CHANT REMAIN IN LIGHT
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THE LAKE WE ARE FOOLISHLY Ambitious
#11 / 081516
REMAIN IN LIGHT “...democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people into the world, the value of life not only declines, it disappears. It doesn’t matter if someone dies. The more people there are, the less one individual matters.” - Isaac Asimov
CONTENTS REGULARS:
PUBLISHER THE LAKE MAGAZINE PTY LTD info@thelake.co Editor / Art Direction Stefan Naude’ stefan@thelake.co Existential ADVISOR
ART:
Brendan Body brendan@thelake.co
Faith47 23 Wilhelm Saayman 35
COVER
PHOTOGRAPHY: Stalker Wake up Joburg Aberration Scortched Earth
11 17 29 49
MUSIC: Reza Khota Sakawa Boys Wax Junkie
07 47 55
LIFESTYLE: Boyz
Oliver Kruger Photography FAITH47 Ghost in the shell Kristi Vlok Concept Kezia Eales Art Direction / Styling Lighting Big Time Studios Retouching Naomi e ‘Camara photographers
FASHION
Oliver Kruger Jacqui Van Staden Jaco S. Venter Gregory Franz Gideon de kock Cole Wheeler Mark Lewis Albert Retief Jansen van Staden Glen Montgomery
Kristi Vlok kristi@thelake.co
CONTENTS PHOTO
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Albert Retief Uganda Kampala Taxi Rank Horizon
Contributors
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.
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Ruan Scott Lani Spice Shane De Lange Xavier Nagel Sukuma Sukummah Fred De Vries Mark lewis Albert retief Luan Nel Rosemary Lombard
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
PRINTING NOVUS Povus Print Solutions Tel: +27 21 550 2500 Email: info@paarlmedia.co.za
www.albertretief.com
News 04 Print Run 56 Plimsoll 58 Fashion Mens 60 Fashion Ladies 62
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NEWS Vans Classics – Van Doren Approved Continuing the celebration of our 50th anniversary, Vans releases a collection curated by Steve Van Doren that includes reissued styles with original vintage graphics from the Vans archives. Originally known as The Van Doren Rubber Company, Vans opened up shop in Southern California on March 16, 1966. The first Vans stores offered customers the opportunity to customize and order their shoes on-site, creating endless possibilities for the final design. As a result, these vulcanized sneakers elevated creative expression to new levels, marking each new colorway as unique as the personalities that created them.
The Van Doren Approved collection channels the spirit of Vans’ DIY-beginnings with a capsule of pattern-clashing and color-contrasting footwear. Utilizing archived graphics, old school tones and unconventional swatch blocking, the Steve’s curated line-up includes vintage-inspired silhouettes such as the Sk8-Hi 38 Reissue, Era 95 Reissue, Slip-On 98 Reissue and Chukka Boot 49A Reissue. Vans’ apparel program ties back to the sneaker range with a selection of hats, backpacks and tees for men. The Van Doren Approved collection releases globally in August 2016. INFO: www.vans.com
LEVI’S® 2016 LINE 8 COLLECTION A progressive expression of Levi’s® clothing, Line 8 presents a full head-to-toe collection inspired by the young and rebellious. It offers a cohesively modern aesthetic that’s understated, new and now. This season, we offer a denim Type 1 Trucker in 2 colour ways, a great summer Dirty White and also a darker more moody finish, Inky Blue. The jacket has a late 80/90’s feel and is a good all wearing occasion trucker. Our classic Line 8 one-pocket shirt gets updated with a modern, shorter collar and a variety of rinses in denim - inky blue, a washed out grey and a classic blue finish.
introducing the new 519 Extreme Skinny fit, this progressive silhouette comes in two muted, moody finishes – Inky Blue, which is a blue black rinse and Super Black which is a double black containing Elastomultiester for superior stretch. The Levi’s® brand epitomizes classic American style and effortless cool. Since their invention by Levi Strauss & Co. in 1873, Levi’s® jeans have become one of the most recognizable garments of clothing in the world – capturing the imagination and loyalty of people for generations. Today, the Levi’s® brand portfolio continues to evolve through a relentless pioneering and innovative spirit that is unparalleled in the apparel industry.
For men’s bottoms, we have the ever popular 511 Slim fit in the Line 8 collection – this season it is coming through in a clean resin indigo, a mid-washed grey as well as an acid blue finish. We will also be
adidas / PHARRELL WILLIAMS introduce the Hu NMD Designed for urban exploration without boundaries, the NMD fuses iconic adidas Originals DNA with breakthrough technology from today. For Pharrell Williams’ Hu NMD, an energy-returning white boost™ midsole meets a breathable and flexible Primeknit upper in yellow featuring a split ‘Human Race’ graphic resulting in a bold visual language. This unisex model features a newly designed lace system, which goes through the cage of the stabilizer to create a moccasin type of feel, giving support as well as freedom right where it is needed. The result is a fearless updated shape for Pharrell Williams’ Hu NMD. INFO: www.adidas.co.za 04
INFO: www.levi.com
sakawa boys / anxiety
Stewart Richard Grays
On their debut LP, 2014 Anxiety, Sakawa Boys fuse alternative rock and shoegaze, through tunnels of psychedelia and krautrock. With a strong pop sensibility atop a progressive framework, the album journeys from quiet introspection to noisy confessions, showcasing the band’s knack for dynamic songwriting, as they tackle themes of self, anxiety and what it’s like to be in your mid-late 20s. Released through Permanent Record.
Stewart Richard Grays is a brand synomynous with style. The luxury brand is launching in South Africa this year with two labels under their banner; Grays London and G4Sports.
The Sakawa Boys are an all-male pop group from Cape Town, South Africa. You will find them complicated, in each and every case. They cry more often than most men, and share very close friendships with one another. Available by mid-October.
Designer Stewart Richard Grays partner`s with Ray Henry Randall to bring two collections that epitomise contemporary men’s fashion. The apparel and accessories collections are perfect for the professional out-going man who strives to live a balanced lifestyle between work, health, social and travel. Both collections have been manufactured in Cape Town but now Grays London and G4Sports will be available to purchase through stores in SA, and online later this year.
INFO: www.sakawaboysband.bandcamp.com
INFO: www.stewartrichardgrays.com
SIMON CARTER The Scottish Group is proud to launch luxury and exclusive brand this season in Sandton City’s Protea Court Mall, Shop No. U319, SIMON CARTER. SIMON CARTER is a contemporary menswear brand rooted firmly in the tradition of eclectic English style. Established just over 30 years ago, the company began selling men’s accessories and grew into fashion and clothing; firstly with shirts and ties and then with a full menswear offer. The business is owned and managed by its eponymous designer, Simon Carter. The SIMON CARTER menswear collection is defined by its use of print and colour, offering men the opportunity to develop their own sense of style and allowing their personality to shine through. INFO: www.simoncarter.net/ THE LAKE
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A Theory of Strings Reza Khota WORDS - Sukuma Sukummah
PHOTOGRAPHY (PORTRAIT) - JACO S. VENTER PHOTOGRAPHY (LIVE) - Gregory Franz
“Maybe when I was younger I thought to myself that one day I’ll get to play at Carnegie Hall, and I did play in Carnegie Hall and that was amazing but that’s not the goal, the goal is that when you play and you play with honesty and sincerity, you spread something to people, you spread this rememberence and awakening of their humanity, which is the appreciation for things without their commodification” - Reza Khota
Namaste Om bhu-r bhuvhah svah tat savitur varenyam, Bhargo devasya dhimahi dhiyo yo hah prachodayat. Let us meditate on that excellent glory of the divine vivifying Sun and may it enlighten our understandings. These are the opening words to the Gayatri Mantra I was taught at the Indian primary school I attended in Durban, in Isipingo to be exact. We recited these before our Hindi language lessons which had been added along with Telegu, Tamil & Arabic to augment the largely Eurocentric curriculum at the time. At the close of the prayer our teacher would then utter the word “Namaste” and we would chant back “Namaste Guruji”, and then there would be silence. Here I hesitantly met the act of Indian devotion for the first time. Hesitantly because despite all efforts by my school to incorporate these “new” languages into the syllabus, I think for the most part we all found the whole thing comical. The new teachers who were mostly priests and retired educators were met with a tinge of suspicion, not just from us Black pupils but also from our Indian counterparts. To be sure my Indian friends were the ones who found the lessons most embarrassing, they would have rather reserved the languages for home when conversing with daada and daadee. The bastardisation of culture and language by western colonialism and the psychological effects which follow could be observed here even at an early age. In hindsight I’m glad the school didn’t budge and kept the Indian languages going alongside the English & Afrikaans. I am grateful for this because a language is a lens through which we can begin see the world clearly. The world I began to see clearly was the Indian way of life, it’s expression in various forms ranging from devotion, education, business, art, literature, music, theatre and performance, film, mathematics to science. There is a certain aesthetic which I have repeatedly encountered since those language lessons which has served me well in cultivating an appreciation for the orient, be it in my personal work in physics or when admiring the various artworks that had been carefully curated at Tagore’s. In my “Meditations on Tagore’s” piece which appeared in the previous issue1 of this publication, I have tried to describe the profound influence that both the space Tagore’s and the first band I saw there Babu has had upon me. In there I failed to mention the role that Kevin Nair the quint essentially beautiful Indian man owner and co founder of Tagore’s played in setting up the space and providing a true Nirvana amidst the chaos, this was a serious omission. Main Kshamaanpraarthee hoon. The Mother City It is no surprise then that when I first heard Babu performing at Tagore’s some six years ago, I was immediately taken back to those Euphoric Durban school days. The line up consisted of Kesivan Naidoo
(drums), Shane Cooper (bass), Ronan Skillen (tabla & didgeridoo) & Reza Khota (electric guitar). Making use of and displaying a flare for both the Raga and Indian Rhythmic (Tala) systems in their compositions, the style of music can be aptly described as Indian Fusion. This was my first encounter with live Jazz in an intimate setting and also my first with the Cape Town based, former Wits scholar and guitarist Reza Khota. I left Tagore’s that winter evening with a deep seated sense of awe and admiration, somehow knowing that the experience was a once in a lifetime at the same time hoping that I would get to see them play again. Looking back I now realise that this was really the first and the last time that I would see the band performing. After releasing their debut album “Up Roots”, a round of tours and festivals later, several of the band members went on from there to focus primarily on their individual projects and compositions. Kesivan formed “Kesivan The Lights”, Shane went on to record the album “Oscillations” and Reza began putting together his Quartet comprising of himself (electric guitar), Shane Cooper (bass), Jonathan Sweetman (drums) & Buddy Wells (alto Sax). It has been through his active involvement with both Shane’s Quintet and Kesivan’s Lights that I have become increasingly familiar with Reza’s sound as a composer and accompanying musician. The work with his Quartet and the release of the album Transmutation serve well to place Reza amongst some of the top recording Jazz artists of our time, a position where he rightfully stands in my opinion. His respect and devotion towards the Jazz idiom is evident both on and off stage and has already garnered him the support of greats such as elder Louis Moholo, Feya Faku, Carlo Mombelli & Buddy Wells to name a few. In fact the very first time I heard and witnessed the spiritual jazz virtuoso elder Louis Moholo play at Straight No Chaser Club, Reza was part of the line up. I would say here that it is his openness to experimenting and improvisation that makes him suitable under elder Moholo’s various ensembles. However improvisation would really turn out to very dry and academic were it not for it’s close links to spiritual jazz and here he has already shown himself to be more than capable first as a band member for Babu and later in his association with elder Moholo. The Quartet’s rendition of Voodoo Child in Transmutation, a Hendrix composition further illustrates this point. Devouring The Classics
