Dan Halter by WHATIFTHEWORLD

DAN HALTER SELECTED WORKS 2005–2015 02 Text: The Original is Unfaithful to the Translation by Matthew Blackman 05 Exhibition: The Original is Unfaithful to the Translation, 2015 38 Text: Halterland by Matthew Blackman 41 Exhibition: Heartland, 2013 65 Selected text works 70 Text: When the Belly Is Full the Brain Starts to Think: Craft and Criticism in the Work of Daniel Halter by Andrew Hennlich 74 Text: The match stick, the suitcase and the weaver: nervous conditions in Dan Halter’s The Truth Lies Here by Katherine Jacobs 79 Exhibition: The Truth Lies Here, 2012 94 Text: Context woven into a history of dislocation by Matthew Partridge 98 Series: shifting the goalposts, 2010 105 Selected works 108 Text: Culture Games by Kathryn Smith 110 Selected works 124 Curriculum Vitae

The Original is Unfaithful to the Translation Matthew Blackman

Plato was perhaps the first philosopher to argue that art’s act of imitation distorts our understanding of the thing-initself. As an adjunct to this idea Jean Baudrillard went on to argue more recently that as a consequence the simulacra that are created in our post-modern world have become a proxy for the original and it is through these that we currently encounter the world. Dan Halter has for some time been interested in these ideas. His work has more often than not investigated the ideas of a ‘homeland’ and the myths and, in his words, ‘fabrications’ that there exist in this search for it. However, in The Original is Unfaithful to the Translation he begins to stretch this idea a little further and begins to explore just how the fabrication itself becomes the (false) source of understanding. It is perhaps not surprising that Halter (as Baudrillard did) takes as his point of departure the famous short story by Louis Borges, On the Exactitude of Science. This is a story distilled into a paragraph of, as Baudrillard put it, a time when ‘the cartographers of the Empire draw up a map so detailed that it ends up exactly covering the territory.’ Here Halter takes the text, weaving it into a work that bares some physical resemblance, at least in size, to the map of the story. This work begins an examination, continued through the exhibition, of the idea of empire and its close cousin colonialism, and how we encounter them. And as in Baudrillard’s analysis of the story, Halter is interested in the idea that ‘the territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory - precession of simulacra - it is the map that engenders the territory.’ Halter’s investigation of this idea has three particular points of focus: the vestiges of the colonial experience, the resulting implications of exile and our (in)ability to interpret this experience through the documents and Internet resources. In works like the UDI, The Rudd Concession and L. Ron Hubbard’s Tentative Constitution, one encounters colonialism, seemingly as it was. But Halter’s fine weaving of paper does two things: one, it demands that one moves in for a closer inspection and two it makes clear that these works are not the original – they are merely the proxy for reality, or again merely a fabrication.

At the root of these works is the idea that an inversion has taken place, what Baudrilliard referred to as the ‘Hypereal’. That is to say we have, through our attempts to interpret the world through text and mimesis, begun to use the interpretations as the reality. However Halter’s work affirms that these objects are not what colonialism is and was, they are simply the residues of what it once produced. Instead as Halter’s other works like Google Compression Artifact and Plenty Sits Still, Hunger is a Wanderer… intimate, one has to quite literally ‘zoom out for a broader look ’ an implication being that colonialism’s presence is not historic. Although the work V for Vendetta works on several levels, the conceit that runs through it bares some similarities to the above. The mask, from the graphic novel of the same name, is supposedly that of the face of Guy Fawkes, one of the first ‘terrorists’ in history. In his work however Halter appropriates the ‘original’ mask transforming it into tropes from various African mask-making traditions. Here Halter plays with the idea of how activism has replicated itself and how the ideas of vendetta, in postcolonial Africa and indeed Europe, have replicated themselves. What is more the work also references the use of the mask as the symbol of the Anonymous activist movement on the Internet. It questions just how activism currently functions, particularly amongst the middle classes. That is to say where activism ‘plays at ’ looking like its original, where words and acts are performed and replicated to mirror those of the past but without the contextual significance. We live in a time where a person can be politically and socially active from the safety of a desktop, where interpretations of the world can be made from the Internet ’s simulacra without lived experience. Several of Halter’s new works, however, make this feeling a little more morally complicated. In the Map is Not the Territory he makes an overt appeal against the above approach. Here a refugee explains the dilemma: there is a reality out there. There is hunger, war, political division and the needs of the marginalized, which the world of maps, passports, borders and the Internet on certain terms act as an anodyne. Of course Halter again plays with this idea. This quote is after all taken from another source, and in this it retains the nameless-facelessness inauthentic world of the Hyperreal an idea that has some connection to postmodern artistic appropriation. In a sense the exhibition The Original is Unfaithful to the Translation goes back to the roots of Halter’s work and the ideas that came from the small group of friends that he graduated with. Inheriting the tropes of ‘Resistance Art ’ that had preceded them, Halter and his friends adapted Resistance Art ’s look, its political one-liners and its materiality into the ‘Contemporary’ look of the globalised art world. This exhibition is not only an exemplary example of this post-apartheid art movement and its concerns, but also one of its most interesting critiques.

The Original is Unfaithful to the Translationâ&#x20AC;&#x192;2015

Right: Patterns of Migration 1 2015 Mannequin legs, custom-made tartan fabric, found plastic-weave bags and Adidas Zx Flux Clot 236 × 71 x 71 cm Series 1 of 5

On Exactitude in Science 2015 Hand-woven archival ink-jet print 89 × 317 cm

Above: F is for Fake 2015 Hand-woven archival ink-jet print 60 x 86.5 cm Edition of 3 Right: F is for Fake 2015 Detail

Right: Space Invader (Expat 1) 2015 Found plastic weave bag 120 x 185 cm

Right: Kure Kwegva Ndokusina Muksubvu (Loosely translated from Shona: It is far from the Jackal where there is not Mukubvu Fruit Tree) 2015 Through observing the jackal the Shona people established Hubvu, the fruit of the Mukubvu Tree, as the animal’s favourite fruit. What the variations illustrate is that values differ from situation to situation: for a man the love for his wife or girlfriend surpasses that for his mother, for the jackal it is love for the Hubvu fruit. It is the sought after goals that determine the time and effort to be expended and also one’s priorities. Found plastic weave bag with custom woven tartan fabric 69 x 105 cm

Right: Given Another Chance in the Colonies 2015 Found plastic weave bag with custom woven tartan fabric 69 x 105 cm Next page: Given Another Chance in the Colonies 2015 Detail

Above: Transnational Block 1 2014 Hand-woven archival ink-jet print 64 x 90 cm Edition of 6 Top right: Transnational Block 2 2014 Hand-woven archival ink-jet print 64 x 90 cm Edition of 6 Bottom right: Transnational Block 3 2014 Hand-woven archival ink-jet print 64 x 90 cm Edition of 6 Next page: Study with Colour 2 2014 Paint sample cards, archival glue and ribbon 200 x 500 cm

Previous page: Study with Colour 2 2014 Detail Right: Google Landscape Artifact 2015 Hand-woven archival ink-jet print 60 x 83 cm Edition of 3

The Original is Unfaithful to the Translationâ&#x20AC;&#x192;2015 Hand-woven archival ink-jet printâ&#x20AC;&#x192;60 x 85 cm Edition of 3

subalternâ&#x20AC;&#x192;2015 Hand-woven archival ink-jet printâ&#x20AC;&#x192;60 x 83 cm Edition of 3

