THE LAKE #010

mellifluous kick in the eye

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THE LAKE WE ARE FOOLISHLY Ambitious

#10 / 050616

A KICK IN THE EYE I haven’t fucked much with the past, But I’ve fucked plenty with the future.

“Some of us are born rebellious. Like Jean Genet or Arthur Rimbaud, I roam these mean streets like a villain, a vagabond, an outcast, scavenging for the scraps that may perchance plummet off humanity’s dirty plates, though often sometimes taking a cab to a restaurant is more convenient.” - Patti Smith

CONTENTS REGULARS:

PUBLISHER

News 04 Print Run 56 Fashion Mens 60 Fashion Ladies 62 Plimsol 58 ART:

Editor / Art Direction Stefan Naude’ stefan@thelake.co Existential ADVISOR Brendan Body brendan@thelake.co

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COVER Oliver Kruger Photography Yann-Xavier Horowitz Golden Boy Sam Clarke Concept Kristi Vlok Art Direction / Styling Adam Kent Wiest Assistant / Video Location Clarkes Bar / The Pit Lighting Big Time Studios Retouching Naomi E’ Camara Jewelery Neil Hughes

PHOTOGRAPHY: Stalker Aberration Ankia Young Sol

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photographers

MUSIC:

Oliver Kruger Jacqui Van Staden Joy Smith Shona van der Merwe Juan Voges Potsiso Phasha Jaco S. Venter Ian Engelbrecht Alan Van Gysen Jansen Van Staden

Vuyo Katsha 38 Tagore’s 10 Wax Junkie 54 LIFESTYLE: Freakonomics Yann Misadventure

CONTENTS PHOTO

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Jaco S. Venter Contributors

PRINTING PAARLMEDIA Paarl Media Group Tel: +27 21 550 2500 Email: info@paarlmedia.co.za The views and opinions expressed within the editorial and advertisements of THE LAKE do not necessarily reflect those of its staff, nor any of its associates.THE LAKE and anything contained within is copyright. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form whatsoever, copied or stored electronically without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Adrian Day Ruan Scott Lani Spice Xavier Nagel Shona van der Merwe Marelize van Zyl Illana Welman Potsiso Phasha Sukuma Sukummah Jaco S. Venter Alan Van Gysen Andre De Waal Luke Doman

FASHION Kristi Vlok kristi@thelake.co Advertising / MARKETING Brett Bellairs brett@thelake.co Brendan Body brendan@thelake.co COPY EDITING Christine Stewart ONLINE / SOCIAL thelake.co.za Submissions info@thelake.co

Jaco S. Venter (@snakeskull666)

Barend De Wet

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THE LAKE MAGAZINE PTY LTD info@thelake.co

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PALLADIUM WAS FOUNDED IN 1920

to make tires for the fledgling aviation industry. In 1947, using their canvas and rubber expertise, Palladium began making boots that were as hard wearing as their tires. The comfort and durablitiy of their unique boot was so outstanding that the legendary French Foreign Legion adopted it for their use. Today, the authentic design, classic lines and time tested utility can once again be enjoyed by explorers worldwide.

PALLADIUMBOOTS.COM 04

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NEWS ASICS / Millionaire’s Row Pack

LEOPOLD7 / CRAFT BEER

The stakes are high, as our GEL-Lyte® III and GEL-Respector™ silhouettes allude to the most exciting two minutes in sports. Each aesthetic is woven with neat seersucker fabrics on the upper – reminiscent of the springtime attire typically worn by the spectators sitting in Millionaire’s Row. Accenting the terry cloth sockliner are an offwhite midsole and laces that ensure both models are set to run for the roses.

Leopold7, a Belgian-born speciality craft beer has officially marked its presence and progress in South Africa and it’s all thanks to a chance meeting in Rwanda between a Belgian and an American who both shared a passion for brewing and enjoying great beer.

The Gel Lyte III is dressed in the red-striped fabric, while the Gel Respecter comes in blue stripes for a more toned down yet jazzy look. Both models get cream-colored outsoles and white accents to finish them off in the most fashionable way imaginable.

Alexandre Tilmans (Belgium) and Marquis Brown (USA) were both looking for a new business adventure and a change of course from their careers in finance and management/entrepreneurship, respectively.

Alexandre had been living in South Africa for seven years before returning to Belgium in 2013 to help establish the first Leopold7 brewery. Upon returning to South Africa in 2014, he laid the initial foundation for the beer company’s second home in Cape Town.

INFO: www.asicstiger.com

INFO: www.leopold7.com/southafrica

Backchat Boys – Volume 1 All image no spinach / Backchat Boys is a 35mm photographic collective currently consisting of three South Africans exploring the surface and depths of Hong Kong street culture. The first edition of this ongoing project is a poor attempt at capturing human nature, love and depravity. The contributors are Duran Levinson, Gideon de Kock and Dustin Holmes.

The book itself is self-published and printed in Hong Kong - 70 full color pages, offset print on wood free paper, perfect bound, hand numbered and personalized. Only 300 copies will be available (online and for purchase), with 100 being sold in Hong Kong, 100 in South Africa, and 100 between Shanghai and Seoul.

INFO: www.duranlevinson.com/store

Billabong / Surf Plus

THE LEVI’S® 501® DOCUMENTARY

Billabong’s founder, Gordon Merchant, began his legacy in 1973, chiefly by making homemade boardshorts sewn up on his kitchen table in Burleigh Point, Australia. Fast-forward four decades later, and today, the Surf Plus collection is a celebration of how far the brand has grown since its humble beginnings. A testament to being a true original, this right here is a reflection of Billabong’s heritage.

The Levi’s® 501® button fly jean – the original and first ever blue jean – was born on May 20, 1873.

And over 140 years later, it is more popular than ever before. In celebration of 100 years of partnership with Cone Mills Denim in North Carolina, the Levi’s® brand presents a short documentary film, The 501® Jean: Stories of an Original. The film explores the lasting impact the Original 501® jean has had on cultural history.

The collection consists of the timeless essentials Billabong built with a philosophy around premium design and unique discovery. Every fabric, stitch and detail has been crafted with focus on durability.Available at Billabong stores nationwide from April

The 501® documentary was screened in NYC, London, Buenos Aires and Caracas in March, and now in South Africa and subsequent screenings around the globe. This three-part film is a story of modern America with the Levi’s® 501® at the center.

INFO: www.swindle.co.za

INFO: www.levi.com

HI-TEC / THE CARRICK As part of HI-TEC’s new lifestyle range, The Carrick Collection: The Osprey is a style for your city explorations and more importantly, discoveries.

The Osprey’s design sets itself apart from its fellow casual ranges with features like a fullgrain leather upper, a padded collar and foam backed breathable synthetic lining for added comfort. A removable sock liner adds extra cushioning and a rubber outsole offers superior traction.

It’s the perfect casual choice for your city life.

Choose from a range of colours that include black, chocolate and burgundy.

INFO: www.hi-tec.com 06

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NEWS RHUMAA Art in all shapes and forms is shrouded in mystery and untold stories that are personal, cultural, historical or otherwise. RHUMAA works with carefully selected and very talented local artists. These artists share their wonderful art prints and stories with us that can then be further interpreted by our fashion designers, alongside trends and seasons. The result is a heart-felt story told through fashion. Their garments inspire others to express their individualism and freedom of speech with as much heart as we have.

Their fashion designers are based in Cape Town, South Africa. They translate and express stories and prints to help others feel part of the story and embody a piece of art they wear.

INFO: www.rhumaa.com

DC / BIG BROTHER

FUTURE NOW

Big Brother was founded by Steve Rocco in 1992 and quickly positioned itself at the front-line of skateboarding, offended or not, most people still read it. It’s no secret that Big Brother was run by skateboarders in the 90’s with no rules; no censorship and no subject considered off-limits. Big Brother was notorious for running controversial stories including step by step ways to commit suicide, how to make homemade bongs and how to get away with underage, public drinking. Capturing the outrageous moments and iconic magazine covers published in Big Brother history, DC releases its limited-edition “The Big Brother Book.”. DC and Big Brother have teamed up to recount some of the best (and worst) memories in the Big Brother legacy with “The Big Brother Book.”

FutureNow teams up with Mountain Falls to release FutureNow Mineral Water: a fresh new approach to the world of water and staying hydrated on a daily basis. It is a brand for the music lover, musician, artist and all round creative persona.

INFO: www.dcshoes.com/dcxbigbrother

INFO: www.futurenow.club

Perfect for the office, studio, home or outdoors.

Has a balanced pH7 + 345 TDS + rich in calcium and magnesium: essential for a healthy daily diet.

FutureNow Water is guaranteed to fuel your future and provide you with some fun entertainment if you join the movement.

LEVI STRAUSS & CO. / S A Levi Strauss & Co. began its presence in South Africa in 1994 In 1995 we opened an owned-and-operated (O&O) factory in Epping that produces men’s and women’s bottoms The factory manufactures, washes and finishes all product for the South African market and other Sub Saharan African countries from the Epping Distribution CenterCurrently, LS&Co. SA employs 500 staff, with 400 of these working at the factorywith the majority (385) in manufacturing and 50 in the distribution center80% of all fabric used in the production process at Epping is sourced from Africa. There are 15 Levi’s® stores across South Africa, and the country plays a key role as our gateway to the markets in sub-Saharan Africa INFO: www.levi.com

PUMA / GRAPHERSROCK Global Sports Brand PUMA has partnered with GraphersRock, Tokyo based graphic designer Tamio Iwaya’s design house famous for its unique taste of cyber punk and techno culture, to launch a collection that exhibits the creative synergy of both brands.

GraphersRock selected the words techno, cyber punk, experimental laboratory and high tech to inspire the sneaker design. Choosing two of PUMA’s most iconic 90’s runner silhouettes, the Disc Blaze and the R698, they worked with PUMA to translate a funky visual story with a play on material. By placing pictures and typography to represent their design ethos, they’ve created a unique design favoured by gadget geeks or ‘otakus’ in Japan.

INFO: www.puma.com 08

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Meditations on Tagore’s TAGORES STORY - Sukuma Sukummah

PHOTOGRAPHY - OLIVER KRUGER

It occurred to me that a magazine which fashions it’s dimensions in record format could possibly do with a piece on Tagore’s and it’s offering to the vinyl community at large.

This being the tenth issue in the series marks a significant point in the publication’s timeline and the imaginations of those who behold it. This issue also meets us at a time of reflection, for tomorrow is the question!? It is, so long as the current climate persists within the Cape Jazz scene (or atleast that which is recognisable as such) since in the space of a month we have seen the closure of two of the most prominent jazz venues in Cape Town, one of which is the subject of this article. I am not at all here concerned or feel any connection to much of the music that passes off as jazz in some of these diners and restaurants, a soulless apathetic style of background play which seems to inspire neither the listener nor the musicians. The music I have in mind has the ability to engage, inform and transform it’s members.

