A Winner at All Costs

Behind the Scenes at the 2010 MTN New Contemporaries

by Rat Western

Art Competitions are contentious. There is no novelty in that. Conspiracy theories abound, and this status quo is so typically expected that the majority in our field pay no more attention than they do to books hypothesising that aliens built the pyramids. The outcome is that art competitions are often considered with so much cynicism that the results often have no meaning past the financial reward gleaned by the winner.

I am no great fan of the competition. More often than not, it breeds bad feeling and green-eyed conceptual envy, something quite natural to the temperament of those who work in the creative field.  In theory, competitions have their place, particularly for emerging artists seeking a debut or for those looking to learn what is considered, by imagined experts, commendable practice. But more and more, the art competition begins to resemble yet another reality TV show, with the social and political dynamics superseding the content. And, like Idols, the initial entries and beginning phases sometimes provide by far the greater entertainment value than the finale.

At present, the majority of South African art competitions are heavily sponsored by corporate entities and, as there is no style guide on to how to present such initiatives, most competition events are so bedecked with corporate banners and logos that they resemble some kind of yellow or blue baubled Christmas event. There is confusion as to whether the corporate benefit is really tax-deductable social responsibility or a potential advertising opportunity. But we in the industry don’t dare say anything. The financial creative pie is so very small that we jump at our share, hoping for lots of corporate condiments.

Yet this does raise the question of who precisely is being honoured in the art competition: the artistic achiever or the generous donor? Neither party comes out looking too good. The artist appears as whore, prepared to compromise good taste and principles for a financial pat on the back, and the corporate, like some blundering, banner-waving bully, feels vindicated in their investment to brand the gallery to excess.

There is a slippage of expectations here, a disjuncture between what the artist would like from the sponsor and what the sponsor would like the artist to do or represent. There is a need for closer conversation.  As artists we seem to be so obsequiously grateful for the patronage that we are too afraid to speak out. And from the sponsors’ side, given that the integrity of the creative arts doesn’t feature prominently in their routine, 9-5 hierarchy of concerns, can we expect them to know any better if we do not speak up?

My recent experience as one of the judges for MTN New Contemporaries brought to light many misunderstandings or misconceptions relating to the expected roles played by all parties concerned.  It is given that certain expectations of confidentiality exist around these matters, even when there is no paper work to govern this. However, I am in favour of transparency, and think in some cases it is an absolute necessity for two crucial reasons. Firstly, to enhance the public understanding of the process of how judges arrive at decisions; and secondly, to reinforce fair practice by making it incredibly difficult to select unjustified winners on personal whims.

Access to information and public disclosure are hot topics at the moment, given the debate around the Protection of Information Bill. More specifically related to the field of art is the recent furore in the British press over the Turner Prize organisers, who attempted to prevent bad publicity of the event by insisting journalist photographers sign a legal document, a ham-fisted attempt to ensure that none of their images could be used in a way that might ‘result in any adverse publicity’ for the show.  (http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/oct/05/turner-prize-2010-shortlist-critics)

By comparison, the MTN New Contemporaries is incredibly small fry, but no less pertinent for us in South Africa.  A lack of clarity, some dubious integrity and appeal to a bureaucratic process that could not be altered at a moment’s notice left a somewhat sour taste in our mouths. The judges’ decision was not final.

So this is how the story ran. Four judges arrived at the KZNSA to view the finalists.  We were: Doung Anwar Jahangeer, Amos Letsoalo, Gabi Ngcobo and myself, Rat Western. There, we joined Brenton Maart, curator of the KZNSA, who was to be the fifth judge. A diverse group of people from varying backgrounds, practices and research interests. Yet despite this diversity, almost immediately after viewing the work we hit upon a decision.

We felt that the strength of the show as a whole was such that the artists should be equally awarded.  This was no inability to select a winner in the face of general mediocrity, as is often the case with such shows. More accurately, it was perhaps, by extension, an award to the curator, Nontobeko Ntombela, who had created such a powerful piece of curation that the show as a whole followed beautifully as a collective narrative of contemporary practice.

We did not believe this to be a particularly novel concept, nor were we rebelling against the formula of the competition, nor was our impulse egalitarian, i.e. that we wanted to state that all artists are equal. Sometimes there is one clear winner, but in this case there was an interesting turn from the Modernist idea of ‘single artist genius’ which we, as a group of judges, felt compelled to register in our decision. We debated this at length, over dinner that night and the next morning of the competition and were in equal agreement that whilst there were weaknesses in individual works, the collective narrative was incredibly strong.

Being able to define clearly why one person is a winner requires some justification, and what often is misunderstood is that such a selection may require an adjudicator to select a work they do not personally like, but that is conceptually and/or technically sound. A troubling part of this process was that it was not a requirement for us as judges to write a statement or report outlining the reasons for our selection; this basically left the matter open to our own integrity as individuals. We might just as well have made an arbitrary choice and spent the rest of the day on the Durban beach front.

Instead, we spent the day debating with MTN why and how our judgement would benefit the award in the long run. It was a judgement we had unanimously decided, an unusual occurrence in itself for a group of practitioners from a field populated with types stereotypically harder to herd than cats. But, we were informed, the issue remained this:  the award is designed for one winner and one winner only (despite a precedent in its first year where joint winners were announced). Any changes to this as a concept would need to be done long in advance, with the consultation of the MTN Foundation Board.

We held fast to our choice, reasoning well past the afternoon press release deadline, where the press were informed that we could not make a decision. This was not in fact wholly accurate, as we had reached a decision the previous day. The issue was that we were not complying with expectations for the competition, which in turn were not clearly defined before: we were not informed prior to viewing the work that a joint award was off the table, despite the fact that 2001’s precedent should have alerted the organisers to the probability of this eventuality.  We were also not given any finite or general criteria for making a selection, nor were we required to provide motivation for our selection. As such, we as a group created our own criteria, upon which we jointly agreed.

Eventually we were informed that if we did not select one person, MTN would withdraw all the awards: splitting the awards was not an option. Another consideration was the fact that most of the artists had exceeded their exhibition budgets, paying from their own pockets to complete their work: surely they would be resentful of the judging panel if our decision resulted in MTN’s withdrawal of all prize money, even the R5000 to which a runner-up would be entitled?

In the end, we chose to award the prize to Kemang Wa Lehulere, whose installation we felt captured best some of the other elements we had enjoyed so much about the show as a whole. But the circumstances were unpleasant, particularly what felt (at least to me) like bullying tactics on the part of the corporate. Later that evening, Gabi and I sat and wrote a statement in which we tried to outline our decision process diplomatically. But strangely, this statement never appeared in any of the subsequent press releases despite being forwarded in good time to the appropriate persons. What’s more, the first press release misspelled Wa Lehulere’s surname ‘Wa Luhelere.’

Whilst it was amazing to see the work of the artists, to engage with Ntombela’s curatorial process and to interact with my fellow judges. who I felt upheld a sense of integrity for our discipline, I left feeling that I was required to come play a puppet in a CSI marketing exercise. Much of this conflict and unpleasantness could have been avoided through clearer definitions of expectations. One wonders what the point of selecting people with certain field expertise is, if their opinions are not to be respected. I say this not because I cannot appreciate that certain spaces have their bureaucracy, but because there was an element of disrespect - starting with being made to sit in a room like naughty children in a principal’s office and being told that we are bad leaders, and ending with no public release of our judges’ statement. There has to be a better way; there ought to be greater transparency to the public. Despite the disparity in resources, respect between the art community and corporations should be mutual: otherwise, what starts out as a fantastic opportunity and generous sponsorship for young artists ends up as yet another billboard advert.