Death to Venice! A South African perspective on the irrelevance of representation at the Venice Biennale

by Mario Pissarra

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 [Note: This previously unpublished piece was originally submitted to the arts editors of leading South African newspapers in October 2003]

In a recent paper (soon to be published in art journals here and in the UK) I raised the questions as to whether South Africans are capable of making a paradigm shift away from a world view centred on the West, and whether we are able to develop an inclusive vision of Africa. [1] Reviews by Marilyn Martin and Sue Williamson on the Venice Biennale amplify the need for these issues to be debated. [2]

In contrast to a recent claim by Martin that “We no longer need to genuflect to Europe” her accounts of the Venice Biennale demonstrate both persistent eurocentricism and a shallow and opportunistic ‘Africanness’ in service of that vision. [3] Williamson also presents an acceptance of Venice as the axis around which we spin, but her review is less provocative than Martin’s and would not in itself have warranted this response. However, given the prominent positions of these two individuals in the visual arts, their views carry more weight than most, and should therefore not go unchallenged.

In “Death in Venice” Martin equates the absence of South African art from the Venice Biennale with death. She describes this international art event as “the oldest and still the most important art biennial”. Williamson appears to concur with this view describing it as “still the queen of the international biennales”. Martin accuses the South African government of having their priorities wrong: “It requires political will and action to participate in the Venice Biennale and this is lacking in South Africa. Those in officialdom who are meant to take responsibility travel throughout the world signing cultural agreements and attending festivals… but visual artists seldom reap the benefits… South Africans alone are guilty for this shameful marginalisation of our visual arts. It is up to artists and arts organisations to exert pressure on government to change this state of affairs.”

In Martin’s companion piece “Faultlines and Fumblings” she extends the same argument to Africa as a whole, with the exception of Egypt. Martin opens melodramatically with “Africa also died in Venice in 2003.” She continues, “African leaders evidently do not understand the power of art in the process of establishing and maintaining the status and influence of a country; after more than 100 years of the Venice Biennale Egypt is the only African country that has a [regular presence].”

Perhaps Martin should tell us why visibility in Venice is so important, apart from it being the “oldest” biennale. Does this exclusive ‘pedigree’ really qualify it for a superior status? According to Williamson, having a “real presence at the Venice Biennale” is “to move [African arts] closer to the centre.” Certainly if we are to measure our success by visibility in the heart of the West then Venice is important. But if the success of our project depends on re-centering the world with a blatant bias towards the exploited Rest then Venice is perhaps not so important.

Our marginalisation as South/African visual/artists will not be addressed by a guest place at “the centre,” it will be addressed by shifting the centre, decentralising it globally so that the fortunes of most are not subjected to the whims of a few. Our marginalisation will be addressed by linking our struggle for visibility with a struggle for relevance, a struggle to engage the critical issues that affect all of us far more profoundly than being on curator Francesco Bonami’s guest list. [4]

I offer two examples that highlight the marginal status of South African visual arts internationally whilst simultaneously offering us an opportunity to redress that marginality. They are not the only examples but I have chosen them because they both represent processes in which South Africa is playing a leading role. The first concerns working towards peace and development in Africa. Where are our artists, art educators, curators, etc, in complementing this process? Why are we not discussing how the visual/arts can contribute towards Africa’s development? Why do we let the debates around an African Renaissance exclude the visual/arts?

The second process concerns globalisation and the battle for a fair economic system. The recent failed Cancun talks heralded the advent of the so called G21 whose most prominent members include countries as diverse as China, India, Brazil and South Africa. Our Trade and Industry Minister Alec Irwin played a significant role in mobilising exploited countries to realise their power to resist. In this context of solidarity against the Greedy Eight (G8) countries a critical engagement with biennales located in the Third World would appear to be infinitely more important now than being seen in Venice.

Why is there no debate coming from within the visual/arts community about how the arts can participate in complementing these critical initiatives? Are the arts, and the visual arts in particular, so impotent that they cannot play a role in these broader processes? If they are, then perhaps the visual arts deserve their marginal status.

