EXHIBITION SUMMARIES

A WALK INTO THE NIGHT

Borrowing its title from the acclaimed novel by Capetonian author Alex La Guma, A Walk Into the Night is an innovative project inspired by the history of the Cape Town Carnival. It is centered around a one hour-long procession with new work by visual artist Marlon Griffith, music composed by Garth Erasmus and curated by Claire Tancons. Inspired by the traditions of the Cape Town and Trinidad carnivals and West African shadow puppets it was conceived by Marlon Griffith as an "invisible masquerade". A Walk Into the Night is a processional shadow play, with various elements worn or carried by a multitude of a hundred participants, casting shadows onto horizontal and vertical planes along the itinerary of the procession, from hand-held white screens, to buildings, the sidewalk and the ground, participants and audience members

AMBULANT

Ambulant is a descriptive adjective meaning to move around from place to place. This piece, with the same name, is a performance one inspired by the street vendors in the avenues of Cotonou, Benin.
These vendors move around the city with their wooden suitcases (with a glass top window) filled with merchandise, and in most instances these suitcases contain daily life objects such as watches and sun-glasses, amongst others.
Meschac Gaba employs this idea of movement and has made a series of wooden suitcases which function as mobile showcases, filled with country flags and mundane everyday objects. In the piece,performers walk around Cape Town Station with these wooden suitcases, some filled with flags of different African and European countries and others with objects. It is a performance that references door-to-door as well as cross-border trade. In this, the notion of displacement across the city as well as that of people across interior and exterior borders is highlighted.

ART PAYS

Art Pays is an unlikely array of artists from vastly different backgrounds and disciplines.  They are Mary Faragher, Khanyi Mbongwa and Bulelwa Basse (three poets), Kai Lossgott (a conceptual artist), Rampedi Molefe and Bangikaya Maqoqa (two painters), and Daya Heller (a sculptor).  Together, they share a belief in public art and performance.  They did not choose each other as collaborators. 

At the beginning of 2008, a group of young creatives was selected by CAPE from a pool of entries.  Over a year, that initial group of around 32 shrunk to a core group of seven, which later named itself Art Pays.  Despite the many disappointments, they kept coming back because they all believed that as artists they could accomplish more as a collective than as individuals.  For CAPE 09 their two public performances - one on the steps of St George’s Cathedral, the other planned for the Golden Acre shopping mall - are the results of this process and the issues that emerged from their conversations.

CHIMURENGA LIBRARY

Chimurenga (Cape Town), a non-profit publication of writing, art and politics has been in print since 2002. The journal has featured work by emerging as well as established voices including Lesego Rampolokeng, Santu Mofokeng, Sefi Atta, Keorapetse Kgositsile, Gael Reagon, James Matthews, Binyavanga Wainaina, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, Amitav Ghosh, Boubacar Boris Diop, Chimamanda Adichie, Goddy Leye, Mahmood Mamdani, Eduardo Agualusa, Achille Mbembe, Greg Tate, and many more.
Chimurenga is published on paper two/three times per year, online monthly (www.chimurenga.co.za) and through themed performances called Chimurenga Sessions. Other Chimurenga projects include "Chimurenganyana", a series of street-circulated monographs; Chimurenga Library (www.chimurengalibrary.co.za), an internet based, ongoing archive of independent pan African real and fictional periodicals; "African Cities Reader" (www.africancitiesreader.org.za), an annual compendium of writing and art on African cities; Chimurenga also contributes to the Pan African Space Station (www.panafricanspacestation.org.za), a live music and radio intervention in Cape Town."

