No Everything by WHATIFTHEWORLD

ROWAN SMITH 2

NO EVERYTHING

LINDA STUPART

TIM LEIBBRANT

FOREWORD 6

SYMPHONY OF DESTRUCTION 19

ELIOT GARDEPE

NO EVERYTHING EXHIBITION WORKS 99

DOES POSTCOLONIALISM MATTER ANYMORE? 102

CONTENTS

ELIOT GARDEPE

TRACY JEANNE ROSENTHAL

THE SUPERMODERN CONDITION 53

SPIRITS OF THE HIVE 73

TRACY JEANNE ROSENTHAL

WHERE THERE IS SMOKE 118

BIOGRAPHY 143

LINDA STUPART

FOREWORD Where is The Architect . . . who can carry impressed upon the tablet of his memory the entire idea of the edifice he means to erect, and without rule, square, plumb-line, or compass, can cut out all his material to their exact dimensions, without making a single mistake or a single false stroke?

NO, EVERYTHING. Cecil on a horse A swarm of bees approaches The two bleeding heads I wanted a foreword, and for you specifically to write it, because my work took a fairly significant shift in terms of content etc (whatever) since my time at CalArts; and because you have a specific, longstanding and personal relationship to me and my work. And if anyone is able to observe this, understand this and interpret it, its you. I don’t expect the foreword to necessarily focus on this ‘shift’, but I did get a lot of “Oh Rowan, this work is quite different from your usual!” at the opening. I mean if I were to be completely honest I don’t think the ‘shift’ is all that drastic, even my older “nostalgic” type work was subtly political. Anyway I don’t want to say too much, but do you get what I mean?

The very notion of a pathological homesickness for the past suggests an idealised and blinkered pathos that negates any value in its misplaced longing for a non-existent, better past: An overabundance of events, spatial overabundance and the individualization of references. (tongues, pussies, cocks). Your horse’s head between the sheets. THIS IS A SIGN SAYING IT’S ABOUT TIME WE HAD A BLOODY REVOLUTION

All of the works in the space have undergone some form of destruction or degradation: piles of rubble, detritus, broken glass, effaced signage, vandalised statues, liquescent driftwood and scattered litter, he says. The shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time in a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity.

I think we have it coming. In an isolated system, the amount of energy remains constant while the available energy continuously and irrevocably degrades into unavailable states. Entropy is then the measure of the amount of unavailable energy in the system, where maximum entropy demarcates total exhaustion. Dr. Lecter was watching a film called A Brief History of Time, about the great astrophysicist Stephen Hawking and his work. He had watched it many times before. This was his favourite part, where the teacup falls off the table and smashes on the floor.

Capital, for Marx, is the congealed mass of human labour. Overproduction is natural. To erect a statue is to take revenge on reality. (I like everybody’s body parts.)

Towards the end of his life Cecil John Rhodes lamented the lack of land left for his Empire. “The world . . . is nearly all parcelled out, and what is left of it is being divided up, conquered, colonised. To think of these stars you see overhead at night, these vast worlds, which we can never reach. I would annex the stars if I could,” he said.

Dr. Lecter is a cannibalistic serial killer character in a series of popular books and films. This scene is in Hannibal: Stephen Hawking, twisted in his wheelchair, speaks in his computer-generated voice: “Where does the difference between the past and the future come from? The laws of science do not distinguish between the past and the future. Yet there is a big difference between the past and future in ordinary life.

In the 1958 issue of Time magazine, Wernher von Braun wrote: “Don’t tell me that man doesn’t belong out there. Man belongs wherever he wants to go—and he’ll do plenty well when he gets there”. This sentiment typifies the midcentury colonising attitude to space, written in countless patriotic politicians’ speeches, everyday magazines and science fiction tales of the era

“You may see a cup of tea fall off of a table and break into pieces on the floor. But you will never see the cup gather itself back together and jump back on the table.”

Cape Town’s decommissioned Athlone Power Station cooling towers mid-demolition.

The film, run backward, shows the cup reassembling itself on the table. Hawking continues: “The increase of disorder or entropy is what distinguishes the past from the future, giving a direction to time.”

It exploded early and everyone was counting and then it went off to soon; premature ejaculation, rash decomposition

Dr. Lecter admired Hawking’s work very much and followed it as closely as he could in the mathematical journals. He knew that Hawking had once believed the universe would stop expanding and would shrink again, and entropy might reverse itself. Later Hawking said he was mistaken. Lecter was quite capable in the area of higher mathematics, but Stephen Hawking is on another plane entirely from the rest of us. For years Lecter had teased the problem, wanting very much for Hawking to be right the first time, for the expanding universe to stop, for entropy to mend itself, for his sister Mischa, eaten by Lithuanian Hilfswillige, deserters in the war, to be whole again.

If labour, Marx writes in Capital, is the life-blood of capitalism, then capital is dead labour which, vampirelike, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The storm is blowing from hell driving us back into the past. Who am I to be blown by it? Oh nationalism, you look so beautiful in ruin; but we never really loved you and chicken just tastes better.

For a second, picture South Africa at the moment of post-apartheid as being a shattered tea cup or car window, shards of glass scattered in heaps in the area surrounding the site of impact/trauma. If we allow ourselves this mental image then it could be said that the TRC envisioned a goal of recombining these fragments into something representing a new, unified whole; clean, glistening and without trace of the trauma from which it was forged. A blank slate. The present South African government’s [neo-liberal] economic policy has, for the most part, been capitalfriendly. If Rhodes were alive today, he would be given plenty of scope for making profit.

Fuck Your Beach House I, 2014 Bronze 42.5 × 38.5 × 3 cm

Emptiness (Salted), 2014 Jelutong, enamel and chrome 20 × 14.5 × 9 cm

Nothing Lasts Forever Cecil (Detail), 2014 Bronze, powder coated mild steel, tempered glass, swarm of bees 208.5 × 92 × 74.6 cm (Case alone: 90 × 60 × 73.2 cm)

TIM LEIBBRANT

SYMPHONY OF DESTRUCTION AN ENTROPIC READING OF ROWAN SMITHâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S NO EVERYTHING

NO EVERYTHING

[T]he image that survives the work of destruction is the image of destruction. BORIS GROYS Becoming Revolutionary 2013

IN ROWAN SMITH’S most recent body of work, No Everything, images of destruction abound. The combined effect of the exhibition’s works create an impression of a site in the aftermath of demolition. As the title implies, all of the works in the space have undergone some form of destruction or degradation: piles of rubble, detritus, broken glass, effaced signage, vandalised statues, liquescent driftwood and scattered litter. Following the lead of Smith’s 2012 exhibition Where There Is Smoke (which was heavily centred on imagery with connotations to late apartheid such as burning tyres and references to Paul Simon’s 1986 album Graceland), No Everything arrives at a juncture in post-apartheid South Africa. Opening within a month of South Africa’s national elections and marking twenty years since the country’s first democratic elections in 1994, the exhibition examines the complexities and contradictions of contemporary South Africa two decades after seemingly transitioning non-violently into post-apartheid. Taking Oh nationalism, you look so beautiful in ruin; but we never really loved you and chicken just tastes better as an indicator, Smith’s conclusion appears to be that post-apartheid South Africa as it currently exists is built on unstable

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nationalist constructs. Having come to the deduction of a self-destructive path, Smith presents detritic imagery in order to metaphorically collapse these flimsy underlying structures for the viewer, bringing forth an ideology conducive to imagining alternative states. He is certainly not alone in his means of expressing this sentiment and similar assertions have been made by thinkers such as Neville Alexander and Edgar Pieterse. In Thoughts on the New South Africa, Alexander accuses the ruling party and dominant elites in South Africa of “wilfully creating or, at best, tolerating a situation that in all likelihood will degenerate into […] a war of all against all, such as we saw in Lebanon in the 1980s and in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.”1 As with Smith, Alexander goes on to say that the accusation is made with the intent of prompting the powers that be to focus on “addressing the danger systematically and seriously, with a view to averting the disaster.” 2 Focussing specifically on Cape Town (where Smith currently works and lives) and coming from an environmentally as well as socio-politically conscious perspective, Edgar Pieterse states rather bluntly that: Cape Town is heading for disaster and is already in deep crisis if one cares to look close enough [. . .] Cape Town’s grim future is born out of the confluence of the globalised economic and ecological collapse that is fast becoming the defining feature of the twenty-first century.3

As with Smith and Alexander, Pieterse is not pessimistic about the situation; merely realistic. He concludes the chapter by expressing hope that with “robust and sustained public engagement, adaptive leadership, mutual partnerships and a collective determination to fulfil the city’s potential […] Cape Town can save itself and lead others.” 4 What is important to note with all three of Alexander, Pieterse and now Smith’s views is a projection onto a destructive end (“war of all against all”, “deep crisis” and “no everything” respectively) with the intent of prompting an ideological reconsideration of the paths that appear set to arrive at this destination. In varying degrees, all three find a combination of inept political vision and short-sighted capitalist consumption as primary causes of this demarcated route. As Alexander rightly observes, scathing descents into genocide have occurred in the postcolonial transitions in Rwanda, the Congo and Zimbabwe. That South Africa averted all-out bloodshed in a seemingly