There is a certain seriousness which both the musicians and the audience attach to it, the kind of intensity you might observe in Malcolm X’s stern gaze as the words ``by any means necessary’’ fall off his mouth, or in Amiri Baraka’s ``If the world was a poem, Strunza Med”.

This is only a quality of the experience which itself is the memory of a memory because even if some of the most serious cats around were not very fond of standards, their rhythms often sounded like news from back home, a home coming or orthodoxy in the Chestertonian sense. At times news from nowhere, glimpses of realities beyond abysmal horizons and grasping. This kind of music could be found almost every day of the week at Tagore’s My first encounter with Tagore’s happened on a winter’s night in 2010, sometime in the second semester to date it vaguely. It was Miles Sievwright who mentioned that a band called Babu would be performing that evening and that he’d be going to see them. Having nothing else better to do I tagged along without expecting much. I had never heard of the place but thought I could do with some time in Observatory (Obz) away from the cold and rainy Newlands. We made our way there just in time for the second set and disappeared into somewhat of a hole, a curious looking structure I hadn’t paid much notice to up until that point. Tagore’s itself was housed in 42 Trill Rd Observatory in what used to be first Cafe Carte Blanche and A Touch of Madness just before that and named after the Indian sage and poet, Rabindranath Tagore (1861 - 1941).

Coming in we were greeted by the low lit bar, the smell of incense, the rugs, the vinyl, the Chimurenga displays (I didn’t know what these were at the time), a packed audience with some people on the floor sitting on cushions, some standing, some around the bar area and most notably a towering figure with dreads in a black leather jacket, who very softly kept nudging the patrons for contributions towards the band as the music proceeded. Babu was an “Indian fusion”

quartet which consisted of Reza Khota (guitar), Kesivan Naidoo (drums), Ronan Skillen (tabla, percussion \& didgeridoo) and Shane Cooper (Bass). They performed one of those tightly woven sets, which gave one the sense that one was now partaking in a deep meditation amongst the four men, the most serene kind. This intensity lasted for about forty five minutes to an hour and left in me with a deep longing to hear more of this kind of music. We mingled around over red wine after the set and watched the murmur from the audience grow more audible somehow managing to remain well below what would be noise, the ether of mutual respect and adoration within Babu’s style of play now seemed to escape from the stage, permeate the entire room invigorating as sense of phileo amongst us. I can’t remember the details from the rest of the evening except a profound sense of awe and adoration this whole experience impressed upon me.

It had struck me as odd that there was no one at the door asking for cover charge as is usually the custom with most Jazz venues. I later learnt that Tagore’s had been established exactly along this principle, that of making music accessible to the Obz community and the broader Cape Town context. I also learnt that the man who would be making his way through the crowds during each performance with an empty Johnie Walker (Black Label) gift box asking for contributions is Leroy Jones Hemmings. The next four years following this episode were filled with intense academic activity but I would still drop in from time to time to catch the odd show here and there. What brought an element of surprise to the whole thing was that the line up would vary depending on who was in town, a lot of musicians would have played here earlier on in their musical development and honed their instruments at Tagore’s.

This was the thing that instilled a sense of homecoming and the crowd would know with each performance they were tapping into untold stories. They didn’t a play for the pay, they played for the privilege.

It was not until the beginning of last year 2015 that I began to take the thing of playing my vinyl out seriously. Tagore’s having established itself over the years as a venue for selectors, a tradition started by Ntone Edjabe with his ``Church on Thursdays” series, became my natural choice.

This also meant that I was now corresponding with Leroy on a weekly basis if not more. This portrait then is largely seen through the lens of a vinyl selector and seeks to convey what Leroy meant to us as a whole with regards to his approach for both recorded and live music.

Very few professional jazz musicians own vinyl and can handle the turntable --Shane Cooper being the only one that comes to mind-- and so what Ntone’s church became was an opportunity not only for wax junkies and their friends to enjoy vinyl

selections but also the local jazz cats were showing up to these listening sessions. You would hear everything from the Afro beat funk rhythms of Fela Kuti in the 70’s, the Bra Hughs, Mama Miriam , Mama Mbuli, Brotherhood of Breath, the intergalactic sounds of Sun Ra and his Arkestra and so on and so forth. Music was played not merely for the sake of getting but also to educate the listener, in this way jazz cats also learnt a thing or two from the selections. Leroy had come be at the epicentre of this interchange by the time I started lugging my records. He would be upstairs, sunk into a couch sometimes dozing off or busy making bookings for the next day, the next week, the next month off of his blackberry phone whilst a killer set would be happening downstairs. The phone was his office space, desk and computer all in one! ``We don’t labour in hip hop, we touch on it” he said following one of my sets which must have been very heavy on the boom bap side. Initially the plan was very simple, I had attended a lot of these Thursday listening sessions and felt that a strong hip hop element was missing, this discovery also made me feel that I was really onto something new. I also knew that there was a spoken word poetry slot every Tuesday evening which seemed the obvious place to begin if one were to try and phrase hip hop in it’s spoken word roots. I remember packing my records one Tuesday evening, taking a cab from Claremont, arriving at the venue and asking Leroy to help set up the decks after the poetry, putting on the first record and watching the audience leave one by one. It goes without saying that he was not at all impressed! I did this for about a month or two before I finally accepted that the poets were not having it. I wrote a poem about it. Once however I played a different night and seeing that the clock was fast approaching midnight as the set was closing, I put on DJ Shadow’s Midnight in perfect world. As the song was finishing off he suddenly appeared from behind the bar and asked whether he should pick up from where I had just left off? I could barely make out these words behind the heavy British accent tinged with a caribbean dialect and thought the song must have been really awful. He reached out to a stack of cd’s and pulled out the whole of Endtroducing, original and played the next song after Midnight.

We sat down in an empty Tagore’s, drank whisky and listened to the whole album. He repeated once again, ``We don’t labour in hip hop, we touch on it”. That morning I also learnt that Leroy used to play back in the late 90’s as DJ Midnight which meant the song had more than just a passing interest to him. Personally I was surprised and very relieved that he owned a copy Endtroducing. This also made me realise that the man was not just hating on hip hop but perhaps had a vast knowledge on the subject which I could learn from. This approach of not labouring in any

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one particular genre has been my soul guide ever since, also I realised that the hip hop hadn’t been missing at all from Tagore’s, it had been lightly sprinkled all across the various sets if one were perceptive enough to find it. You could find it in Fela in as much as it was in the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and then if you really wanted to be explicit you could go ahead and drop that avant garde madlib beat.

Such were the lessons I was learning and picking up from the man during this time. He was interested in crafting a particular sound for the space, something akin to the grooves that had been laid by Ntone Edjabe over the years. In this way one may go as far as saying that there is a particular school of selectors, none of whom sound the same, who consider themselves as building upon this lineage. Of the few that spring to mind there is DJ Mighty of Mabu; Malik “Be” Edjabe; Michael Batch; Ben V and Ra Mava from Indestructible beats; Zipho Daylite; Zara Julius, Daniel Gray, Kimon de Greef & Hal Cooper from the Sub dwellers; Attiyah Khan, Grant Jurius & Boeta Gee from Future Nostalgia; Saint Miller and Dr. Kolade. The list is not exhaustive but reflects some of the names I would see scribbled in chalk on the board just outside Tagore’s.

Amidst all this euphoria and musicology there was always a strong police presence on Trill road and they never left Tagore’s alone. As far as I could tell this was one of the most peaceful and inclusive spaces in Observatory, this alongside Cafe Ghanesh just up the road. After years of enduring instability and police raids, of providing free Jazz education for all, news came in February that the space would really be closing it’s doors this time. A month later 31.03.16 Tagore’s did eventually shut down it’s operations to a large outcry by patrons and fans worldwide. In the days leading up to the closure, Leroy also received news from back home Birmingham, UK that his father was in hospital and things were critical. He would have to make his way there soon to be closer to the family.

A week passed while a flight was being arranged and it passed along with his dad (may you rest in peace Mr. Hemmings). Now it was even more crucial that he went up, perhaps this time for good without a Tagore’s to return to. We met up at Tagore’s the day before he left, also two days before the shut down to talk and reflect on his 25 years in South Africa, spent mostly in journalism and music. I had so many questions. Would he ever return, what about Jazz, what about vinyl selections? I took him back to that first evening I saw Babu, he went on to describe what the music sounded like to him; ``it fitted well into Tagore’s, they were easy on the ear you know, no stadium rock band, genteel without being austere. They represented that whole Yin & Yang balance”.

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STALKER JOY SMITH INTERVIEW - LANI SPICE

PHOTOGRAPHY - JOY SMITH

“Well, I grew up on a farm and one day I found a bag in my father’s cupboard and there was a whole camera set in there. I was around 13 or so.”

A lot of great photographers have either moved back or are experimenting with analogue photography again. This is something you work with yourself, what is it about film photography that interests you?

ing on digital is an art of its own. I have great admiration for those who have mastered it.

I work on film mainly as it captures a certain emotion that I find digital just can’t match. I’ve been shooting on film for most of my life, ever since my father handed me the family Pentax film camera.

What appeals to me and always pulls me further into film photography is that you’re never really sure what you are going to get at the end of the day.

No matter how much you plan and how many light readings you do, you’re always left with a lucky packet rolled up in your hand.

Yes, it’s shocking and upsets me that the cost of buying and developing film has gone up so much in South Africa. It puts a limit on the amount of work I can produce. It shouldn’t be so expensive at all, but I guess that while it’s definitely seeing a rise in popularity, it’s still a pretty niche part of the photographic industry.

Analogue has proved to be quite a pricey process, do you ever feel limited by this?

and my La Sardina 22mm wide-angle fixed lens) and then the trusty Nikon FE on which I either use a 50mm, 55mm or 35mm Nikon lens.

In your social media, you also go by the name Girl Pepper. Is there a story behind it?

“Girl Pepper” is my illustration alias. The story behind “Girl Pepper” is a rather abstract and winding one, but in short I can say the name was inspired by a glorious feminist movement that took place in the 1950s in London - they were called the Ted Girls, so that’s how the alias “Girl Pepper” was born.

Your creative spectrum is quite wide, when did the medium of photography begin for you?

way I look at everything today. Music also plays a big role in my photography. The music I listen to while I work on a project is a game changer, it really helps me mould my work. But also, while I was studying photography, I started developing a bit of a complex because I was surrounded by people with really beautiful, expensive cameras and I couldn’t afford the same calibre. But one day my lecturer pulled me aside and he told me that it doesn’t matter what camera you use, it’s the way you see things that makes a good photographer.