In the context of our absence from real international struggles, lobbying for participation in the Venice Biennale is to inadvertently further the perception of the visual arts as marginal. In fact at this point in time we should not be asking our government to support our participation in any of the major showcases in the art capitals in the West. We should be asking it to support us in engaging with artists across Africa and throughout the Third World. We need not do this in a superficial way determined by diplomats but with an agenda set by artists and people working in the arts, and informed by real rather than esoteric concerns. This should be our priority, a project we should adopt for at least ten years.

We could take this further by lobbying artists and governments throughout the Third World to do the same. We do need to turn the tables on the West if we are to realise our full potential. Let us see how long they can sustain their own shows without the ‘exoticism’ that ‘developing’ ’countries bring to their events. Perhaps it would even be good for their own practice to be isolated by the Third World. Perhaps it would encourage them to reflect critically on their role in the way that South African art and art history, contrary to the views of people such as Martin, benefited from international isolation under apartheid. But let us not boycott them completely. Let us invite those who traditionally invite us to participate on terms set by ourselves in our own shows with our own agendas. While ten years may not be enough to make a huge difference, it should be enough to make a start in developing a truly international art community.

We also need to ask what kind of events do we need? Biennales themselves, as presently conceived, may not be the most suitable vehicle for promoting the exchange of skills and ideas. Similarly, high powered conferences have their limitations regarding active participation. On the other hand, participant centred workshops and forums need visibility in order to have impact. There will be no simple satisfactory solution, but we need a proper debate about what it means to be part of the international community beyond fitting into an iniquitous system and creating a few international superstars and holding these individuals up as a sign of progress.

Back in Venice Martin criticises Egyptian born London based Gilane Tawadros who curated the only pan-African exhibit Faultlines: Contemporary African Art and Shifting Landscapes. Martin takes particular exception to the strong showing of artists from the African diaspora and that the only artists included who are resident on the continent live in Egypt and South Africa. She writes that “Africa was hijacked and killed by the diaspora in Venice at the hands of those who purport to have her interests at heart… Faultlines misleads – it is not about Africa but about the diaspora, it is not contemporary and it does not reveal any shifting landscapes. Tawadros …does not have sufficient knowledge of contemporary African life, experiences, indeed the challenges faced by those living on the continent and the art that is made here.”

I do not know Tawadros nor am I familiar with her show, but there are two things that need to be said here. The first is that is that her exhibition appears to be a radical re-positioning of the assumptions that usually frame Africa. Judging by most surveys of African art, Africa is usually taken to read as Sub-Saharan Africa but stopping short of South Africa. By privileging Egypt and South Africa Tawadros challenges this (usually unwritten) rule. She compounds this re-framing of Africa by foregrounding the diaspora. By doing this she calls into question the very notion of Africa and how it is defined. While I cannot comment how successful she is in doing this, the idea itself is certainly not without curatorial merit as claimed by Martin.

Secondly it is somewhat obnoxious for Martin to dismiss the right of Africans living in the diaspora to be seen as Africans. Africans in the diaspora may have complex overlapping identities but so do persons born on this continent with ancestry from another. Pretending to be ‘more African’ on the basis of birth and residence, particularly when that ‘right’ is a consequence of a ‘settler’ inheritance is insensitive to the usually deplorable circumstances that caused many Africans to go into ‘exile’ in the first place. Besides, arguing ‘who is more African than who’ is less important than demonstrating a commitment towards Africa’s development, and here Martin is particularly vulnerable. She may well be right in criticising our officials for globetrotting with limited results, but Martin is no desk bound administrator herself. If she purports to be an African voice perhaps she can tell us how many miles she has traveled to international destinations since 1990 and how many of these have been to African countries?

Let us stop mouthing platitudes to ‘promoting’ Africa and commit ourselves to re-centering our world. Until our artists have a visibility on the continent and in the Third World, beyond participation in elitist biennales, we should not be mourning our absence at Francesco Bonami’s table. Until that day our call should rather be: Death to Venice!

 

Notes.