Right: A for Anonymous 2015 (The Autographs of Guido Fawkes before and after Torture) Hand-woven archival ink-jet print and matchsticks 61 x 87 cm

Above: V for Vendetta 2014 African masks Dimensions variable Next page: V for Vendetta 2014 Details

Halterland Matthew Blackman

In a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. – Albert Camus There is something of Albert Camus’ absurdity about the work of Dan Halter. There is also something of the French Algerian’s metaphor of the human condition, of Sisyphus (the man condemned by the gods to forever role a stone up a hill), in the tireless, perpetually recurring, acts of Halter’s production. Cutting three-millimetre strips out of duplicate media only to weave them into the same image is perhaps literally absurd. But it is the feeling that these images create, of both familiarity and distortion, that links them to the existentialist’s notion of absurdity. Again like Camus, Halter is an exile, an émigré who has crossed many borders, physical, temporal and political, leaving behind the palpable land while retaining them only in the unreliable landscapes of memory. Having been born in Rhodesia and brought up in Zimbabwe, the son of two Swiss nationals, and having moved to South Africa, Halter’s references, like Albert Camus’, are of those places seen from a position of physical exile. Feelings of displacement and the memories of a lost home has been an everpresent theme in Halter’s work. However unlike in Camus’ lyrical essay ‘Return to Tipasa’ - where at least the feelings of loss are recoverable in the very stones and ruins of Algeria - for Halter these feelings and memories of place are now irrevocably distorted. There are now boundaries - the razor wired fences and rivers of the political and technological changes of the last 15 years - between the land as it is now and those lands of memory. Perhaps given Halter’s Swiss origins it is not unsurprising to find that the medical condition of Nostalgia – the longing for a home that no longer exists – was diagnosed first by the Swiss doctor, Albert von Haller, amongst Swiss soldiers fighting abroad in the 17th century. Another Swiss national, the philosopher JeanJacques Rousseau, also noted the specifically Swiss nature of the longing for a lost home. In fact Rousseau’s whole philosophy was underpinned by the very feeling of a lost domain and the inability to return the lost ‘natural’ state of man. But Halter’s work is not this form of pure nostalgia, of a longing for a lost golden age. It is not an attempt to try to replicate the lost home and to create the feeling of the dint of pity and ‘authenticity’ associated with it. Instead they are as much about that feeling of nostalgia as they are about how distorted these visions and

memoires are and have become – they suggest the essentially corrupt nature of memory. Halter, in his pixilated woven images, creates a distortion of place rendering an image that is familiar from a distance but what becomes almost entirely unrecognizable the closer one gets. Like in the most famous Greek nostos (the song or poem of the return home) Odysseus discovers his native country of Ithaca only partly recognizable and covered in a mist. He finds his wife Penelope cannot recognize him. The very Penelope who has spent her time in a ‘labour of love and endurance – the cloth that she weaves by day and unravels by night represents a mythical time of everyday loss and renewal.’ (2001, S. Boym p.8) Much like Penelope, Halter and his long time assistant Bienco Ikete, exiled from the places of their birth, weave, endlessly creating the distorted images of a lost and dysmorphic heartland.

Heartlandâ&#x20AC;&#x192;2013

LDE NTA HRA HEARTL AND D A N H A LT E R

Above: The Ears of the Hippo 2013 Details Right: The Ears of the Hippo 2013 Shona sculptures carved from black springstone and serpentine, found plastic-mesh bag and custom-made tartan fabric by Johnstons of Elgin Dimensions vary

Above: New Identity 2013 Detail Right: New Identity 2013 Woven archival Inkjet print on Ivory Enigma paper 90 × 60 cm Edition of 3 + 3AP

Above: The South African Constitution 2013 Detail Right: The South African Constitution 2013 Woven archival Inkjet print on Ivory Enigma paper 248 × 88 cm

Right: The Freedom Charter 2013 Woven archival Inkjet print on Ivory Enigma paper 40 × 56 cm Edition of 2 + 2AP

Right: UDI 2013 Woven archival Inkjet print on Ivory Enigma paper 62 × 45 cm Edition of 2 + 2AP

Right: The great grey-green Limpopo River 2013 Woven archival Inkjet print on Ivory Enigma paper 90 × 64 cm Edition of 3 + 3AP

Right: South Africa / Zimbabwe Border Fenceâ&#x20AC;&#x192;2013 Two archival ink-jet prints on Ivory Enigma paper woven togetherâ&#x20AC;&#x192;88 x 64 cm Edition of 3 + 3AP The border fence, inherited from the apartheid era, is set a few hundred metres south of the international border, which runs down the centre of the Limpopo River. It has three lines of razor wire with an electric fence between, and the voltage can be calibrated from deadly to the uncomfortable electric tingle used for game fencing. A survey in 2005 by army trackers compared human tracks crossing through the fence to those apprehended by the police. They found that only about 15 percent of undocumented migrants were caught. www.irinnews.org/report/89262/south-africa-troops-reinforcing-a-porous-and-dangerous-border

Above: Pale Blue Dot 2013 Detail Right: Pale Blue Dot 2013 Woven archival ink-jet prints 150 × 110 cm “Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.” Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

10:25am 16 September 2009, Wanderers Taxi Rank, Johannesburgâ&#x20AC;&#x192;2013 Detail

10:25am 16 September 2009, Wanderers Taxi Rank, Johannesburgâ&#x20AC;&#x192;2013 Woven archival Inkjet print on Ivory Enigma paperâ&#x20AC;&#x192;49 x 69 cm

Right: Vote With Your Feet 2013 Found plastic-mesh bag with custom-woven tartan fabric 65 × 70 cm Next Page: Vote With Your Feet 2013 Detail

Selected text works

Above: Nervous conditions 2012 Entire text from the novel Nervous conditions by Zimbabwean author Tsitsi Dangarembga Woven archival Inkjet print on Ivory Enigma paper Each panel 188 × 88 cm Left: Nervous conditions 2012 Details

1984 2012 The entire text from the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell Woven archival Inkjet print on Ivory Enigma paper Each Panel 90 × 64 cm

When the Belly Is Full the Brain Starts to Think: Craft and Criticism in the Work of Daniel Halter Andrew Hennlich Published in Esse arts and opinions, issue 74 winter 2011

1 David Smith, “Mugabe Allies Own 40% of Land Seized from White Farmers”, The Guardian, November 30, 2010. 2 Sebastien Berger, “Zimbabwe Inflation hits 231 Million Per cent”, The Telegraph, October 9, 2008.