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non-violent transition into post-apartheid does not mean that this apparent position as an exception is secured. As with the central support beam in Robert Smithson’s Partially Buried Woodshed (1970), if cumulative force is continuously applied to a structure that is not reinforced to withstand the pressure it will eventually cave in (Smithson’s work took 12 years 5). By imagining iconic signifiers of contemporary South African existence in a state of ruin, Smith is not arguing that “we are all fucked” or anything as suitably reductive. Rather (as with Alexander and Pieterse) he is pointing to the hubris in assuming that nothing in the present situation needs to change or that some hypothetical future development will emerge to avert this outcome. The notion of hubris will be returned to later in this discussion. The aesthetics of destruction then serves a dual role. It points to the collapsing of a specific mindset or ideology while also serving allegorical foreshadowing. In developing his concept of defacement, Michael Taussig argues that in demonstrating the potential for something to be destroyed (he is discussing the defacing or vandalising of significant statues), “the critique supplied by defacement is already inscribed within the object” and consequently defacement “brings these otherwise obscure or concealed inner powers [referred to as the “public secret”] flooding forth.” 6 Taussig’s conclusion is that “the negation merely completes the object of critique and was its destiny.” 7 By symbolically depicting the end point of the current trajectory of post-apartheid South Africa, Smith points out that while it may not necessarily be obvious at present (and this is debatable), imminent collapse is ingrained within its current underlying structures. It is here that the role of Groys’ revolutionary artist emerges. Ultimately, it is not the role of the revolutionary artist to define a better society. As Groys notes, “that is the goal of the post-revolutionary period.” 8 The revolutionary artist expands, enhances and stokes the regenerative ideology of the collective determination that Pieterse spoke of. Rendering a South African post-apartheid capitalist wasteland tangible is such an act. In visualising this concept as something which can be physically perceived, Smith generates an acknowledgment in the mind of the viewer of its (metaphorical) potential to exist.

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In light of these ideas, I wish to suggest a reading of Smith’s work through the lens of entropy. The concept derives from the second law of thermodynamics but has served diverse applications from a critique of capitalism in Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen’s The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, to Rosalind Krauss’ reading of Roger Caillois’ musings on animal mimicry 9 and is a central tenant of Robert Smithson and Gordon Matta-Clark’s art production. In thermodynamics entropy is outlined as such: In an isolated system, the amount of energy remains constant while the available energy continuously and irrevocably degrades into unavailable states. Entropy is then the measure of the amount of unavailable energy in the system, where maximum entropy demarcates total exhaustion.10

In thermodynamics this pertains to heat energy moving from areas of high heat to low. But when entropy is used metaphorically (perhaps allegorically) the nature of the energy that is ultimately depleted depends on the system under discussion. It should also be stressed that this demarcates the limits of entropy as it will be applied here as a metaphorical model. I am in no way claiming to be an expert in the complexities of thermodynamics. An example: When British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan delivered his seminal “Winds of Change” speech 11 to South African parliament on 03 February 1960, he asserted that the process of decolonisation in Africa was underway and irreversible. This is an entropic assertion in the sense that it suggests the eventual but inevitable exhaustion of the energies which perpetuate colonialism. As entropy gathers momentum, this process becomes increasingly irreversible and final. In theory then, post-colonialism and post-apartheid should exist in the wake of their respective exhaustions. This is the condition which Smith critiques in No Everything; in fact the title itself is a revolutionary statement of “everything” reaching maximum entropy (or at least everything that defines post-apartheid South Africa). The transition into post-apartheid brought with it a period of idealism and optimism typified by ideological nationalist constructs such as the “rainbow nation” which sought to create the impression of a country unified and peacefully coexisting across racial lines and actively striving towards

NO EVERYTHING

addressing the wounds and inequalities of the past. Along with this came the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) aimed at assisting the country in coming to terms with the atrocities of apartheid and facilitating a sense of reconciliation and healing.12 Fundamentally these endeavours brought with them an alternating sense of rapprochement and amnesia. There were also aspects of translation into spectacle in the sense that many of the hearings were broadcast publicly and received extensive media coverage.13 For a second, picture South Africa at the moment of post-apartheid as being represented by a shattered car window, shards of glass scattered in heaps in the area surrounding the site of impact / trauma. If we allow ourselves this mental image then it could be said that the TRC envisioned a goal of recombining these fragments into something representing a new, unified whole; clean, glistening and without trace of the trauma from which it was forged. A blank slate. The contradiction inherent in this is succinctly expressed by Brandon Hamber and Richard A. Wilson when they assert that: Nations do not have collective psyches which can be healed, nor do whole nations suffer post-traumatic stress disorder and to assert otherwise is to psychologise an abstract entity which exists primarily in the minds of nation-building politicians.14

In other words, presenting reconciliation as something which can take place collectively by a nation is a fallacy that ignores the relativity and subjectivity of individual trauma and instead serves specific political functions. In so doing, it also generates a scenario where those not suffering post-apartheid trauma view themselves as being rehabilitated and reconciled and expect this to be the state of things across the board. This marks a condition reflected in a pervasive attitude, characterised by complacency, of many in the contemporary South African middle to upper class: Apartheid is over, we had a TRC, it’s been 20 years, why can’t people forgive / forget and move on? Smith astutely presents a metaphorical engagement with this contradiction through his troika of reconstituted automotive glass works Untitled (Toyota Tazz), Untitled (Citi Golf) and Untitled (Opel Kadett). Laboriously sifting through the contents of the vacuum cleaners at an auto glass repair centre, Smith amassed a stockpile of glass shards derived from broken windows;

Untitled (Toyota Tazz), 2014 Reconstituted automotive glass 47cm × 76cm × 4mm

NO EVERYTHING

hence materials with a charged history. Recombining these to once again assume the form of specific car windows, the impossibility of circumventing the disparity between the individual pieces becomes readily apparent. The windows represent a fractured recombination of shattered elements (each with their own past trauma) that while comprising a whole shaped as a car window, cannot necessarily be viewed as being homogenous. The same is true of the people that occupy the area of land delineated as “South Africa” by the political constructs of borders, geography and nationalism. The three works then also demonstrate the concept of entropy as irreversible when considered in light of Robert Smithson’s famous “jejune” experiment wherein a sandbox divided in half between two different colours of sand 15 is stirred by a child running in a clockwise direction repeatedly for hundreds of rotations. Changing direction “will not be a restoration of the original division but a greater degree of greyness and an increase of entropy.” 16 This reading is not a perfect metaphor in the sense that there never was a shiny original South Africa window that preceded the shattering force of apartheid, but it still serves to convey the fragmented and disparate nature of the contemporary South African whole. If we extend the scope of the shattering trauma to include the broader colonial project preceding the 1948 implementation of apartheid legislation then this problem is further alleviated. The inclusion by Smith of imagery pertaining to Cecil John Rhodes in the exhibition itself certainly supports this. If this initial phase of post-apartheid “rainbow” nation-building exercises marked a “consensual hallucination” (to borrow a term from William Gibson17), Smith examines the conditions for its collapse from these rickety foundations with Oh nationalism’s mound of rubble and detritus. Smith’s suggestion here is that nationalism and the idea of nation-building are constructed impositions, willingly abandoned at a moment’s notice in favour of the creature comforts of frivolous capitalist consumption because “we never really loved it and chicken just tastes better”. The suggestion is of a collapsed monument of South African post-apartheid excess.

Oh Nationalism! You look so beautiful in ruin; but we never really loved you and chicken just tastes better (detail), with Untitled (Opel Kadett), Untitled (Toyota Tazz), and Emptiness series Installation view, 2014

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Placing the plethora of cruel human rights abuses aside for a minute and looking at it from a specifically economic perspective, one of the outcomes of the apartheid system’s design was the generation of extreme economic disadvantage along racial lines. Post-apartheid nation-building is an empty gesture when its applications are limited to collectively supporting the national rugby team on occasion (ergo the springbok horns) and doing little else to rectify this economic disparity. Georgescu-Roegen has offered an hourglass metaphor to demonstrate a relationship between the entropy law and economics, wherein the “stuff of the upper half stands for low entropy and by pouring down it degrades into high entropy (waste).”18 In this respect, the faux potato chip packets of Smith’s Emptiness series (reductively carved from jelutong wood) act as an efficient visual translation. Depleted, consumed; their energy has been exhausted and they now lie scattered in the streets as litter (waste). The point is that transitioning to a post-apartheid system which fails to sufficiently address this disparity does not mark a resetting of the entropic hourglass, just a renaming. Discussing the ideology behind the fact that one of Evo Morales’ first acts as president of Bolivia was to pass a law that reduced his presidential salary by 57%, Neville Alexander observes that in postapartheid South Africa the exact opposite occurred from the get-go: The recommendations of the Melamet Commission of 1994 and the subsequent annual increases recommended by the Independent Commission for the Remuneration of Public Office Bearers, based on the principles of remuneration of the apartheid dispensation, were accepted without much soul searching among the new elite. This, in my view, was the first signal that we were headed in the wrong direction.19

Oh Nationalism!, with Emptiness series Installation view, 2014

Ultimately a system that is infused with a capitalist logic that extends right to the top will inevitably benefit a few and completely fail to address those who are desperately in need of it. Official means of redress are superficial at best and do little to address the broader problem.20 As such, the chasm between the select few who benefit under post-apartheid and those left out in the cold is extended even wider. Alexander summarises that â&#x20AC;&#x153;if we fail to address the question of values with even a modicum of success, we will inevitably arrive at the edge of the abyss, pushed there by the logic of capitalism.â&#x20AC;? 21 Extending our metaphor, this abyss is then the point of maximum entropy. In emphasising how the current post-apartheid condition perpetuates many existing oppressive apartheid / colonial structures, Paul Maylam makes the uncomfortable suggestion that: The present South African governmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s [neo-liberal] economic policy has, for the most part, been capital-friendly. If Rhodes were alive today, he would be given plenty of scope for making profit.22