[1] “The Luggage is Still Labelled: But is it Going to the Right Destination?” Art South Africa vol 2 issue 2 2003 [published as “Decolonise the Mind”] & Third Text vol 18 issue 2 2004
[2] http://www.artthrob.co.za July (Williamson) & September (Martin) 2003
[3] “This, that and the ‘other’” Mail & Guardian 3 October 2003, p.III
[4] Bonami is the curator of this years Venice Biennale

 

I Don’t Like Cricket, I Hate It! How the Minister’s Imbizo resurrected suppressed childhood memories and hurled me into the horrors of the present

by Mario Pissarra

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After five years at the local, whites-only government school I was sent to a private, then boys-only, Catholic boarding school. Sending your children to be educated by strangers with a penchant for corporal punishment was entirely consistent with the child-rearing ethics of the post-slavery/ colonial plantation class. Where the school stood apart was that it was more liberal than most – it was modelled on Thomas More, the English chancellor who chose to lose his head rather than his principles, and the school adopted his motto of “truth conquers all”. In 1977, I attended my first ever political meeting, called by the Black Sash to protest against deaths in detention, dressed in my Sunday Best. One prize-giving ceremony a few years earlier we were treated to the Chief Minister of KwaZulu, Mangosuthu Buthulezi, who arrived with a fleet of black Mercedes’ with number plates one to six.

If anything was more boring than Buthulezi’s speech, it had to be long days spent dressed in white enacting that colonial gift to the colonies: cricket. One of the consequences of being in a small school was that if they threw you the ball and you caught it you were in the first team. This usually meant playing against big schools that had many teams, and for whom sport was dead serious, schools more likely to have mottos such as “We shall conquer”. Bearing in mind that we were also not entirely encouraged to be competitive – the headmaster would always make a point in assembly of congratulating all participants, and lost his job after parents with perceived sports prodigies for children ganged up against him – chances were we would get thrashed. As one of the smallest boys in my age group I inevitably found myself struggling with oversized bat, knee pads and crotch-guard.

Somehow I acquired some dubious merits as a cricketer. One of these qualities was that I learned to defend myself from overzealous bowlers. Meaning that on a good day I could block the ball, no matter what angle it came from or regardless of where it was headed. All I cared was that it didn’t hit me. I don’t think I ever hit the ball to the boundary, not even in a practice match. The value of this was that if there was no way we could reach the opposition’s total, which there usually wasn’t, then we could still draw with them if they failed to get us out. Another dubious asset of mine was that I had a very boring, medium paced style of bowling, remarkable only in that it was occasionally subjected to criticism that I was throwing. Where my bowling was useful was that I was accurate, seldom pitched two consecutive balls in the same place, and had a faint off-spin. Since most coaches trained their boys to only whack balls that were off target I would frustrate the hell out of hungry batsmen. They would be obliged to block, block, and block, very useful when you need to reduce the run rate of the opposition. In retrospect, it seems that my value as a reluctant cricketer was in wasting time. Which brings me, finally, to Minister Pallo Jordan’s Imbizo. [1]

Let me say at the outset that I don’t think the Minister is as dull as my cricket. Nor does the elegant Minister resemble the unsightly gait of an ill-fitted, pale faced youth squinting in the sun. But he really took me back to those years frying slowly in the heat waiting for the whole trying ordeal to be done. It is hard to retain faith in the charade of consultation when the Minister says he is there to listen, and then talks, and talks while you watch the time, your time apparently, whittling away. Now if one was listening to an insightful analysis of the challenges facing the visual arts, I, for one, would not complain. But when you find yourself being subjected to one superfluous example after another, then you cannot help but wonder whether the Minister is really there to bat or to field. For example in advising us what questions were not appropriate he told us not to ask to go to the moon. Then he proceeded to give us reasons (note plural) why he can’t send us to the moon. I do believe the same entirely inappropriate example was used at the last Cape Town Imbizo. Or when a series of questions about what the Minister and his Department are doing for the visual arts is answered with a copious list of examples from the performing arts, or literature, or film, or language… then one begins to wonder if the Minister is testing the field to see if we are still awake.