You can have the best camera but produce shit work, on the flip side you can have a disposable camera and capture something timeless. Some of the biggest names in photography used shit cameras but the clever way they used them made their work so remarkable. Those words really changed the way I look at photography to this very day.

Any projects you are currently busy with or that are coming up?

Well, I grew up on a farm and one day I found a bag in my father’s cupboard and there was a whole camera set in there. I was around 13 or so.

I ran to my father with the camera and asked him “how does this work, show me” and he did. I immediately ran outside and shot a whole roll in like 10 minutes! He took the roll in and when he showed me, I was blown away that one could capture whatever you see in a still. I guess you can say that since then I was hooked on film.

Yes, I have a group exhibition Utopia themed with a creative collective called NUDE coming up on 25th of June at Touch of Madness in Observatory, Cape Town, which will be a very liberating and interesting event. Then, my solo exhibition Youth City is coming up this summer. That will take place at Drawing Room in Observatory, Cape Town.

When it comes to taking photos, is there a particular subject matter that you are mostly interested in?

No, not at all. There is too much around to single out a particular subject matter, it would honestly be a huge challenge for me to focus only on one subject.

La Sardina 22mm

Photography mastermind, William Eggleston has often said, “The way I have always looked at it is the world is in color. And there’s nothing we can do about that.”

Colour seems to play a fair role in your images, especially in the when it comes to your double exposures. Is this intentional and Are there particular types of film you use or printing methods such as cross processing etc., that you prefer?

Are there other disciplines you would like to explore, possibly within photography?

Do you have any inspirations that influence you or your work?

I am very interested in working with short films and I am also feeling out ways of mixing my illustrations with my photography.

I have many, yes. Mostly people I am surrounded by, like my friends but also strangers. Living in Berlin was one of my biggest inspirations, it changed the

The colours you see in my recent work is purely the camera and, yes, the film. I have shot most of my recent work on a La Sardina Lomography camera with very old expired Fuji film from the 80s. The combination of the camera and the film makes the photos “burst” with colour. It’s not always my preference but as I said earlier, it’s a lucky packet - especially the way I shoot.

Your talents are also filtered into other creative worlds such as music and fine art, could you tell us more about that?

What are your feelings toward digital photography, is it something you practice too?

I find my digital camera very handy to use as a light reader and just to make sure that I get that crisp exposure when shooting on my Nikon film camera, but I hardly use it for anything else. However, work-

I have been making music for a very long time. It’s a great passion of mine and so is illustrating. I love keeping myself busy, so I’m constantly pushing myself to learn how to use different materials and instruments. It’s all about finding new ways to express myself.

Konica C35 38mm

Nikon FE

HOT HITS Joanna Newsom

Ata Kak

Peter Sarstedt

Juan Wauters

Porches

Ys

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Coming back to tools, what kind of camera/s do you use?

Well I have three cameras I love using, two of which are point and shoot (Konica C35 38mm fixed lens THE LAKE

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“Living in Berlin was one of my biggest inspirations, it changed the way I look at everything today. Music also plays a big role in my photography. The music I listen to while I work on a project is a game changer, it really helps me mould my work.�

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ART = LIFE = ART Barend de Wet COPY - Marelize van Zyl / Shona van der Merwe

PHOTOGRAPHY - Juan Voges / Projected Identities - Shona van der Merwe / Artworks

A mythical figure in the South African art world with a career spanning more than thirty years, artist Barend de Wet CAN AT BEST BE INTERPRETED AS a conceptual formalist. For de Wet, the job of art-making is to insist on the unobvious, and to do so without advocating any absolute law. The value and intent of art - or an artwork - must remain open.

In the introduction to her monograph on the artist, Kathryn Smith wrote: “Barend de Wet has operated with stunning agility in the interface between contemporary art, material culture and social networks. He is everywhere and nowhere at once, constantly testing relationships and perceptions”. Described as a “consummate aesthete”, de Wet’s practice incorporates traditional media, craft skills and fanatical hobbyism that manifests in acts of playful and witty sculptures, metal drawings, ‘knitted paintings’, performances, interventions and productive collaborations.

his clothing, a Tretchikoff print, and his version of Joseph Beuys’ Fat Chair (1964–85). In 1996, De Wet performed what has been described as his most iconic work at an empty storefront in Troyeville, Johannesburg: art disguised as pasta,

from art-making altogether, but as De Wet cannily suggested, art-making and the art world are two entirely different games. De Wet’s post-resignation years were not spent idly. In 1998 he established the Museum of Temporary Art at his

From being a model for Issey Miyake, beekeeper, world record holder in yo-yoing, serial tattooist, hotel manager and innate exhibitionist, everyday de Wet exemplifies his motto that art is life and life is art, and that anything can offer creative possibilities for transformation. “What’s your notion of beauty, what’s mine?” he asks.

“Art is in the eye of the beholder, as beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The art I make attempts to be art in most people’s eyes. In other words, art that is art and nothing else.”

Since joining SMAC, De Wet has presented two solo shows. The first, GREEN, was exhibited in Stellenbosch in 2010 and was accompanied by a monograph about the artist, authored by Kathryn Smith. His second solo exhibition, MAXIMALISM, was presented in 2012 in Cape Town.

De Wet was the invited artist for the inaugural Cape Town Art Fair in 2013 where he presented a solo exhibition titled A Tangled Skein, curated by Andrew Lamprecht. He performed in Experimental Evening - Notes in Thread and was included in Thinking, Feeling, Head, Heart, curated by Marilyn Martin, both at the New Church Museum in Cape Town in 2014. De Wet’s latest projects include a video montage titled Projected Identities, which was first featured in MINE (Part III), an itinerant exhibition of South African video and performance art, which was shown in Bordeaux, France in 2013. In 2015, Projected Identities was presented at the TATE Modern in London as part of The Film Will Always Be You – South African Artists on Screen, co-curated by Zoe Whitley, followed by a screening at SMAC Gallery in Cape Town.

Barend De Wet / Projected Identities - Untitled 22

Barend de Wet was born in 1956 in Boksburg, Gauteng where he grew up and matriculated in 1973. After a brief period of studying architecture at the University of the Witwatersrand, De Wet changed direction to study Fine Art at Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town. With a magnetism and personage that has consistently informed his career to the point of eclipsing his practice, De Wet has often evaded formal record-keeping of the milestones of his life’s work. His earliest exhibitions date back to group shows at The Market Gallery in Johannesburg in 1984, with his first solo exhibition, toying with art in 1985, presented at the Old Castle Brewery in Woodstock, Cape Town. That same year, De Wet was presented with the prestigious Zöllner Prize.

In 1987, he presented Old, Regenerated and New Work at Gallery International in Cape Town, and in 1988 he was awarded the Volkskas Atelier Award by the South African Association of the Arts, Pretoria. He had one more solo exhibition, barend de/wet, at the US Art Gallery in Stellenbosch, before completing his studies in 1990.

That same year, de Wet received top honours in the Volkskas National Art Prize, earning himself an eight-month residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris.

Although De Wet’s richly textured career can at times eschew clear theoretical definition, the products of his practice consistently engage with the complex politics of art-making, offering guileless objects that allow art to function as a direct experience. As Kathryn Smith describes: “He is a trickster; obdurate, contradictory, wilful, and generous in equal measure. The artworld needs him, but finds him difficult to ‘manage’.

Throughout his career, de Wet has consistently opened up spaces of possibility for future creative action in a context of production with very specific local conditions”.

Barend de Wet / in the flesh - 2016 Enamel on Steel 97 x 88 x 20 cm

While the social dissent and upheaval of the South African political landscape during the late 80s and early 90s delivered a meaningful canon of ‘resistance’ art, this period also proved productive for De Wet , who is often categorised as an avant-gardist, in terms of his discursive contribution to the historical understanding of experimental practices in South Africa. De Wet participated in various group exhibitions and staged unique performances and interventions; most notably, the the 22nd Biennale de São Paulo in 1994, Brazil, where he presented a mixed media installation with a video of himself in the nude, explaining the various components of the work,

and enigma that surrounds his practice and its interchangeability with the artist’s life. De Wet joined SMAC Gallery in 2009, and participated in important exhibitions like Dada South? Exploring Dada Legacies in South African Art 1960 to the present, co-curated by Kathryn Smith and Roger van Wyk at the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town, in 2009; Twenty: South African Sculpture of the Last Two Decades at the Nirox Sculpture Park, Johannesburg, in 2010; The Rainbow Nation: Hedendaagse Beeldhouwkunst uit Zuid-Afrika at the Museum Beelden aan Zee, Den Haag, Netherlands, in 2012 and After The Rainbow Nation at the NIROX Sculpture Park, Johannesburg, in 2013.

where the artist performed the act of making fresh pasta which was hung out to dry on lines spanning an otherwise empty space.

It was in this same year that De Wet’s uncompromising attitude to his practice was exemplified in a radical space-clearing gesture. De Wet officially resigned from the art world with the announcement of the birth of his son, by way of a postcard featuring the newborn photographed on a pedestal,titled art is life: homage to michelangelo, rodin, camille claudel and my wife (1996). Many took this to mean a resignation

hotel, The Grand, in Observatory, Cape Town.

Here he continued his obdurate battle against the intellectualisms of art, favouring honest gestures imbued with visual puns and Duchampian mischief. Many significant South African and international artists completed ‘residencies’ at the ‘museum’.

Although De Wet participated in numerous group shows and has presented works in solo exhibitions since the late 90s, his most emblematic moments feature De Wet himself, in performances which served to enhance the shroud of cult

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Barend de Wet’s latest solo exhibition, Black, White & Everything In-Between runs at SMAC Gallery in Cape Town from June 4th to July 23rd 2016, and will be accompanied by the launchof anew publication with test by Alexandra C.M. Ross.

Reference: / Smith, K. 2010. Barend de Wet. Stellenbosch: SMAC Art Publishing

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Barend de Wet / abstract metal drawings V 2012 Enamel paint on welded steel 154 x 133 x 11 cm 2

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Barend De Wet / Maximal Knitting 2012 100% Acrylic Wool and Acrylic Paint on Board 122 x 124 cm

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Barend De Wet / Projected Identities - Untitled 23

Barend de Wet / the great escape (i), (ii) & (iii) 2016 Enamel on Steel Dimensions Var

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Freakonomics Scavenger Economies of Joburg’s Mine Dumps STORY - Potsiso Phasha

PHOTOGRAPHY - Potsiso Phasha

“I work here and whatever I make is for my house back home. I will never stay here – I am here for work alone.