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An element of Oh Nationalism which hasn’t been discussed as of yet is the rubble itself. Besides pointing to ruin in a general sense, rubble also implies the prior existence of walls; another signifier which serves a key role in constructing an image of post-apartheid South African identity. During apartheid, separations in terms of which spaces one was permitted to be in were defined on racial grounds. Particularly in relation to living spaces, this perpetuated a clear division between white suburbia and black townships. During apartheid in Johannesburg, it was in these townships where crime was forcibly contained by the apartheid system.23 Post-apartheid opened up the space of suburbia for diversification, something which Lindsay Bremner suggests has created a kind of anxiety generated by an imagined Other understood to be criminal. Bremner notes that “as political, social and economic barriers have broken down, anxiety has ensured that others have been erected.” 24 Frank Lewingberg goes on to suggest that “Johannesburg today is a city of walls, substituting for the invisible walls of apartheid through which the Other was kept in its place.” 25 This is a consequence of post-apartheid capitalist logic, the more one imagines and projects a hypothetical criminal Other who lacks but desires, the higher the walls go to prevent this perceived Other from acting on this disparity. Call it the Jenga effect, the result is a nationalism built on shakier and shakier ground, ultimately looking beautiful in ruin. If the rainbow nation was a consensual hallucination then Fuck Your Beach House, Smith’s series of bronzes depicting driftwood in a state of nightmarish liquefaction, visually mark the point of descent into bad acid trip. “All that is solid melts into air” was the decidedly entropic vision of capitalism famously put forward by Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto.26 In a country where a large portion of the population live in informal settlements, the concept of owning an additional ‘getaway house’ used intermittently on weekends solely for leisure reads as pure excess and indulgence; waste. Critiquing the idea of ‘rustic’ as an aesthetic décor choice through the driftwood imagery, Smith paradoxically (confrontationally) preserves the upper-middle to upper class beach house dream in bronze at the moment of literally melting into air; a petit monument to bourgeois hubris.

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Entropy and hubris are tightly intertwined. Stated simply, hubris can be viewed as the denial of entropy. This can also be extended into equivalence between entropy and mortality. As suggested by the title, there is a duel ode to hubris in the decapitated equestrian monument of Nothing Lasts Forever Cecil. On the one hand the ruined statue recalls the “half sunk shattered visage” of the eroded remnants of the monument in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ozymandias. The other reference stems from arguably the most iconic moment in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972). There is an established trajectory here that flows from vanity to hubris and finally to entropy. Maylam notes that Rhodes’ “quest for immortality” resulted from his being a “supreme egotist, driven by vanity.” 27 Taussig infers that “to erect a statue is to take revenge on reality,” 28 in other words, to attempt to deny mortality and to maintain an immortal presence. There can be little doubt that Rhodes wished for “ye mighty” to look upon his works. As the stark sands which surround the decaying wreckage of Ozymandias’ statue remind us, this is a futile gesture that will inevitably and unavoidably corrode. Ultimately, Rhodes bought his (temporary) immortality and it is “his money […] that preserves his presence amid the spires.” 29 Of the numerous memorial statues which exist in commemoration of Rhodes, it is George Frederick Watts’ Physical Energy, a bronze cast originally conceived in 1870, which has since become inseparable with the man, despite sharing no real physical resemblance to him.30 At present three casts exist, one in Cape Town’s Rhodes Memorial, one in London’s Kensington Park and a perpetually unloved casting, a gift from the BSA company unveiled by the Queen Mother in Lusaka in May 1960 ,31 that has since been abandoned to the garden of Zimbabwe’s national archives. It is this third version which provided the inspiration for Smith’s work; linked to an incident in which a visitor to the Zimbabwean national archives allegedly found bees nesting in the mouth of the statue. 32 The horse head in Nothing Lasts Forever Cecil is an exact recreation of the Rhodes Memorial casting.

Fuck Your Beach House I Installation view, 2014

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. . .wherein it was believed that bees could parthenogenetically emerge from the corpse. . . A more explicit reference of equestrian desecration and hubris than Ozymandius derives from the encounter between Jack Woltz (portrayed by John Marley) and the mafia in The Godfather. Given “an offer he cannot refuse” from Marlon Brando’s Don Corleone, Hollywood mogul Woltz declines this offer on the basis of pride (“a man in my position can’t afford to be made to look ridiculous”) and hubris in his misguided faith that his connections to the FBI and the White House will protect him. Woltz quickly finds that these layers of safety and protection are not nearly as impenetrable as he foolishly perceived, awakening to find the head of his prized $600,000 stallion Khartoum laying on his bed sheets as a warning for denying Don Corleone his request. It shouldn’t be inferred that Smith’s simulated defacement of George Frederick Watts’ statue is similarly an assault on one of Rhodes’ prized horses (Rhodes was in fact a lamentable horseman33). Instead it is an attack on what the reared horse stands for in colonial imagery, what Watts described as “a symbol of that restless physical impulse to seek the still unachieved in the domain of material things.” 34 Smith defaces this symbol of the colonialist / imperialist impetus to perpetually claim, reducing it to an icon of failure. The work diminishes Rhodes from ambitious, all-conquering Imperialist to the chummy “Cecil” (apparently on a first name basis with the speaker) Nothing Lasts Forever Cecil, 2014 Bronze, powder coated mild steel, tempered glass, swarm of bees 208.5 × 92 × 74.6 cm (Case alone: 90 × 60 × 73.2 cm)

faced with the reality of the impermanence of his life’s quest for immortality. In reading this entropically, Watts’ title, Physical Energy, could not be more perfect. Smith’s act of defacement symbolically marks the exhaustion of the colonial “physical impulse”, expediting this to a point of maximum entropy.

Wall-mounted like a hunting trophy, the addition of a living swarm of bees takes the symbolism of Smith’s iconoclastic gesture a step further. By drawing inspiration from the afore-mentioned discovery in the Zimbabwean national archives, the swarm of bees residing in Smith’s horse head prompts consideration in relation to the ancient Mediterranean ritual of bougonia, wherein it was believed that bees could parthenogenetically emerge from the corpse of an ox. In Book Four of Virgil’s Georgics, there are two different descriptions of how bougonia may be achieved. The first is of less relevance to the discussion at hand and entails killing a two year old steer by blows, ensuring that the fatal injuries are internal and no blood is spilled. According to Virgil, leaving the corpse in a sealed chamber for an undisclosed period of time will result in “the rotting blood of an ox [bringing] forth bees.” 35 The second method, which bears a more specific relation to Smith’s defacing gesture, involves the ritual slaughter of “prime bulls of the best conformation” in a leafy grove, throats slit, drained and left for nine days. Upon returning, the aspiring bee conjurer will encounter: A sudden omen, plain to see, almost incredible to tell: out of the putrefying bovine guts, out of the bellies and burst sides, bees, buzzing, swarming, then streaming upward in huge clouds till they join in a treetop and hang in a great ball from a bending branch.36

No Everthing Installation view, 2014

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According to Taussig, the decapitation of a statue marks a sort of ritual sacrifice in the name of defacement; one which reveals the public secret. By metaphorically sacrificing Rhodes’ steed to yield a swarm of bees, Smith enacts a kind of bougonia of the second sort described by Virgil. The bees mark the deceasing of the horse head as colonial / imperialist signifier and reincarnate it as hive. There are echoes here of the Old Testament parable of Samson in the book of Judges, wherein Samson poses the riddle: “Out of the eater came something to eat, out of the strong came something sweet.” 37 In the wake of the desecration of the horse / ox / lion, the bees become the living, thriving image of destruction. As Thomas N. Habinek observes in his reading of Virgil’s ox-born bees: It is through an account of conventional animal sacrifice, the central and defining ritual of Roman as well as of Greek religion, that Vergil completes the history of the bees, and celebrates the potential for the renewal of human society as well.38

It is here that Taussig and Groys find equivalence between their defacing and revolutionary artists. Both attempt to uncover some kernel of truth excavated through their iconoclastic gestures of negation. Smith as entropic artist enters the fray as a third equivalence; rendering visible the point of collapse / exhaustion at maximum entropy, simultaneously raising both Groys’ image of destruction and Taussig’s public secret. As with the emblematic semiotic apparition in Smith’s The Official Restaurant of the South African Family, the resultant spectre is reduced to its core, revealing a previously-concealed truth while collapsing in on itself. A plausible resistance to entropy as it has been discussed here lies in the impulse to sustainable preservation of something broader than just the self (society). Instead of waiting for the system to exhaust itself in maximum entropy and attempting to rebuild from the rubble, the image of destruction prompts an ideological reconsideration of how to reintroduce expedient energy into the existing system. Ultimately this is the motive undertaken by Rowan Smith with No Everything.

LEIBBR ANT NOTES

1 Alexander, N. 2013. Thoughts on the New South Africa. Auckland Park: Jacana Media. 157. 2

ibid

3 Pieterse, E. 2010. ‘Introduction’. in Pieterse, E. 2010. Counter-Currents: Experiments in Sustainability in the Cape Town Region. Auckland Park: Jacana Media. 13. 4

Ibid:23.