Several people expressed to me the opinion that the Minister came over as a typical politician, the sort that does not answer your questions. The one time he enquired if the question had been answered he received a polite, one word reply: “Partially.” One really got the feeling that the Minister was going through the motions, it being official Imbizo week, and hence expected of him to play, when he really didn’t seem inclined to do so.

It also seems that the Minister is limiting his strokes, and either can’t or won’t hit the ball through the covers. Either the Minister of Finance, or Education, or Foreign Affairs, always somebody, is diligently keeping guard. Meaning we shouldn’t really expect him to get past them, or should we? Many of us recognise the constraints of a junior ministry like Arts and Culture, but we do expect a Minister who is a senior figure in the ANC and a leading intellectual to at least test the Ministries that wield more power. Otherwise one can’t help but wonder whether the Minister is simply buying time, waiting to get a real job.

Where I felt well and truly blocked was when I tried to bowl a bumper: does the Minister think that there has been enough transformation in the visual arts? Does he think we need an audit of transformation? I asked the same question at the last Imbizo and apparently the Minister has given it some thought. An audit, he enlightened us, would probably concentrate on who is showing in the galleries, and anecdotal evidence suggests that there is increased visibility of black artists. That seems to be good enough for the Minister. Try a second one: what about institutional transformation, and lingering euro-centrism? Don’t underestimate the importance of increased black visibility in the galleries, young man! [2]Now I have no doubt that my IQ would be dwarfed by that of the Minister, but I don’t get it that he doesn’t seem to get it, so let me try and step up the pace, hopefully hitting close enough to the boundary to at least trouble the sleeping fielders.

Who gives visibility to those artists? Curators. Then does it matter that our premier institution, the South African National Gallery, has employed at least four black trainee curators in the last ten years, and most of them never got the chance to curate anything? Does it matter that most other institutions have made more progress in training black curators than the SANG? Does it mean anything that the current curator in training is getting real opportunities to curate, but outside of the SANG? Does any of this unacceptably slow ‘training’ have to do with the fact that the head of the SANG was an apartheid era appointee, and hence dubiously qualified for the new dispensation? To what extent does she owe her survival to window dressing, misplaced affirmative action (definitely not ‘corrective” in this case!), the absence of an organised visual arts lobby, and poor political leadership on arts and culture? Does it matter that the transformation of state institutions has been a closely guarded, poorly managed process that has created no real space for public participation? Does it matter that transformation has been confused with technocratic amalgamation of previously separate institutions? Why did a man with limited management experience get tasked with the integration of fifteen institutions? Why did a suitable candidate fail to get an interview? What do the top layers of Iziko management add in value to the performance of these institutions? Does it matter that it is still considered vitally important to go to Venice whereas virtually no-one (apart from captive students) showed up to hear the Director of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe talk about the 2nd Harare Biennale? Does it matter that fear of alienating powerful individuals and jeopardising funding applications or career prospects contributes to an environment where real criticism seldom happens in public? Does any of this matter? No. No. No. [3]

There was only once when the Minister hit the ball to the boundary. Interestingly this was a question that had nothing to do with the visual arts – it had to do with a request for government support in retaining forests for male circumcision rites. The Minister challenged the person asking the question to adapt to changing circumstances. Notably he said that his reply was “an opinion”. It was, in my view the only time he actually answered a question.

The horrors of the present lie in the realisation that, not only has the visual arts, unlike most other areas within arts and culture, been largely left to its own devices to transform itself, but the Minister appears to be satisfied that it has done (or is doing) a good job. The horrors of the present lie in the realisation that the current Minister may well be the best candidate arts and culture practitioners can hope for, and if he doesn’t see the need to stump the current gatekeepers of the visual arts then no other Minister will. Leaving the transformation of the visual arts to people in the sector is not an inspiring thought. I have to express amazement that not a single question for the Minister came from any of the office-bearers of the Visual Arts Network of South Africa. Hopefully this was not the case in other provinces. But then should one expect calls for change from the elite batting order (and those aspiring to become part of this class), or from perceived mavericks and dissidents who can see something more urgent to do than pass time in the sun?