THE FIRST OFFICIAL PROVISIONAL FYNBOS MUSEUM OF THE GREATER KHAYELITSHA AREA

This is a temporary botanical garden – the first of its kind in South Africa – designed specially for a site outside the Lookout Hill Tourism Centre in Khayelitsha.  For the week following the opening of the Fynbos Museum on May 2, its curators will host a series of talks, garden walks and teas in order to acquaint the public with the practice of provisional gardening and its potential to transform South Africa’s urban environmnts efficiently and nonintrusively. 
We call this project a "museum" rather than just a "garden" because botanical gardens are living museums and are as, if not more, important for the preservation of elements of South Africa's  heritage as traditional museums are. In this museum live fynbos plants thrive in the barren soil of Khayelitsha, which, in 1984, the former apartheid government of South Africa recognised was unlikely to yield any plant-life other than useless coastal grass.
We believe that having an awareness of one's heritage impacts how one envisages the future, and this museum is deeply invested in how the people of Cape Town imagine their natural environment in years to come. To this end, some fynbos plants are displayed in special "simulacrum kiosks" that offer viewers a glimpse of what Cape Town's most degenerate urban environments could one day look like with the help of a few cubic tonnes of topsoil and the mass-dispersal of fynbos seeds.
The personnel at The First Official Provisional Fynbos Museum of the Greater Khaylitsha Area are not sure how long the museum will survive in the form in which it exists at the opening. We hope it doesn’t burn down or blow away.  We hope people don’t steal bits of it when no one is looking. Whatever happens to it, once The First Official Provisional Fynbos Museum of the Greater Khayelitsha Area no longer exists as a museum, the fynbos plants used for its displays will become part of a permanent, freely accessible community garden at Lookout Hill.
-Anthea Buys, Head of Acquisitions, on behalf of the curatorial team.

For more information and for updates consult our blog: www.fynbosmuseum.blogspot.com

GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINE

The project is a contemporary investigation of the everyday intersection and interaction of people living in Cape Town. The chosen location is Church Square, right in the hub of town; a geographical, historical and emotional axis for many Capetonians – a place where the history of the city is accessed in the compacted strata of memories and experiences.
The architecture of the square was recently restored with the intention to create more than just a sense of urban renewal – the project manager was working towards the ideal that, "if you create the right kind of spaces, it brings people together."

Our city is creolised, as well as being a city constantly in motion. The project seeks to use the rich history of the location and present day interaction as a springboard to encourage cross-cultural and interdisciplinary dialogue; and to discover a commonality amongst citizens through the discourse of food. This performance will be facilitated by Alude Mahali, Katy Streek and Penelope Youngleson.

MOVE!

MOVE! Is a multi-disciplinary production by Project Phakama that takes people on a journey of life stories about being on the move. The production questions why people leave their homes, where they go and if and what is calling them back.
Unlike previous projects, MOVE! is performed by a group of Phakama facilitators who will be performing, directing and designing together to create a mobile show, taking the audience on a journey from Cape Town Station to Observatory and back again. This dynamic group includes Thando Baliso, Yvonne Banning, Sherna Botto, Caroline Calburn, David Johnson, Mwenya Kabwe, Lerato Maponga, Masizole Marafana, Thami Mbongo, Nceba Mpiliswana, Masana Mulaudzi, Masande Narwele, Clinton Osbourn, Katy Streek, Mpotseng Shuping, and Phakamile Xaso.

MUSICAL STATUES

This playful intervention employs the statue of Cecil John Rhodes in the Company Gardens, being dressed up by willing participants, in an attempt to engage these citizens with the pictorially historical record of the city. Participants choose clothes to dress the statue and then have their photos taken with it. The intervention creates an opportunity for people who pass through the city to engage with public space in a playful way. People will walk away from the statues carrying something in their hands that will make them laugh for years to come. They’ll also notice the statues and think about their relevance in a different way, which will hopefully serve as a talking point about public space and history in their homes or places of work. For pictures and more information, please go to Musical Statues' Facebook group: www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=74430753482

