Imperfect Librarian
The impious maintain that nonsense is normal in the Library and that the reasonable (and even humble and pure coherence) is an almost miraculous exception. – The Library of
Babel (1941) Jorge Louis Borges
By this art… Over the last months, the artistic researchers who form part of the ARC: the visual university and its columbarium, have been grappling with the meaning of “columbarium” itself. The word designates those things (be they objects, stories, perspectives, surprises) which find themselves, via mishap or chance, caught up in the official archives of history. This caught-up-ness is not to be pitied, in fact – it’s what captures our imaginations as practitioners. We, who are perhaps not “trained” archivists, have found the incongruities between memory, record, beauty and the material - absolutely captivating. In turn we have become self-appointed curators, each playing a variation on that role as we catch-and-release the columbarium of histories under our care.i Care is of course at the root of the word “curate”: bringing with it a sense of responsibility, not merely the idea of playing at something.ii In this sense, we may admit imperfection, as in the case of Borges’s librarians who must run, almost defeatedly around the infinite, perfect order of The Library of Babel iii : a short story from which our show finds its inspiration.
However, responsibility does not necessarily imply flawless reproduction of archival rituals. It also means the ability to respond. The capacity to make public what was private. The opportunity to foreground what was forgotten. A moment in which to put into circulation another time and place...the chance to rearrange narratives of the known.iv The value of such interventions – giving a “creative scope” to what existed independently of brash interruptions – is still up for debate. Having come through the backdoor offered by this thing, “columbarium”, we realised that, whether we are contending with historical ethnographic representations, eccentric collector fetishes, or structural heritage of monumental proportions, the archive is, in short, about artifice. Nothing is to be taken for granted in the way these subjects, these stories, are administered – not the title cards, not the classificatory codes, not the limiting distinctions between fact, fiction and “none of the above”. What we hope you find as you meander through the maze of this exhibition, is therefore a set of care-full responses, manoeuvres, unfaithful facsimilies, and commentaries upon commentaries, which expose the support structures of history – the moments when we catch sight of ourselves in the archive’s mirror.
i. A reference to Sarat Maharaj’s phrase “curatorial capture” ii. Curate comes from the Latin word curare: “to care for”. And this is familiar to english speakers in the person of the parish administrator: the curate. iii. Jorges Luis Borges’s almost architectural short story constructs a universe/library where hexagons, mirrors, endless staircases and an infallible classification system dwarf the inept humans attempting to comprehend and contextualise themselves within it. iv. Charles Esche used this phrase in a lecture at the Terminal Convention, in March last year (Cork, Ireland).
And indeed this exhibition would not have been possible without its own set of valued support structures. The artistic researchers at the Centre for Curating the Archive would like to thank: Professors Carolyn Hamilton and Pippa Skotnes, the ARC: the visual university and its columbarium and the Centre for Curating the Archive; Niek de Greef, Thomas Cartwright and Fazlin van der Schijff for their assistance. To Cara van der Westhuizen, Nadja Daehnke of the Michaelis Galleries for their tireless coordination. Thanks to Gerald Bedeker for his generous contribution to the design of our publicity materials. For their financial sponsorship: the University of Cape Town; the National Research Foundation and Cape Nature. To Iziko Museums, the UCT Manuscripts and Archives, as well as the UCT Works of Art Committee for their generous loans. And to our colleagues with the APC, Michaelis and elsewhere, as well the many loved ones who have constructively critiqued and helped us develop these projects.
Preparation materials for George Mahashe’s Dithugula tša Malefokane: Seeing other people’s stories, telling tall tales, 2011-2, from Krige photoalbum.
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GEORGE MAHASHE
George Mahashe’s research considers the circumstances that gave rise to the ethnographic photograph as a genre, accessing its value for today’s generation. Focusing on the history and practice of 1930 South African anthropology in general, and that of E.J. and J.D. Krige in Bolobedu more specifically, George tracks the legends that established Balobedu as a powerful actor in the making of Krige’s archive. Interpreting the overlapping aspects of being a researcher of anthropology and history while being a curator/artist interested in the aesthetics presented by the materiality of the photograph, George asks the question: what does it mean to be an insider or outsider in the practice of making and curating photographic archives? In this room, the artist has constructed a darkroom where he encourages visitors to develop their own prints. In the frustrating absence of fixative, however, the limits of the photograph are revealed in its unreliability and impermanence as a record of the past. In this way,visitors are asked not merely to critique a 1930s anthropological collection – a safe position in a postcolonial era – but to assume responsibility for this archive.
APPENDIX Balobedu Balobedu are located in South Africa’s Limpopo province between the Kruger national park’s Phalaborwa gate and the Magoabaskloof area. Nestled in a majestic forest with the rare Mudjadji cycad, Bolobedu is rich with natural beauty and heritage. Balobedu boast a traceable modern history spanning 400 years with ties to the historic Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe complex. They are a diverse group united around a mystic queen that bestows rain to her subjects and devastate those that plot against her. Balobedu‘s circular fame comes from the myth of “She that must be obeyed” a figure made popular in R. Hagar’s book She. In reality Mudjadji is a Queen whose dynasty has spanned 200 years. Her fame is mainly attributed to her seclusion, which is bound up with her accession to the throne, this seclusion has spawned myth imagining her as a Boer girl, an Arab harem keeper and a blue eyed fair skinned woman. Through the Krige’s book Realm of a Rain Queen Balobedu are imagined to be self sufficient and practical people. To day the fate of Balobedu is like most groups in South Africa: the effects of the 1904 land policies reduced their land to a fraction of its former size; the hut taxes started a tradition of migrant labour; and diasporic trends among today’s youth have left a gap in its rebuilding.
