ideas and other ephemera in an accessible way. This makes it an ideal tool for artistic production outside of those myths. The fact that the Internet can be incredibly user-friendly allows artist to be subversive, or at least challenging towards institutions, without having to use traditional channels for art production. The project facilitated by Gimberg and Nerf, South African National Gallery: Touching Moments uses these two points to good effect.
The basic premise is a series of photographs taken inside the South African National Gallery itself, not of work but of the seedy underside that is often hidden within the Gallery's aura of Art with a capital A: a dirty corner, a paper wedge, a dent in the wall, a light leak and a scratch on the floor. The Young Curators were then asked to curate these into a show called Touching Moments through the use of text on the website http://southafricannationalgallery.blogspot.com. The results are humorous, but also offer insight into the functions of language in art, as well the way institutions validate art.
The show exists in the National Gallery, if you want to spend R15, and some time looking for it. They even had an opening on the steps outside one rainy afternoon, with rambling speeches by Ronald Suresh Roberts and Barend De Wet. But it exists online too, where this quirky hijacking is perhaps more functional. And if we and the Young Curators learn anything, it is that the Real World of Art is not inviolable.
On a slightly different note, last month's project www.artthrob.co.za/08jun/project.html used Google Maps to document a moment in history. Another project, using a similar approach is documenting history as it happens. With all the current tension about Zimbabwe's election crisis, http://www.sokwanele.com/map/all_breaches provides an interesting intersection between art and politics.