ONE MINUTE WORLD EXHIBITION

The One Minute World is a brand name for videos that last exactly one minute, including credits- an art form with a measure of time as a unifying starting point. With his/her minute, the artist can do whatever he/she wants. From recording a poetic dream to delivering visual sledgehammer blows, from giving an incomprehensible reply to an unasked question, to observing some small thing from everyday life.
A One Minute can pass in a flash but it can also seem to go on forever. On the one hand the possibilities are endless, yet on the other it is very difficult to make an exceptional One Minute.
The One Minute were launched in the Netherlands, at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam, an international Master’s degree programme in Art and Design, where students were given an assignment of producing an hour long show for late night television. The students decided to segment the hour into 60 one-minute showcases.
In 1999 the first awards ceremony of the One Minute was held where the winners won a bronze statuette, called the Tommie.
It became a worldwide project where juries were formed and artists from all over the world could submit their one-minute videos. A hundred countries are now participating in the movement, which is called World One Minute. The first One Minute World exhibition took place in June 2008 at the Beijing Today Art Museum in China. Since then the exhibition has been travelling to other cities and countries around the world.

SMALL VICTORIES

Small Victories is a collection of snippets from people’s daily lives in the form of printed mugs. The artist, Nicola Grobler, focuses on soon-forgotten victories, as these are often neglected in our communication with each other every day. In her experience, a chain of small achievements may act as motivation during a difficult day or at least give cause to smile. As such, these events deserve merit.

THANK YOU DRIVER

Artworks on wheels? Travelling from Khayelitsha through to Sea Point? These are the CAPE Art Taxis that not only transport the public to the multiple exhibitions and events of CAPE 09 but also integrate art directly into the urban environment with the aim of engaging new audiences. 
Transport is at the heart of the daily life of most big city dwellers. The transport industry in South Africa is currently in the spotlight owing to the much anticipated 2010 World Cup that is to be hosted in South Africa. Cape Town is littered with sites being developed and the echo of change can be heard all over the city. The refurbishing of Cape Town station and public transport vehicles is part of the multi-billion rand face-lift that is rippling throughout the city and the country.
This renewed energy provides an opportunity for a creative engagement that challenges the ways we see the transport system, reinvigorates our perception of the city we move through everyday and reinvents art as a truly public media, integral to everyday life. The fragmented geography of the city is somewhat re-connected by the public transport systems. They are the sole connection between the Cape Town CBD and secluded areas such as Gugulethu, Khayelitsha, Nyanga and Langa. In a sense they are the thread that holds the Cape’s wayward fabric together.
Currently, art is a concept that is far removed from the reality of everyday life to the man on the street (or in this case the man in the taxi!). Art is seen as a luxury, an exclusive preserve of the wealthy. This perception is cemented by the relative inaccessibility of most South African commercial galleries and prohibitive entrance fees at national museums.
Given the various languages that divide Africa and fuel negative notions such as xenophobia, we have some common thread that makes Africa, Africa. There are some things that transcend language barriers- mini-bus taxis are one of them as they’re often a feature of the supposed Third World, because of their economical value and efficiency.

UMAHLUKO

Umahluko is a Nguni word, loosely translated as "difference". It is through the body, understandings of the self and its relation to time and space, that we can closely interrogate and celebrate that which is different.
The notion of identity remains a pivotal and prevailing theme in both social politics and contemporary art practice, as people express their concerns about who they are, who they have been, and who they are becoming in our society. Identity is however, never a unified or singular concept, it is rather a complex, fragmentary experience constantly in the process of being destructed and reconstructed, defined and redefined, while locating ourselves in a particular time and space.
As it has many implications, ‘Umahluko’ in terms of this exhibition, implies that which is not self and not like self in many respects but not limited to cultural, socio-economic, socio-political, gender, sexuality and personal experiences, on both individual and collective planes.
The binary opposites of "self/other","‘black/white", "male/female", "urban/rural", "local/global" and "inside/outside", amongst others, are fundamental differences that constantly locate and dislocate us on various levels of social strata. It is this (dis) location that is inescapable, and more often than not, it becomes an imperative governing production processes for many artists.
In the same breath, this (dis) location provides a positive breakthrough. It becomes an assessment allowing for the appreciation of difference.

DO YOU KNOW WHERE BRENDA FASSIE IS?

So who is Brenda Fassie? We’ll probably never really know. After all, as she warns us in her hit song "Ngeke Umconfirm", she wasn’t an easy woman to keep up with. Nevertheless her legacy continues to haunt, inspire and move us.