5 Mundy, J. 2012. Lost Art: Robert Smithson. Available: http://www.tate. org.uk/context-comment/articles/ gallery-lost-art-robert-smithson [06/06/2014]. 6 Taussig, M. 1999. Defacement: Public Secrecy and the Labour of the Negative. California: Stanford University Press. 43. 7

ibid

8 Groys, B. 2013. ‘Becoming Revolutionary’. in E-flux Journal # 47. 3 9 See: Bois, Y and Krauss, R. 1996. ‘A User’s Guide to Entropy’. in October, 78. 38-42. 10 Georgescu-Roegen, 1986. ‘The Entropy Law and the Economic Process in Retrospect’.in Eastern Economic Journal. 12(1). [4-5]. 11 To hear the entire speech, see: BBC Archive. n.d. Apartheid in South Africa: Tour of South Africa | Rt Hon Macmillan. Available: http://www.bbc. co.uk/archive/apartheid/7203.shtml [31/05/2014]. 12 See: Truth and Reconciliation Commission [n.d]. Available: http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/ [06/06/2014].

13 See: Bird,E and Garda, Z. 1997. ‘Reporting the Truth Commission: Analysis of Media Coverage of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa’.in International Communication Gazette. 59(4). 331-343. 14 Hamber, B and Wilson, R. 2002. ‘Symbolic Closure through Memory, Reparation and Revenge in Postconflict Societies’. in Journal of Human Rights, 1(1). 35-53. 15 I have intentionally avoided specifically referring to the black and white division of sand suggested by Smithson to prevent this from being contextually read as a reductive racial metaphor. The colours of the sand are irrelevant to the underlying principle anyway. 16 Smithson, R. 1967. ‘A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey’. in Flam, J (ed.). 1996. Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings. Berkley: University of California Press. 74. 17 Gibson, W. 1984. Neuromancer. New York: ACE. 51. 18

Georgescu-Roegen, 1986: 14

Alexander, 2013: 193.

20 “If we had overthrown the apartheid state by military means, we would certainly not have had any reason to implement ‘affirmative action’ in its present form”. ibid: 161. 21

ibid: 195.

22 Maylam, P. 2005. The Cult of Rhodes: Remembering an Imperialist in Africa. Claremont: David Philip. 139. 23 Bremner, L. 2004. ‘Bounded Space: Demographic Anxieties in Post-Apartheid Johannesburg’. in Social Identities. 10(4). 460.

ibid: 465.

Quoted in ibid: 464.

26 Marx, K and Engels, F. 2008. The Manifesto of the Communist Party. Translated by Moore, S. Utrecht: Open Source Socialist Publishing. 10. 27

Maylam, 2005: 30.

Taussig, 1999: 21.

Maylam, 2005: 31.

Ibid: 53.

Ibid: 54

Ibid: 55.

Ibid: 53.

34 Quoted in Royal Parks, 2012. Physical Energy Statue. Available: http://www.royalparks.org.uk/parks/ kensington-gardens/kensingtongardens-attractions/physical-energystatue [04/06/2014] 35 Virgil. 2005. Vigil’s Georgics: A New Verse Translation. Translated by Lembkhe, J. New Haven: Yale University Press . 69 [285]. 36

Ibid: 78 [538-557].

Judges 14:14

38 Habinek, T. 1990. ‘Sacrifice, Society and Vergel’s Ox-born Bees’. in Griffith, M and Mastronarde (eds.)1990. Cabinet of the Muses: essays on classical and comparative literature in honor of Thomas G. Rosenmeyer. Atlanta: Department of Classics, University of California Berkley. 212.

Emptiness (Salt and Vinegar I), 2014 Jelutong, enamel and chrome 18 × 14 × 6 cm

Untitled (Opel Kadett), 2014 Reconstituted automotive glass 45cm × 55cm × 4mm Untitled (Citi Golf), 2014 Reconstituted automotive glass 50cm × 46.5cm × 4mm

Fuck Your Beach House III, 2014 Bronze 14 × 36 × 17.5 cm

Emptiness (Smoky Beef), 2014 Jelutong, enamel and chrome 17.5 × 12 × 15 cm

Fuck Your Beach House II, 2014 Bronze 10 × 40 × 16 cm

Demolition Painting I (Munitoria Building Pretoria), 2014 Gouache on Fabriano 180 Ă&#x2014; 150 cm

RIGHT: Demolition Painting III (Nedbank Building Johannesburg), 2014 Gouache on Fabriano 180 × 150 cm NEXT: Demolition Painting II (Athlone Towers Cape Town), 2014 Gouache on Fabriano 180 × 150 cm

ELIOT GARDEPE

THE SUPERMODERN CONDITION

NO EVERYTHING

MODERNISM IS OVER. It has been superseded and consumed by supermodernism, globalized capitalism, and consumerism. Rowan Smith’s No Everything examines the effects of the supermodern in South Africa today and, in doing so, reveals the contemporary shift in everyday experience away from the anthropological, towards the ahistorical. No Everything plays with the contradiction Supermodernity creates within postcolonial development and identity and poses the question: what is the postcolonial if history ceases to exist and identity is dictated by capitalist modes of engagement? Modernism can be distinguished from supermoderism in that modernism exhibits a “presence of the past in a present that supersedes it but still lays claim to it”.1 Supermodernity on the other hand “stems simultaneously from the three figures of excess: overabundance of events, spatial overabundance and the individualization of references” which engender non-anthropological spaces that are disconnected from history.2 They are the main product of supermodernism: the non-place, a “space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity”. 3

GARDEPE

To understand non-place consider Demolition Painting II, which depicts the Cape Town’s decommissioned Athlone Power Station cooling towers mid-demolition. The painting points towards the destruction that is inevitable with supermodernization in the postcolonial state. Reclaiming unused or underused space for new developments is the result of both macro and microeconomic forces that are enacted both by local needs and globalized economic decisions and policies. However, the results of demolition for the purpose of (re)development are threefold. First, the destruction of anthropological places leads directly to the effacement of history over time. Athlone Power Station’s cooling towers existed as both a landmark of Cape Town as well as a reminder of South Africa’s postcolonial growing pains from the foundation of the republic to the end of apartheid. The demolition thus becomes a supermodern act which “makes the old (history) into a specific spectacle” of the simulacra of the new.4 History dissipates like the smoke in Demolition Painting II and is replaced with non-places engendered by the precession of supermodernity. Demolition also embodies a unique double bind as both a transgressive act of destruction and a productive act of creating a new place. The site becomes a place of transition, existing in between destruction and construction, while also being a place in and of itself. Lacking concrete history, it ceases to be an anthropological place. It is a place of simulacra whose past, both in relation to history and identity, is “listed, classified, promoted to the status of ‘places of memory’, and assigned to a circumscribed and specific position” of transition that will be forgotten through the passage of time and future development.5

NO EVERYTHING

Finally, capitalism drives (re)development and it is through this economic impulse that the supermodern comes into being. Non-places are where supermodernity “finds its full expression,” but sites of destruction are just one of the many sides of the non-place.6 The Athlone Power Station’s main facility remains intact and the city of Cape Town is currently considering ways to (re)develop the site.7 Like the cooling towers it has become a nonplace. While the Athlone Power Station could become any number of things, until that decision for its future has been made it can only exist in the continuous now. Even after its future shape has taken form it will continue to be a non-place as it slowly erases its own history. Demolition Painting II then depicts both the physical destruction of the cooling towers as well as the psychic destruction of the space’s history. Oh Nationalism! deals directly with the relationships that individuals have with the proliferation of non-places in the contemporary postcolonial state through its reference to a (de)construction site. The non-place “creates neither singular identity nor relations” and has no capacity for “history unless it has been transformed into an element of spectacle.” 8 Non-places engender the “urgency of the present moment” that becomes amplified through the effacement of history.9 Through the springboks that sit atop the pile of rubble, Oh Nationalism! engages with South African history while critiquing the spectacle of non-places. The springbok has a complex history within the context of the South African state and has moved through various states of symbolism, from apartheid nationalism to rugby, through the process of supermodernization. Its history as a referent to apartheid is being effaced and slowly replaced with new meanings that relate to the continuous present of non-places.10 This presents a troublesome ramification for postcolonial identity because the supermodern individual “proceeds as if space had been trapped by time, as if there were no history other than…an unending history in the present.”11 Oh Nationalism! implies that references to history and history’s relationship with postcolonial identity will increasingly become simulacra and by engendering non-places, supermodernity effects postcolonial identity.

Emptiness (Salt and Vinegar II), 2014 Jelutong, enamel and chrome 27 × 16 × 12.5 cm

Identity has a “necessary [relationship] with space, image and consumption” and non-places have repositioned identity towards an ahistorical mode of continuous consumption.12 This creates a “world of consumption that every individual can make his own because it buttonholes him incessantly,” leading to class indicators that cease to be recognizable.13 Simultaneously, capitalist modes and aesthetics are used to divert attention away from increasing social stratification that has become common both in the West and the postcolonial state today. Supermodernity, as simulacra, has superseded the real, which has placed postcolonial identity and agency in a precarious position. In the continuous present engendered by the supermodern, the only means of production is reproduction of simulacra influenced by consumption-based identity. This leaves the postcolonial subject in a position to continue the cycle of reproduction and consumption. The Untitled series, shattered glass from car windows reconstructed into new windows, illustrates the economic (and resulting physical) violence that is cyclically reconstructed, repackaged, and sold again within the capitalist system while also metonymically referencing supermodern postcolonial identity.