Life is hard. But you must never suffer as long as you still have your hands; that’s what my father taught me. He taught me you must work hard to have your own things” – Tofara*, a Zimbabwean national who works on the mine dumps.

In 1886, a prospector digging in the ground in an area just west of what is now Johannesburg discovered gold. His discovery led to the establishment of the world’s greatest goldfield, the Witwatersrand, a reef stretching some 55km in an east-west direction.

Over the last hundred years, this reef has produced nearly 50 000 tons of gold (Mphephu, 2003). The discovery of gold in this region of South Africa laid the basis for what is today a giant region of inter-connected towns and cities, housing almost 13 million people and contributing over a third of national economic output. It also contributed immensely to the development of the country as a whole.

As more and more mining activity took place on the Witwatersrand, its physical landscape began to change. A number of mine tailings began to define the landscape – a result of mining operations where large volumes of ore were mined and brought to the surface where it was crushed and gold extracted.

The pale mine tailings have since become ‘permanent’ features of our landscape. As Mphephu (2003) notes, there are over 250 mine tailings covering an area of 44 000 hectares. At the time of their establishment, mine tailings – commonly referred to as ‘mine dumps’ – contained fine traces of gold which could not be extracted. With advances in mining technologies and increasing gold prices the tailings have, over the last two decades, been reprocessed to recover the gold they still have .

Today the region’s physical landscape is once again in a state of transition due to this reprocessing. The reworking, where mining machinery reshuffles the mine dumps, has resulted in an unusual scavenger sub-economy. Every day from dawn to very late in the evening, groups consisting only of men intensively and illicitly work the polluted soil of these pale landscapes in search of scrap metals – leftover fragments of old mine operations that are either surfaced through the mechanical reshuffling or manually dug up. This is best seen on mine dumps in the eastern edge of Johannesburg along Heidelberg and Rosettenville Roads, the focus of this photo essay. As the scrap metals surfacing in one site get depleted, the men move on to other areas, often resorting to manual excavation in order to maintain their livelihoods.

The intensity of this scavenger sub-economy is intriguing. On the one hand it is very different from what is conventionally understood and valued as an ‘urban economy’ by city-planners. On the other hand it is worth asking whether this economy, although largely invisible, is any different from the early prospecting activities – where opportunity-seekers dug in the ground for scraps of gold a century ago, in the same area – that were the very foundations of the city-region we have today.

This photo essay follows a group of men in the Rosettenville and Booysens areas of Johannesburg, who make a living through ‘scavenging’ for scraps of metal on old mine dumps. It places them in the context of the strange and distorted mining landscapes they inhabit, and reveals some of the key dynamics of their activities, from the moment of unearthing of leftover metal shards to when these are sold to scrapyards in

the nearby Johannesburg CBD. Ultimately, the essay portrays the workings of an invisible but vibrant economy on the region’s mine dumps – seemingly dead spaces typically overlooked as mere waste ground.

Working in these landscapes has dangers, the biggest being the fact that the ground gets more destabilized the more excavating the men do. With no proper mining tools, their work creates cliffs which regularly collapse. This particular area in the photograph has a large concentration of steel but the cliff now has a crack, and rock chips off a number of times a day.

Most of the men now fear digging here. The instability of this landscape is further aggravated by rain. “Water is dangerous because it goes between the crack and makes the ground loose”, says Ronny, one of the men who works on the mine dump every day.

Most of the men dig very close to the edge of the hill.

Although dangerous, digging here has some advantages. The biggest one is that boulders and undesired rubble can be thrown off the dump with ease and so do not need to be carried away. This facilitates faster digging, meaning more money can be made quicker. Working further from the edge means digging is hampered by all the rubble being unearthed, therefore covering further potential areas for digging.

Working on the edge is also advantageous because when it is time to leave at the end of the day, the metals are easily thrown off the cliff to the bottom where they can be collected again and carried away.

The mine dump undergoes physical change every day. With various metals ranging from steel (heavy, light, stainless); aluminum; copper; brass and lead being extracted, a series of ‘caves’ remain, signalling to the other men where digging has already taken place. The steep gradient of the landscape prevents the men from digging too deep as more and more cliffs and caves are created, in turn increasing the danger of working these spaces. Hence the men constantly move around to dig in new spots.

Most of the men on the mine dumps are Zimbabweans. Ronny talks about how working on the mine dumps is a real job for him, the same way people go to work in offices every day. As such, he has developed a strong sense of work ethic and discipline.

“South Africans do not like these kinds of jobs because they are laborious. You have to work very hard.

They prefer better jobs, white collar jobs at the office.

Because they have an ID they can access more things like applying for loans”, says Ronny. “I have to save and take everything back to Zimbabwe. Every time I go home, I take everything I own. When I come back I start from scratch”.

gang comprises about 20 men, who are feared for not hesitating to deploy violence to secure the any of the metals the machines unearth. They are not interested in doing any manual work and as such ‘appropriate’ the big mining machines to work for them.

In instances where little steel is brought to the surface, the gang is also known to rob the other men of the scrap metals they have found, claiming that it was dug from an area that ‘belonged’ to them. This reveals a criminal economy living off an “illegal” economy that also feeds an informal trader economy.

While some of the interactions in the space where these different kinds of economies exist are defined by mutual gain, others are driven by individual benefit. The result in the latter case often has life-threatening consequences for those actors with lesser power.

Digging on the mine dump is a gamble. There are no guarantees that metals will be found. On this day, after many hours of digging, brothers Tofara and Ronny had only recovered a few pieces of steel. Late in the afternoon they moved to another spot to start digging. As it was already late and they were frustrated, they decided to spend the night on the mine dump digging. “If I had a lot of money I wouldn’t be here.

If you were to give me money today, I’d go straight to Zimbabwe. I was last there two months ago. I love Zimbabwe. I have my own land there. It is huge. I have cattle on it and my younger brothers and cousins take care of them. I also love our president. Not like; I love him! He gives his people land. Which other president will do that?” says Ronny.

After the metals are thrown down the mine dump, they are gathered into a bag and prepared to be sold immediately. The heavy load is carried for a few meters to the road where a small truck comes to pick the men up. This truck belongs to a scrap dealer in the nearby CBD who offers the men transport from the mine dump at no charge.

Although the men are here for the same thing with no guarantees of success, there is no form of competition between them. They work together, eat together and share their tools. They also respect each other’s workspace. In instances where one is not done digging in a particular spot, he is allowed a chance to continue in the same spot the following day. “Mdala”, in the picture, spent yesterday relaxing in the city’s parks in the CBD, and today continues where he left off. He says he came back to dig as he had run out of money.

“I have been working on this mine dump for eight years. I started on the other side. I am married to these mine dumps” – Victor.

Ronny digs in his pocket to see how much copper he has accumulated. Of all the metals, copper is the most precious due to its high retail price. When recovered, it is immediately put away, normally in the pocket, to ensure that it is not forgotten on the mine dump at the end of the day.

Victor, along with the other men, speaks of a gang of men operating on the mine dumps. In the Rossettenville mine dump where this gang is, the mine dumps are also being worked by heavy machinery by mining companies. The gang follows the machinery as it moves around reshuffling the mine dump, assuming ‘ownership’ of that part of the dump, and everything that the mining machinery brings to the surface. The

The scrap dealers to whom the men sell complain when copper is still covered with a plastic casing, and often reject it for that. So the process of trading the scrap metal involves a phase where it is cleaned on site to ensure that dealers do not reject it or offer a lower rate. The men burn the copper wires so that the casing melts off and the copper wires inside are exposed.

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Each metal has its own retail price. Copper, in the picture, holds the highest value sold at a rate between R48 and R50 per kilogram; brass is R25/kg; stainless steel R8/kg; lead R7/kg; heavy steel, which is the most prominent of all the excavations, is sold at R2,50/kg while light steel trades at R1,60. The men are very aware of what is valuable and what is not – and how to treat the most valuable. Copper is the ultimate prize.

At the end of the day, the men make a quick cell phone call to their scrap yard owner and within 10 minutes his truck stops beside the mine dump. The metals are weighed and the men paid immediately.

Immediate access to cash means they are able to attend to daily bills such as food. Tofara talks about how, as a Zimbabwean, the cash payment arrangement is perfect for him as it requires no paperwork.

Transactions are concluded within minutes. Being able to sell the metals on the same day also saves the men money as it eliminates storage costs and changes of their treasure being stolen.

The Booysens mine dump, a few kilometers west of the Rosettenville Road dump, is relatively flat with a lot of vegetation. After some digging the landscape begins to take on a different form. The mounds of unearthed material reveal a series of past movements over the landscapes and the traces of decisions made on it, and speak to the men of where and how deep to dig before moving on. The pursuit of opportunity is made visible through the day to day changes in the landscape. In the distance, the tall buildings of the Johannesburg CBD, a city built from these same kind of excavations a century ago, can just be seen.

In the same way as copper goes through fire to get cleaned before it is sold, steel needs to be cleaned by knocking off the hardened bits of soil covering it.

The pieces have been underground for a long time and are in a process of decomposition. Tlou, pictured here, talks about how when these metals were disposed of by the mines they were coated with chemicals that increased their rate of decomposition. The bucket on the right contains heavy steel that now looks like a rock. Once crushed, the rust falls off and the steel inside is recovered.

“I don’t want to do this anymore, man. I want to do other things, I just need money to start. R2000 would be okay to start. I want to buy things and sell to people. It is almost Christmas time now, people are going back home (to Zimbabwe) and they will be looking to buy clothes and toys and stuff. I must make money, my man”, says Ronny. He says the pipe he is cutting in the picture will be his meal for tonight and for lunch tomorrow, while he and Ike (in the background) pursue a much bigger pipe.

Ike and Ronny discovered this long pipe together one day while walking from the Booysens mine dump.

From the road they saw a brown pipe jutting out from the earth, and upon closer inspection discovered it was much longer. They do not know exactly how long it is but judging by its thickness and diameter, and the current length of the furrow, it is estimated to weigh around two tons. Two tons of heavy steel would be worth around R5000.

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“One guy discovered it. It was a small hole and he started to dig that hole more to see what was inside it.”

The Booysens mine dump is bordered by a municipal waste dump. This dump has another group of men who also scavenge for recyclables such as plastic and glass. Like the gangs on the Rosettenville Road mine dump they are known to be a violent group that views the municipal waste dump as their territory. Anybody who goes up the waste dump risks their life as the group sees unfamiliar faces as a threat tp their livelihood. While some informal economies gel with ease, others within the same informal economic space are strongly repellent to each other due to the struggle to maximize waste, or money, at the end of the day.