which provided the sound track on most days. Then there was that moment when his dad bought himself an acoustic guitar which Reza immediately took complete control over as his own. The acquisition of his first musical instrument shortly after that which was an electric guitar along with an amp. With this he unwittingly impressed his parents by coming home from the cinema this one time and reworking all the music from memory in the film that the family had just seen. Following this episode it was decided that the best thing for the young prodigy would be to start taking formal guitar lessons with Jeremy Karodia at the school he was then attending. It can be said here that this was the beginning of his formal relationship with the stringed instrument. The guitar became the favourite toy. He would see the guitar and immediately experience the desire to pick it up and to fiddle. It was not until his meeting with Faizel Boorany, his second guitar teacher and mentor in high school that Reza began to see a tapestry emerge for the kind music which he himself would later come to make and appreciate, the classical avant garde and improvisational jazz on guitar. “So he became like my mentor, it wasn’t a formal lesson. I would spend a weekend with him and we would just play, listen to records, have lunch, play some more and just keep playing for hours and hours. The way he would do it is he would play an accompaniment and get me to solo over it and just improvise. He would push me and get me to play faster and do all kinds of things to build my technique. So it was very much that kind of mentorship and being exposed like I say to all that music, avant-garde stuff, I remember he introduced me to Eric Dolphy and I heard for the first time those very angular somewhat atonal sounds, I got it from him, Bands like the Loose tubes which was a group in London” he fondly recalls. Here he was also introduced to bands like the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever, Weather Report, Miles Davis and his various ensembles, John Coltrane, the avant-garde classical composers Bartok, Stravinski & Schoenberg, Chris McGregor and The Blue Notes, Abdullah Ibrahim of course which were
to all form part of the repertoire that was studied and emulated during the sessions. Faizel also ensured that the young Reza gained a good grasp of the history that was important within the context of South African Jazz. Greats such as Louis Moholo, Dudu Pukwana, Mongezi Feza, Johnny Dyani, Bra Hugh, Mama Mikeba, Mama Mbuli, Zim Ngqawana were all discussed and studied extensively. Faizel had spent time in London and so he knew some of these people intimately. So it was a full musical education but in very informal and personal way so to say. Towards the end of high school, it was Faizel who advised that Reza should go on to study towards a B.Mus degree at Wits, a decision which was well received and approved by the family. At Wits he picked up the classical guitar with the late David Hewitt and Jonathan Crossley as well as the prominent teacher and trombone player John Davies amongst others and was now beginning to fully immerse himself in a life dedicated to music. All the while during his studies in classical music he was at the same time developing and nurturing his interest in Jazz outside of the class room, one must remember that Wits did not offer a Jazz program at the time. He would go and listen to performances by Johnny Fourie and Allen Kwela, the late jazz guitarists who were both influential in the development of the jazz guitar in South Africa. Upon completing the B.Mus he went on to enrol for the Masters in Music (Wits) as well as receiving Master Classes from the Norwegian guitarist Vegard Lund and the Austrian crossover guitarist/ composer Helmut Jasbar. Some accolades during this time include the first prize in the National Classical Guitar Competition (1998) adjudicated amongst others by the renowned Czech guitarist/composer Stepan Rak from whom he also received master-classes during the latter’s visit to South Africa I mention the extent of his training here mainly to avoid a popular misconception that people in the more traditional fields often have with regards to the creative arts. The idea that music is a less rigorous and
influences Vijay Iyer
Mark Turner
Reimagining
Dharma Days
Mahavishnu Orchestra
The Tony Williams Lifetime
Apocalypse
Emergency!
John Coltrane Sun Ship
2005
2001
1974
1969
1965
Savoy Jazz
Warner Bros
Columbia
Polydor
Impulse!
Growing up in what can be described as a largely musical family in Johannesburg South Africa, certain memories stand out as having formed part of his musical growth which are worth recalling here. In the family photo album there are pictures of the young Reza (at about the age of 5 or 6) holding a small guitar. There are recollections of the family record player and the Orchestral music Vinyl collection THE LAKE
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Improvisation is the ability to spontaneously respond to a new problem by making use of previously gained intuition. It therefore requires a serious grounding in your discipline and inspiration to improvise satisfactorily. Theoretical physics pretty much works the same way, the previously gained intuition comes from old and familiar problems, the theorems and a good base of mathematical knowledge.
informal enterprise which can be pursued overnight so long as one is endowed with a bit of luck and some good fortune along the way, it is not so. Artist in Residence Recently Reza was invited by the preeminent scholar, philosopher and social theorist, Professor Premesh Lalu to join the group at the University of the Western Cape’s Center for Humanities Research as resident artist, an invitation which he accepted. The nature of his work here is of an interdisciplinary kind, resulting in a series of stellar productions with the Cape Town based and fellow resident artist painter, Dathini Mzayiya. I like to call this duo “The Portrait”. In principle it has transformed Dathini’s painting into a sub genre within Jazz and vice versa Reza’s guitar into a paint brush from which colourfully textured grooves emanate. The first time I saw “The Portrait” was also at Tagore’s and this was during the last days when the space was coming to a close. Since then they have performed together under different configurations at times accompanied by a full band with drums, base, cello and electronics depending on the line up. When asked about this collaboration, Reza says that while improvisation requires an enormous amount of individual practice, it is very much a collective experience in which the performers are almost telepathically connected. In this case the focus becomes dynamic and gestural. The interplay between the brush and canvas, the strings and phrasing become percussively interwoven. When I met up with him in his home in Woodstock, Cape Town in order to reflect on his journey as a Jazz musician thus far, I asked him about some of his most memorable experiences on stage. The one at Carnegie Hall, New York with Kesivan and the Lights was certainly amongst some of his favourites. However for Reza it is the small and intimate settings that really capture what it is that he aims to do with the guitar. It was in this context that I first heard him play. Locally his favourites naturally included Tago-
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re’s 2(Cape Town), What used to be the Mahogany Room and is now Straight No Chaser3 (Cape Town), The Orbit (Johannesburg), The Chairman (Durban) & The Jazzy Rainbow (Durban), all spaces which can be said to offer a true home for the Jazz in tuned. Physics Notebooks In observing Reza Improvise, I have found myself compelled to draw parallels with what it is physicists intend to do when faced with new phenomena. For improvisation is the ability to spontaneously respond to a new problem by making use of previously gained intuition. It therefore requires a serious grounding in one’s own discipline and inspiration to improvise satisfactorily. Theoretical physics pretty much works the same way, the previously gained intuition comes from old and familiar problems, the theorems mixed with a good base of mathematical knowledge. The improvising bit is when all this intuition illuminates and prompts a certain mind to deduce a new law of nature that was hitherto unknown, what we call a breakthrough. When viewed in this way, the improvisational guitarist may very well provide the string theorists a paradigm for approaching their problems. What is the guitar after all , is it not a theory of strings? Acknowledgements - The version which now appears before your very eyes was made possible via numerous correspondence and conversations with Reza Khota himself who was more than willing on several occasions to help cross check the spellings of the various artist names mentioned in the article, any errors which now remain are my own. Any misgivings about my comparisons of Improvisational Jazz and Theoretical physics are most welcome and the critic who wishes to discuss them openly with me is invited to the Duncan Elliot Seminar Room, R.W James bldg, Physics Dpt. University of Cape Town. INFO: www. rezakhota.com
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STALKER GIDEON DE KOCK INTERVIEW - LANI SPICE
PHOTOGRAPHY - gideon de kock
“What hooked me on film photography was the risk/reward element that comes along with it. I’d dabbled in digital but never felt like anything I did “mattered” when I pushed the shutter, as everything could be easily rectified or reshot.” To jump right in, how were you first introduced to photography? My mom was a very avid photographer when I was younger. It eventually rubbed off on my brother but seemed to miss me. Last year I received a Point and Shoot film camera from a friend of mine for my birthday and have been shooting every day since. Could you tell us more about yourself, such as where you are from and where you are currently based?
and white image (and roll) as much as the next person, but I believe it’s too easy to “get away with it”. Black and white really strips your image down to the bare essentials and thus can even make seemingly average work pop. By stripping colour you’re left with fewer distractions for the viewer who can really focus on the subject and composition. Colour is far more unforgiving with incorrect exposure values and general composition in my opinion. Depending on the film I’ll alter my choice in technique
my eye and composition is Photoshop enough for my tastes. I even cringe a bit when I crop into an image.
digital. If photography is your soul-food then we’re all still eating, regardless of the medium.
Many photographers working with film tend to get frustrated with the medium, especially with regards to turnover time and costs. Would you say you experience any difficulties in this respect?
What camera/s do you currently shoot with? I started shooting on an MJUII and still do on occasion. Recently I’ve gotten hold of a Leica M6 and use a Zeiss 35mm F2.8 Biogon lens.
I’m from Somerset West which is outside Stellenbosch and about a 30-minute drive from Cape Town. I’m currently based in Hong Kong and have been in Asia for over 3 years now. Your photographs seem to be mostly shot on film. What is it about analogue that interests you and what are your feelings towards digital?