The democratization of technology in the digital age allows artists to produce films, music, and other media at much lower costs, purportedly allowing the user control of the means of production. Conversely, handcrafted goods often associated with the outmoded (including analogue recording technologies, vinyl records, and art such as William Kentridge’s laborious animations) not only retain their place within the digital age, they resist the totalizing technological forces creating a dialectical pairing between the new and the outmoded in contemporary art. Zimbabwean-born artist Daniel Halter works in this dichotomy between the mass-produced and the bespoke object. Halter frequently uses curio crafts to engage with the Zimbabwean dollar’s hyperinflation thus recontextualizing work and value. His work also considers the modes of production and consumption that tie Zimbabwe to Western perceptions of Africa. Halter’s Yes Boss (2006) is a handwoven image displaying a map of a farming region of Zimbabwe. The warp is made of pieces of the map and the weft is formed from shredded $5,000 banknotes and gold thread. The woven image evokes a number of traditional West African ceremonial wraps that emerged when the British introduced silk to Africa. The dual European and pan-African textile is used in Yes Boss to refer to two difficult aspects of Zimbabwe’s post-colonial history: inflation, and president Robert Mugabe’s land redistribution policies. The redistribution of white-owned farmland is evoked in Yes Boss’s map of former farming plots. While initially purchased for fair prices, in 2000 Mugabe supporters forcibly seized approximately 14 million hectares of land, resulting in the beating and murder of white farm owners. Despite redistributing in the name of giving land to blacks, it has largely gone to Mugabe supporters. Because of the small size of the parcels, nepotistic redistribution, and a lack of expertise, agricultural production has declined and led to malnourishment in Zimbabwe1. The second, and related, issue is the Zimbabwean dollar’s rapid inflation as the government printed the necessary currency to meet its needs, leading to estimated inflation of close to two trillion percent a year and bread prices of nearly $10,000 for a single loaf2. In this endlessly expandable domain of inflation and the dispossession of production,

3 Walter Benjamin, “Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century”, in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, eds. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings, trans. Edmund Jephcott,

Yes Boss is a specific, crafted object made from something that is itself endlessly disposable. Yes Boss as a work of art—and artworks frequently being lodged in questions of value—is made of currency that is, in essence, without value. This pairing of disposability and the handmade gives the work an ironic quality. The repurposing through a loss of value also recalls the land appropriation that led to a decline of agricultural production.

Howard Eiland and others, Vol. 3 (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Belkamp Press, 2002), 33. 4 Ibid., 39, 41-42.

Halter’s production of outmoded forms of visual culture turns towards the antiquated in its handmade form. His work belongs to a recent past, much like the outmoded in Walter Benjamin’s “Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century”3. Benjamin’s analysis of the Haussmannization of Paris expresses anxiety over the remaking of the city as the potential for new and open movement through the streets paradoxically destroyed the potential for political resistance. Haussmannization made going to the barricades impossible; a refashioning of social space that highlights Mugabe’s ideology of land redistribution to open Zimbabwe to its people. In reality, land redistribution becomes an ideological screen for nepotistic control and a violent repression of dissent. The government in each instance opens social spaces while using that openness to facilitate a repression of resistance to its sovereign power. Under Hausmannization Benjamin saw art being put into the service of technology, removing traces of the everyday “imprinted” in Parisian social space 4. These imprints are preserved in Halter’s use of maps; they exist as traces of something lost and call attention to the famines in Zimbabwe today. Furthermore, Halter’s woven image does not just simply recall the loss of white farms, its “yes boss” is suggestive of a farm labourer responding to the owner, documenting a trace of colonial power paradigms within the map’s image as well. As a handmade African object Yes Boss imagines a politics of “Africanness”. It does not advocate a return to white control, but rather, reveals the ideology of newness with which Mugabe tries to remake Zimbabwe. It is impossible to return to a pre-colonial existence, and Mugabe’s appeals to do so are made for political gain, resulting in further losses of vital goods. Yes Boss’s form highlights this dialectical problem: its weft of reproducible currency and warp of old farming maps suggest a crisis emerging from this situation of colonial power and black empowerment. Yes Boss acknowledges the colonial relationship without giving in to simple ideologies of the new. Halter’s remaking of woven textiles considers how, in the technological and fastpaced world of the West, ideologies of the “old” (as Benjamin reminds us, the construction of new architecture in Paris represented itself ahistorically as old and timeless) persist about Africa. Halter’s curios ask how traditional forms of African culture are consumed in the West. This relationship between the West and Africa is explored in Halter’s video, Untitled (Zimbabwean Queen of the Rave), which examines the popularity of Zimbabwean singer Rozalla’s hit song “Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good).” The video features Rozalla’s song and images of British youths dancing at raves juxtaposed with pictures of riots and protests in Zimbabwe. Both of these scenes are portrayed as dances featuring the mass movement of people and both have been associated with revolutionary politics yet they raise the question of who is free to “feel good”. Largely fueled by ecstasy and other drugs, rave culture is seen as a marginal and transgressive space in Britain, whereas the revolution for access

5 Sue Williamson, “Daniel Halter”, (2010). Accessed July 22, 2011, www.artthrob.co.za/07jul/artbio.

to democratic representation, food, and land is met with violence. Few are free to “feel good” in Zimbabwe as the access to safety and sustainability is controlled by Mugabe’s regime.

html. 6 Jonathan Owen, “Street Prices of Cannabis, Ecstasy and Cocaine at an all Time Low”, The Independent, September 6, 2006.

A related project is Halter’s Stone Tablets/Bitter Pills (2005) which features soapstone sculptures (a Shona artform in Zimbabwe, early sculptures represented eagles as ancestral objects, but soapstone sculptures are better known as a modern production of abstract forms) upon which logos such as a star, a skull and cross bones, or the Mercedes-Benz logo commonly found on ecstasy tablets are carved. Unlike the pills themselves these sculptures are about the size of a landmine. 5 The allusion to consumptiveness (that is, as sculptures of things one ingests) is evocative of tourists on safari purchasing these curios. Markets found throughout Africa sell curios, such as soapstone sculptures, in endless numbers to tourists willing to buy them. These items lose some of their cultural impact upon their return to the West: it is debatable if those who purchase a mask, Basotho blanket, or Shona sculpture engage with their intended meaning. Instead, they most likely return to the Western mantle as symbols of singular “Africanness” despite both weaving and soapstone carving having developed from colonial encounters and becoming ahistorical objects in the process. Likewise, Rozalla becomes a singular image of Zimbabwe in a world of consumptive 90’s drug culture. This discord within Halter’s imagery reveals the paradoxes that arise as kids in Britain dance in fields and other venues which have largely been co-opted by business ventures, while at the same time dispossession and violence rages in its former colony’s move to redistribute land. To “take” culturally becomes sinister—the pill is no longer the guarantor of a “good night” but a landmine: it holds the potential to destroy or maim. The ecstasy tablet as an image of excess and consumption turns the discussion back towards the rates of inflation and saturation. (In the UK ecstasy tablets for most of the past decade were incredibly cheap and pills could be bought for a little over a pound.) 6 This market saturation, like the inflation of currency in Zimbabwe, has brought prices down, bringing one back to the conflict hailed by Halter’s project: in the UK capitalism and democracy make it “free” to feel good. The opposite is true for those in Zimbabwe where the endless reproduction of money has priced Zimbabweans out of basic goods and services. The bitter pill left for Africans to consume is surely lacking any sustenance. Halter’s reappropriation of traditional craft makes use of the outmoded but also calls attention to the flavor-of-the-month reproducibility of pop stars such as Rozalla and the culture of cheap drug consumption that accompanies it. This reproducibility and consumption within rave culture highlights the disposability of capitalism’s desire to continually make things new. To produce handmade crafts in the era of late capitalism raises the question of how these objects are consumed. They exist as specific and handmade yet cheapened in African curio markets. The curio enters a network of the synthetic consumption of Africanness, much like ecstasy, bringing to bear the endless disposability in capitalist economies. Western nations also endured mass inflation in Europe and the United States during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Halter enters into this question of reification, asking: when everything is endlessly expandable how do people find worth in the work they produce? In Zimbabwe, the spiraling number of zeros attached to the dollar took on a life of its own, estranging the workers from the