NO EVERYTHING

Similarly, the Emptiness series is a direct commentary on the effacement of recognizable class indicators. The chip bags signal the lower and lowermiddle classes and, in some senses, are a symbol of populism and banality. Conversely as a mass-produced, distributed, and marketed product it also signals the soft power Western global capital holds over the postcolonial subject. However these indications of class and power are lost through their (meta)physical overabundance, and the object comes to be overlooked as trash. This superficial innocuousness is both a symptom and sign of contemporary capitalism. It is an object of contradiction, a simulacrum that Emptiness makes physical, a product of supermodern non-places: the non-object. Much like non-places, the non-object is ahistorical and non-anthropological. It engenders a “universe where nobody is ever alone, where everyone is under close control, where the past as such is rejected” in favor of the cycle of consumption that occupies the perpetual now.14 The non-object can be differentiated from a real object in that it superimposes an ahistorical identity on the subject.15 This indicates that the supermodern, with its non-places and non-objects, obfuscates class and its indicators, which suggests that agency (and in particular, the need for postcolonial agency) in relation to history and socioeconomics has been eliminated in favor of consumerism. The Emptiness series, through actualizing the simulacra of non-objects, is a subtle critique of the power that the everyday has on conditioning identity. Everyday life itself has become dominated by the modes and affects of non-places and non-objects. Common discourse claims that identity dictates consumption, but within the supermodern it is the inverse: consumption dictates identity.16 It is the banality of the everyday that distracts individuals from socioeconomic reality.17 Christmas and the Fuck Your Beach House series exemplify how supermodernity has engaged the effects of non-places and non-objects to dominate everyday life. Christmas does not become recognizable as an indicator of lower class socioeconomic realities until placed within an art context. While it is a unique, hand painted sign, it references the countless hand painted signs of the economically disadvantaged whose identity and survival is predicated on the cycle of consumption. However, outside of the gallery these types of images are glossed over as an indication of some type of service or product for sale rather than a symptom of socioeconomic disparity.

Fuck Your Beach House IV, 2014 Bronze 4 × 33.5 × 28.2 cm

The Official Restaurant of the South African Family Installation view, 2014

GARDEPE

The Fuck Your Beach House series operates on the other side of the economic spectrum. As replications of found objects, their distortions act as a critique of the contemporary bourgeois desire to construct everyday aesthetics by, in this case, displaying pieces of found driftwood as art. This elevates the humble piece of driftwood itself to a class indicator of the economically advantaged. However, the irony resides in how common a practice it is, pointing towards the cross-class “homogenization of needs and consumption patterns” that are a symptom of the supermodern.18 Identity is mediated by capitalism, whether through the consumption of real or non-objects. Individuals of all classes become “subjected to a gentle form of possession” by consumerism through which they experience the “passive joys of identity-loss” as they become defined by non-anthropological objects, places, and the “pleasure of role-playing” a classless society.19 Through this, non-places and non-objects have become arbiters of identity that actively erase the subject’s relationship with history. The Official Restaurant of the South African Family’s effaced logo of the Spur restaurant franchise typifies this current state of the postcolonial by depicting an image of a colonial past that ceases to signify as such in favor of modern convenience.20, 21 Supermodernity creates a system of simulacra that “weaves the tissue of habits, educates the gaze, [and] informs the landscape” and by removing the relationship between past and present, it conditions individuals to exist strictly as consumers of (non-)objects and (non-)places.22 With the rise of supermodernity, postcolonialism is important now more than ever. If consumer identity has superseded all other identities, what space does postcolonial agency have as colonial history is being eroded? Smith’s No Everything asks the viewer to think critically about their relationship to capitalism and postcolonial identity. While it critiques today’s South Africa, No Everything provides a pathway to agency by lifting the curtain on the non-places, non-objects, and simulacra of everyday life while reemphasizing the need for postcolonialism today. However, perhaps the most explanatory imagery in No Everything is Nothing Lasts Forever Cecil. The buzzing bees emerging from the mouth of the horse bust seem to say, “Do you remember Cecil Rhodes?”

GARDEPE NOTES

1 Marc Augé, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (London, England: Verso, 1995), 75. 2

Augé, 109

Augé, 77-78

Augé, 110

Augé, 78

Augé, 109

7 Athlone Power Station site, City of Cape Town, http://www. capetown.gov.za/en/Planningportal/ Pages/Athlone.aspx (Jun 13, 2014). 8

Augé, 103

Augé, 104

10 The continuous present is a symptom of the overabundance of information that results from supermodernity in which we, as subjects, can only focus on the present as it is at its current moment. It becomes detached from history and forward-thinking, as evidenced by the twenty-four hour news cycle, the internet’s meme economy, or technology product cycles, in which attention is always being drawn to the latest breaking story, the freshest piece of information, or, particularly symptomatic of supermodernity, the newest object to purchase.

Augé, 104-105

Augé, 119

Augé, 106

Augé, 114

15 The non-object operates similarly to a status symbol, but rather than a status symbol indicating class it indicates consumer preferences. Along with non-places, nonobjects efface identity and replace it solely with consumerism. 16 This is evidenced by the rise of the supremacy of algorithms, consumer segmentations and demographics, and tracking and analytics data as fundamental aspects of contemporary globalized capitalism, which condition individuals to exist exclusively in their personalized spheres of influence. 17 For more on banality and the oppression of the everyday, see Henri Lefebvre, Everyday Life in the Modern World (New Brunswick, United States: Transaction Publishers, 1009). 18

Augé, 5

Augé, 103

20 Much like Christmas, outside of the gallery the Spur logo is glossed over as an indication of a product for sale rather than a symptom of socioeconomic disparity, or, particularly in the case of Spur, the brutal colonial history of the Americas.

21 For a different analysis of The Official Restaurant of the South African Family, see Eliot Gardepe, Does Postcolonialism Matter Anymore? (New York, United States: VOLTA NY, 2012) 22

Augé, 108

Emptiness (Salt and Vinegar II), 2014 Jelutong, enamel and chrome 27 × 16 × 12.5 cm

Nothing Lasts Forever Cecil, 2014 Bronze, powder coated mild steel, tempered glass, swarm of bees 208.5 × 92 × 74.6 cm (Case alone: 90 × 60 × 73.2 cm)

Fuck Your Beach House V, 2014 Bronze 8 × 81.5 × 34 cm

RIGHT: Emptiness (Ghost Pops), 2014 Jelutong, enamel and chrome 19 × 15 × 7 cm NEXT: Nothing Lasts Forever Cecil (Detail), 2014 Bronze, powder coated mild steel, tempered glass, swarm of bees 208.5 × 92 × 74.6 cm (Case alone: 90 × 60 × 73.2 cm)

TRACY JEANNE ROSENTHAL

SPIRITS OF THE HIVE

ROSENTHAL

1. If the bee dies out, mankind will follow four years later. 2. As it turns out, this is something Einstein never said. 3. The one and only time I was ever stung, it was on the lip. I was twelve, sitting on the top of a picnic table, surveying some camp playground, wearing a white tank top lined with iron-on daisies, flip-flops dangling off my heels. I noticed my own hair stuck to the blue raspberry lollipop. I removed the hair, but I didn’t see the bee. 4. If I remember well, it was Einstein who said: “Remove the bee from the earth and at the same stroke you remove at least one hundred thousand plants that will not survive,” Ernest A. Fortin wrote in the Canadian Bee Journal in 1941, the first recorded instance of Einstein’s apocryphal theory of bees. 5. Some twenty years later, G. V. Poulton claimed in the Irish Beekeeper, Professor Einstein, the learned scientist, once calculated that if all bees disappeared off the earth, four years later all humans would also have disappeared. 6. When it comes to the bee, history circulates around an empty hive. 7. In 2005, researchers coined “Colony Collapse Disorder” to name the sharp increase in bee mortality rates. A commercial keeper had expected to lose an average of ten percent of a hive each year. By 2007, many keepers reported fifty. It seemed as if half their bees had scattered, as usual, searching for nectar, but mysteriously never returned. 8. Hours later, swollen and drooling, I watched a similarly-twelve-year-old frenemy with boobs bring her hands to my knees and her face to my face: “Poor bee,” she said, “It had to die just to sting you.”

ROSENTHAL

9. Why does a physicist continue to receive credit for this peculiar eschatological portent? In newspapers (The Guardian, Huffington Post), TV (CNN, BBC), my own father? A Google search of Einstein + Bee retrieves a million and a half results. 10. In his 1976 The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins coins “meme” to describe the transmission of genetic and cultural information: that is, like a virus. A biological metaphor for both natural and synthetic processes. 11. Current research on Colony Collapse Disorder points to the discovery in bees of the same fungi found in humans whose immune systems have been suppressed by AIDS or cancer. 12. It is only later, when a fixation on the mouth takes a central place in my self mythology, that I begin to view the lip-stinging as a personal attack. Mythologizing forensics: At all times, I must talk, kiss, smoke, or chew. My mouth is equal opportunity. I like everybody’s body parts (tongues, pussies, cocks). I like soft plastics (pens, straws, bottle caps). My fixation on language is equally oral. 13. On an agrifarm in northern China, migrant workers harvesting fruit have begun to swab pollen by hand. Carrying a bucket and a paintbrush, the workers dab every blossom. 14. You will probably more than once have seen her fluttering about the bushes, in a deserted corner of your garden, without realizing that you were carelessly watching the venerable ancestor to whom we probably owe most of our flowers and fruits (for it is actually estimated that more than a hundred thousand varieties of plants would disappear if the bees did not visit them), and possibly even our civilization, for in these mysteries all things intertwine.