Olympus mju II
What hooked me on film photography was the risk/reward element that comes along with it. I’d dabbled in digital but never felt like anything I did “mattered” when I pushed the shutter, as everything could be easily rectified or reshot. I’ve always liked a bit of a challenge and film gave that to me. The limitations in shots per roll and only being able to see my images maybe days later would force me to really focus on getting the “right” shot. As for digital, I have no problem with the medium as I see incredible digital images daily. At the end of the day the best camera is the one you have on you, right? My choice just happens to be film as it’s more fitting for my tastes. The subject matter in your work seems to vary from still life to cityscapes to portraits, as well as street photography. Would you say you have a preference and why? Film has allowed me the luxury to stop and observe more. In a city as fast paced as Hong Kong that’s a blessing as most are too absorbed in this corporate and consumerist lifestyle to really see what a visual feast it is. I try not to pigeon-hole myself into a specific theme, but I do look for anything that interests me. This could be a row of chairs placed to look like they could be in some installation art gallery, it could be the child throwing the mother of all tantrums and it could be the man who fell asleep on the arcade cabinet just right. That being said, I do tend to gravitate towards street and portraits with interesting still life scenarios thrown in for good measure. The street and portraits because it’s an interesting look into the human condition, and still life because I get a kick out of finding these accidental sculptures, man-made or otherwise. You shoot in black and white, as well as colour. Do you favour one over the other or do you find that it depends on the subject matter? I shoot predominantly in colour. Let’s call it about an 80/20 split in favour of colour. I love a good black
LEICA M6
Let’s chat about Backchat Boys, a zine that you, Duran Levinson and Dustin Holmes put together while in Hong Kong. I believe it was really well received, could you tell us more about it? How did this come about?
and subject matter. All of this comes with time and practice and I’m learning every single day. You use Instagram as a platform to showcase your analogue work. Some purists have mixed feelings about photography from other devices, such as SLRs and analogue cameras, being uploaded. What are your thoughts around this? The fact is that we all live in a digital age. I think it boils down to what one wants to do with ones work. If you want to stay a purist and shoot and develop your film all by hand then by all means, do it, then teach me everything you know! Film is such a wonderful medium which produces such wonderful results that I think it would be a loss if that exposure were to be reduced so dramatically. Instagram has been integral to exposure of the visual medium, not only film, and I love it because of that. I’ve been exposed to some amazing people and film photographers through it. I would love to be more hands-on with my work in the future and keep the process to print as analogue as possible, if only to experience it and grow and learn something new. The only problem I have with photos introduced to a digital medium is the photo-manipulation that comes with it. How I see it is this; if I shoot film, my choice of film,
I’m lucky in that I’m spoilt with same-day development, which usually takes about an hour, but I know that this is not commonplace. The price of film photography definitely makes it an expensive hobby (far less so in Hong Kong compared to Cape Town for instance), but after enough digging and exploring I have a couple of options to minimize costs a bit to make it sting less. If you’re lucky enough to be able to shoot film without stressing about costs then you’re in a good position, otherwise just shoot
Backchat Boys is / was three South African photographers shooting street photography in Hong Kong. It came together rather quickly and organically actually. We all had passion and photographs that we wanted to do something with. Instead of going the predictable and inexpensive usual zine route we opted to put a bit more money into it and produce a product we’d be happy to look back on. A sort of zine/book hybrid kind of thing. The whole book from idea to fruition took about 2-3 months. It was a very selfish project as it was important for us to do something WE liked, but it was so well received that we’re already planning the next one.
HIGH FIVES Hiatus Kaiyote
Poison the Well
Kendrick Lamar
Meshuggah
Drug Church
Choose Your Weapon
The Tropic Rot
Good Kid, M.A.A.D City
obZen
Hit Your Head
2015
2009
2012
2008
2015
Flying Buddha
Ferret
TOPDAWG
Nuclear Blast
No Sleep Records
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“Film has allowed me the luxury to stop and observe more. In a city as fast paced as Hong Kong that’s a blessing as most are too absorbed in this corporate and consumerist lifestyle to really see what a visual feast it is.”
Asia is of course, your main muse at this point and inspiration seems endless there. What do you look for when you go out to take photographs? I look for candid moments. I like capturing emotional responses and expressions. I tend to shoot the elderly more as I feel they have more of a story to tell coming from old Hong Kong. The youth are a byproduct of their environment and thus emulate other parts of Asia and consumerist cultures. I want to capture something more honest and real. I’ve said before that I’m not a fan of photo-manipulation and that includes people/model/body manipulation as well. I shy away from that in my personal work but have dabbled in the latter in a more professional capacity. Have you been travelling anywhere recently that has inspired you to continue shooting? I’ve recently come back from a short photo trip to Bangkok. I met up with Duran Levinson and we explored and shot for about four days straight. We shot in many different locations, from train tracks to skate parks to slums. Amazing people to shoot there and really looking forward to doing something special with these images. Do you have any favourite photographers or artists? Do any of these favourites influence your work and in what way? I’ve recently been exposed to the works of Vivian Maier and Bruce Gilden. Both fantastic street photographers who have taken some really fantastic photos. Other than that my influences are all creatives I’ve grown up with and/or met along the way. Franco Fernandes, Duran Levinson, Dustin Holmes and Karl Schulschenk to name a few. Though not strictly photographical, their work, work ethic, outlook and approach to their mediums all stimulate me to be better. The last thing I want to be known for is one that simply emulates other styles. It’s important to craft one’s own identity. Any upcoming projects you’re willing to share? Backchat Boys 2 is on the cards. We’re planning a bigger and better release which is always exciting! I have a black and white zine release in the near future with Franco Fernandes and I’m planning on doing some solo and group exhibitions this year. Where should we go to keep up to date with your work? My Instagram is my most up to date platform. I try to post at least twice daily as a way to keep me shooting consistently. My website is a great place to view highlights at a much higher resolution and possibly a number of images that haven’t been seen on Instagram just yet. INFO: www.gideondekock.com INSTA: Gideondk1 THE LAKE
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Eric Oblivion Goner Records STORY - FRED DE VRIES
PHOTOGRAPHY - Cole Wheeler
Let’s take a moment and rewind, back to September 2015. Pretoria’s garage duo MakeOvers are proudly touring the United States, playing with the likes of Tee Oh Sees, when out of the blue they get a phone call from Memphis, Tennessee. ‘Hey there, what’s up, this is Eric Oblivion....’ What? Eric Oblivion?! Yes, him, the Eric Oblivion, him of the legendary garage band The Oblivions.
Eric Oblivion, founder of Goner Records, home of seminal acts such as Guitar Wolf and The Reatards. Eric Oblivion who co-owns the Goner record store in Memphis. Eric Oblivion who’s largely responsible for Gonerfest, the yearly four-day gathering of the global garage tribes that descend on Memphis to play or listen to the latest strands of primitive rock ‘n’ roll. Yes, it’s him. We’re not worthy! And then Eric Oblivion tells Make-Overs that there’s an afternoon available for next week’s Gonerfest, because some band from New York has dropped out. Would they be interested? Well, urhm, how can two Pretoria hopefuls say no to sharing the bill with the likes of Obnox from Cleveland and Salad Boys from New Zealand? And wait, isn’t Ty Segal also playing? Hell, yes! “We had to cancel some of our Chicago dates,” remembers Make-Overs drummer and vocalist Martinique Pelser. “But all the organisers understood and were very supportive when they heard it was for a chance to play at Gonerfest. With help from some amazing people we managed to get a lift down to Memphis and a place to stay in a town that was about to explode in a frenzy of weirdos.” They played on Saturday afternoon, outside a place called Murphy’s. Says Pelser: “We had an amazingly fun show, I think we were very well received, our merchandise sold out in a hot flash right after our set and it got our next album out on Heel Turn Records.” Almost a year later, in a Memphis coffee shop adjacent to the Goner record store Eric Oblivion himself remembers Make-Overs fondly, those two scrawny kids from South Africa and their relentless noise. Their energy and commitment were amazing. “Obviously they had listened to some of the same stuff that the other bands that played at the festival had listened to. Kinda grunge rock ‘n’ roll. I had heard them before. And it was great that they were in town.” We had met in the record store, which is smaller than you’d expect from such a famous place. It does, however, sell some of the best, loudest and weirdest garage currently available. It’s only here that you’ll find a red vinyl version of the new Angry Angels album, or the ultra-rare, one-sided single by the late Jay Reatard’s first ever band Forest of Blitzkrieg. And of course you’ll be able to buy nearly every Oblivions album still missing from your collection. The Oblivions formed in 1993, and are now considered to be the godfathers of the raw garage blues punk, which provided White Stripes with lots of ideas and gave the meddling city of Memphis a shot in the arm. The music of the threesome (Eric, Jack and Greg share duties on drums, guitar and vocals) is loud, lo-fi, distorted, snotty, primitive, ob-
noxious, occasionally tasteless and perennially unforgiving and uncompromising. Like the Ramones they use the band name as a surname (Eric’s real name is Freidl), and like the Ramones they are guilty of having created an army of imitators, some of whom tweaked the formula and got rich and famous. Stand up and plead guilty White Stripes and Black Lips! But while Jack White and Dan Auerbach have since opted for the pleasant, nouveau hipster environment of Nashville, Eric Oblivion has stubbornly stuck to its ugly cousin Memphis, which has remained decidedly untrendy. Developers have tried to breathe new life into the downtown area, especially its legendary Beale Street, nicknamed ‘Home of the Blues’ and host to among others Louis Armstrong, BB King, Muddy Waters and Rufus Thomas. But downtown still looks and feels quite eerie, especially at night, once you’re past the main drag and its drinking crowd. Brutalist architecture, boarded up shops and empty parking lots don’t do much for cosiness. Listen to The Oblivions and you’ll hear what Memphis looks and feels like. But that unapologetic roughness is Memphis’s charm, says Eric. “It’s cheaper than Nashville and just not hip or cool. It’s way more dysfunctional. When people come down here they have to embrace the aspects that don’t work.” As he mentions them, you feel as if he’s talking about South Africa: huge inequality, bad housing, problematic education, crime, white flight, racial tensions, you name it. Eric and his crew are tireless proponents of Memphis. The Gonerfest is one way to make people familiar with a city that is legendary for its music. This is the place where Elvis Presley had his Graceland mansion. It’s here in the famous Ardent Studios that Big Star recorded their stunning trio of albums. If you’re a fan of early country and rockabilly there’s the Sun Studios to drool over. At night you can drink on Beale Street and imagine what it must have looked like in the sixties, until the killing of Martin Luther King in a nearby motel and the riots and bad planning that followed led to a rapid urban decline. And if you want to know about the roots of modern R&B, a visit to the Stax Museum on McLemore Avenue is an absolute must. In the sixties and early seventies Stax Records released a series of unforgettable records by local soul legends such as Otis Redding, Booker T & The MGs, Isaac Hayes and Aretha Franklin – hard hitting, deeply emotional, socially conscious music that still resonates with all the Jay-Zs and Beyoncés of this world.