value of their labour as it yielded less ability to provide sustenance, security, or stability. Mass production and the fluctuation of value change the imprints of social relations upon these commodities when production becomes defined by money. Like the Dadaists working in Weimar Germany, Halter appropriates the discarded or devalued, remaking it as a form of cultural critique. Thus the Zimbabwean dollar is no longer tied to the swirling zeros that undercut its ability to provide basic goods for survival. Halter’s specificity preserves traces of the human narratives of farms and farm labour and the loss of these histories through the denial of human rights amid the increasingly disposable approach the West takes to Africa. The use of the map in Yes Boss preserves the history present in the commodity while documenting the loss of these farmers’ livelihoods. Production, through this conscious turn towards craft, gives the previously disposable lost maps, curio craft, and even inflated money, a sense of agency in narrating Zimbabwe’s violence and dispossession. As curios, Halter’s sculptures and woven maps change the notion of these relationships. Not only is it the intent of specificity and craft to counter the mass circulation of these items as curios and to revalue those peoples and histories that have been devalued, but to change how we think about these items as artworks. Halter’s work makes traditional craft part of a political network and considers these works as art rather than banal decoration, thus imbuing their production with a sense of agency. Halter’s repurposing of handmade craft objects preserves traces of the past histories of loss and dispossession in Zimbabwe under Mugabe. Mealie Pip, an engraved maize kernel bearing the phrase, “When the belly is full, the brain starts to think,” strikes at the crux of his work, insisting as it does on the necessity of providing sustenance for Zimbabweans, but also shows us that political consciousness can emerge from highlighting its lack. Halter’s Benjaminian imprints sow a kernel of historicity and critique into the technological networks of financial exchange and the ideologies of a timeless Africa.

Andrew Hennlich is an independent scholar working on issues of memory, representation, and historical narrative in South African visual culture. He completed his doctoral thesis (un)Fixing the Eye: William Kentridge and the optics of Witness at the University of Manchester in 2011. He is currently preparing a manuscript based on his doctoral research as well as editing a special issue of parallax on the theme of stupidity with Paul Clinton.

The match stick, the suitcase and the weaver: nervous conditions in Dan Halter’s The Truth Lies Here Katherine Jacobs

1 The Free Dictionary

The status of ‘native’ is a nervous condition introduced and maintained by the settler among colonized people with their consent. Laying claim to and denying the human condition at the same time: the contradiction is explosive. For that matter it does explode, you know as well as I do; and we are living at the moment when the match is put to the fuse. (Sartre 1961) fab·ri·cate (verb)1 1. to make, build, or construct 2. to devise, invent or concoct (a story, lie etc) 3. to fake or forge The manner in which a structure is built determines its fate. Weak materials, shallow foundations, and shoddy workmanship place stress on it. To the naked eye the danger is often hidden; we cannot see the slowly rotting joist that will one day cause the ceiling to cave in, the shuddering bolt that will make the bridge collapse or the live wire that will spark the fire. Look closely though, and we might notice a few hairline cracks; the bubbling paintwork that belies rot, or the flakes of orange rust collecting beneath the support. Sartre’s treatise on the status of the ‘native’, quoted above, was written in 1961 as a preface to Fanon’s seminal treatise on decolonisation, The Wretched of the Earth. Written during the decolonisation of Algeria, Fanon’s text tackles all manner of issues; from the role of intellectuals in the revolution, to the manner in which colonial language subjugates the subject. Zimbabwean author, Tsitsi Dangarembga, reused Sartre’s phrase in the title of her novel, Nervous Conditions (1989). Set in colonial era Zimbabwe, the book displays the psychological maladies exhibited by the young black protagonist, Tambudzai, and those around her, when they come into contact with the coloniser. Ranging from alienation to full-blown anorexia, these invisible conditions build up and feed on that which is internalised; the rage that does not find expression. Born in Zimbabwe, and currently residing in Cape Town, Dan Halter’s work refers not to a colonial context, but to a dictatorship. On one level, his works are fairly divergent, exploring a web of issues surrounding the post-colonial drama as it

2 Online Etymology Dictionary

has played out in Zimbabwe over the past decade. His modes of fabrication, for instance, diverge greatly. In The Truth Lies Here, works are either fabricated from match sticks, woven mesh bags or woven from excerpts of literary text. On another level though, there’s a seam – or crack, rather – which runs through all of Halter’s work: a nervous energy which leads us back to time when the walls cannot hold; the lie unravels, and the structure topples. It is here that we begin to spot the nervous conditions of a different sector of the world’s population: those living under a dictatorship, or attempting to escape it as a refugee.

THE WEAVER ‘text’ (n)… from pp. stem of texere “to weave” 2 Weaving is not new to Halter’s practice. In the past, he has generally woven together two contradictory pieces of printed material; text from Orwell’s Animal Farm with maps of Zimbabwe (I don’t know what to believe anymore (2005)) or shredded Zimbabwean currency with a maps of farms (Never say never (2006)). The act of weaving in these works then, is about joining; knitting things together as if to force a confrontation. In this exhibition though, it is the same pieces of text which are sliced up, and meticulously rewoven back into themselves. It’s an odd tautology, in a sense; a long process to go through, one might think, just to keep the text the same. In Samizdat (2011), it is a portion of Orwell’s 1984 that receives the reweaving treatment. Recreating a page from the fictional book within the book, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism by Emmanuel Goldstein, Halter slices up the text and then reweaves it back into itself. By and large, the text is still visible, and the fake manifesto, still legible: Past events, it is argued, have no objective existence… The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon. And since the Party is in full control of all records and in equally full control of the minds of its members, the past is whatever the Party chooses to make it. (Orwell 1949) The words, however, bend and curve with the warp and the weft of the weaving. The mode of fabrication draws attention to another kind of fabrication: that of writing a text. The magician’s trick revealed, the magic dissipates, and the crowd have no reason to follow the leader any longer. Similarly, in Stru’s Bob! (2012), three A2 pages of text from George Orwell’s Animal Farm are rewoven in a triptych. In the act of weaving a certain amount of slippage also takes place. “Bbtlefef ttl ccwswsedd” reads one phrase, the words literally falling through the cracks. The paper too, is placed under stress, pulled taut to keep the meaning, it buckles under the strain. It begins to resemble something worn, a used piece of cloth, a little like a woven mesh bag. Speaking of the work, Halter recalls how, in 2000, just as the farm grabbing began in Zimbabwe, one brave newspaper reprinted Animal Farm in its entirety. A brave, subversive deed, Halter’s Stru’s Bob! commemorates this act, whilst simultaneously calling attention to the erosion of truth and transparency in Zimbabwe’s media over the past 12 years.

