worked hard earning rents. now takin april off to make pictures and things. startin with 'cataloguing' this show. yes its not practical to render this image in negative like so but shit how lovely/balanced the colours are/sexy ++

some snaps i took while making the risk zine & performance elements, first at anstey's building, downtown jhb, then at the 12 decades art hotel in jeppestown, then making 'cc:everybody' signs in my room at 12 decades and finally at the nirox projects space and installing there for the show. missing now the feeling of temporarily knowing exactly what my purpose is. but i have some ideas for two projects that im excited about. photo projects, surprisingly. so i will document these joburg works here, and move to that newer purpose. in a conversation this afternoon, a friend said 'i dont know what the purpose of art IS.. other than to make a living..'. we discussed the value of the more journalistic elements of the things we're excited about making lately, and resolved to start presenting things more as journalism than as 'art'. here. to be useful in the ways that we want to be. ++

some shots from december in johannesburg to communicate to home: "the show im doing is abt public communication, and these flyers (photo at top), in this style, is the most common way info is passed on the streets in this city.. so the invitations for the show i had printed in that style, though it's an invitation to an event, rather than the familiar use - advertising deals on stuff, traditional healers etc."

i liked that. thought "nice 'appropriation', there..".

another / related attempt at cultural-solution-mash-ups: the felllas who pass these flyers out on the streets give them a little shake as you walk by.. the sudden sound meant to attract your attention.. with the dancers mpho and bonolo we made a performance of passing these invites out using that sound/shake technique, but amplifying it. instead of standing still on the corners as is customary, the dancers were in constant motion, impossible to miss.. and instead of a single quick shake as people passed by.. a constant shake! until ppl either took the flyer or made a massive effort to move away as though unseen/not existing.

with shannon walsh and boban chaldovich, we made video. gna get my hands on that soon and post it here

++

too much fear/order for so little consequence/audience. see how orderly this 'informal' blog/dump got? why? and everything else. how come i started thinking and saying i make photos? i was making all kinds of things before. ive heard a friend say it happens all the time in this place that people become charicatures of themselves. citing sprangalang, a dennis hall character, seeming to eventually become the man. that represents a stopping exploring. a stickin. and that is a death. and for me, this orderly presentation and re-presentation of this repeatable thing, once i had it identified. not a person but a machine. lately i wanta try all kindsa things i have no experience with. this co-inciding with realising there is basically no art here. yea i believe that. sounds blasphemous cus they always repeat how creative and inventive we are. but maybe we only used to be. now we only follow order. like me presenting artist. artist is dead in that way. every youth on the edge of the internet knows it. what matters now a lot is exploration. one way is to indulge in impulses / acknowledge instinct. why not explore writing / music / performance / webshit etc etc. one thing to remember is beautiful trinidad is imaginary. and all it really takes to be something here is to say that you are that something enough times. photographers, writers, radio personalities, politicians. that is how this place works and if u understand that it can be a beautiful thing.

if an artist is, like marshall mcluhan believed, the person who, in all this confusing information clutter, makes situations clear for people, then in this actually media-less imaginary place we really need the services of some good effective artists to help us realise whats goin on with us. and effective must mean with some massive appeal / massive audience. orderly artist wont do it because that practice is not in the national language/culture. so we should explore to find it. santana's pretty good. we dont often get to see us like that. santana x more focused commentary would be really valuable culturally in addition to being entertaining. the way comedy functions as art: chris rock, richard pryor etc. artists should simply be translating the culture into interesting instances of making situations clear. and not necessarily always through one kind of practice/technique. we have so few 'cultural practitioners' / translators, maybe there's a responsibility on each to imagine the purposes of the missing practitioners - people that would explore a particular area but actually dont exist - and become that / perform that function. i saw a ted talk a while ago with a fella who made an entire show of 100 different artists where he invented all the artists' and the work etc. so clearly the art thing is a game like that. but im taking it so seriously/orderly lately and most likely you too. we should play more. anything else is startin to look a little old / irrelevant. even blogger is old now. i can hardly stand this blog/myself talking. i'll end it soon and find more elegant communication. old mcluhan says comedy is accepted easiest. *insert humour*.