ROSENTHAL

15. In 1901, ten years before his Nobel Prize, Maurice Maeterlinck casts the bee as nature’s mother, muse, and messenger in his gushing The Life of The Bee. Maeterlinck assures the reader that the female worker bee is reproductive—of civilization itself. 16. Samuel Coleridge Taylor inaugurated the euphemism “birds and the bees” pining in his 1825 “Work Without Hope,” All nature seems at work . . . The bees are stirring—birds are on the wing . . . and I the while, the sole unbusy thing, not honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing. 17. The first design of a birth control pill suppressed a period altogether. Before the FDA would legalize its distribution, it demanded that the Pill manage to engineer an illusion of a menstrual cycle. 18. It is not, as Judith Butler had it, imitation of cultural codes of femininity that here produces gender, but the imitation of biology itself. Natural femininity is something one can sell. 19. Richard Dawkins coins “meme” to describe the transmission of genetic and cultural information: that is, like a virus. Of course, the root of “meme” is mimesis. 20. Where is the architect . . . who can carry impressed upon the tablet of his memory the entire idea of the edifice he means to erect, and without rule, square, plumb-line, or compass, can cut out all his material to their exact dimensions, without making a single mistake or a single false stroke? Sidney Smirke asked the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1853, comparing humans to bees. 21. The beehive has proved to be one of architecture’s most powerful similes. Gaudi, for example, graced the entrance of his first building, the Workers Cooperative Mataronesa, with an iron sculpture of a bee, citing the beehive’s hexagons as the source of his parabolas.

ROSENTHAL

22. It is curious that the architect who designed the world’s first glass skyscraper, Mies van der Rohe, nicknamed an early plan “The Honeycomb.” It seems his honeycomb isn’t nature’s construction but our technological imitation. Rather than the hexagons bees make themselves, van der Rohe references the then popular observational hives in which bees were kept. 23. As Foucalt argued, Benthem’s panopticon exploits the ever-present possibility of being seen to turn prisoners into their own guards. This inaugurated an epoch in which, as with the Pill, the body no longer inhabits disciplinary spaces but is inhabited by them. 24. The first clinical trials for the Pill were administered by US companies in Puerto Rico, where corporate interests intersected happily with colonial population control. Perhaps the island granted the wish of the Pill’s principal funder, philanthropist and suffragette Katherine McCormick: Human females are not easy to investigate as are rabbits in cages. The latter can be intensively controlled at all times . . . 25. Commercial honeybees are transported hundreds of miles every season. At each stop, they are fed sugar water laced with antibiotics. 26. The Pill is currently the most manufactured pharmaceutical product. 27. Avital Ronnel rewrites Heidegger’s Being as Being-On Drugs. Whether one is subjected to ideology or pharmaceutical, there is no Being apart from what one has metabolized. (Is it necessary to remind you of “bee”’s existential homophone?) 28. A single bee produces a single teaspoon of honey in its life, purifying pollen with its own metabolism. 29. Perhaps history’s hermeneutics aren’t archeological but metabolic.

ROSENTHAL

30. According to the American Agricultural Department, bee pollination adds about $15 billion to global crop values each year. Out of every three bites you take, one is brought to you by bees. 31. To make a queen, a bee feeds a larva royal jelly, a special secretion from its own mouth. 32. Produce king Monsanto Foods, through laboratories in the US and Israel, spends more money on Colony Collapse research than every university combined. (In the early 2000s, Monsanto underwent a failed re-branding effort, attempting to escape their own bad publicity by assuming Pharmacia, the name of the biotechnology corporation with which they had just merged.) 33. Even vegetarians depend on industrial animal â&#x20AC;&#x153;husbandry.â&#x20AC;? This summer, I visited an almond farm in California where, after bee pollination each morning, almond trees have their trunks jiggled as if by 1950s exercise machines. 34. If labor, Marx writes in Capital, is the life-blood of capitalism, then capital is dead labor which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks. 35. Last year, instead of wildflowers, hoards of French bees lapped up the sugar they found at a plant processing M & M waste. They produced honey in primary colors. 36. Colonies produce an excess of honey, more than they need to survive each winter.

ROSENTHAL

37. Capital, for Marx, is the congealed mass of human labor. 38. Bees will only visit one type of plant on each trip out of the hive. In pursuit of their nectar, they pollinate. Bee’s excess production is more than honey. It is the reproduction of other species. 39. Bee pollination adds about $15 billion to global crop values each year. 40. In four years, I’ve lived in two apartments in Los Angeles. In both of them, bees have made a hive underneath my bedroom window. They often chose my pillow as a place to die. I began to make a tally: On my pillow September 9th 2012, October 13th 2012, April 5th 2013, April 10th 2013, April 14th 2013, December 2th 2013. On my patio June 28th 2013, August 13th 2013, September 15th 2013. February 3th, 2014 a bee flies into the windshield of my car. It doesn’t die, but wounds its wing. I lift it into my palms and tuck it in a nearby flower. 41. Is this how one is meant to recognize one’s spirit animal? 42. The full moon in June, my birth month, is known as the Honey Moon, most likely to glow golden throughout the night. This Friday the 13th will be a Honey Moon. It will also be the first day of my period. 43. We might say the Pill nurtures the idea that women’s monthly reproductive overproduction is natural. 44. In 1715, English poet Isaac Watts used the phrase “busy bee” in a moral poem advising against idleness and mischief: How doth the little busy bee / Improve each shining hour, / And gather honey all the day / From every opening flower! 45. All nature seems at work, Samuel Coleridge Taylor wrote, The bees are stirring—birds are on the wing . . . and I the while, the sole unbusy thing, not honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing. Taylor’s euphemism “the birds and the bees” makes labor as natural as sex. Or, sex as natural as labor. A tautological ouroboros.

ROSENTHAL

46. For in these mysteries all things intertwine. 47. Colony Collapse Disorder isn’t a mystery, but an abstraction that unites three visceral phenomena: plants genetically modified to produce their own pesticides, a virus that spread to bees from tobacco plants, and a harvesting calendar by which everything blooms at once. 48. If one recognizes one’s spirit animal, then what should I do? 49. The queen bee, Maurice Maeterlinck marveled in 1901, is not the queen in the sense in which men use the word. She issues no orders; she obeys, as meekly as the humblest of her subjects, the masked power, sovereignly wise, which for the present, and till we attempt to locate it, we will term the ‘spirit of the hive.’ 50. Bees see in ultraviolet. They also smell in stereo. They communicate with one another through dance. 51. This text is navigating through, or with, a mass. Its solution is to swarm. 52. In his 1705 allegorical poem The Fable of The Bees, Bernard Mandeville uses “the spirit of the hive” to anticipate Adam Smith’s “invisible hand,” arguing that through competition, the market transforms individual vices into public good: Such were the blessings of that state; / [The bee’s] crimes conspired to make them great: / And virtue, who from politics / Had learned a thousand cunning tricks, / Was, by their happy influence, / Made friends with vice; and ever since, / The worst of all the multitude / Did something for the common good. 53. Famous for his work on ants, Edward O. Wilson claimed of social insects, Karl Marx was right, socialism works; it’s just that he had the wrong species.

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54. Bees show us the history of a metaphor is how it’s been abused. 55. What is it, Maeterlinck wondered, that governs here? What is it that issues orders, foresees the future, elaborates plans, and preserves equilibrium? 56. Drones get their genitals and a few other organs ripped from their bodies after sex, killing them instantly. If they do not mate, drones are expelled from the hive before winter. (Drones are the male bees, by the way.) 57. “Hive mind” is collective intelligence. Or, brutal conformity. 58. A bee’s buzzing isn’t disordered, just demoralized. 59. If one can share a mind, can one share a feeling? 60. Onomatopoeias like “buzz” wring language into producing experience. 61. Cicero insisted that a bee had settled on the lips of an infant Plato, a sign that Plato would be gifted with eloquence. Cicero uses the phrase, “golden tongued,” for the gold of honey. 62. Once, I followed a bee into the mouth of a bronze horse, who was bearing some dead bronze man of honor. I found a beehive buzzing in its head.

Emptiness (BBQ), 2014 Jelutong, enamel and chrome 14 × 11.5 × 7.5 cm

Emptiness (Original Cheese Flavour), 2014 Jelutong, enamel and chrome 14 × 9 × 4.5 cm

The Official Restaurant of the South African Family, 2012 Plexi, LEDs, aluminium 89 × 101.6 × 14 cm

Rowan Smith <rowansmith@alum.calarts.edu>

re: Spur Research 3 messages Allen Ambor <AllenA@spur.co.za> To: "rowansmith@alum.calarts.edu" <rowansmith@alum.calarts.edu>

Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 6:25 AM

Dear Rowan

To answer your questions:

1. Regarding Spur’s native American theme: What happened was that I originated the décor. We started off being more like cowboys and Indians, but the cowboy soon fell away as the Indians were far more colourful, interesting and of far more stature. Having said that, the original Spur logo was the spur that goes on the back of a cowboy boot (over a number of years). Initially it had a circle behind it to try and give it a sense of strength and draw more attention to it, then a sheriff’s badge, etc.

There came a time when I purchased a building, which I wanted to house the company in, near the centre of town overlooking a highway. It had a particularly attractive façade and I commissioned somebody to design a https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=37caf10556&view=pt&q=allen&qs=true&search=query&th=1335… CalArts Students and Alumni 11/27/11 1/5 Mail - re: Spur Research red Indian themed “nature type hippy scene” of forests, eagles, teepees and a red Indian including the old Spur logo with the sky above, symbolized by stars in a royal blue background. The rest of the colour theme was in a rainbow coloured format starting from the lightest progressing up to the blue above. When the Indian was finally completed, in terms of him being young, virile and exactly what was right for the brand, I then took the decision (as a signal to people of colour in South Africa to show them that they were more than welcome in Spur) and (as a result I did what all marketing men will tell you never to do) is, I changed the logo of our company. This just before the time (1984) when we went to market and became a public company. It was an appropriate time to make the change because we were now getting a lot of exposure and media in the financial and other press, as well as a lot of growth occasioned by going public and looking far more significant as a public company as a result, i.e. we were given credibility by the fact that we were now a public company, as were a couple of others in the same industry.