THE SUITCASE At a glance, two things signal the refugee: his accent, and his suitcase. Plasticmesh bags, of the variety used by immigrants all over the world, have become a recurring signifier in Halter’s works. Early on, they appear emblazoned with an alien motif from Space Invaders, or arranged to form a literal barrier, visible from the air. Mass produced in China, the bags have become synonymous with refugees, often named for the immigrants in each country. In Ghana and West Africa, Halter notes, they are known as ‘Ghana must go’ bags, after a period of forced expulsions which the countries engaged in. Halter’s Ghana Must Go Quilt (2011) uses these bags as a means to find solidarity with other persecuted groups in history. A recreation of the tumbling block pattern, used in quilts prior to the end of slavery in the USA, the work refers to a theory held by some historians that slaves during this period employed coded quilts hung over fences to communicate (City of Owen Sound 2004). This particular pattern is thought to be a covert warning to those escaping that the area is not safe; a conductor is in the area. Constructed out of the woven mesh bags most commonly used by refugees, it reads differently. Is it a warning to illegal aliens, of dangers from the authorities? A warning of the threats of xenophobic violence? Or an indictment of the host country who exert a pressure akin to slavery on their guests? In a second gargantuan quilt, it is the map of the world which is constructed from these bags. Rifugiato Mappa Del Mondo (2011) references Alighiero Boetti’s Mappa del Mondo in which each country is embroidered with its flag. In Halter’s quilt, the entire world is made up of new and used bags, as if the world were an endless sea of travellers, perhaps, united under one flag. In places, the mesh bags are still new; North America is a shiny expanse of fresh bags, while Africa and South America are worn raw. Elsewhere, the fibres have stretched beyond breaking point, and holes are appearing. In one place, big looping black stitches have been used to repair the bags, in another a thick stretch of black rubber winds itself between the borders, securing the topography. Roughly conforming to an infographic of immigration and emigration statistics, the quilt reveals the weak spots where the world is under strain; where the fabric of society is stretched taut, and made to bear too much weight. In Things Fall Apart I and II, this threat of breakage is articulated. A reference to Chinua Achebe’s seminal novel of the same name, the plastic-mesh bags both exhibit holes. For the main character in Achebe’s art, the story ends in disaster, with Okwonkwo taking his own life after finding himself incapable of tolerating the indignity of colonisation any longer. The ultimate expression of a “nervous condition”, Achebe’s story suggests how continued stress can lead to selfdestruction (Satre 1961). A third bag meanwhile, is embroidered with the phrase ‘When the bag breaks, the shoulders get a rest’. A seemingly pragmatic saying, it also highlights the weight these cheap, flimsy bags carry, the tension their carrier is under, and the proximity of disaster.

THE FIRE-STARTER Halter’s works with match sticks are perhaps the most tension-filled of all of his works; the most confrontational expression of the building tension. As Sartre put it, “We are living at the moment when the match is put to the fuse,” (1961). Halter first used matches in the work Font for a revolution (2006), the matches glued together to read the ‘The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.’ Using both the matchboxes, and the matches, the work was a veritable kit for starting a fire. It seemed to call for revolution, as if hailing the cleansing power of violence elucidated in Franz Fanon’s anti-colonial writings. In this exhibition, the match stick works are used in a contradictory sense. “Patience is Zimbabwean” declare a row of matchsticks in Struze fact (2012). Rendered 3D by a trick of their positioning, the letters seem to tilt ever so slightly, as if at any moment, they might topple and meet with the side of the matchbox, causing a fire. Like the Brit’s fabled stiff upper lip, or the brashness of Americans, the phrase uses cultural pressure to enforce obedience and conformity. This patience though, surely cannot last forever. The repressed rage will seep out somehow; particularly given the vast injustices which Zimbabweans daily face. The phrase also brings a childish chant to mind: “Patience is a virtue, virtue is a grace, Grace is a little girl who wouldn’t wash her face”. Nonsense it may be, but appropriately, Grace also happens to be the first name of Robert Mugabe’s wife. Known as ‘dis-Grace’ by some Zimbabweans, her lavish lifestyle represents one of many bitter pills Zimbabweans – some of whom do not even have access to safe drinking water – must swallow. A third reading results from the fact that Patience is a common Zimbabwean name. As such, the work becomes a statement of nationality; the marking of an outsider, or, in a context of xenophobic violence, an accusation. In Necklace (2012), a tyre, emblazoned with the words ‘Go Home or Die Here’ in matchsticks, refers to a second verbal threat used during the 2008 outbreaks of xenophobic violence. A veritable kit to commit a necklacing, the match stick here captures another sign of cracks forming; the vertical violence and oppression which has so patiently been endured by South Africa’s post colonial subjects, converted into horizontal violence. In the 2008 attacks, Halter remarks on the fact that the aggressors used language to discern who was a foreigner; their shibboleth a Zulu word for elbow – which ironically led to several South Africans dying as they did not speak Zulu. In an interview, activist Joachim Gauck discusses the psychological effects of living in exile. The refugee must constantly observe themselves and their surroundings. “You are immediately recognisable because you talk differently… don’t let yourself be too easily recognisable, it could be dangerous” (2010). In the third matchstick work rainbow-coloured matches spell out ‘amakwerekwere’. A childish, teasing name, it is meant to ridicule the way in which foreigners sound when they speak, but it is easily co-opted into tinder to spark a fire, burning the

ideal of a rainbow nation as it burns. Titled Indlala inamanyala (2012), meaning “don’t blame us blame our stomachs” it alludes again to the conversion of vertical oppression to horizontal oppression. Unable to free themselves from poverty, or the legacy of the apartheid oppressor, the aggressors take it out on those around them. Everywhere in Halter’s work then, there are signs that something is amiss in the fabrication. Try as we might to conceal the tensions; cracks are forming, the slick covering inevitably peeling away to reveal the rot within. Be it in buckling woven texts, ripping bags or inflammatory words, Halter’s fabrications vibrate with this tension. For now, the frustration is held patiently in the rewoven texts, the quilted bags. They beg several questions: how long will it be before the match is struck? And when it comes, will the fire be a cleansing one, or will it merely destroy those whose load is already too heavy to bear?

City of Owen Sound. (2004). Quilt Codes. [online] Available: http://www.osblackhistory.com/ quiltcodes.php.[13 March 2012]. Dangarembgba, T. 1988. Nervous Conditions. Seal Press: New York. Gauck, J. 2010. Right life in the wrong life: Joachim Gauck talks about Ossis and Wessis, opposition, conformism, and the long-term psychological effects of a dictatorial regime. An interview with Joachim Güntner. [online] Available: http://www.signandsight.com/ features/2039.html. [14 March 2012]. Homer; Monro, Homer; Monro, D. B. (David Binning). (1890) The Iliad. [online] Available: http:// www.archive.org/details/homeriliadbooks00monrgoog. [13 March 2012]. Sartre, J, P. (1961). Preface to Frantz Fanon’s “Wretched of the Earth”, [online], Available at: http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/1961/preface.htmz. [13 March 2012].

The Truth Lies Hereâ&#x20AC;&#x192;2012

Ghana Must Go Quilt 1 2011 Found plastic-mesh bags 170 x 250 cm

Rifugiato Mappa del Mondo 2011 New and found plastic-mesh bags ± 183 x 380 cm Series of 8

Map of the world loosely based on infographics showing areas according to immigration and emigration statistics. Areas and routes with increased emigration are more worn than the destination countries, constructed out of new and used plastic-mesh bags. These works were stitched together by Sibongile Chinjonjo, a Zimbabwean refugee currently living in South Africa.