 

Notes.

[1] In terms of current government practice an Imbizo is a public meeting between government representatives and “the people”. In this specific instance it was a meeting between the Minister of Arts and Culture Pallo Jordan and visual arts practitioners, and was held at the Goodhope Gallery, The Castle, Cape Town on 10 April 2006.

[2] The irony did not escape me that I was a lone voice in publicly challenging artists interviewed in Julie McGee and Vuyile Voyiya’s video documentary “The Luggage is Still Labelled: Blackness in South African Art” to acknowledge that some changes had taken place, particularly regarding the visibility of black artists. However few people would (or should) accept this increased visibility as evidence of sufficient transformation.

[3] I am aware that a lot can be said on these points, and that many people could contribute to such a process. At the Imbizo I questioned whether the Minister could make space for more substantial contributions than that which is possible in the context of a mass meeting. He dismissed my suggestion stating that the Imbizo was an adequate vehicle for public participation. In fact he questioned whether it had been necessary to hold a specific visual arts meeting, since only 15 people had questions for him. The fact that all the allocated time was used, that some of us had may well have had more questions or input to make, and that the previous years Imbizo at the Baxter Theatre only elicited one question concerning the visual arts (from myself and on the same issue) appear to be of no consequence. I have also tried on several occasions to get papers that I have written on aspects of the transformation of the visual arts to the Minister, and it is evident that he has not seen any reason to read them. But then why should he?

The African Renaissance: Confronting the Unspeakable

by Randolph Hartzenberg

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[Originally presented at the Design Education Forum of South Africa conference at the Cape Technikon, now the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Cape Town, June 2000]

A plague wind has been sweeping across Africa, blowing across stagnant pools of absurdity, deception and attrition. The wind tears into the new millennium. Attempts at reconciliation are cast adrift. It is with disbelief, though not unexpected, that one encounters South Africans, who having chosen the supremacist path of the pre-1994 era, and having swallowed the “race” classification pill then, are now still slaves to that deception. It seems they believe that stagnation is viable, that locking themselves inside “die huis van die dowes” is still an option. It is against the backdrop of these absurd ironies that the inspiration for an African Renaissance programme has emerged. A plan for unity, for the renewal of Africa. A plea for the re-humanisation of this traumatised continent. President Thabo Mbeki, has, like Robert Sobukwe decades before him, with urgency, repeatedly spoken of his vision for progress that embodies the concept of an African Renaissance.

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Connecting Africa

by Mario Pissarra

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[Paper prepared for the “Reconnecting Africa” panel at the “Transformation/Growth/ Opportunity” conference convened by the Visual Arts Network of South Africa, Hiddingh Hall Campus, UCT, 10 February 2006]

The title for this panel discussion should really be “connecting Africa ”. Certainly “reconnecting Africa ” is misleading if it implies that “Africa” was once connected, and that the restoration of this connection is currently on the agenda. A number of commentators, Ali Mazrui and Olu Oguibe (1993) among them, have made observations about the fictiveness of a united Africa, and how the term Africa has historically meant different things to different constituencies. Mazrui has argued that it was in fact western imperialism that inadvertently created the incentive for the notion of pan-Africanism to emerge, and pan-Africanism has been (and continues to be) more of an ideal than a reflection of actual relations between, on one hand, African countries; and on the other, between Africans on the continent and in the diaspora.

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“Not Just Another Biennale”?

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by Susan Glanville-Zini (CEO of Cape Africa Platform) and Julian Jonker (Coordinator of Sessions Ekapa), in conversation with Mario Pissarra

The Cape Africa Platform promises to deliver a mega-event that will be “not just another biennale”. The first major element in their plan is a conference, Sessions Ekapa, which takes place in Cape Town from 6-8 December 2005. The conference theme is “(re)locating contemporary African art” and will be followed with a multi-disciplinary “Manifestation” in 2006.

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