pendent attitude. Given the dismal state of Memphis it’s hard to find an explanation for this musical legacy. “I don’t know if it’s because people move here, or if it’s something in the water, or because people are never satisfied. It’s a dysfunctional city, there’s always this sense of trying to fill in something that’s not there, create your own entertainment? Is that it? I don’t know. I’ve never managed to come up with the answer,” says Eric. Unlike Nashville, Memphis doesn’t have the money or promotional capacity that can make things happen in a big way. “Here people are pretty much doing it for themselves,” says Eric. “I think really good bands come out of here because of that. You go to Nashville and see bands who think they’re something because people have been telling them that they’re something. You don’t get that in Memphis, basically because of its self-deprecating nature. It makes for better bands.” Interestingly, the Oblivions recorded their last album Desperation in 2013 in Nashville, in the studio of Dan Auerbach. “He wasn’t there for the recording. He said hi, and then they wanted to play with the Beach Boys or something,” says Eric with a wry smile. Fortunately you won’t hear any of the Nashville studio gloss on Desperation. It’s just as raw and in-your-face as any of the previous products, although the songs have a slightly more sophisticated structure. “We took our friend Dough Easley along. We used to record at his studio down here. He was our Memphis ears to keep it honest,” explains Eric. If you walk around in the Stax Museum and hear the social and political message of the music of yore, you realize how lyrically tame rock ‘n’ roll has become. The Reatards, the Oblivions, the Last Words, all those famous Memphis punk and garage bands never raised a verbal fist. ‘She’s a Hole’, was one of the less than subtle song titles. They made a hell of a noise, but the lyrics were
instantly forgettable, unless you think endlessly repeating the phrase “I will never change” makes great poetry. Does Eric listen to the words when he signs a new band? “Not really. It’s more for effect and tone. They are not so important. Look, I can’t sing. We just go eh eh eh (sound of a rhythmic cough), just chopping away at it. We came from a Circle Jerks and Angry Samoans background, bands that were pissed off and saying funny stuff, so you could relate to it without feeling specifically preached to. I like the funny really dumb word play, saying stupid things over and over again.” Not caring for worthy lyrics is also an age thing, he admits. He’s fifty now, too old to be told what to do or think by a 24-year singer. “But that said, kids have this great beautiful energy. And they’re the only ones who are going to get things done, because they don’t know yet that you shouldn’t be doing that. By the time you get older you accept the walls.” So after almost a quarter of a century of life on Planet Goner, does rock ‘n’ roll still excite him? “When I was a kid, I was really into Top 40 music. Then I heard about punk rock and psychedelic stuff and I thought it would sound like nothing that I was into. So when I finally heard the Ramones I was like: ok, that’s good, but it sounds like music to me. I thought it would be like static mixed with a dishwasher. And then I heard Funkadelic, and they were really going out there. I like chaotic, crazy sounds. And that can be in a blues song too. We used to go see RL Burnside and Junior Kimbrough play in Holy Springs, and that would be the craziest… It wouldn’t make any kind of sense. Even in counting it wouldn’t make sense. It was completely mesmerising blues, out of tune, just perfect. I like the stuff that always sounds wrong but it’s right. That’s kinda our model.” INFO: www.goner-records.com
HIGH FIVES from goner records Ty Segall
Carbonas
Nots
The Reatards
Eddy Current
Melted
Carbonas
We Are Nots
Teenage Hate
Suppression Ring
2010
2007
2014
1998
2008
Goner Records
Goner Records
Goner Records
Goner Records
Goner Records
Eddy Current
In their own idiosyncratic way Goner and the Oblivions are purveyors of the old spirit of Sun and Stax: pure, undiluted sounds and a staunchly indeTHE LAKE
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BABYLON WAKE UP, THIS IS JOBURG
Wake up, This is Joburg tells the stories of ten ordinary, interesting, odd or outrageous denizens of the city of Johannesburg. Some are newly arrived, some are long-time residents, but all have found a way to inhabit urban space in unusual ways, carving out a living and a life in an alternative economy, flying by the seat of their proverbial pants, or working the same job in the same building for decades. All are, in their own ways, survivors: of the dramatic changes that the city has seen in the last twenty years, of successive waves of xenophobia, of political upheaval here and in countries elsewhere on the continent. Some have simply not moved in decades, preferring to sit things out and watch the city transform on their doorstep, making the most of what it brings them. Wake up, This is Joburg is about that thing you can’t quite put a finger on when you tell people why you live here. INFO: www.fourthwallbooks.com
PHOTOGRAPHY - MARK LEWIS
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FAITH 47 A Discourse on the Difference between Liberty and Fraternity “How could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?” ~ Plato. STORY - SHANE DE LANGE
PHOTOGRAPHY - OLIVER KRUGER
Faith47 is an acclaimed, self-taught, South African artist known for her prolific oeuvre situated primarily within the rubric of Street Art. With a career spanning over two decades Faith’s work, given its transient nature, was initially present in all the major cities of South Africa, and can now be experienced in many of the important urban centers of the world, including London, Los Angeles, Melbourne, New York, Rome, Sao Paulo and Shanghai to name a few. Faith’s work can now be experienced in many of the important urban centers of the world, including London, Los Angeles, Melbourne, New York, Rome, Sao Paulo and Shanghai to name a few. Her canvas, practically any surface common to the built environment, painted on decaying walls, strewn across urban rooftops, filling abandoned interiors, always maintaining an acute awareness of absence where things were once present. Her scale varies from the astronomical and monumental to the incidental and intimate, from private and enigmatic to public and collective. Despite being associated with the global Street Art movement one would not do Faith’s work justice by reading as such. Her work is more a form of urban installation or intervention, even performance, redefining the border between Street Art and Fine Art. By shifting the boundaries that have traditionally separated lowbrow from highbrow Faith’s work negates outright categorisation, merging the street and the studio. These diverse spaces bleed into each other, connecting the texture of the sidewalk with the timbre of the gallery. The Freedom Charter (2010) is one of Faith’s most notorious early projects. Redirecting political headlines and slogans, citing struggle posters and Apartheid propaganda, Faith places postcolonial discourse on street level, taking her cue from the opening statement of South Africa’s original Freedom Charter: “The People Shall Govern!”. Many of the subversive elements innate to this series is evident in her current work. Critical of the powers that be, irrespective of geography or nationality, Faith is a veritable global citizen living a nomadic lifestyle set by the current Zeitgeist. Her esoteric perspective places her work within an international meta-narrative. In capitalist societies where institutions etch truth into the matrix of history, dualism sustains the status quo, feeding our perceived humanism and by association driving the human condition. The archetypal binary opposition of the inside(r) versus the outside(r) is of particular interest in this context as it manufactures the hierarchical relationships between the civil and the political, the urbane and the common, the natural and the urban, and the like. Such dualities can be reverse engineered and revealed to be mere constructs, all fictitious. Albeit difficult to pin down, Faith’s work can be described as her own private inquiry into the nature of human condition and how relations of this kind are fabricated. The Psychic Power of Animals (New York, 2015) exhibits the manner in which Faith evolves upon her growing visual narrative. In this case she introduces motifs taken from nature and places them into the urban environment. She adds a sense of refinement to the squalid architecture of the city, symbolised by the grace and beauty of animals such as swans in motion. The distance between humans and nature is highlighted by Faith’s large scale murals, spiritually
connecting the authentic absence of animals with the fabricated presence of humans. Faith’s journey is a profound and idiosyncratic one, seeking to transcend into another realm of human perception and understanding. By altering the values that have defined the binary oppositions we live by, Faith transforms the cursed into the holy, nature merges with the city, and the boundaries between high and low, inside and outside disintegrate. She dismantles dualities, effectively critiquing dominant narratives in a defiant expression of personal truth, reinterpreting values and morals with the same ideological apparatus that originally reasoned them into being. A quasi-spiritual investigation into the machinery of the human condition. Faith subverts previously given a priori truths and dusty histories, yearning for alternative ways of seeing, perceived on multiple, schizophrenic plateau’s. Faith’s ability to scramble meta-narratives also allows her to reclaim innate feminine qualities that have been repressed throughout history by patriarchal structures and monotheistic establishments, specifically within a Western cultural context. Sensuality and intimacy are key concerns for Faith, pivotal aspects of the human condition, increasingly moving her work outside the context of Street Art. Delving into other mediums and conceptual practices, avoiding the desire to create art for public consumption, Faith uses readymades, video and photography in combination with traditional mediums such as graphite, spray paint, printmaking, oil paint, ink and wash, and collage. As such it is difficult to associate Faith’s current artistic output with any specific scene or genre. Emphasis can rather be placed upon the overarching themes and narratives that interweave throughout the variety of surfaces and spaces that she uses. Fragments of a Burnt History (2012) was Faith’s initiation into the world of the White Cube. Hosted by David Krut gallery in Johannesburg, it was her first solo exhibition unraveling the disparate facts about life in the shadow of South Africa’s tainted history. Johannesburg is depicted as a burgeoning African city in one of her earliest immersive environments that physically alters the gallery, turning it into a sepulchre of sorts for the disenfranchised people of the metropolis; mainly those living on the streets, the proletariat of South Africa. It seems ironic that most gallery devotees would not normally have access to the street. The reform of the gallery in Faith’s immersive spaces compliments her revival of derelict spaces. There is something to be said about the quite walls of a building that nobody will enter, that might be destroyed; something peaceful and unapologetically personal. The absence of spectacle in such dilapidated environments further compliments the presence of the sublime in her work, facing the realities of life on the streets without sensationalising the unfortunate situations and grim prospects of the unnamed people that appear in her work. Retreating into these abandoned spaces is something like a