To some of the men, the mine dump has become more than a place of extraction. It is their home.

They pay no rent, and they can work for much longer hours. This tunnel is on the Booysens mine dump. It links the municipal waste dump and the mine dump, and some of the men use it for shelter. “One guy discovered it. It was a small hole and he started to dig that hole more to see what was inside it. He found there was drums, steel drums, about maybe 80 of them. He did not tell anyone. Every day he would come here, take a few drums and go sell them at the scrap yard. He didn’t have to dig anymore. The other guys started to wonder what was happening and where this guy was getting the drums, because he would take like 3 each day, and in 30 minutes he was gone, gone home. So they followed him and found the drums. From then everyone began to take them and sell as well. And now it’s a place where people sleep”, explains Ronny. “It’s not too old. It was found last year towards the end of the year, like around this time”. About 8 people sleep in here every night.

It is much easier to dig during the rainy season. Some advantages of digging in the rainy season include the fact that the ground is softer and there is no dust.

There are, however some disadvantages too. The soil is much heavier to lift with a shovel, and rain is also a disruption to their productivity. If it rains for a day or two in a row there will be no food to eat. The mine dump is empty and no one is working because all the holes that have been dug are now filled with water, making it risky to walk around as it isn’t clear which is a puddle and which goes deeper. The rainy season does however present an opportunity to store some metals if they are in small quantity. Small but heavy pieces of steel are wrapped in plastic and placed at the bottom of the water filled holes, making them easier to access the following day when the water level had subsided.

While the process of unearthing scrap metal from the dump is itself laborious, the logistics of how these metals reach the market is equally so. On the Rosettenville Road dump, the scrap yard owner comes to collect the men and their metals. In Booysens, however, they have to transport the metals themselves, over a distance of close to three kilometers. While it is good to make the largest discoveries on the mine dumps, it also comes at a cost. When the men have a fortunate day on the dump, unearthing a lot of metals, they may make more than one trip to the scrap yard to ensure that the finds do not over-ac-

cumulate, making it harder to transport them at the end of the day. The costs of transporting the metals come in various forms ranging from physical and mental exhaustion to possible physical injury if a large piece of metal falls on a leg, for example, or someone accidentally rolls down the mine dump – as Tofara has in the past. In some instances the discovery is a single, heavy piece of steel. Such finds immediately escalate the costs Large finds not only require more manpower to lift and move; they call for moving equipment – often makeshift trolleys. These have to be sound as well, and in this precarious economy this is seldom the case due to financial constraints. The trolleys are always shared, making them more vulnerable to damage. They also have a plastic base which bends under heavy load, immediately reducing their mobility and requiring more force to push and pull. This is a great challenge especially on the gravel road from the mine dump.

The moment it reaches the street less manpower is required, although it still rolls with the base touching the ground. Ultimately, all costs end up being financial. The strength required could result in physical injury; the digging itself could lead to health problems as it has with Paul, who now has pneumonia; and the trolley needs maintenance as well.

One of the men who used to work the mine dumps has been given a job as a scrap yard assistant. As soon as scrap metals arrive he cuts up all ties and weighs them and pays out. He is the ‘face’ of the shop. The owner only appears in cases of large sales that require large amounts of cash. On this particular day for example, a group of men came in with over R4000 worth of copper. In such instances, the shop assistant calls the owner to bring more cash to complete the transaction. The owner must always have cash to pay for incoming scrap. When scrap fills up at his shop he quickly arranges transport to take it to a smelter in town, in order to always have adequate liquid cash.

In order to remain competitive and to secure clients, the scrap yard owner says he sometimes organises braais for the men, and every day he arranges soap and water for them to wash their hands. He needs to show a sign of appreciation to the men because there are many other scrap yards around and he could easily lose them as clients. This is particularly so due to the fact that the trading process is not always a smooth one. Some tensions often emerge between the buyer and seller as both parties are aware that the other will try to maximise gains. The seller sometimes has not cleaned the steel properly and it is still covered with other solids, or the copper wires are still covered with plastic. The buyer could easily offer a lower price, or claim that some steel is actually hardened solid and reject it. Both sides play this weighting game: the seller may try to allow additional weight to his metals by not cleaning them properly; while the scrap dealer might offer a much lower rate claiming he is also offered a lower price when he sells poorly cleaned material for smelting.

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NAIVE MELODY Yann-Xavier Horowitz STORY - ADRIAN DAY

PHOTOGRAPHY - OLIVER KRUGER

Jason Jessee once stated, “Skateboarding, I love it so much I want it to die.” To the non-skateboarder, this might come across as perplexing, but when you’ve been a skater for most of your life, it makes sense.

Skateboarding today is unfortunately becoming a jock activity. It’s going Olympic, it’s been infiltrated by TV networks, deodorant brands, soft drinks, banking institutions, car companies and Monsanto-grown food brands. Venture capitalists and giant corporations have swooped in to take over, and ultimately, try to sell our culture back to us.

Every kid now uploads his pile-of-shit footage onto Instagram, and self-promotion is an alltime high. Delusional kids buy into promises made by the bean counters, and follow instructions in the hopes of making it as a disposable hero. Skateboarders and longboarders are seen as the same beast, and mall chains execute skater-boy window displays with mannequins that look as though a rollerblader fucked a stand-up paddle boarder and dressed the unwanted child in an MMA weekend outfit.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom. The good shit is there and it’s strong, but it’s not packaged for the non-skateboarder.

This is why someone like Yann is so important to the heart and soul of not merely skateboarding, but what it is to be a skateboarder. You can have a skateboard, you can show up at the park, but that doesn’t make you a skateboarder. It’s your approach, mentality and attitude that entirely define you. The fact of the matter is, kids are good these days. They can flip in and flip out, jump on handrails, and boggle your head with technicality, but more often than not that doesn’t mean shit. A performance bar in skateboarding stifles it, and whilst it makes it palatable to the masses and sells ad space, it holds little weight in the long term. When everyone is aiming for the same thing, very few will stand out.

For many of us, Yann is the real deal. He embodies what the skateboarder should be. He’s accidentally iconoclastic, and he doesn’t give a fuck about what you think. He found his skateboard style a long time ago and ran with it, paying little attention to what’s cool or not, and this has now got him international attention from publications and brands from all over the world. His raw personality shines in his skating - it’s powerful and gnarly - even frightening at times, and in an age where kids fake their styles, his is nothing but the truth. It’s this ‘truth’ if you like, that will always elevate a skateboarder to greater heights, because it’s original, uncontrived and exciting. It’s comparable to watching some guitar virtuoso technically noodling some high-pitched prog-rock bullshit cover on YouTube, to being at Hendrix’s show at Finsbury Park in ’67.

A lot of skaters are artists, whether they have realised it or not. I think Yann knows that there is

Oh, yeah, and he was pretty much on a party train every night. Late to bed, early to rise.

potentially huge artistry waiting to get out, but in a sense, it has to wait. In a way he looks forward to the skateboarding thing passing so he can start exploring this potential, but for now, all eyes are on the skateboard prize. He has however started to unleash some twisted illustrations and ideas come through in Liars 8000, a collective of bespoke griptape art and T designs, in which sub-cultures and fashion comedically bear the brunt of abuse. When you’re on the outside looking in, this can be your fuel for life.

This notoriety has had zero effect on elevating his own opinion of himself. He’s still the local kid, friendly to everyone, down to talk to anyone, and he takes an interest in ideas and people outside of our incestuous circle. He serves you a beer with a smile and rarely says a bad word about anyone, and we’re a pretty tough crowd. Culturally and existentially he is wise beyond his years. He’s thrown himself into the deep-end enough times to know himself pretty well, and how he wants to live his life. Of course there will probably be bumps in the road, but in relation to millennials his age, his eyes are seriously open.

Following in this vein, he is pretty much the only well-recognised skater in the world who has publicly addressed his sexuality. In a weirdly and supposedly open-minded sub-culture, homosexuality is barely addressed in skateboarding.

Whilst declaring your sexual orientation seems completely irrelevant to skateboarding [and it is], it’s his approach of being bold enough to not care that further encapsulates who he is.

And it wasn’t an easy thing to do. Skateboarding is made up primarily of snotty teens, with little understanding of reality, and furthermore, in skateboarding, you’ve got to be tough. You don’t want anyone to call you a ‘faggot’ for not making your trick, and in previous eras even brands would graphically target and mock homosexuality. And while your peers are getting hammered and trying to fuck every girl at the bar, you are often expected to do the same.

And if you don’t well, maybe you’re a …

At a young age, his skateboard has taken him all over the world on trips and tours. And it took very little time for the Euros to take note of him.

On his first grown-up trip he came with us to Barcelona at age 18. Then we left him there to skate and party. Or party and skate, whichever seems more appropriate. It should be noted that our Yann is no stranger to danger, a natural-born partier. This has on occasion potentially created perhaps some cause for concern, but frustratingly it doesn’t seem to affect his performance or demeanour at all. It’s like you can barely show him the bad side, because he’s already risen above it. One of my favourite personal experiences was arriving at Baseline, late in the afternoon, to a much damaged-looking man. He had partied all night with no sleep and was adopting the hair of the dog approach on the outside bench.

It was the middle of summer and he had told me that an hour earlier he had put on five layers of clothing and sat in the sun to try and detox the hell-ride out of his system. That same evening was a large contest, with corporate cash thrown all over the gaff and PA systems and promo girls. And whilst the rest of the contest skaters would have gotten there early to train, assess the competition, and strategise their runs, Yann was hanging with his friends, drinking the pain away. He arrived at the contest that night in a right state, and won. The photo of him holding up his cheque is something to behold.

And whilst the lifestyle may be at 200 miles an

Raised right? I asked him. Because so often to develop into the true you, you need to have freedom as a kid. Freedom he had, and even in his mind perhaps a little too much. With supportive parents backing his choices and passions, he laughs that he was never told “no”, which by his delivery illustrates that a few doors opened a little too early. They even let him go to Circus School in Switzerland to be an acrobat. You heard me. Circus School. It was however that same freedom given that enabled him to skate as much as he could, and go on countrywide tours with older dudes your mama warned you about.

hour sometimes, it’s entirely his and about his journey. It’s not unconscious and has nothing to do with peers or a scene. And somehow, it works.

We were recently on tour with RVCA and Thrasher Magazine, with seven very heavy professionals from the US. He man-handled every spot, literally blew everyone away, thus kicking in his US door invitations in which travels are soon to follow. His footage productivity and 150% approach had the Americans pretty wide-eyed.