As far as the décor was concerned, that carried on becoming more and more colourful and more and more Red Indian in character. I am interested in the second part of your sentence about “the culture in which we operate as an American Indian themed restaurant group in the South African culture”. I think what has happened is that the circle has been closed now that we in South Africa are part of the global community. (Which we weren’t before). So what was initially an anomaly is now less of an anomaly and our brand is accepted as such by people who have grown up with it, such as yourself and others, i.e. they do not question its “get up”, it is what it is.

2. As far as your second question is concerned, if Spur served only South African cuisine, Spur would not exist. There have been one or two South African brand food offering type restaurants which have really not survived for any length of time except one in the depths of Hillbrow which, as Hillbrow Johannesburg changed, got to see its end after a couple of decades. There are some black African restaurants today, one in Cape Town called Manuel’s. There are however many stand alone stalls in poorer areas.

The Official Restaurant of the South African Family (correspondence), 2012 electronic email

As far as cuisine is concerned, whether it be Thai, Chinese, Indian, Japanese sushi, Vietnamese or South African, I think what is culturally appropriate, isn’t the question. What the question is, is how the international market (whether they live in South Africa, Thailand, Japan, etc.) perceive a taste to be. Different food stuffs, their taste profile and how they appeal. I don’t believe South African food per se has “legs”, other than your normal barbecue or braai, certainly bobotie and those sort of stews (which are Cape coloured and Malay in nature) have a very limited appeal, even in South Africa. I think rather than your sentence which says …. “This question is of course incredibly complex and pertains to discourses around the nation of cultural authenticity”… I think its really all about taste, it’s what you put in your mouth and whether it appeals or not.

I do not really think it is that cultural although I do accept that Vietnamese, Japanese sushi, Indian food, etc. etc. is very different from American burgers and/or South African steaks and burgers. We also use various bastings and sauces which compliment and supplement our tastes and these are a part of our success. As far as you saying that we are all over South Africa, this is true, but in the United Kingdom and Australia we exist in a very limited way. In Australia, in fact, we have more Panarottis pizza restaurants than Spurs and in the UK, as well as Australia, we found the going tough. The theme does not determine where we open our restaurants and in America they might resent our native American theme and might contend that it is not respectful of the native Americans?? I wouldn’t know. I would say however, that Spur’s food has a place in America, but the question is to find somebody who is willing to put up, not only the financial muscle, but the actual muscle to operate stores in that region. That is the limiting factor apart from capital resources.

Rowan, I have explained above where the Spur logo fits in and why it came about and I do not feel in any way that you are being critical. https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=37caf10556&view=pt&q=allen&qs=true&search=query&th=1335… CalArts Students and Alumni 11/27/11 2/5 Mail - re: Spur Research

In conclusion, I want to thank you for your patience, sorry it has taken so long to get this back to you. I wish you well with all your activities. If you have further questions, fire away.

Kind regards

ALLEN AMBOR [EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN] SPUR GROUP (PTY) LTD 14 Edison Way, Century Gate Business Park, Century City 7441, Cape Town, South Africa Tel: +27 21-555-5100 Fax: 086-519-1353 Cell: +27 72-778-7877 Email: allena@spur.co.za Postal Address: Box 13034, Woodstock, 7915, Cape Town, South Africa PLEASE CONSIDER THE ENVIRONMENT BEFORE PRINTING THIS EMAIL - THANK YOU

NO EVERYTHING EXHIBITION WORKS Christmas, 2014 Found object 87 × 57 × 2.5 cm

Emptiness (Salted), 2014 Jelutong, enamel and chrome 20 × 14.5 × 9 cm

Fuck Your Beach House V, 2014 Bronze 8 × 81.5 × 34 cm

Demolition Painting I (Munitoria Building Pretoria), 2014 Gouache on Fabriano 180 × 150 cm

Emptiness (Salt and Vinegar I), 2014 Jelutong, enamel and chrome 18 × 14 × 6 cm

The Official Restaurant of the South African Family, 2012 Plexi, LEDs, aluminium 89 × 101.6 × 14 cm

Demolition Painting II (Athlone Towers Cape Town), 2014 Gouache on Fabriano 180 × 150 cm

Emptiness (Salt and Vinegar II), 2014 Jelutong, enamel and chrome 27 × 16 × 12.5 cm

Oh Nationalism! You look so beautiful in ruin; but we never really loved you and chicken just tastes better, 2014 Cement Dimensions Variable (Approximately 3m × 1.5m × 1m)

Demolition Painting III (Nedbank Building Johannesburg), 2014 Gouache on Fabriano 180 × 150 cm Emptiness (BBQ), 2014 Jelutong, enamel and chrome 14 × 11.5 × 7.5 cm Emptiness (Ghost Pops), 2014 Jelutong, enamel and chrome 19 × 15 × 7 cm Emptiness (Original Cheese Flavour), 2014 Jelutong, enamel and chrome 14 × 9 × 4.5 cm

No Everything Installation view, 2014

Emptiness (Smoky Beef), 2014 Jelutong, enamel and chrome 17.5 × 12 × 15 cm Fuck Your Beach House I, 2014 Bronze 42.5 × 38.5 × 3 cm

Nothing Lasts Forever Cecil, 2014 Bronze, powder coated mild steel, tempered glass, swarm of bees 208.5 × 92 × 74.6 cm (Case alone: 90 × 60 × 73.2 cm)

Fuck Your Beach House II, 2014 Bronze 10 × 40 × 16 cm

Untitled (Toyota Tazz), 2014 Reconstituted automotive glass 47cm × 76cm × 4mm

Fuck Your Beach House III, 2014 Bronze 14 × 36 × 17.5 cm

Untitled (Opel Kadett), 2014 Reconstituted automotive glass 45cm × 55cm × 4mm

Fuck Your Beach House IV, 2014 Bronze 4 × 33.5 × 28.2 cm

Untitled (Citi Golf), 2014 Reconstituted automotive glass 50cm × 46.5cm × 4mm

I Have Reason to Believe We All Will Be Received in Graceland, 2012 Patrolman portable radio, FM Transmitter, Paul Simon’s Graceland (1986) 33 × 25.4 cm (each)

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ELIOT GARDEPE

DOES POSTCOLONIALISM MATTER ANYMORE? 102

WHAT IS THE STATE OF POSTCOLONIALISM TODAY? While once a hot topic within Western academic circles, postcolonialism as an idea and a project has faded from the foreground in discussions on the contemporary moment. Although there have yet to emerge any signs of the waning ramifications of colonial and imperialist practices, it seems no longer in vogue to continue to address issues that remain extremely relevant in the contemporary moment. What is needed is a new approach to the postcolonial problem, a method that is skillfully taken by Rowan Smith’s exploration of aesthetics and politics in his new work. In order to understand the state of postcolonialism today, however, a brief history of Paul Simon is required. Paul Simon’s 1986 album Graceland stylistically combines Americana with South African musical traditions with an earnest sensibility that seems oblivious to the cultural and political context of late 1980s Africa. On a surface level analysis the album partakes in a particular type of colonial 1 Graceland reached number three on the US Billboard 200 as well as topped the UK Album Chart. It won the 1986 Grammy Award for Album of the Year and the title track won the 1987 Grammy Award for Record of the Year. It is platinum certified in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands. 2 The songs I Know What I Know, Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes, Under African Skies, and Homeless are the most obvious examples. 3 This is both because of the ramifications of apartheid in South Africa as well as the cultural boycott imposed by the rest of the world on South Africa in response to apartheid. 4 The issue is that there are groups of people (indigenous, racial, cultural, etc.) who are so oppressed that they themselves have no outlet in which to express themselves and make their situation known. However, speaking for these groups or trying to provide a method of which to give voice to their oppression is in and of itself a colonial act. Thus the postcolonial, in trying to rectify the ramifications of colonialism, becomes a colonialist. For more, see Spivak, Gayatri Chakrvorty. Can the Subaltern Speak?. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988. Print.

capitalism by appropriating elements of isicathamiya, mbube, and mbanqanqa and exploiting African musicians to create a commercially successfully product.1 A deeper inspection, however, of Graceland’s connection to South Africa reveals that its commercial success is only one part of its story. There is no doubt a large amount of questionable appropriation and thematic choices made in Graceland.2 Yet there is no question that indigenous and non-white South African music was suppressed and had little to no exposure outside of certain South African communities.3 This dichotomy is at the forefront of Smith’s I Have Reason To Believe We All Will Be Received in Graceland, which displays Graceland clearly entrapped in the classical postcolonial dilemma first put forth by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in her seminal essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?”4 Spivak’s own conclusion is that there is no way in which to speak for the Subaltern without committing a type of colonialism yet she believes, despite this double bind, that such actions must be taken nonetheless.

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Rowan Smith <rowansmith@alum.calarts.edu>

re: Spur Research 3 messages Allen Ambor <AllenA@spur.co.za> To: "rowansmith@alum.calarts.edu" <rowansmith@alum.calarts.edu>

Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 6:25 AM

Dear Rowan

To answer your questions:

Rowan, I have explained above where the Spur logo fits in and why it came about and I do not feel in any way that you are being critical.

https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=37caf10556&view=pt&q=allen&qs=true&search=query&th=1335… CalArts Students and Alumni 11/27/11 2/5 Mail - re: Spur Research

In conclusion, I want to thank you for your patience, sorry it has taken so long to get this back to you. I wish you well with all your activities. If you have further questions, fire away.