Fabrication 1 2012 Woven archival prints on Ivory Enigma paper 29.5 x 20.5 cm Edition of 6 + 1AP Text by Udo Kultermann from Viva Pancho

Fabrication 2 2012 Woven archival prints on Ivory Enigma paper 28 x 19 cm Edition of 7 + 1AP Text by Udo Kultermann from Viva Pancho

Samizdat 2011 Woven archival prints on Ivory Enigma paper 28 x 19 cm Edition of 101

Page from The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, by Emmanuel Goldstein, is the fictional book that is a thematic and plot element integral to the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), by George Orwell. A large portion of Nineteen Eighty-Four is a reproduction of portions of the samizdat publication allegedly written by Emmanuel Goldstein and known simply as “The Book”, although its actual title is The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism.

sa·miz·dat (sämz-dät, s-myz-dät) (n) 1a. The secret publication and distribution of government-banned literature in the former Soviet Union 1b. The literature produced by this system 2. An underground press

Necklace 2012 Found tyre and matches 60 x 60 x 14.5 cm

Struze Fact 2012 Matches and match box on board 106.5 x 81.5 x 6 cm Multiple of 2 + 1AP

Indlala inamanyala 2012 Different coloured matches on black velvet 55 x 170 cm Title translated from IsiXhosa ‘If we misbehave don’t blame us blame our stomachs’

Context woven into a history of dislocation Matthew Partridge Published in the Mail and Guardian, 17 November 2010

“Whereabouts are you from?” is an increasingly common question in today’s shrinking, globalised world. But in Dufftown, in the northeast of Scotland, the accent makes the question sound more like “furry boots ye fae?” And it is this peculiarity that is at the core of artist Dan Halter’s recent work produced for the Glenfiddich artists residency programme. Selected with artists from the United States, Canada, India, Taiwan, South Korea and China, Halter has spent three months with that unlikely backdrop creating work that speaks about severed roots and belonging to nowhere while being a citizen of the world at the same time. Whereabouts are you from indeed. Clad proudly in what looks unmistakeably like traditional Scottish tartan, complete with sporran and furry boots, Halter poses next to the source of his inspiration – the ubiquitous plastic-mesh “refugee” bag. Known locally as “Zimbabwe bags”, they too have an international flavor. In Nigeria they are called “Ghana must go bags”, in the US “Chinatown totes” and in the United Kingdom “Bangladeshi bags”. There is even a German equivalent that translates as “Turkish suitcase”. In Halter’s work they embody the essence of how to question and translate the myths of such origins. Halter (33), born in Zimbabwe and now living and working in Cape Town, is no stranger to such issues of displacement and his work deals with issues of territory and immigration. Being in Scotland presented him with the opportunity of further exploring these themes by geographically localising their context. The similarity of the red, black and white checked pattern of the bag, which bears a striking resemblance to Scottish tartan, led Halter to the famous Johnstons of Elgin, where he commissioned the pattern to be woven out of wool into a kilt, which he plans to have registered as his very own brand of tartan. Besides the local regalia, he made a Scottish version of the bag with tartan, transforming it into a luxurious piece of luggage. This tartan was also the object of another installation in which Halter used more than 1000 barrels from the distillery’s cask compound as pixels to make up the pattern, which is visible from Google Earth. The title is simply the geographic coordinates of the installation, 57°27’55.24”N3°07’45.33”W. 94

On the surface, what is an almost childish exercise in join-the-dots has a deeper significance – none of the barrels has a generic, homogenous history. Each one is different. Some are white oak from North America and used only once for the distilling of bourbon. Others are a darker variety, from Spain, for example, used for sherry. Halter’s tartan imprint speaks of a fleeting belonging in a global world filled with the transience that consumption demands. These wooden vessels, from far away, are used to brew liquor for export to be sent, almost ironically, away again. Like the refugee bags, which are used to transport people’s worldly possessions across borders, the now discarded barrels, arranged into Halter’s now signature pattern, address the trauma of a very real condition of forced migration and exile. Halter was recently lambasted by some sectors of the art world cognoscenti for “fiddling like Nero while Rome burned” in this recent show, Double Entry, at Whatiftheworld in Cape Town, but his recent work nevertheless displays a subtle observation of the intricacies of not belonging. Halter admits that “the country I grew up in no longer exists”. Perhaps this is not such a bad thing. But with the problematic history that has come to characterise Zimbabwe’s recent turbulent political economy, it seems that such a situation could lead only to a form of detached reflection. Having suffered, like Nero’s victims, at the hands of the Zanu-PF agents in Zimbabwe earlier this year during his participation at the Harare International Festival of Arts, where he was, like so many Zimbabwean, detained and beaten could possibly account for Halter’s calculated and somewhat detached meditation. The visual arts today, most noticeably in South Africa, have become characterised by the commodification of pain and suffering. Burdened by history, it seems doomed to perpetuate debates about where we have come from, not where we are going to. Halter’s work, which could easily slip into the former category, nevertheless resists such easy conscriptions. It is surprising how such a simple pattern communicates so much, to speak of lives altered and histories lost through the movement of people from one country to the next. Yet there is something surprisingly regenerative about this recycled imprint that appeals to the vitality of the human spirit in its capacity to transcend the tyrannical circumstance of place. The simple everyday nature of these bags, which represent entire communities of people displaced, forced into exile, makes Halter’s work immediately accessible and conceptually rich. This imprint of the barrels, visible from Google’s all-seeing satellites, speaks of a marked landscape in which region is no longer disconnected and isolated but rather is intrinsic to the notion of being a citizen of the world at large. As much as the bags, Halter’s presence is now ubiquitous, reinvigorating the question, “furry boots ye fae?”

Documentation of the translation of the bag pattern into a tartan fabric by Johnstons of Elgin. This was part of a project done during a residency at the Glenfiddich distillery in Dufftown, Scotland in 2010. 47 x 84 cm

Fabrication 3 2012 Woven archival prints on Ivory Enigma paper 47 x 84 cm Edition of 3 + 1AP The middle panel is a woven combination of the outer two panels.

shifting the goalposts in collaboration with Adam Davies

Dan Halter and Adam Davies are two Zimbabweans now living in South Africa. Together they collaborated on a project called ‘shifting the goalposts’ at the Beitbridge border between South Africa and Zimbabwe. This border is notorious due to the large number of Zimbabwean immigrants that cross it illegally to make their way into South Africa. Dubbed the derogatory ‘amakwerekwere’ in South Africa these foreigners often face harsh conditions and xenophobia from their South African counterparts. ‘Shifting the goalposts’ is a turn of phrase apt to describe the questionable political manoeuvres carried out by Zanu-PF in the Zimbabwean government in order to cling onto power. It also applies to the South African government’s attempts under international pressure to bring an end to the Zimbabwean crisis. And it illustrates the tendency towards corruption and neglect of promises made by both governments. Will South Africa end up like Zimbabwe? Frequently the Zimbabwean immigrants find on reaching South Africa that the ‘goalposts have shifted’ to their detriment. In ‘shifting the goalposts’ Halter and Davies swapped one of the goalposts from a soccer field in Musina, South Africa with one from another soccer field in Beitbridge, Zimbabwe. The two affected fields now each have local and foreign goalposts, politicizing the current relations between the two countries. ‘Shifting the goalposts’ is situated in the timely context of South Africa hosting the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup. This photographic series depicts a dirt soccer pitch in a poor Musina township similar to those where the majority of South Africans play the game. This is in stark contrast to the current costly mega-stadiums that have been built in the major cities funded by the government.

shifting the goalpostsâ&#x20AC;&#x192;2010 in collaboration with Adam Davies

Musina, South Africa (original) 2010 Photographic Lambda print 90 x 130 cm Edition of 5 + 4AP Photograph: Adam Davies

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Musina, South Africa (switched) 2010 Photographic Lambda print 90 x 130 cm Edition of 5 + 4AP Photograph: Adam Davies

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Beitbridge, Zimbabwe (original) 2010 Photographic Lambda print 90 x 130 cm Edition of 5 + 4AP Photograph: Adam Davies