I’ve watched him grow up from a spray-on, stripey-pants-wearing upstart to the globally recognised skate-powerhouse that he is, and to be frank, I couldn’t be prouder, for a myriad of reasons.

Because beyond the skills and the attitude, I see him at the moment as our ultimate skateboarding export. He’s not rocking a sports drink hat, he’s not rocking an energy bracelet and he’s not self-promoting - he’s being himself and that’s all he’s got to do to make it.

PARTY POOPERS Roxy Music

Bauhaus

David Bowie

Fela Kuti

Talking Heads

Roxy Music

In the Flat Field

The Man Who Sold the

Afrodisiac

Speaking in Tongues

World

1972

1980

1970

1973

1983

Island

4AD

Mercury

EMI

Sire

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A lot of skaters are artists, whether they have realised it or not. I think Yann knows that there is potentially huge artistry waiting to get out, but in a sense, it has to wait.

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For many of us, Yann is the real deal. He embodies what the skateboarder should be. He’s accidentally iconoclastic, and he doesn’t give a fuck about what you think.

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ABERRATION Jaco S. Venter

DIS HOE ONS ROL / THIS IS HOW WE ROLL

Coming from a background of playing music, and the lifestyle that comes with it, I was (and still am) prone to forget a lot of the things that happen around me and the insane people I get to meet. I decided to start taking photos about 8 years ago so I can remember these faces and places a bit better. It was an amazing opportunity when my good friend Hardus told me about his idea for a TV show that involved him and another good friend of mine, Jack Parow, riding Harley Davidsons around South Africa. I explained to them that they needed a behind the scenes photographer, and from my experience ‘people dig that type of shit’, and they fell for it. These are some of the photos I took on the East Coast leg of what is going to become ‘Dis Hoe Ons Rol’.

SHOT on FUJI X-PrO 2

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Percussive maintenance Vuyo Katsha STORY - RUAN SCOTT

PHOTOGRAPHY - JANSEN VAN STADEN

When he plays his instruments, a brilliant sense of bliss floods his face.

His lips are slightly ajar with concentration while the corners of his mouth are raised to a subtle smile.

This man is deep inside his element. As peaceful as he is when thumping and clicking away on traditional African percussion instruments, and as dexterously as he plays the mbira’s, akikandas or tama drums, standing behind an instrument is not the only place Vuyo Katsha has found peace.

Kholeho Mosala, a percussion player associated with acts like Hesho’Beshoo and Amajqi emerged as a talented young musician from the influx of marimbas in their hometown during the 70’s. “Mosala was the one who introduced me to percussion instruments in the 80’s He was like and elder to us,” says Katsha.

His brown eyes pierce when he talks, yet they don’t appear antagonistic. He engages with me as he explains Buddhism: “Buddhism tells us not to discriminate against other religions, but, as opposed to other religions which take the external and internalises it, Buddhism is about taking what’s inside you and letting it out.” “If you don’t bring forth what is within you then that which is within you will destroy you.” He adds.

By age 15 Katsha was playing marimba in Amajqi, a percussion ensemble growing in popularity during the late 80’s 90’s. Katsha was given an opportunity to travel abroad in 1991 when Amajqi performed at the International Children’s Festival in Vancouver, Canada. The first of numerous international performances.

His ears are prominently silhouetted against his shaven head, giving him a youthful appearance.

We are sitting in the courtyard of the Rootspring Studio in Muizenberg. A small home recording studio that records and promotes indigenous and fringe music. A polished gold tooth catches my eye every time Katsha laughs. It’s hard to believe he recently celebrated his fortieth birthday as he seems much younger.

“I was introduced to Buddhism through Jonny Blundell owner of Rootspring. At first, I thought it was another colonialist religion, a celebration of Western ancestry. You know, I was opposed to Christianity growing up so I didn’t immediately recognise the value of this spiritual practice. It has brought peace into my daily life, the same peace when I play music.”

However, Katsha chose a ‘life path’ long before he crossed paths with Buddhism. Since age nine he has been using music to mend the broken scenes of a childhood raised in Gugulethu.

“We started Gumboot dancing, just me and kids from the neighbourhood. We were out there every Saturday busking around the Cape Town CBD. You know, it was something else to do than get involved with locals gangs or drugs. It fostered a love for music in us. That’s where my musical journey began,” Katsha says.

Marimbas was one the first instruments Katsha was introduced to as a young boy.

“Marimbas came to South Africa through the Catholic missionaries traveling the continent.

They brought them from Zimbabwe to accompany their singing in the church because they didn’t have pianos. Actually, some of the members in the band Amopondo learned to play marimba from the St. Gabriels church in Gugulethu during the 70’s.”

“My father refused that I go. He was scared of flying and didn’t trust airplanes. I was still a minor so my older brother had to sign the contract allowing me to go.”

“When I started traveling with Amajqi I got exposed to other African musicians and instruments. Today I play the tama drum, marimba, akikanda, and mbira. Artists who have inspired me are people like Salif Keita and Ismael Lo both of whom I have had the honour of sharing a stage with.”

The tama drum, also known as the talking drum is a small drum from West Africa, no bigger than a two-litre cool drink bottle. It was used to communicate over vast distances as it mimics the sound of a calling voice when played. The high pitch is obtained by the small surface area and tightly stretched skin. The pitch can be altered by squeezing the tension chords on the sides of the drum, altering it to resemble different phrases or calls. The skin of a Likkewaan’s belly works best to for the drums surface, Vuyo attests.

The akikanda or log xylophone from Uganda is similar to standard wooden xylophones, except in size. It requires up to six players that play it simultaneously and the must keep the rhythm, melody and solo parts in synch while never missing a beat. “There is no room for improvisation here,” Katsha tells me.

However, it is the mother of these percussion instruments that Katsha favours: the mbira.

The interesting thing about the mbira, which means spirit and is commonly known as the thumb piano, is that not only is the instrument’s name ‘mbira’ but every key played is known as mbira too. The mbira is tuned to three voices: that of the children, the middle aged and the old people and ancestors. “In Africa, there were never terms like alto and tenor or soprano. That is a Eurocentric way of looking at it,” Katsha says. And so the mbira refers to the spirits of the said groups and the keys are the voices of these spirits. As simplistic as it seems, one can’t deny its beauty.

The songs he sings range from the contemporary to fairy tales. “The song Chemtengure tells the story of the pay day. “It is a celebration and signifies a time to eat, drink and dance,” he says.

“Ugaga is a fairytale my father used to tell us when we didn’t want to go to bed. It’s the story of a monster who catches naughty children in a bag. During the day, the monster morphs into human form and goes from door to door begging for food. At this point, he makes the children in the bag sing to seduce the people into giving more food.”

After obtaining his matric in 1998, he enrolled at UCT for a degree in Ethnomusicology. The curriculum at the time did not include African music or instruments, only classical music, and jazz. He never completed his studies there, rather aiming his efforts at learning to play and celebrate African instruments.

Katsha expresses his despondency about the strong influence of American popular culture on the youth, the middle-aged, and even the old people in his community. “Most of the people associate with DJs and house music, rather than the traditional instruments we play.”

“According to my personal experience, there is a much bigger sense of recognition for the kind of music we make abroad. Our target market has shifted to the first-world countries from which we gain respect for the work we do. When we travel and play internationally, that’s where we feel that our hard work and effort is being appreciated. It’s only when you leave your country and gain the approval and following of fans abroad, that you receive the approval of the local market.”

It’s a pity, he says, and an irony too. The origin of the culture drowning his cultural identity is also where their biggest support stems from.

THE MBIRA

The mbira is an African musical instrument consisting of a wooden board (often fitted with a resonator) with attached staggered metal tines, played by holding the instrument in the hands and plucking the tines with the thumbs.

TOP FIVES Youssou N’Dour

Salif Keita

Cheikh Lô

Immigrés

Amen

Balbalou

Heshoo Beshoo Group

Ismaël Lô Tadieu Bone

Armitage Road

1984

1991

2015

1971

2000

Earthworks

Mango

Chapter Two

Columbia

Sonodisc

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ANKIA RASPBERRY BERET, I THINK I LOVE HER STYLIST - KRISTI VLOK

PHOTOGRAPHY - IAN ENGELBRECHT

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MAkeuP: NEVEEN SCELLO, MOdeL: ANKIA B AT FANJAM PAGe 1 / BERET - CRYSTAL BIRCH / CHOKER - MATTER OF FAKT / POLONECK - AFRAID OF MICE PAGe 2 / GLOVES - SECOND TIME AROUND / CUFF - SECOND TIME AROUND / RING - SMITH AT MUNGO & JEMIMA PAGe 3 / GLASSES - SECOND TIME AROUND / SHIRT - COMME DES GARCON PAGe 4 / YELLOW DRESS - SEE BY CHLOE / TURTLE NECK - MR. PRICE / BRACELET - ORA AT MUNGO & JEMIMA PAGE 6 / GLASSES - VINTAGE CAzAL 46

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MISADVENTURE MONSTER / MOZAMBIQUE STORY - ALAN VAN GYSEN

PHOTOGRAPHY - ALAN VAN GYSEN

The first few pricks of an anaesthetic needle are the worst. Those exposed and yet to be numbed nerve endings are raw and alert with adrenaline and agonising thought.

Skin and muscle part as the metal is inserted, grating past innumerable pain receptors split seconds before the burning liquid sedative forces its way between cells and finally goes to work. The momentary anguish subsides, and relief floods your brain while the pain diminishes, replaced with a desensitised and dull sense of pressure. The worst is over. Well, at least you hope it is.

They say the best thing about an adventure is not knowing what’s around the corner. Not knowing what will happen next. It’s why we choose to visit exotic shores and not the same old beach across town. But in the world of adventure and surf travel, what hides around the corner for every surfer isn’t always warm, blue water and flawless, tropical tubes. Quite often what lies around the dark corner in a place like Africa is far more than you bargained for. Far more than you prepared yourself for…

Stepping off the little LAM aircraft Gearoid McDaid was excited. It was his first time to Mozambique.

His first time to Africa. The hot, humid air closed around his air-conditioned skin as he breathed a triumphant first breath of paradise. He had seen the photographs and recently watched Globe’s ‘Strange Rumblings’ and couldn’t help but daydream about the endless right tubes the East African country promised. South African team rider and friend Beyrick de Vries had invited Gearoid to join himself and fellow QS campaigner Casey Grant for two weeks before their respective competitive years took full control. They all needed the free-surf distraction. They all needed the uncrowded tubes and mellow, tropical vibes. Gearoid couldn’t wait to wash off the travel grime and immerse himself in the warm Indian Ocean.