haven for Faith, a temporary respite from the world. She turns private into public, highlighting the derelict and disenfranchised, denoting sacramental significance to the scrawled doodles and inscriptions of the homeless on the walls of her abandoned spaces. Reminiscent of palimpsests, these influences find their way into the studio, charging seemingly insignificant objects, things that society prefers to ignore, with aesthetic gravitas. By incorporating the detritus of the street into the refinement of the studio Faith re-contextualises it all within the contrasting space of the gallery. Aqua Regalia (2014 - 2015) demonstrates how Faith disturbs the contrasts between street, studio and gallery, comprised of two parts taking the form of in-situ installations and various other exhibited elements. Aqua Regalia refers to the latin word for ‘royal water’, a corrosive blend of nitric and hydrochloric acids, originally used by alchemists to dissolve precious metals such as gold and platinum. Conceptually this reference implies nobility and sacrament. Chapter one, hosted by Moniker Projects in London in 2014, explores the gallery as an immersive environment, turning it into a kind of sacred space, a shrine adorned with found objects taken from everyday life. Accompanied by paintings, photographs, prints and drawings, the installation of readymade idols and assembled relics rejoices in the transformation of the discarded and unwanted into the pure and divine. The second chapter, hosted by the Jonathan Levine Gallery, New York in 2015, fetishistically takes the baton from the London show, continuing Faith’s evaluation of the parallels that can be drawn between the sacred and the mundane, once again enveloping her audience in the gallery space as if it were some sort of shrine or tomb. 7.83Hz Frequency (2016) is Faith’s most recent body of work comprised of facade murals, adorned abandoned spaces, video installations and paintings. As an ongoing, collaborative, multidisciplinary series, the overall thematic continues to break away from the misconception that her art is oriented towards Graffiti or Street Art. Scientific and spiritual resonance sits at the heart of this project, referencing the innate interconnectivity of human beings, a collective unconsciousness, scrutinising the instinctual sensitivity that humans have towards nature and each other. Faith
sees collaboration with other creatives, particularly videographers, from across the globe as impressions of her ever-changing visual narrative; iterations adding to a broader statement still to come. Each video in this series can be interpreted symbolically and factually, defining chaos and disorder as fundamental principles akin to life. The series combines a variety of seemingly unrelated events and happenings, highly charged, pointing towards the varying realities that we collectively share. She creates an allegorical link to Schumann’s frequency, which explains a vibration caused by lightning around the planet. Lightning being a metaphor for corporeal interactions and arcane connections between human beings. Faith’s artistic pursuit is largely existential, seeing light where there was once only darkness. By reflecting upon the recurring destructive characteristics inherent to human nature, she unearths the collective, unconscious resonance of the human condition. Faith does so without prescribing to dominant ideologies or single-minded political worldviews that are anchored within the jurisdiction of patriarchal, Eurocentric and occidental power structures. Retracted from outright political orientations, Faith’s protest lies within the visceral presence of her fallen buildings, permitting her audience to acknowledge the incandescent embers that once formed the primal fire of humanity. Ignoring the borders of creed, ethnicity and nationality which have been fueled by a lust for dominance and power, Faith shares her immunity to the imaginary lines invented by men to divide and conquer. Faith suggests that there is a difference between liberty and fraternity. To her, no taxonomy, method of control or authoritative system can possess the aching passion of humanity. We are a phenomenon, and all of this is a temporary situation on a cosmic scale; fragile and transient. Faith’s work thus asks us to question why we fixate on trivial truths when there is a greater spiritual catharsis at hand, relevant to our temporary situation, that can disarm the fatal strategies of political hegemony. And so, Faith gives us hope. “Silence, I discover, is something you can actually hear.’” ~ Murakami INFO: www.faith47.com
HIGH FIVES Grimes Art Angels
The Sisters of Mercy
CocoRosie
The Knife
Crystal Castles
Heartache City
Deep Cuts
Crystal Castles
Vision Thing
2015
1990
2015
2003
2008
4AD
Merciful Release
Self Release
Rabid
Lies
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unearth - napier, new zealand 2015
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the la salpetriere school - VI
580 BC - 265 BC Athens
the la salpetriere school - III
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ABERRATION ALBERT RETIEF
reflections from the road
Reflections From The Road is a portrayal of photographer Albert Retief’s year-long overland journey from Tokyo to Cape Town. Using only public transport - without any bookings, guidebooks or assistance along the way and travelling on an incredibly tight budget - he set off with his camera and a craving for adventure. From Tokyo, he crossed over to the Korean peninsula and over the Yellow Sea to China. He travelled across the Steppe to the Caspian Sea and down to Iran. He then continued on to Turkey and across the Mediterranean to Israel and Palestine. He then travelled down the eastern flank of Africa to finally arrive in his home town of Cape Town. Inspired by Paul Theroux’s travel books, he dreamt of capturing visuals of the world as he moved through it. He kind of knew where he was going, but had no idea what he would find there or how he would get to the next place. Ultimately, he wanted to portray the similarities we all share despite our differences - that at our core, we’re all the same. It was a demanding solo journey and he relied on his instincts and intuition to get him by, but when it came down to it, he needed the hospitality, generosity and trust of strangers. It was the people he met along the way that made the journey the revelation that it was. And it’s these characters that form the basis of Reflections From The Road. Along the way, Retief was invited to weddings in Kazakhstan and Sudan, teargassed in Istanbul, and interrogated in China, Israel, Egypt and Sudan because authorities thought he was a spy due to his equipment. He ended up in a Turkish hospital with food poisoning and got it again in Cairo. He hitchhiked through the Sinai Peninsula with two Palestinians, had to hide in a bunker as the first bombs were dropped on Gaza by Israel and stayed with Iranian hippies in the desert. By the time he reached Lake Malawi he had run out of money and had to hitchhike to South Africa, trading clothes for rides and food. He had bought a one-way ticket to Asia where he taught English in South Korea and Taiwan for a few years before venturing on this, his most challenging journey to date, a one-year overland odyssey from the Far East to the tip of Africa. INFO: www.albertretief.com
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WILHELM SAAYMAN Seen and Not Seen INTERVIEW - Luan Nel
PHOTOGRAPHY - jansen van staden
Wilhelm Saayman’s work regularly pops up in group exhibitions, gallery solos, Art Fairs and on social media. Meet the man and delve into what lies behind work that surpasses the cynical and horrific in its wry look at the world that surrounds us. You came to Art slightly later. How?
And dealers, gallerists?
My wife Catherine was researching Vedic Astrology. She had a practitioner of this specific Astrology, which is not like Western Astrology, do a reading of our charts. He suggested I try and live out parts of my character through creativity. In particular, those aspects of my character that I can’t or don’t express in everyday life. You know, violent thoughts, bad feelings towards others, things you can’t say in public. It was excellent advice. I found that I could communicate and manifest things I couldn’t express, through art. This way I could speak the unspoken. This was around 2003. That’s when I seriously started making art.
Some have said that I’m a ‘difficult’ artist to work with. The thing is, this thing, this art inside you, shouldn’t be interfered with. If one wants to get proper use from one’s art, then you shouldn’t let others stick their fingers in it. It dilutes it and disrupts it. Never in a positive way.
It was always difficult for me to choose between Music, Writing orArt. I started off playing music. I joined a surf punk band called CretinX in 1980, in Milnerton. Then I played in Under Two Flags. There were three of us in the band. One of the band members was studying fine art at Michaelis. He exposed me to the art world. Sometimes our gigs were more like performance art pieces. Funny things happened, sometimes people didn’t realise we were sending up the system. They thought we were serious. This was 1982 in Apartheid South Africa. Bottles were thrown, they wanted to beat us up. After that I formed a band called Khaki Monitor and moved to Jhb. Later I had a solo thing called Swim Club. Bands are hard to keep together. What instrument do you play? I played the bass guitar. Is this what you did until 2003 when you decided to venture into the similarly oblique world of being an artist? No, I edit television commercials. That’s how I make a living and buy time to be able to make art. Do these two fields influence each other? Editing and making art? To me they’re polar opposites. With editing one is always answering to others. Making changes to cuts. That’s what editing is. With art I have absolute freedom. I take no instruction, it’s my voice and mine alone. I can say what I like. I never had any formal training and before 2003 my drawing was seriously bad. But I continued trying. Catherine helped me. You’ll know, she’s incredible when it comes to drawing or making an image. She can spot a problem a mile off. Yes, we studied Fine Art at Wits together, she was one of our top students. Draughts person par excellence. So it was a kind of an informal tutelage? WS: Yes, but what’s also important is that she has no motive. She has no reason to say something’s good when in fact it needs more work. She’s always honest. She still regularly gives me input. It’s as close as I come to being advised or curated.
Galleries often expect you to make work in one vein and try to keep you boxed in whatever compartment or niche of theirs they see you filling. I love the scene in Basquiat (the movie) where he asks his cousin how one gets famous and his cousin replies that he needs to make work in the same style over and over again. I don’t want to peddle a formula, I prefer working like Kippenberger, making different things all the time. If that makes me a difficult artist… An artist friend gave me good advice. She said I must ask myself what success means to me, decide what’s important and pursue that. I thought about it and realised that, to me, art is not a job, it’s a need. It’s both a blessing and a curse. And it needs freedom and space to grow. So, for me, success in art means making work with as little outside interference as possible. And right now I’m more successful than ever before. Your work is often described as ‘dark’ How do you respond to such a statement about your oeuvre? I know people have walked out of my shows, saying it’s too dark for them. I accept that my work isn’t for everyone. I think of this darkness that they refer to as my tone, my voice. Much like you find in music. We can’t all make happy songs. Other artists can make happy pictures. My tone is my tone and I’m quite at peace with it. But then we find a work like Crossing the Bar, a beach scene at night. The title taken from Tennyson. Quite romantic I should think. How do you explain this anomaly? That was one of six beach scenes, all painted from photos taken at night using a flash. They were studies. I was researching artists whose work was influenced by photography: Bonnard, for example and more recently Luc Tuymans. Tuymans would take a photo, then do a watercolour of the photo and then do an oil painting of the watercolour. He did that to see things in a different way. I related to the need to do that, to see things in a different way. I made those paintings because they suited what I was trying to say, but also because I needed to develop more technical painting skills. It’s important to be able to depict things realistically. You need to have mad skills, a large vocabulary.