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Beitbridge, Zimbabwe (switched) 2010 Photographic Lambda print 90 x 130 cm Edition of 5 + 4AP Photograph: Adam Davies

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Space Invader V 2008 Photographic Lambda print mounted on aluminium frame 25.5 x 37.5 cm Edition of 5 + 2AP Photograph: Matthew Partridge

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Above: Crossing The Limpopo 2010 Video Duration: 15’ Edition of 5 + 2AP

Top right: Beitbridge Space Invader 2010 Video Duration: 4’10 Edition of 5 + 2AP

Bottom right: Beitbridge Moonwalk 2010 Video Duration: 5’24 Edition of 5 + 2AP

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Culture Games Kathryn Smith

1 Artist’s notes to author, 2006 2 Life goes on is not included in this exhibition

Take Me To Your Leader includes a technically diverse range of works encompassing video, sculpture, weaving, collage and assemblage. The exhibition has its origins in post-conceptualism, literary cut-ups, games of culture and currency, the histories of colonial occupation and revolution in Africa. Untitled (Zimbabwean Queen of Rave) provides a strong orientation from which to access this collection of works. The opening refrains of ‘Everybody’s Free (to feel good)’, that anthem of early 90s dance music, are unmistakable. The driving beat and club diva Rozalla’s assurance that ‘brother and sister, together we’ll make it through’ are insistently buoyant, yet somewhat at odds with the accompanying visuals. White kids, the protagonists of 90s rave culture, dance on flatbed trucks and in open spaces, worshipping the gods of deep bass emanating from giant speaker stacks. Cut to images of mass protest and uprising, multitude of people toyi-toying in the streets. The juxtaposition immediately unsettles. It feels dangerous. You ask yourself, ‘Is this okay?’ Can you play this sort of sampling game when what the particular scenarios represent seem so fundamentally out of synch with each other? But such is the strategy behind montage’s production of a ‘third’ sense engendered by radical combination. The heaving bodies pound the ground and raise their arms with similar resolve. Stripped of their ideological disparities, both scenarios speak of a desire for an alternative reality. Both harness the psychology of crowds to shift individual sensibilities to mass consciousness. The song’s chorus seems to suggest a political imperative camouflaged in a otherwise bubblegummmy dance track. Like the rave-culture origins of the video piece, the sculptural work Stone Tablets/ Bitter Pills sees Halter using traditional Zimbabwean soapstone from various areas within the country to hand-carve a set of tablets bearing pop culture icons. They make explicit reference to Ecstasy pills, while their scale is more congruent with that of small landmines. Halter’s suggestion of ‘a new set of commandments and some bitter truths’ 1 also provides the impetus for I don’t know what to believe anymore and Life goes on. 2 He has paired two maps of Zimbabwe, on of the farming regions and the other of land classifications, with two key literary works

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3 Artist’s notes to author, 2005

of the 20th century, George Orwell’s Animal Farm and Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness, respectively. The novels are shredded and woven into the maps to reveal aphoristic platitudes (‘when days are dark friends are few’) where areas are left unwoven or stitched over. Halter’s work is characterised by a conceptualism that employs play as a principle device, most literally embodied in a modified game of pool installed in the gallery. The piece capitalises on a perverse ‘foreign exchange’, namely the interchangeability of a Zim 20c piece and South Africa R2 coin (the standard price for a game on a pay-per-play pool table). The game is cheap and the stakes are high: only two balls are left. Sink white, your opponent gets two shots. Sink black, you win, game over. Halter’s engagement with play and the dark side of humour is not to make light of complex issues, but rather functions like satire in that it provides a point of access to a truth or reality that is otherwise unspeakable. He asks: ‘How do you start or suppress a revolution?’3 With a nod to Kendell Geers’ Terrorist’s Apprentice (2002), Halter has developed Font for a Revolution/Zimbabwe, two typefaces produced from matchsticks and matchboxes. Using the industry-standard sentence used to demonstrate the ‘look and feel’ of a typeface – ‘the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog’ – the result is deliberately inflammatory. Halter states: ‘I think art does create a consciousness that can cause social/ political change. I think art should attack the status quo in as many different ways as possible. I think it should manifest itself wherever possible, on the streets and in buildings. I think this particular body of work was made for a gallery audience: to jolt the intellectuals out of their complacency and to start looking at the future of South Africa with an awareness of what is going on in Zimbabwe and the rest of Africa. In many ways South Africa has to catch up. The wealth distribution here must change; and to ignore Zimbabwe as a model close to home where this is happening is naïve.

Kathryn Smith (b. Durban, 1975) is senior lecturer in Fine Arts in the Department of Visual Arts, Stellenbosch University. She graduated MA(FA) (distinction) from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1999 and received the Standard Bank Young Artist Award (Visual Arts) in 2004. Recent publications include ‘The Experimental Turn in the Visual Arts 1990 – 2007’ in Visual Century: South African Art in Context vol. 4 (Wits University Press, 2011) and Barend de Wet (SMAC, 2010).

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Right: Black and White 2005 Print listing the names of the farms seized by the Zimbabwean government 76.5 x 88.5 cm Edition of 10

Left: Black and White 2005 Detail

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Space of AIDS 2007 Farming Region map of Zimbabwe woven with a shredded 2006 Bulawayo telephone directory and black thread 82 x 89 cm

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Far is Nothing... 2007 Farming region map of Zimbabwe woven with a shredded 2006 Harare telephone directory and black thread 82 x 89 cm

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Untitled (Zimbabwean Queen of Rave) 2005 Video Duration 3’33 Edition of 10 + 2AP

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Mealie Pip 2008 Laser-etched white maize kernel ± 1 x 0.8 x 0.3 cm Edition of 10 + 2AP

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Zhing-Zhong ( ) is a Zimbabwean slang word meaning cheap, Asian-mostly-Chinese of inferior quality. The word made its appearance at the onset of Chinese penetration in to the Zimbabwean economy at the turn of the 21st Century. It stems from the way the Chinese language sounds to a Zimbabwean hearing it for the first time, and from the names of the Chinese manufacturers on the labels of many cheap, low-quality products. Zhing-Zhong now also means anything that is lowquality, even a person unfit for their occupation or station in life can be described as “zhing-zhong”. The term carries strong connotations of widespread discontent over the continued deindustrialisation of Zimbabwe, and the replacement of its products with Chinese ones. In some quarters, “Zhing-Zhong” or simply, “zhing” is a slur on the Chinese. Perhaps mindful of this, the Government of Zimbabwe is reported to have banned the word.

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Zhing-Zong Mother and Child 2006 Plastic 33 x 18 x 10 cm each Edition open

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Black Light (Off) 2006 UV neon tubing 50 x 100 cm Edition of 5 + 2AP

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Black Light (On) 2006 UV neon tubing 50 x 100 cm Edition of 5 + 2AP

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About

Dan Halter’s artistic practice is informed by his position as a Zimbabwean living in South Africa. Using materials ubiquitous to South Africa and Zimbabwe Halter employs the language of craft and curio as a visual strategy to articulate his concerns within a fine art context. Through this, as well as through photography and video, Halter addresses notions of a dislocated national identity and the politics of post-colonial Zimbabwe within a broader African context. Dan Halter was born in Zimbabwe in 1977. In addition to five solo exhibitions Halter has participated in numerous group shows including US at the South African National Gallery, curated by Simon Njami, Zeitgenössiche Fotokunst aus Südafrika at the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (NBK), 2009 Havana Biennale and Earth Matters at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington DC. He has completed four international residencies, in Zürich, Rio de Janeiro, Scotland and Turin. Recent exhibitions include the 7th Triennial of Contemporary Textile Arts of Tournai, Belgium and Dan Halter / Mappa Del Mondo at the Nassauischer Kunstverein in Wiesbaden Germany. Dan Halter lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa.