“One hundred dollars” bellowed the immigration officer, hand extended from behind the blue wooden table, waiting. Gearoid’s dreamy, idyllic bubble burst with the harsh reality of the official’s words. “I…I don’t have any money” pleaded Gearoid, looking around for help. Why hadn’t anyone told him about the USD $100.00 on-arrival visa charge? Tropical paradise seemed a world away suddenly. He felt helpless. Freedom and promise taunted him from beyond the concrete room like a caged monkey in a banana plantation. Palm trees swayed, flags flew and children played. A British pass-port may get you into a lot of countries for free around the world, but Mozambique obviously is not one of them. Fortunately, Beyrick finally arrived in classic, delayed African time, slipped the neces-sary through the slatted glass window and welcomed the Irishman with open arms. Driving down the dusty road to the coast, all was well - for now, but Gearoid felt shaken. Barely had the adventure begun and already a shady corner had been negotiated.

to point in the area. Beyrick and Casey revelling in the freedom of uncrowded and non-competitive surf for the first time in over a year. The next morning a vicious stomach bug hit the crew with all the severity of a human volcano, erupting on both sides of the earth, eliminating Casey, one of the filmers, and Gearoid from anything but trading places in the now contaminated bathroom. Feeling only slightly better the next morning Gearoid decided to join the remaining crew for a morning surf check. A few hundred meters down the bumpy dirt road we slammed on brakes, just in time for his weak body to launch out of the vehicle and prepare for another wave of nausea and yellow projectile bile. It came, burning up and out onto the grass. That last one did the trick though. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand Gearoid stood up, looked around, exhaled deeply, and felt instantly better. Still white as a sheet and very weak, but the 24-hour cleanse had done its work, and the worst was over. That evening the healthy half of the crew prescribed the weak some oral electrolytes, lots of water, nourishing rice and vegetables, and a good night’s sleep. It was just what the doctor ordered.

Waking up to pristine conditions, the three now close surf friends hiked up the sandy hill to cast their eyes on the far right point. With a light offshore singing through the casuarina trees, they felt their spirits lifting after the last few days. Their hearts soared as the first set of waves of the morning was dealt out across the sandy table - a beautiful blue triplet of tubes with no takers. “Yewwwww!”. This is what they had come to find. This is what they had missioned here for.

Taking their time in favour of the dropping tide and the unforgiving rocks, all three surfers made it slowly out into the lineup with smiles and high hopes. Local fishermen stared on with handmade rods and lines in hand, jigging absently for rockfish and the odd lobster while everyone waited for the first set. Each surfer paddled into their respective warm-up waves with ease and confidence; Casey unleashed a series of signature point-break carves on his first, Beyrick negotiated a freighting little nug on the inside, and Gearoid set to work with a series of hard off the bottom, yet off the top turns that would have scored him an 8.0 at any event on tour. Things were looking and feeling great,

and optimism was at an all-time high. Gearoid’s second wave was even better than his first. Kicking out with casual abandon he felt on top of the world, especially after his recent recovery and string of poor luck. Then disaster struck - wham!

After the flippant kick out, his leash had stretched dangerously taut and shot his surfboard back unexpectedly. The side fin, arrowed down into his heel at force, had broken out, gouging a big, deep hole into his left heel. Blood flowed freely and the pain seared. Rolled helplessly onto the inside ledge a fellow surf visitor assisted Gearoid in and signalled to the crew in the water. A pool of already congealed blood awaited our arrival and coated in red what used to be a black sandal.

Covering the bloody foot in a plastic packet, we drove him quickly to the only doctor in the area, a local who worked the dive school in town. He didn’t say much, not that he needed to really. Signal-ling to the lone plastic chair on the concrete floor he disappeared into his make-shift infirmary, emerging a minute later with the basics for stitching: a suture kit, scissors, bandage, a kidney dish, anaesthetics and a big anaesthetic needle. Getting cut open in the relative comforts of familiar sur-rounds is bad enough, but going through the experience in a third world country a continent away is all the more terrifying.

The first few pricks of an anaesthetic needle are the worst. Biting down hard on his rolled-up towel, Gearoid squeezed Beyrick’s hand and turned away. The needle stabbed in and out, in and out in-side the exposed wound to administer the block that would allow for the stitches that followed. In and out, and then all was numb. Gearoid drew a deep breath. But the first half-moon stitcher bent against the thick skin of his heal, rendering it useless and ineffective. The doctor shook his head, muttered something in Portuguese, and went to look for the thickest needle and thread he could find. This one did the job, although not as neatly, and within a few minutes Gearoid had his first African wound, his first African stitch-up and his first real African experience.

Days later, unable to surf and waiting for his flight home Gearoid watched on as the bad just got worse. Casey Grant burst his eardrum attempting an alley-oop aerial, and one of the filmers stormed

SEX WAX Dick Dale

The Trashmen

Link Wray

Cazumbi

Zulu Stomp!!

SURF BEAT

SURFIN BIRD

Link Wray & The Wraymen

African Sixties Garage

South Africa Garage Beats

2013

1963

Dick Dale

Garrett

1960

2009

2010

Epic

Nosmoke

Nosmoke

Gearoid’s first surf in African waters wasn’t any more successful than his airport arrival. Mistiming the jump off the jagged, sand-stone rocks he grated open both knees, his back and hands, and had to sit out the rest of the session on the grassy knoll watching super fun waves roll across the goTHE LAKE

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off the trip to catch the first bus out of Mozambique. Things just hadn’t gone well, and it seemed that this was just one of those trips. C’est la vie as they say in French - such is life. So what do you take away from a trip like this? “A lot in fact,” says Beyrick. “More than most trips.” Ultimately you learn and grow. You learn to be grateful for the small and simple things, and you appreciate the good and easy all the more when you’re blessed with it. You grow and become experi-

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enced, getting insight into life, the world, and you yourself.

And although an adventure or experience like this isn’t first prize, it’s an experience all the same, and one considerably more valuable and memorable than any other that life will throw your way. Because it’s from these misadventures that everything else is put into balance and finally makes sense.

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YOUNG SOL streetwear Valhalla STORY - Luke Doman

PHOTOGRAPHY - Ricardo Simal

For one night in May, Friday the 13th no doubt, Cape Town hypebeasts and fuccbois alike were allowed to poke their heads through heaven’s blue gates, having been granted the high honour of a glimpse at local streetwear Valhalla.

You see, Young and Lazy and Sol-Sol Menswear, two of our country’s most respected, most refined and most influential streetwear brands have combined their energies to create the most hyped local menswear collabo since the OGs 2BOP and Shelflife blessed us with ‘Twice as Nice’ back in 2012. The High Street capsule collection, which holds the most coveted menswear pieces of the season so far, dropped exclusively at corner store CPT, an occasion that was celebrated in the usual corner store fashion.

tudes as well as best utilising the brands’ separate production strengths. Sol-Sol stripes got the classic Young and Lazy long sleeve treatment and the minimal brand’s clean, productive energy best captured in their tagline, ‘Destroy Today’, was twisted by the Young and Lazy attitude, the product of which is the ‘Destroy Tomorrow’ tee. The ‘Young Sol’ Logo, a combination of the Y&L Graffiti Logo and the classic Sol-Sol Logo, was developed especially for the collection and appears on a white long sleeve tee as well as on a black crew.

Mat Kieser and Anees Petersen, designers and creative heads for Sol-Sol and Y&L respectively, have been contemporaries in the industry for one or two years now and their initial collaboration, corner store CPT, a venture they took on with Anthony Smith of 2BOP, has been revolutionary for the local culture. Collaborating on a collection was the obvious next step and is evidently a very strong move.

The collaborative collection is rounded off by a pair of reworked olive chinos and a denim chore jacket, arguably the prize piece in the collection. The chinos are constructed out of the same stretch canvas we’ve seen used in previous renditions, this time however the two brands’ mutual appreciation for Japanese Menswear culture sees a far wider silhouette come into play. The same influences feature in the denim chore jacket, a must have in the rotation of any self-respecting menswear connoisseur.

Seven pieces make up the collection, combining the two brands’ respective aesthetics and atti-

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The lookbook for the collection was shot by Ricardo Simal, a name we’ve seen associated with Young and Lazy before - he shot the lookbook for Young and Lazy’s first Autumn staples collection for 2016, as well as the backstage snaps at the corner store show at Menswear Week AW’16. Directed and styled by Mat and Anees, the lookbook stars an eerily present Pierre Carl Vermeulen in a shoot that took place in and around Mat’s studio office.

Pierre’s slight frame and striking features (he literally looks like he weighs 50kg but could and would rip open your belly with his fingers for fun) create a perfect balance with the clean interior of the SolSol headquarters as well as with the soft pinks and oranges of the Cape Town evening sky, a balance that mirrors the symbiosis achieved when two contrasting industry heavyweights decide to floss their creative powers as one.

The collection is exceptionally limited and is available exclusively in-store and online at corner store in Cape Town.

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WAX JUNKIE ANDRE DE WAAL / Trompe Le Monde COPY - ANDRE DE WAAL

PHOTOGRAPHY - JACQUI VAN STADEN

Growing up, my home was like the black lodge, there was always music in the air. I had the influence of my sisters playing their disco, my mother’s John Denver, my father’s classical and opera, and then my salvation - my brother’s taste of all things good. He introduced me to The Smiths at a young age, my first record is when my father took me to Strangers record bar and the lads behind the counter didn’t understand why an 11 year old would want to put himself through Morrissey’s misery. Anyway, long story short, they only had Meat Is Murder in stock and I gave up meat for a while. My mom was pissed.

Coil Loves Secret Domain 1991 / Wax Trax

Beastie Boys Le Son Hip, Du Monde Hop (The In Side From Way Out) 1996 / Capitol

My mate Michael got me into Coil, Current 93, NON and all the other weirdos that kinda fall into a category of experimental industrial / apocalyptic folk / dark ambient music, the one band that has always been top of the list was Coil, each album a different experience. I was fortunate enough to buy a few albums from a friend about 20 years ago, I think he’s still pissed off for selling them, especially the Loves Secret Domain which is signed by the band.

In 1999, my friend Sakkie and I scraped together some cash and popped over to London to see the Beastie Boys on their Hello Nasty tour, the best part of the concert was when they got down and played tracks from The In Side From Way Out. The album oozes funk as thick as molasses. I love this album so much my wife and I played Sabrosa as we entered our wedding reception.

Pixies Doolittle 1989/ 4AD

Kraftwerk The Man-Machine 1978 / Kling Klang

Mute, Warp & 4AD are labels that always seem to tend to my musical needs, especially 4AD. My brother introduced me to Pixies when I was 15, first album I heard was Bossanova, I thought it was the best album ever, till I heard Doolittle, the perfect album; it has it all, monkeys going to heaven and Sampson killing heathens with his eyes poked out.