er. For example, ‘Stage Fright’ could have been titled many other things but something about the apprehension in her face made that a good title and added another dimension to the narrative. In the beginning, because I couldn’t draw, my artworks consisted mainly of text. Like ‘You’re A Blowjob Waiting to Happen.’ The text carries the piece and the images are conjured in the viewer’s mind. Violence is often more effective when the viewer doesn’t see it, but has to imagine it. In the work you had on exhibition at ZINK, John Nankin’s space in Tamboerskloof, there was a shift towards drawing and a monochromatic palette. This is in contrast to a lot of your other work that I am familiar with. It was largely because of my living arrangements. My wife, Catherine, and I separated just over a year ago. I decided perhaps it was best for me to leave Johannesburg and move back to Cape Town. So I moved to my mom’s place in Milnerton, but there was no space to paint. I went from having a studio, to drawing at a table in front of her TV. In these works you quote Philip Guston - the man’s head, in a sleeping position, puffing a cigarette, sometimes with figures walking over his head. What is its significance? Philip Guston is very interesting. He took risks. And the Universe rewards risk. Did you know he only started the work he is most known for today, the cartoon-like narratives, late in his artistic career? He was classically trained as a young man and worked in that figurative style. But he soon got swallowed by the trend towards Abstraction in the 60s and its silencing characteristic. He had a degree of success with those but got to a point where he felt the need to construct narratives. He wanted his work to speak and found abstraction limiting in this regard. And so he changed direction and started painting the type of work he is most known for today. People reacted. A few stuck by him, others stopped collecting his work and some even stopped speaking to him. I doubt he would have been as influential if he had stuck to abstraction. And why the head, lying down smoking, why quote that? Then with smaller figures walking over
it? Why that specific iconography? I drew a parallel between his appropriation of cartooning as a style and what happens when territory is colonised. People land somewhere and are imperious, they don’t consider the people that are already living there. I found it interesting to make Guston part of the colonised landscape and have the colonisers walk all over him. He took cartooning and made it a happy place for himself, but unfortunately that’s generally not what happens when a place is colonised. In the same image we find, in contrast to the cartoon language, an almost naturalistic portrait, who is it? Dostoyevski and it refers to his book, ‘Crime and Punishment.’ This then in relation to colonialism. Punishment for the taking of dignity, the pillage that went on. And it seemed to make sense to introduce this literary reference in another visual language. More naturalistic. The cartooning helps in telling the story more simply. Or clearer. It’s a type of shorthand. But not in a Pop art kind of way. I would make a terrible Pop artist. My work must have a certain weight to it. It must be able to elicit discussion. I don’t want to make work that gets sold to look good with couches. You also use images of skulls regularly. What do they symbolise? Why are they so important to you as iconography. Death. It’s the only sure thing in life. We should accept that it’s our inevitable fate. No matter who you are, how important or famous or memorable, by the end we breathe our last breath and then the skin falls off our bones. Whatever you might have been, the colour of your skin, your sex, everything is taken from you. You’re reduced to bones, a skull. Whether you’re Nelson Mandela, a leper or a car guard, it all falls away. Death is the great equaliser. I suppose that’s what my work comes down to. Morality and Mortality.
HIGH FIVES Gloss Drop
David Bowie
Son House
GOLD ZEBRA
Talking Heads
Battles
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust
Father of the Delta Blues:
GOLD ZEBRA
remain in light
2011
1972
1965
2014
1980
Warp
RCA
Sony
VISAGE MUSIQUE
Sire
One of the things that draws me to your works are their titles. It seems as if as much thought goes into the titles as the image. Often text enters the image as well. I could never make a work called Untitled. Why limit yourself? The title offers more options to the viewTHE LAKE
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Boyz STYLIST - Mandy Nash
PHOTOGRAPHY - Glen Montgomery
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Grooming: Megan Wridgway Models: Jae and Nicolas at Twenty Management Page 1/ Jae wears: Olive bomber and burnt orange puffer both Country Road at Woolworths; blue beanie H&M; backpack Chapel. Page 2 / Jae wears: Maroon jacket Lukhanyo Mdingi at AKJP Collective; beanie MarkhamsNicolas wears: Maroon jacket Lukhanyo Mdingi at AKJP Collective; beanie and brown turtle neck Markhams; mix match earring Steffany Roup Jewellery at AKJP Collective. Page 3 / Nicolas wears: Brown cargo jacket Markhams; Beanie Country Road at Woolworths; mix match earring Steffany Roup Jewellery at AKJP Collective Jae: Burnt orange jersey Topman; beanie Markhams. Page 4 / Jae wears: Burnt orange jersey Topman; beanie Markhams. Page 5 / Nicolas wears: Brown turtle neck Markhams; mohair sweater Yes Dear Mandy; mix match earring Steffany Roup Jewellery at AKJP Collective. Page 6 / Jae wears: Boxy button up shirt H&M; beige turtleneck Markhams; olive drawstring joggers Country Road at Woolworths. Nicolas wears: Brown turtle neck Markhams; mohair sweater Yes Dear Mandy; beige chino Trenery at Woolworths; mix match earring Steffany Roup Jewellery at AKJP Collective. THE LAKE
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SAKAWA BOYS Everything feels the same in the dark STORY - RUAN SCOTT
PHOTOGRAPHY - OLIVER KRUGER
Skye MacInnes jaunts down a passageway of a suburban house looking for the toilet. Indy-rock hits from the 2000s drone in the background as he proceeds towards a white light shining from a door standing ajar down the hall. He doesn’t knock. He pushes it open with his beer-holding hand while the other reaches down towards his fly. He is met by a surprised cough from someone inside. Marijuana smoke fills the space between Skye and the stranger. A moment of awkward silence. “Hi, I’m Peter, do you want to smoke a bong?” says the guy by the window pushing back his spectacles to the top of his nose. He turns around, takes the sheet with mulled dagga on it and presents it to Skye as a kind of peace offering. It’s 2011 and the two of them are at a house party in a leafy suburb of Cape Town. First-year university students fill the property, drinking, dancing, making out and doing drugs. Peter Scott passes the makeshift plastic bottle bong to Skye who obliges by asking for the light. Somewhere at this same house party is John Seth, having a jol, vehemently discussing life or law or music. He has a beer in his right hand. Always his right hand. There’s a cigarette clipped between his left index and middle fingers which he ashes regularly. His mobile phone is in his left pocket, always his left pocket. And his wallet in his right pocket. Always his right pocket. It’s this same OCD tendency that had him playing his guitar obsessively and routinely for about two years. Not that it’s a setback; it has made him a stellar guitar player. John is currently on a hiatus from work as a commercial attorney and will be obtaining his Masters degree in European Economic Law in Sweden later this year. “A strategic move for the band and not only a professional and personal one,” he explains. “Having a band member on the ground in Europe will significantly advance the possibilities of playing abroad.” I’m sitting in front of four fine young men who make up the band known as Sakawa Boys. “John, Skye and I were always getting high making music at varsity” says Peter. “Joking around, playing songs together in my bedroom on my electric drum kit. Subconsciously yearning to start a band.” “While you were getting high,” jokes Keenan Oakes from the other end of the couch. “At that stage I was getting high, but not anymore. We’ve all moved on from that,” Peter retorts. John responds with sounding laughter, “Says the guy who has legitimately not moved on from smoking weed”. Peter Scott is a self-taught computer programmer and the drummer for Sakawa Boys. Not just a stoner. “I started teaching myself computer programming after I realized a degree in humanities wasn’t going to earn me lots of money. I taught myself to play drums. After the passing of my father, I felt the need to fill a creative void inside me. Drums were something I’ve always wanted to play.” “We were watching a show of Lotus Plaza performing on YouTube, a band we were really into at the time” says Peter. Bemused by the sound and ‘lack’ of stage presence – a peculiar characteristic of shoe gaze
bands – the three felt an uncanny urge to actually write a song. That song turned out to be Lazy Eyes, one of their first recordings. A love song if you listen between the lines. This was late 2013 and the Sakawa Boys had by now crafted a few songs that would make up their ‘V’ Ep. They were still only a trio at this time and considered it timely to complete the band by adding a bass guitar to the lineup. Keenan - bass player and vocalist for atmospheric death metal act Wildernessking, and a mutual friend of the band - started playing with them. His seriousness as a musician, musical ability, energy and style blended fluidly with the group and he was an obvious choice. “As a band we take our music and lyrical content fucking seriously and in that sense Keenan was a perfect fit,” says John shuffling around in the couch getting more comfortable before switching to a more serious facial expression. “We give people seriousness and in doing so, the music means something to us and to the people listening to it. We are sincere to ourselves by being honest in our efforts when writing material. Something I feel is present in our music. if we are sincere about our efforts the music will bear testament to it.” “The song Emotional Young Men from the ‘V’ Ep is an amalgamation of intentions and emotions that brought this band together,” he adds. The time spent behind bedroom doors working on music until it reaches the acme of their satisfaction can be seen as a primary reason why it took up until July 2016 to release their first full length album. Entitled 2014 Anxiety, their first full length was released digitally on July 22, 2016. It is an ode to the anxiety involved in producing the album and how they realised that actually playing the music kept them sane and focused on delivering throughout the creation process. Their vinyl will be released through Permanent Records later this year. “The only people we need to impress are the people within this band,” says John. “And it’s tough, the guys in this band are the strongest critics I have encountered.” “Bands are hating the local music scene because their subpar rock band isn’t scoring gigs and getting reviews. That’s no one else’s fault but yours and your band’s. If your band is producing songs faster than setting up a social media page then what did you expect the feedback to be?” John says with an austere sense of indignation. He excuses himself from the interview for a minute. John returns a moment later carrying on as if he never left. “This isn’t just some willy-nilly deal. We fucking care a lot. We are extremely critical about song-writing. We are mixing things up when we are writing songs, always aiming for higher standards in music, production and delivery. Changing structures, writing good lyrics, really working on our music. We are putting a lot into the music, creatively and emotionally. In doing that, we know that’s what’s going to separate Sakawa Boys from other bands. Not only locally but internationally too. We are transcending the South African scene or whatever scene and genre for that matter.”
This critical approach to song-writing sets the standard for their music. “It gets frustrating,” says Skye. “Many times we will argue about the music. I’m using ‘argue’ in the best sense of the word here. I love it when the guitars are big and loud taking up a lot of the space, but I need to step back at stages and let the vocals sound through.” Skye has been playing in bands, starting off in the church band, from a very young age. He jokes that he is over the Jesus shit though and adds: “There has been conflict in every song. A real debate on how to do it or how a particular song isn’t at the level of where we want it to be. Songs are victories for us.” “I think a lot of bands are focused on the outward appearance, looking good on stage. Dressing fashionably and coming up with quirky song titles and cool album art. Yes, all of those things are important, but let’s not forget the music speaks for itself,” Peter tells me while the rest of the guys nod in approval.
without being too abstract: a sound that is truly Sakawa Boys. Between all the serious talk the guys are full of jokes, primarily in-jokes which leads to enthusiastic laughter every few sentences. Laughs from good spirits and not from smoking weed I must add. They are definitely having laughs, especially with their online presence. A subversive poke at bands that take themselves too seriously. Serious bands like themselves. INFO: www.sakawaboysband.bandcamp.com
DISCOGRAPHY SAKAWA BOYS Lazy Eys Single, 2014
Peter’s words have hardly hit my eardrums when Keenan continues the train of thought “Bands try to copy other bands on the international circuit thinking that that’s the sound of success or acceptance. Rather take the time and try to find your own sound. Figure out riffs and different structures or whatever. Just work on something that you know you worked on. Then it will mean something to you and will reflect in your music.”