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Curriculum Vitae Daniel Halter. Born in Harare, Zimbabwe 1977

Education 2001: BA (FA) University of Cape Town

Solo Exhibitions 2015: The Original is Unfaithful to the Translation, WHATIFTHEWORLD, Cape Town 2012: The Truth Lies Here, WHATIFTHEWORLD, Cape Town 2011: D an Halter / Mappa Del Mondo, NKV (Nassauischer Kunstverein Weisbaden), Weisbaden, Germany 2010: Double Entry, WHATIFTHEWORLD, Cape Town

Shifting The Goalposts, (in collaboration with Adam Davies) Son Gallery, London & GoetheOnMain, Johannesburg

2008: Never Say Never, Derbylius Gallery, Milan, Italy 2006: Take Me To Your Leader, João Ferreira Gallery, Cape Town

Group Exhibitions 2015 Foreign Bodies, WHATIFTHEWORLD, Cape Town

Brave New World…20 Years of Democracy, Iziko South African National Gallery,

Cape Town

Migrations, The National College of Art and Design, Dublin

Broken English, Tyburn Gallery, London

Joburg Art Fair, WHATIFTHEWORLD, Sandton Convention Centre, Johannesburg

2014 Uncertain Terms, WHATIFTHEWORLD, Cape Town Exact Imagination: 300 Years of Botanically Inspired Art in South Africa, Standard Bank Art Gallery, Johannesburg Earth Matters: Land as Material and Metaphor in Arts of Africa, Smithsonian, National Museum of African Art, Washington DC

Ngezinwayo - Migrant Journeys, WITS Art Museum, Johannesburg, South Africa

Paperwork, SMAC Art Gallery, Stellenbosch, South Africa

2013 Who is afraid of the public? ICA (The Institute of Contemporary Arts), London

Earth Matters: Land as Material and Metaphor in Arts of Africa, Smithsonian, National Museum of African Art, Washington DC

Digi Re-engineering, UNISA Art Gallery, Pretoria

Making Way, Standard Bank Gallery, Johannesburg

2012: Positive Tension, WHATIFTHEWORLD, Cape Town

Under Constant Threat, Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto Alegre, Brazil

4th Protest Arts International Festival (PAIF), Harare, Zimbabwe

Beyond Apartheid: sex, race, and politics in contemporary Africa, Porto Alegre, Brazil

Making Way, National Arts festival, Grahamstown

2011: 17th VideoBrasil, São Paulo, Brazil

7th International Triennial of Contemporary textile Arts, Tournai, Belgium

10 Years On, Michaelis Gallery, University of Cape Town Propaganda by Monuments, Cairo, Egypt

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2010: L ADUMA! Rotterdam, Holland

Dak’art, Dakar, Senegal

US, South African National Gallery, Cape Town

Harare International Art Fair (HIFA), Zimbabwe National Gallery

Spier Contemporary, City Hall, Cape Town

/ + \ = X, Serialworks, Cape Town

Mooimarkshow III, Galerie Weisser Elefant, Berlin, Germany

2009: Project 35, NADA Miami Art Fair

Holiday, WHATIFTHEWORLD, Cape Town

ECC25 (End Conscription Campaign 25 years), Spier Wine Estate Stellenbosch

US, Johannesburg Art Gallery WORD!, Association for Visual Arts (AVA), Cape Town Encounters, South African International Documentary Festival

10th Havana Biennial, Havana, Cuba

Second Johannesburg Art Fair, Sandton Convention Centre, Johannesburg

Objects of a Revolution, Dominque Fiat Gallery, Paris, France

18th Annual Art Salon at Rose Korber Art, Cape Town

2008: Big Wednesday, WHATIFTHEWORLD, Cape Town 3rd Guangzhou Triennial, Guangzhou, China Monologs, Rome, Italy and at the Gallería Animal in Santiago, Chile MTN New Contemporaries, University of Johannesburg

Forty Years of Friendship: The Friends of The National Gallery: 1968–2008, South African National Gallery, Cape Town

Power Play, Goodman Gallery, Cape Town

First Johannesburg Art Fair, Santon Convention Centre

Prints + Editions, WHATIFTHEWORLD / GALLERY, Cape Town

Studio 2666: Ons Skrik vir Niks, Blank Projects, Cape Town

17th Annual Art Salon at Rose Korber Art, Cape Town

2007: Spier Contemporary, Spier Wine Estate Stellenbosch

16th VideoBrasil, São Paulo, Brazil

The Inchoate Idiosynchratic Descent into Nihlism, Michaelis Gallery, University of Cape Town

The 2nd Cape Town Biennale, Blank Projects, Cape Town

3C Committee and Critics Choice, Association for Visual Arts (AVA), Cape Town Hell Yeah, Museum of Contemporary Art, Cape Town

eitgenössiche Fotokunst aus Südafrika, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (NBK), Z Berlin, Germany

16th Annual Art Salon at Rose Korber Art, Cape Town 2006: Second to None, South African National Gallery, Cape Town

The Cape Town Biennale, Blank Projects, Cape Town

The Last Braai 666, in collaboration with Christian Nerf and Ed Young, L/B’s Lounge, Cape Town

Next Wave Festival, Melbourne, Australia

15th Annual Art Salon at The Bay, Bay Hotel, Cape Town

2005: B lack and White Poster Project, Dirt Contemporary, Cape Town

14th Annual Art Salon at The Bay, Bay Hotel, Cape Town

2004 Contra Mundi, Association for Visual Arts (AVA), Cape Town

xchange Views on… / Echange vues sur…, Espace Croix-Baragnon, France & E Michaelis Gallery, University of Cape Town

2003: Picnic, Bell-Roberts Gallery, Cape Town

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Meeting: Art in the Water Closet, Gallerie Puta, 2A Dysart Road, Cape Town

Residencies 2014: Nine Urban Biotopes, Turin, Italy

Awards 2010: Glenfiddich residency in Dufftown, Scotland 2008: Nominated as MTN New Contemporaries finalist 2007: Pro Helvetia residency in ZĂźrich, Switzerland 2008 Capacete residency in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 2008 from VideoBrasil 2001: Judy Steinberg Prize, Michaelis Painting Prize

Collections South African National Gallery, UNISA (University of South Africa), University of Cape Town, Scheryn Collection, Artphilein Collection, Pigozzi Collection, SAFFCA Collection, Round About Collection and other private collections.

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All rights reserved, no part of this publication maybe reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, electronic, photocopying, or other means without the prior permission of the copyright holders. © The Artist and Whatiftheworld 2015 Dan Halter: Selected Works ISBN: 978-0-620-54140-4 Kathryn Smith text © Kathryn Smith and is republished with the permission of the author. Matthew Partridge text © Matthew Partridge and is republished with the permission of the author. Katherine Jacobs text © Katherine Jacobs and is republished with the permission of the author. Andrew Hennlich text © Andrew Hennlich and is republished with the permission of the author. Matthew Blackman text © Matthew Blackman and is republished with the permission of the author.

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