I later went on to name my company Trompe Le Monde.

Coldcut and Kid Koala played a set at the Fort in Johannesburg sometime in the 90s - one of the best evenings of my life. The highlight of the evening was when Coldcut played the self-titled track from The Man-Machine, it felt like it went on forever. I remember Sakkie and I standing there in awe, beer in hand, I think my brother was passed out in the corner.

Cathedral Forest of Equilibrium 1991 / Earache

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds Henry’s Dream 1992 / Mute

Earache is another brilliant record label, and was one of the first to bring bands to tour SA. I dislocated my knee after a glorious stage dive at the Napalm Death concert, and got to meet and have a few beers with the lads from Carcass after theirs.

But Cathedral was the band that stays with me till today. The Etherial Mirror is total brilliance from start to finish, but the one I have on vinyl is Forest of Equilibrium, a piece of doom heaven.

Henry’s Dream was one of those pearl albums from which they played multiple tracks at Club Alcatraz.

Countless weekends sitting on the stage, drinking cheap whiskey and looking at foxes dancing in cat suits. All Nick Cave touches is gold, but there’s something about this album which always brings me back for more..

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print run REVIEWS - XAVIER NAGEL

SUPPLIED BY - BIBLIOPHILIA

FOUND Bitterkomix 17

the Chronic

The latest Bitterkomix hits South African shores! Bitterkomix 17 (R200) presents a dark and biting critique of the conservative, Afrikaner cultural mainstream. In no. 17 Anton Kannemeyer and Conrad Botes collaborate with several South African creators, and feature an assortment of Afrikaans and English comic stories, as well as prose pieces by Breyten Breytenbach, Ryk Hattingh and John Miles.

The latest issue of Chimurenga’s pan-African gazette, the Chronic (R118), explores the tensions between reform and revolution, and decolonisation and the neoliberal order in the academy, through the lens of history and via the alternate education paradigms based in indigenous knowledge systems, and also arising from South Africa’s radical anti-apartheid struggle. Football is the focus of the book’s supplement, Chronic Books. Not so much the game itself as the language produced in, around and about it; how football is spoken, written and narratively performed – from the informal commentary of bar talk, blogs, social media and stadium banter to more formal inquiries in mainstream media.

Found (R60) is a short-form comic set in Cape Town by Maya LeMaitre. She works on paper, making anything from comics to illustrations and collages. Found was launched at the recent FANCON. As Maya explains, “this story takes place in Newlands Forest, on Table Mountain, in Cape Town, South Africa. Paradise is a real place and was built in the early 18th century.

The property was owned by the V.O.C or Dutch East India Company. It was one of a number of outposts on Table Mountain.

This one housed a master woodcutter, who was reponsible for protecting the timber on the mountain.”

Sigh, the Beloved Country

What Happened, Miss Simone?

Sigh, the Beloved Country (R299) by Bongani Madondo, is a saucy stew of literary performance that showcases essays, memoirs, the interview as an art form, profile as a form of theatrical set-piece, travelogues, political epistles and excursions into fantasy and fiction. Whether at home with subversive artists in cities’ back alleys, or enjoying himself at the invite-only black-tux balls, in Sigh, the Beloved Country, the culture critic morphs into a storyteller, eavesdropper and something of a travelling jester throughout the land to share stories of its prophets, beauty and tragic figures. Simultaneously a synopsis of and a critique of a country, Madondo’s latest comes out like a soul blast.

From music journalist and former Spin and Vibe editor-in-chief Alan Light comes a biography of incandescent soul singer and Black Power icon Nina Simone, one of the most influential, provocative, and least understood artists of our time. Drawn from a trove of rare archival footage, audio recordings and interviews (including Simone’s remarkable private diaries), What Happened, Miss Simone? (R415) examines her musical inventiveness and unwavering quest for equality, while laying bare the personal demons that plagued her from the time of her Jim Crow childhood in North Carolina to her self-imposed exile in Liberia and Paris later in life.

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The Hipster Featuring original Ladybird artwork alongside brilliantly funny, brand new text, The Ladybird book of The Hipster (R160) is the latest in the series of Ladybird books which have been specially planned to help grown-ups with the world about them. In large clear script with a careful choice of words, the frequent repetition and the thoughtful matching of text with pictures will enable grown-ups to think they have taught themselves to cope. Other titles in the series include The Vegan, The Emo, The Sexist, The Gamer and The Vlogger.

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Girl in a Band Kim Gordon, one of the founding members of Sonic Youth, opens up as never before in Girl in a Band (R205), taking the reader back to the lost New York of the 1980s and ‘90s that gave rise to Sonic Youth, and the Alternative revolution in popular music. The band helped build a vocabulary of music—paving the way for Nirvana, Hole, Smashing Pumpkins and many other acts. But at its core, Girl in a Band examines the route from girl to woman in uncharted territory, music, art career, what partnership means— and what happens when that identity dissolves.

On Bowie In On Bowie (R200) by Simon Critchley, this concise and engaging excursion through the songs of one of the world’s greatest pop stars melds personal narratives of how Bowie lit up his dull life in southern England’s suburbs with philosophical forays into the way concepts of authenticity and identity are turned inside out in Bowie’s work. The result is nearly as provocative and mind-expanding as the artist it portrays. As Rick Moody said: “A magnificent and deceptively slim book, in which no essay takes longer to read than it would take to listen to a David Bowie song, but in which there is a cumulative sense of revelation as regards what makes Bowie special, and why it is that his work seems to yield more, the more time you spend there.”

Graffiti Planet Piggy Boy’s Blues Known for his music, SAMA award-winning musician Nakhane Touré is changing tune with his debut novel, Piggy Boy’s Blues (R195). The novel centres on the disastrous consequences of a man’s return to his Eastern Cape home town of Alice. Touré’s work is poetic with sensuous prose. An overarching theme of the book, Touré says, is its exploration of the spiritual lives of black people. “You can see it in the characters, whether they are good or bad.” There is also the normalisation of gay sex, which Touré achieves by “writing about it in the plainest language possible”.

Ever controversial, graffiti, or street art, has become a significant art form and continues to evolve and transform urban landscapes in cities around the globe. Graffiti Planet (R215) presents the greatest graffiti from around the world, compiled by KET, a veteran of the New York graffiti scene. Featuring work by a host of international artists, including Atome from Australia, Banksy from the UK, Smart from Italy, Ghost from New York, Lazoo from France, Neon from Germany and Os Gemeos from Brazil, this is a celebration of the creativity of graffiti artists from all over the world and a perfect companion to this dynamic and vibrant art form.

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IMAGE - Dean-James Honey / instagram.com/caveyone

PLIMSOLL

VANS / Authentic - (Nintendo) Donkey Kong / Black

VANS / Authentic - (Nintendo) Princess Peach

VANS / Authentic - (Nintendo) Super Mario Bros / Tie-Dye

VANS / Old Skool - (Nintendo) Console / Dove

VANS / SK8-Hi Reissue - (Nintendo) Controller / True White

VANS / Sk8-Hi Slim - (Nintendo) Console / Gold

Havaianas / origine II azul estrela

Havaianas / origine II branco

Havaianas / origine II preto

Havaianas / origine II marinho

Havaianas / origine II amarelo gema

Havaianas / origine II vermelho

HUF / classic HI slap

HUF /CLASSIC LO White

HUF /CLASSIC LO BLACK BLACK

HUF / CROMER DIP DYE NAVY

HUF /CLASSIC LO Black Elephant

HUF / SOTO Black

ASICS / GEL-LYTE III Tai-Chi Yellow / Tai-Chi Yellow

ASICS / GEL LYTE V Classic Blue / Classic Blue

ASICS / GEL-LYTE V Soft Grey / Soft Grey

ASICS / GEL-KAYANO TRAINER EVO Hot Coral / Peach Melba

ASICS / GEL-KAYANO TRAINER EVO King Fisher / Sea Port

ASICS / GEL-LYTE III Black / Black

Palladium / Pallaville Hi CV Pavement / Wind Chime Men’s

Palladium / Pallaville CVS Dark Slate / Wind Chime Men’s

Palladium / Pallaville CVS Sudan Brown / Wind Chime Men’s

Palladium / Authentic Black / Black / Wind Chime Women’s

Palladium / Pallaville CVS Monument / Wind Chime Women’s

Palladium / Pallaville CVS Old Rose / Wind Chime Women’s

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ICONS AD ROCK

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1 VANS - TALCOTT / 2 GLOBE - Stratton Shirt / 3 VANS - TANKA II / 4 BILLABONG - Escape Jacket / 5 VANS - 66’D RAGLAN / 6 Ben Sherman - Silver Chalice Marl Top / 7 Havaianas - origine II 8 HUF - CROMER / 9 HUF - classic hi slap / 10 BEASTie BOYS - CHECK YOUR HEAD LP / 11 GLOBE - Halladay Beanie 12 BRIXTON - Ramsey Beanie / 13 VANS - AUTHENTIC SKATEPACK 14 VANS - WAYDE SHADES / 15 BRIXTON - Messer Fedora 16 Globe - Goodstock Chino / 17 Ben Sherman - Letterbox Red Gingham Shirt / 18 BILLABONG - Trial Pull Over Hood 19 Ben Sherman - Stone Stretch Slim Trousers / 20 Ben Sherman - Rich Teal Blue Knit / 21 GLOBE - Hikari Legacy Jacket / 2z VONZIPPER - LEAGUE 60

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ICONS bianca jagger

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1 emanuel geraldo - floppy hat / 2 see by chloe - ruffle-trimmed plisse-georgette maxi dress / 3 paul smith - eileen boot / 4 topshop - faux fur coat / 5 THE GUESS WHO - AMERICAN WOMAN LP 6 h&m - sequined jacket / 7 tiger of sweden - moricino glove / 8 h&m - gold platform / 9 gucci - vintage turban / 10 joseph - pussy bow blouse / 11 reiss - isla trouser 62

THE LAKE

www.scarhair.com THE LAKE

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LEVI’S® WE ARE ORIGINAL FOR OVER A CENTURY, ACROSS BORDERS, CULTURES, STYLES & TRENDS, REAL PEOPLE HAVE BEEN CREATING REAL STORIES IN THEIR LEVI’S®.

This year Levi’s® invited Johannesburg to join the global We Are Original community to share in an experience unlike any other.

On the 23rd of April 2016, over 200 trend setters came out to show off their incredible sense of style, have their story captured by I See a Different You & connect with like-minded individuals at Shine Studios in Braamfontein.

This is how Johannesburg lives in Levi’s®.