BANDCAMP
SAKAWA BOYS Yes, I Know Single, 2014
John, who has taken his seat on the couch again, adds that “It’s easy to be in a shoe gaze band and sing shit like floating on a cloud of dreams and sleep. Its meaningless bullshit. I sat long and hard and fought through lyrics for both albums. It’s deeply personal and introspective and revolves around where we are in our lives collectively. It’s an intensification of emotions felt up until now. There is a universality to the emotions we convey on this album though and every song was under immense pressure to be the best possible version of itself.”
BANDCAMP
SAKAWA BOYS V EP, 2015 BANDCAMP
Sakawa Boys sound is highly guitar driven without drowning out the vocals and other instruments. The guitars, often strummed in continuously down fashion, high up on the fret board, are dressed with overdrive and some fuzz effects. The loud bass carries the catchy rhythms, gleefully adding a pop sensibility, while the drums add a steady back beat. However basic that might sound, Sakawa Boys successfully merge their various influences to produce dreamy and ambient shoe gaze pop
SAKAWA BOYS Anxiety FULL ALBUM, 2015 BANDCAMP
influences Mastodon
Radiohead
NCATBS
Blood Mountain
Kid A
No More Shall We Part
Rage Against the Machine
The Mars Volta Frances the Mute
The Battle of Los Angeles
2006
2000
2001
1999
2005
Warner Bros
Parlophone
Mute
Epic
Universal
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East Jerusalem, West Bank, 2014 and West Bank, Western Cape South Africa, 2015
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Scorched Earth: Satellite Cities Svea Josephy
Near Bosnia-Bosonia, South Africa (stop), 2014, and Bosnia, Sarajevo (flats) 2013
There are many places in South Africa that are connected through their names with sites of conflict around the world: Beirut in Alexandra in Johannesburg was named when hostel violence erupted in the area in the early 1990s and references the Lebanese Civil War; Kosovo, a settlement in Cape Town, developed after an invasion of private land, invokes the war in Kosovo, in Central Europe; and, referencing local events, Marikana near Philippi in Cape Town was settled and named shortly after the tragic events at Marikana in North West Province in August 2012. In Scorched Earth: Satellite Cities Svea Josephy, presents large colour photographs that explore what these connections mean to the communities that adopted these names. The works are often displayed as diptychs. More broadly, the exhibition is concerned with the South African urban landscape through an investigation of naming connected to sites of conflict and war. The photographs place the suburbs and areas surrounding South Africa’s cities at the heart of a network of interconnected perspectives and relationships. These branch out to reveal correspondence, difference and parallels with other places within
South Africa and throughout the world. The place names evoke violent sites in our imaginations. They bring to mind places, cities and countries located all over the globe that are evocative of war and disaster, for example, West Bank, Iraq, Vietnam, Kuwait, Bosnia, Harare, Taiwan, Burundi, Congo and Cuba. Naming happens in different ways, but one noteworthy practice is when settlements are named after events in current news, such as wars or disaster. This draws parallels between events taking place in the war zones and similar perceived conditions in life circumstances, facilities and infrastructure in the places in South Africa at the time. This powerful and thought provoking exhibition is organised in conjunction with the Wits City Institute through funding provided to the Institute by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Svea Josephy is an artist, NRF rated researcher and Senior Lecturer in Fine Arts (Photography) who teaches at The Michaelis School of Fine Arts at the University of Cape Town.
PHOTOGRAPHY - Svea Josephy
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Kosovo (National and University Library of Kosovo, Pristina, Kosovo)2012
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Cape Town (surveillance camera) 2014
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Excavations, West Bank, Palestine (Jerrico) 2014
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West Bank Alexandra, Johannesburg, South Africa (River Bank) 015
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WAX JUNKIE ROSEMARY LOMBARD WORDS - ROSEMARY LOMBARD
PHOTOGRAPHY - JACQUI VAN STADEN
I’m an insatiable explorer. I’ll find music via any route I can, but vinyl is my favourite medium for its wonderful tactility. I’ve been collecting records since I was about 14. My pocket money didn’t stretch to buying CDs regularly, so I turned to second-hand LPs because I could buy speculatively and get a rush of novelty for R2 or R5 a pop. Every great record holds a slice of adventure – as it spins, thin air is transformed by sound into a tangible place you inhabit. You can take listeners anywhere your imagination and collection will stretch, and I think this can really expand your capacity for empathy. Nina Simone Little Girl Blue - 1958 / Bethlehem
Forces Favourites Eleven Songs by South Africans Supporting the End Conscription Campaign - 1986 / Shifty Records
This was Nina Simone’s first album, recorded when she was just 25. Despite her youth, her mastery of expression is already consummate here. I often listen to music medicinally, and this is one of those records I turn to when I’m really over the world in general. Nina’s voice and piano carry all the bittersweet weight of living. “All you can ever count on are the raindrops…” The notes spill out exquisitely, painting cathedrals where my spirit can shelter, smoky bars where my soul can dance. Any morning I’m struggling to pull myself together, if I drop the needle on “Good Bait”, by the time it’s resolutely swinging, two minutes in, the kettle will be on the boil and I’ll be thinking of what to wear.
This compilation was released by legendary South African label Shifty Records in support of the movement for conscientious objectors against compulsory military service in the apartheid army. Jennifer Ferguson’s chillingly honest exploration of white privilege and paranoia, “Suburban Hum”, still feels relevant right now. It’s a highlight on this record for me, along with “Shot Down” by James Phillips’s Cherry-Faced Lurchers and the Kalahari Surfers’ “Don’t Dance”. I’ve owned the South African release for a long time, but last year, while living in a small university town in Sweden for a semester, I also picked up a US pressing with a different cover. While there, I was also privileged to meet Jennifer herself. She happens to live in the very same town, and is doing inspiring creative work with refugees.
The Raincoats Odyshape - 1981 / Rough Trade
Sathima Bea Benjamin Windsong- 1985 / Ekapa
I read somewhere that following the release of their eponymous first album in 1979, the Raincoats were one of the first bands to be called “post-punk”. John Lydon said they were the best band in the world. Kurt Cobain wrote the liner notes for their first album’s 1993 re-release. None of this hype really prepares one for the shambolic assemblage of punk, folk and lo-fi that is the Raincoats’ second album, Odyshape, though. A wildly experimental departure into unmapped territory, the melodies float loosely over an assortment of unusually textured percussive instruments, including kalimba and balafon. This record still sounds extraordinary 35 years on: intimate and vulnerable, uncompromisingly feminine. I can definitely hear its influence on later artists such as Micachu and the Shapes, and Tune-Yards.
Windsong was recorded in New York in June 1985 and released on Ekapa RPM, the label launched by Sathima in 1979 to publish her own music and that of her then-husband Abdullah Ibrahim. A meditation on exile, displacement and yearning, the album opens with a haunting rendition of “Sometimes I Feel like a Motherless Child”, alongside Sathima’s own compositions. Windsong is dedicated to “the resilient, remarkable, and courageous mothers and daughters of the struggle for peace and liberation in my homeland, South Africa, to the heroines both sung and unsung”. My copy is extra precious to me because Sathima signed it for me just a couple of weeks before she passed away in 2013.
Julia Holter Ekstasis - 2012 / Rvng Intl.
Kate Bush Hounds of Love / The Ninth Wave - 1985 / EMI
Los Angeles-based composer Julia Holter makes music which is conceptually dense, yet spacious and eminently listenable – hummable even. I saw her give a phenomenal performance last year in Stockholm. I already had three of her albums on mp3, including Ekstasis, so that night I grabbed this, which the merch guy told me was one of the last copies of the out-ofprint 12” 45rpm double vinyl release. By drawing on archetypes from Greek tragedy, this album simultaneously abstracts personal narrative and renders the emotional content conveyed universal. It’s a clever conceit, but one you don’t need to be aware of in order to appreciate the music. An obvious comparison to draw would be with the work of Laurie Anderson (whose ground-breaking 1982 debut, Big Science, was also on my shortlist for this article).
Choosing only six records to feature here was an ordeal because the span of what has shaped me is just so wide. I decided to restrict contenders to female artists, who are often under-represented in these kinds of list. I got down to about 20 possibilities but then had to shuffle and pick randomly with my eyes closed. So, for starters, what’s there to say that hasn’t already been said about the brilliance of Kate Bush? This album is a perennial go-to for me on grey, melancholy-drenched days – the second side, beginning with “And Dream of Sheep”, in particular. It’s also something of a litmus test. I’ve realised over the years that if someone new I meet loves this record deeply, it’s almost a given that we’re going to click alchemically
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print run REVIEWS - XAVIER NAGEL
SUPPLIED BY - BIBLIOPHILIA
The Wire
Slim Foot on the Neck of a Dead Lion Dominique Cheminais self-published Slim Foot on the Neck of a Dead Lion (R250) in a limited edition of 300 copies. This beautifully designed and packaged collection of poetry and short stories by the Cape Town-based artist is one of three collectable books published. Here’s an extract called Best Friends on Cocaine. “Girl 1: Do you think I’m beautiful? Girl 2: Totally. Do you think I’m smart? Girl 1: Totally.”
If you’re into “weird” music or are a label trainspotter, chances are you’re familiar with The Wire (R120). Originally a British avant-garde music magazine, founded in 1982, it initially concentrated on contemporary jazz and improvised music, but in the early 1990s branched out to include various types of experimental music. Since then it has covered hiphop, modern classical, free improve, post-rock and various forms of electronic music. Features include The Invisible Jukebox, an interview conducted by way of unknown tracks being played to an artist, and The Primer, an indepth article on a genre or act. In addition to its musical focus, the magazine also likes to investigate cover art and mixed media artistic works.
Richard Rive Patience
Huilboek Huilboek (R210) is Ryk Hattingh se eerste boek in 19 jaar. Die bekende joernalis en skrywer wat al vir die Vrye Weekblad en Die Suid Afrikaan geskryf het woon deesdae in Nieu-Seeland. Huilboek speel af tussen die hier van Nieu-Seeland en die verlede van Ryk se kinderjare in die 1960s aan die Oosrand. “Jy sien my nou so mooi speel met my kinders, jy sien my in die kombuis besig om kumara te skil, knoffel en preie op ’n kauriplank fyn te kap, jy sien my agter die toonbank van my winkel, vriendelik bedien ek my klante. ’n Gewone mens is wat jy sien . . . Ek was nie altyd so nugter en voorspelbaar nie. Ek was ’n plofbare vent.”