APPENDIX The anthropologist The ethnography of Balobedu was conducted by a husband and wife team of anthropologists, which canonised Bobedu as ethnographic subjects in the iconic 1943 book The Realm of a Rain Queen. A study of the pattern of Lovedu society. The ethnography concerned itself with the daily life, technology and culture contact. The archive is mainly attributed to Eileen J Krige who is considered to be the first student of anthropology at Wits University’s newly formed anthropology department in under Winifred Hoernle. Krige borders the space between the first generation of anthropologist that established the governing bodies that directed south African anthropology in its golden years and anthropology first class that established the IRL. Like most anthropologists in the 1930s Eileen and her husband, Jack Krige, attended the London School of Economics with Malinowski, who was involved with developing new imaginings of photography in the service of science. This generation of anthropologists rejected the anthropometric style of photography were images sourced from travellers and missionaries for the use in armchair anthropology was abandoned in favour of the more direct documentary style.
APPENDIX
...Here, the researchers themselves went into the field and made their own photographs, recovering the context lost in third party and anthropometric photography. What is most striking about this generation was the amount of images made during their field work and the intimate nature of their photographs where the images could very easily be mistaken for pure aesthetically inclined documentary photography and may very well be the genesis of South African documentary photography as a genre.
APPENDIX The archived, the archive The Krige photographic archive was presented to the South African Museum (later incorporated into Iziko Museums of Cape Town) in 1980 due to the efforts of Dr Patricia Davison. The conservation of the negatives and photographs was undertaken with funding from the American Social Science Research Council (SSRC) by photographers Paul Grendon and Chris Ledochowski – producing working transparencies, contact sheets and 46 enlarged prints. The negatives from highly flammable celluloid nitrate film, which is conducive to self-combustion. June Hosford did the cataloguing and transcription of the 1930 archive. In 1996 a set of the 46 enlarged prints were exhibited at the Lobedu royal court and local schools where Davison documented responses from members of the Lobedu community.
Joanne Bloch, The People, ongoing The Things, 2012,
I.
The Treasures, 2012 Dimensions and materials variable
II.
(photograph by Claire McNulty)
III.
gold
JOANNE BLOCH
Joanne Bloch’s project uses the collection based in the Manuscripts and Archives Department at UCT to explore various issues relating to objects, collecting and designating taxonomies, as well as the often arbitrary attribution of value to those collections. In this exhibition, Joanne presents two installations that, when read together, seek to understand those complex politics of value. The first shows a section of the artist’s personal collection of thousands of (mostly) plastic toys, The People, amassed over decades, in a work that allocates museum status to mountains of cheap tat. The second installation shows a haphazard and non-cohesive collection of artefacts from the UCT Manuscripts and Archives Department, most of them collected byUCT Chief Librarian Rene Immelman in the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s.In this case, the fact that the objects are held within an archive automatically ascribes them a value which might be less apparent under other circumstances. Both installations are thrown into question by a third component, Bloch’s pseudopriceless golden object collection, consisting of versions of objects from both collections. Together these artworks examine and subvert the arbitrary nature of the allocation of value to collections.
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Brenton Maart, Untitled (3) from the series Mount Coke, 2012 Other titles on display: * Untitled (1–3) from the series Air Force, 2012 * Untitled (1–3) from the series Mount Coke, 2012 * Untitled (1–3) from the series President’s Palace, 2012 * Untitled (1–3) from the series Independence Stadium, 2012 All images pigment print on paper, on aluminium, 58 x 70cm
BRENTON MAART
Brenton Maart looks at the architecture of apartheid native reservations crafted in South Africa from as early as 1913. The structures in his photographs were initially built for expedient implementation of racist legislation: parliaments, hospitals, schools, airports, hotels, military controls, prisons and factory sites, slapped up as often deep-rural facilities for violent relocations. At the fall of apartheid in 1994 the homeland system dissolved, and certain of these buildings were incorporated into the new government bureaucracy. Others were immediately abandoned, precipitating their inevitable physical collapse into ruin. The four sites presented in Imperfect Librarian start to reveal the codes allowing us to read these vestiges of apartheid in a contemporary light, as unintentional indicators – as inadvertent monuments – to an ideology of oppression.
Independence Stadium shows the slumping sports facility OF Mafikeng, built as one of a number of revealing partnership ventures between Israel and the old Bophuthatswana, and inaugurated in 1985 to coincide with the eighth celebration of “self rule”. Mount Coke documents the fate of a Ciskei colonial mission hospital established in 1825, burnt down twice, and then rebuilt in 1948, its irreparable damage now defying its official status as national monument. The metallic decomposing vestiges of Bophuthatswana’s Air Force become indicators of disavowal of a militant power play characterised by whim. Finally, President’s Palace traces layers of history from the building’s first intention as Lucas Mangope’s Bophuthatswana home, to its occupation today by the North West Province Department of Traditional Affairs.