The creator of Ghost World, Daniel Clowes has recently published Patience (R385). It’s been described as “a psychedelic science-fiction love story, veering with uncanny precision from violent destruction to deeply personal tenderness in a way that is both quintessentially “Clowesian” and utterly unique in the author’s body of work. If you’re not familiar with the work of this frequent cover artist for The New Yorker and Academy-Award nominated screenwriter, Patience - as in his previous genre experiments – forms part of Clowes’ ongoing exploration of loneliness, rebellion, and alienation.
Richard Rive (R250) by Stellenbosch University professor Shaun Viljoen, is a biography of the creator of ‘Buckingham Palace’, District Six. Richard Moore Rive (1930–1989) was a writer, scholar, literary critic and college teacher in Cape Town. Subtitled a partial biography Viljoen, a former colleague of Rive’s, creates the composite qualities of a man who was committed to the struggle against racial oppression and to the ideals of non-racialism but was also variously described as irascible, pompous and arrogant, with a ‘cultivated urbanity’. Beneath these public personae lurked a constant and troubled awareness of his dark skin colour and guardedness about his homosexuality.
We Can’t Do This Alone Welcome to an extraordinary journey into underground culture from visionary publisher (Dazed and Confused) Jefferson Hack. Subtitled A Clarion Call for Cultural Resistance in a Digital Age, contributors include Tilda Swinton, Rankin, Douglas Coupland, Björk, Aimee Mullins, and many more. We Can’t Do This Alone: Jefferson Hack the System (R1500) re-defines the purpose of alternative media in the 21st century—drawing on a wealth of innovative projects to artfully map out a bright future for radical publishing. In the spirit of progressive individualism at its core every single copy is unique, emblazoned with an individuated, numbered cover displaying a one-off fresco of the provocative material between its pages. If you stand for nothing, you’ll fall for anything. 56
The Spirit of District Six The Spirit of District Six (R225) was first published in 1970. Now almost 47 years later, Cloete Breytenbach’s images are available again in book form. Home to a diverse community with a wide range of historical origins, neglect on the part of landlords and local authorities led to the area becoming rundown. On 11 February 1966, the government declared District Six a white area under the Group Areas Act, and the wholesale removal of the inhabitants was started. Over the next fifteen years, in excess of 55 000 people were relocated.Through these pictures he captures the spirit of the people of District Six and tells the story of a place and culture that was one of a kind, but is no more.
How to Use Graphic Design to Sell Things The girl without a sound The girl without a sound (R250) by Buhle Ngaba “was born out of defiance and as a response to the fairytales we were told as little girls. Stories about white princesses with blue eyes, flowing locks of hair and an overwhelming awareness of their beauty.” As the author explains: “I want it to be a healing balm for all who read it. I wrote a story about a voiceless girl of colour in search of a sound of her own. I want it to be the catalyst that reminds them of the power of the sounds trapped inside them.” THE LAKE
How to Use Graphic Design to Sell Things, Explain Things, Make Things Look Better, Make People Laugh, Make People Cry, and (Every Once in a While) Change the World (R1000) by Michael Beirut is the first monograph, design manual, and manifesto by one of the world’s most renowned graphic designers—a career retrospective that showcases more than thirty-five of his most noteworthy projects. Known in Cape Town as one of the presenters of Design Indaba, Beirut offers insight and inspiration to artists, designers and students, and anyone interested in how words, images and ideas can be put together.
The Galactic League In a previous issue of The Lake we looked at the work of local comic artist Luis Tolosana. Recently the second installment of The Galactic League (R20) was published and launched in Cape Town. Printed on 100% recycled paper, it’s set in the year 2150 when intelligent life has been found all over the galaxy and football has become the most played sport in the universe. Luis Tolosana is the founder of Falcon Comics and creator of The Galactic League.
IMAGE - Dean-James Honey
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PLIMSOLL
VANS - OLD SKOOL RACING RED / BLACK
VANS - ERA 95 REISSUE (50TH) STV / MULTI PRINT
VANS - ERA / GOLD MONO (50TH) STV / MULTI COLOUR
VANS - ERA GOLD MONO / PORT ROYALE
VANS - ERA GOLD MONO / IVY GREEN
VANS - ERA GOLD MONO / DRESS BLUES
VANS - SK8-HI / 38 REISSUE TRUE WHITE / TRUE BLUE
VANS - SK8-HI / 38 REISSUE (50TH) STV / MULTI COLOUR
VANS - SK8-HI / REISSUE ZIP (50TH) STV / MULTI PRINT
VANS - SK8-HI / REISSUE ZIP MONO / PORT ROYALE
VANS - SK8-HI / REISSUE ZIP MONO / IVY GREEN
VANS - SK8-HI / REISSUE ZIP MONO / TORNADO
GLOBE - GS Navy / Gum
GLOBE - GS Black / Gum
GLOBE - GS Black / Black
GLOBE - Dart Lyte Grey
GLOBE - Dart Lyte Black / White
GLOBE - Dart Lyte Black / Black
Onitsuka Tigers - MEXICO 66 GOLD / GOLD
Onitsuka Tigers - MEXICO 66 SILVER / SILVER
Onitsuka Tigers - MEXICO 66 WHITE / BLUE
Onitsuka Tigers - MEXICO 66 TAN / OFF WHITE
Onitsuka Tigers MEXICO DELEGATION POSEIDON / OFF WHITE
Onitsuka Tigers MEXICO DELEGATION ZINFANDEL / OFF WHITE
ASICS - GEL LYTE MT GREY / GREY
ASICS - GEL LYTE MT INDIA INK / INDIA INK
ASICS - GEL LYTE III JAPANESE DENIM
ASICS - GEL LYTE III BLACK / BLACK
ASICS - GEL LYTE V BLACK / BLACK
ASICS - GEL LYTE V JAPANESE DENIM
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NEW BALANCE / 420 RE-INGENEEERED WHITE - WOMANS
NEW BALANCE / 420 RE-INGENEEERED PINK - WOMANS
NEW BALANCE / 420 RE-INGENEEERED GREEN - WOMANS
NEW BALANCE / 580 RE-INGENEEERED JACQUARD - FLAME
NEW BALANCE / 580 RE-INGENEEERED JACQUARD - GREY
NEW BALANCE / 580 RE-INGENEEERED JACQUARD - WHITE
PUMA - Dee & Ricky Basket Mid - PUMA Black
PUMA - Dee & Ricky Basket Vibrant Orange / Surf The Web
PUMA - Trapstar - SUEDE barbados cherry / PUMA WHITE
PUMA - Trapstar - SUEDE BLACK / PUMA WHITE
PUMA - SUEDE CLASSIC Team Regal Red / white
PUMA - SUEDE CLASSIC olympian blue / white
Palladium / Mono Chrome Baggy II Anthracite
Palladium / Mono Chrome Baggy II Safari
Palladium / Mono Chrome Baggy II White
Palladium / Pallaville Hi Deux Indigo
Palladium / Pallaville Hi Deux Metal
Palladium / Pallaville Hi Deux Black / White
HI-TEC - Brixton Hi Chocolate
HI-TEC - Brixton Hi Navy
HI-TEC - Brixton Hi Tan
HI-TEC - Brixton Lo Chocolate
HI-TEC - Brixton Lo Navy
HI-TEC - Brixton Lo Tan
ADIDAS - NMD XR1 white
ADIDAS - NMD XR1 GLITCH
ADIDAS - NMD XR1 GLITCH
ADIDAS - NMD R1 Reflective
ADIDAS - NMD R1 Reflective
ADIDAS - NMD RUNNER X WHITE NOISE
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ICONS Donavon Frankenreiter
1
2
3
20
15
16
14
17
4
19
12
24 11
13 22
5
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6
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1 Ben Sherman - Sand Harrington Jacket / 2 BRIXTON - Wheeler Crew Fleece (Cypress) / 3 BRIXTON - Albert L/S Woven (Green/Rust) / 4 BILLABONG - ocean surf plus crew 5 VANS - 50TH REISSUE TEE - NAVY / 6 GLOBE - Evil Paradise Spray Tee (Acid Blue) / 7 VANS - SK8-HI / 38 REISSUE / 8 PUMA - Trapstar - SUEDE - barbados cherry / 9 Hi - TEC - Brixton Hi - Tan 10 donavon frankenreiter - Donavon Frankenreiter LP / 11 BRIXTON - Rosa Snapback (White) 12 BRIXTON - National Mesh Cap (Burgundy) / 13 VANS - VONIEOU OLD SKOOL BACKPACK - VAN DOREN 14 oakley - froskins - green fade / 15 PRINGLE - Natural, Aldis Trilby 16 PRINGLE - Black Stone, Abel Rev Bucket Hat / 17 RAY BAN - CLUBMASTER / 18 LEVIS - Line 8 19 Ben Sherman - Jet Black Shirt / 20 LEVIS - DIRTY WHITE TRUCKER. / 21 ToePorn - White, Brett Skeleton / Yellow, Jack Umbrella / Blue, Jason Check 22 PRINGLE - Tan, Mateo Belt / 23 PRINGLE - Neal Wallet / 23 BRIXTON - Evil Paradise Surfboard Bag 60
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JASON JESSEE FLEET CHINO PANT THE LAKE
ICONS LAUREN HUTTON
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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
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PUMA / TRAPSTAR Global Sports Brand PUMA launches a collaborative collection with London-based lifestyle label, Trapstar. Teased in June with an exclusive PUMA Disc Blaze drop bearing the signature Trapstar “White Noise” graphic speckled sole, this season’s range includes footwear and apparel that combine street fashion, PUMA’s sports-inspired styles and the Trapstar crew’s passion for football. As far as Trapstar is concerned, there is a star trapped inside everyone. Forged from underground subculture, this London-based lifestyle brand – and its founders, Mike, Lee and Will – takes its influence from iconic cinema, photography, mu-
sic, and contemporary art. Transcending the ethos of the brand through designs that follow true inspiration, not trends. Teaming up with PUMA, they remix their vision of streetwear inspired pieces with PUMA’s iconic sports silhouettes. Bold red hues, subtly contrasting details, and athletic elements update familiar designs while giving an edge to fresh apparel The PUMA x Trapstar collection will be is available from August at PUMA SELECT Bree Street, Cape Town and Braamfontein, Johannesburg, X-Trend stores, Cop Capital, Shelflife and Madaiza.
www.facebook.com/PUMA - @PUMASouthAfrica - www.store.iamatrapstar.com