Costume tests by Andrew Putter, 2012 (photography by Hylton Boucher and Kyle Weeks of Stellenbosch Academy)
Preparatory materials for Native Life including a casting diagram by Andrew Putter and a portrait of Eirene Fayoum from the 1st century CE
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ANDREW PUTTER
Andrew Putter’s current work emerges from his love affair with the deeply beautiful ethnographic photographs by Alfred Duggan-Cronin, a body of work often criticised for its artifice and stultifying, primitivizing view. By inventing and photographing an imaginary, inter-racial tribe, Putter then attempts to reclaim something which goes beyond racism and colonialism: something that he describes as sheer beauty. For Imperfect Librarian, Putter exhibits photographs of his work in progress, here showing the development of the costumes for his fantasy people. In the artist’s words: ‘At the same time, looking critically at Duggan-Cronin’s work, he has provided a richly articulated point of departure for thinking about big questions, like race, culture, beauty, what it means to be human, to be African…’
Information for each skin bag is taken from museum recordsÂŹ and ordered as follows: Tribe, language group, locality, collector/donator, year acquired by SAM, name for object in San, description
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JON WHIDDEN
Jon Whidden is a rock art researcher primarily interested in the paintings found in many of the Western Cape’s shelters and caves: an archive and form of display that is as expansive as it is detailed. Iziko’s collection of San skin bags has been assembled, conserved and made accessible for public display and research through processes which are essentially typical of other traditional museums with ethnographic collections. The shelter that Jon investigates is, likewise, a place where a collection of ethnographic material, including paintings of skin bags, has been assembled, conserved and made accessible to the public, although through processes altogether different from those employed by the museum. For this exhibition, Jon highlights the relationship between the object and its spacialisation through reflection in an installation featuring San skin bags generously loaned from Iziko Museums Social History Collections.
film still Dorian Gray 1945
display includes: Gabriel Clark-Brown Painting Reality I Etching 1995 Painting Reality II Etching and Ball-Point Pen Untitled (‘Ladder’) Found Object 2012
detail
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JESSICA BROWN
The University of Cape Town Works of Art Collection currently comprises approximately 1200 works of art, a number that continues to increase annually. At present, the University does not possess a dedicated gallery space for the exhibition of works from the collection, which has instead allowed for the creation of what it terms an open or “living” museum, with the works on display across the faculties. Hidden in plain sight, the collection is found scattered among the various campuses and residences, in over fifty buildings extending across five main sites in Cape Town. A Works of Art Committee was formed in 1978 and was initially conceived as a form of stewardship primarily concerned with the care of this collection. However, like the positioning of its collection, the committee’s curatorial power has become largely dispersed and its character steadily shifted to an absent custodian, involved almost solely in the administration of the works of art. All this is the terrain of Jessica Brown’s project, who has chosen to hone in on the continuum between destruction and preservation. For her work on exhibition, Brown selected objects that bring to light peculiar inconsistencies in the university’s enacting of custodianship and, more intriguingly, how its art collection projects the institution’s sense of self.
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CLARE BUTCHER
For Imperfect Librarian, Clare Butcher plays a double act as coordinating curator of the exhibition, while also contributing to it as a member of the ARC initiative. Her research focuses on the history of curating contemporary art in South Africa – beginning with a case study from an international exhibition exchange of contemporary art between Britain and South Africa in 1948. For this exhibition, by way of wall colours, the use of signage, etc. Clare draws attention to a number of curatorial framing devices – introduced already in the 1940s, as essential for the making of any “proper” contemporary art show. In foregrounding the usually unseen logistics and logics of these kinds of intervention, we become aware of the historical mechanisms used to display “the spirit of the now”. How do these function when transposed into our own contemporary moment?
Imperfect Librarian
Clare Butcher
Michaelis Galleries floorplan
Jon Whidden George Mahashe
Joanne Bloch
Brenton Maart
Jessica Brown
Andrew Putter entrance
In the hallway there is a mirror which faithfully duplicates all appearances. Men usually infer from this mirror that the Library is not infinite (if it were, why this illusory duplication?); I prefer to dream that its polished surfaces represent and promise the infinite ...
– The Library of Babel (1941) Jorge Louis Borges
Imperfect Librarian An exhibition by Joanne Bloch, Jessica Brown, George Mahashe, Brenton Maart, Andrew Putter, Jon Whidden, Clare Butcher (curator) 12-26/03/2012
At Michaelis Galleries, Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, 32 Orange Street, Gardens, 8001, Cape Town, South Africa. With the ARC: the visual university and its collumbarium and the Centre for Curating the Archive. Also supported by the University of Cape Town, Michaelis School of Art, the National Research Foundation, Cape Nature and Iziko Museums. Copyright held by the contributors. For permission to reproduce any of this publication please contact Niek de Greef (niek.degreef@uct.ac.za)