Kind regards

PLEASE CONSIDER THE ENVIRONMENT BEFORE PRINTING THIS EMAIL - THANK YOU

It is within this unsolvable problem that Smith asks the viewer to consider passive colonialism and cultural expression within the contemporary postcolonial context. This implicit colonialism exhibits itself as a theme in Smith’s work through subtle references to popular culture and history that relate anecdotally to his personal experience. While I Have Reason To Believe We All Will Be Received in Graceland points to the past as a method of historical reflection, The Official Restaurant of the South African Family (correspondence) looks to the present to express the effects of that history on the present. The Official Restaurant of the South African Family (correspondence) demonstrates the type of mindset that is typical in the postcolonial setting in which the response to Smith’s inquiry into the Spur brand lacks any sense of self-awareness. Smith, in attempting to understand the aestheticopolitical realities of a well-established South African company, provides the viewer with a glimpse into post-apartheid culture as well as a commentary on globalization. The irony of using a caricature of an oppressed indigenous group’s culture and image as focus of the Spur brand’s aesthetic vision within the context of analogous colonial histories is clearly lost upon the Executive Chairman of the Spur Group Ltd.5 Furthermore the use of globalization as a justification for cultural colonialism provides an insight into how colonialist practices continue and remain, for the most part, critically unchallenged.6 Smith, through a dark humor originating from the implicit irony presented in The Official Restaurant of the South African Family (correspondence), puts into question the passive acceptance of colonialism within the postcolonial subject and society. However unlike I Have Reason To Believe We All Will Be Received in Graceland, Smith chooses not to remain ambiguous and instead responds to this dialog powerfully with the partner piece The Official Restaurant of the South African Family.

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5 “As far as the décor was concerned, that carried on becoming more and more colourful and more and more Red Indian in character.” 6 “ I think what has happened is that the circle has been closed now that we in South Africa are part of the global community. (Which we weren’t before). So what was initially an anomaly is now less of an anomaly and our brand is accepted as such by people who have grown up with it, such as yourself and others, i.e. they do not question its “get up”, it is what it is.” 7 This is meant, of course, in the Arendtian sense. See Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1958. Print.

Hinting at the shape of the Spur logo, The Official Restaurant of the South African Family speaks volumes about the state of victims of colonialism in the contemporary moment. The Native American figure is effaced; an allegorical technique that distinctly criticizes how quickly colonialism and racial oppression has faded from the global collective memory. While directly referencing the colonial history of the United States and South Africa under apartheid, it goes further to critique both the dominance and hubris of the Western world. As with I Have Reason To Believe We All Will Be Received in Graceland, Smith returns thematically to the colonialism we partake in, both actively and passively, in our everyday lives. Over the course of his oeuvre, Smith has examined very different aspects of the history of South Africa as well as the postcolonial South African experience. While his work remains closely tied to an introspective and personal understanding of the past in relation to the present, it is here, however, where he has taken a political turn. It seems more and more that the role of the contemporary artist is no longer solely focused on the production of aesthetic objects created for the gallery circuit and, instead, has become a method in which to reshape the political discussions and commentaries of our increasingly apolitical world.7 Smithâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new work has clearly risen to this challenge of promoting but remaining critical of the postcolonial situation.

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Sometimes I Listen To Innocuous Indie Music, But I Never Know How It Informs My African Identity, 2012 Goache on Strathmore watercolour paper 76.2 × 55.6 cm

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BELOW: You Need More Black Friends, 2012 Goache on Strathmore watercolour paper 76.2 × 55.6 cm NEXT: White People, 2012 Goache on Strathmore watercolour paper 76.2 × 55.6 cm

Untitled (Burn), 2012 Digital prints 177.8 × 76.2 cm (each)

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TRACY JEANNE ROSENTHAL

WHERE THERE IS SMOKE

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“How many maps might be needed to deal exhaustively with a given space, to code and decode all its meanings and contents?” “Things do not speak the truth about themselves. On the contrary, it is in their nature as things to conceal that truth, to dissimulate the social relationships of exploitation and domination on which they are founded.” HENRI LEFEBVRE

ROWAN SMITH is as much a cartographer as he is an artist. Each one of the objects in his latest collection functions as a map, charting the embroiled territories of semiotics and history as they’re dissimulated into the language of things. How many maps does it take to chart the landscape of post-apartheid South Africa? With Where There Is Smoke, Smith offers us six. Shosholoza / Inside Outside presents a closed intercom system, average enough for any middle class home, their seeming permanence and banality punctured by the haunting lyrics of “Shosholoza:” a call for forward progress and for escape. The stark black and white of the intercom’s colors leaves no mistaking who is inside and who is outside, who belongs, and whose power it is to enable entry. The meaning of home is at question in the legacy of apartheid, and on both sides of the intercom. Will the door open? Or is home forever haunted by the ghosts of those it excludes, those whom economic inequality continue to keep out. Miriam Basu makes no explicit demands, her disembodied voice filtered by mediated communication: a folk song form and a knotted, mess of wire, drooping to the floor.

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The Official Restaurant of the South African Family centers on the logo of Spur Restaurant Group, a South African franchise with over 250 locations. The display of correspondence from the restaurant’s Executive Chairman lays bare the dissimulating labor of images: apparently, the Chairman designed the “colorful” “Red Indians” theme to welcome people of color. Rather than advocate a response (like indignant rage or despair), Smith focuses on mapping the path meaning has taken here, presenting us with an ambivalent, neon copy of the surface of the logo, cleansed of facial detail and ready to accept projection. Smith portrays this landscape of racial ideology as a palimpsest: meanings scraped off and re-inscribed. For I Have Reason To Believe We Will All Be Received In Graceland, Paul Simon’s “Graceland” plays in perpetuity, broadcasted to a portable Patrolman radio. Smith wields the album’s notorious recording history—Simon broke a boycott to record the album in South Africa during apartheid and later failed to give full credit to the artists featured. Smith points to the hypocrisy of the album’s titular track, on which Simon proselytizes the Mecca of American rock & roll. A celebratory homecoming to the city of Graceland is satirized by Smith’s bold inscription of “Radio Bantu” on the radio’s façade, which hails to the forced segregation of black people into Bantustans, or “homelands.” Meaning in both cases, Smith tells us, works as propaganda, creating a false narrative of solidarity. Made of glass, as if the shattered windows and storefronts have re-constituted in the image of the bricks that broke them, Who Took My Stuff / The Promise of Housing / In Advance of Delayed Construction (Geers Repair) maps a particular thread from the history of apartheid, finding a circular violence in unrest, government ineptitude, and protest. As the title suggests, the brick signals a break-in robbery, broken promises for housing reparations, and the breaking of a window as an act of resistance (which Kendell Geers performed in 1994, throwing a brick through the window of Johannesburg gallery). With effect and cause collapsed into each other, Who Took asks with equal parts nihilism and pathos whether a brick through a window results in anything besides broken glass. How Meaning Can Change Over Time Through The Degradation of Speakers echoes this concern. The heads of the ominously stacked speakers degrade, piling in pieces on the floor as a protest song plays through them. The pun on “speakers” plays up the song’s history: once rallying solidarity, the song

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ROSENTHAL

has recently been blamed for inciting factionalism within activist communities. As the installation continues, the message of the song loses the media that would carry it. Memory terminates in detritus. The history of resistance threatens to deteriorate, the past made unspeakable in the present. Untitled (Tyre) and Untitled (Burn) offer process and product, but hide the human. While a burning tire has entered the international vocabulary of contemporary protests, it’s central to the practice of necklacing, by which South African members of the ANC punished those accused of collaborating with the apartheid regime—forcing petrol-soaked tires around victims and setting them alight. Is this murderous remembered in the act’s murderless global rehearsal? Or has burning a tire become a ready-made gesture, dissimulating its contexts? Untitled (Tyre) and Untitled (Burn) perform this dilemma and implicate Smith’s own project. Plucked from life, Smith’s tire perches resolutely, as if it had been painted not burned; only the photo series forges the connection between the tire’s gold veins and how they were made. Untitled (Tyre) and Untitled (Burn) beg the somber question, does knowing ambivalence achieve any more than ignorance? In the appropriated vocabulary of resistance, Smith offers, meaning works to disjoin signifier from signified, and, as the tire reveals with disturbing literalness, to structure absence where there once was presence. Smith shows us how meaning moves, changes, evacuates, distorts, and fuzzes. He maps it with models of circular systems, palimpsests, broadcasts, and decay. He evokes the lapse of a message with the break-down of media, disillusionment with dissolution. Just as his art unpacks the language of things, Smith invites his viewers to unpack the language of his art. To evaluate Smith’s work is to uncover that which it dissimulates, to dig up its sources, to watch the meanings collide and conjecture a trace. To view it is to also participate in Smith’s investigation. Where there is smoke, there’s fire. But who lit it? Who was burned? What was destroyed? And what grew out of the ash-enriched soil? Smith gives us a reality haunted by representation, and representations haunted by their repression of the real. He maps the machinations of “post” to make us wade through the labyrinthine territory of the present.

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How Meaning Changes Over Time Through the Degradation of Speakers / Ayesaba Amagwala (Dubula Ibunu) Version, 2012 8” Speakers, speaker wire, paper, wood, amplifier, sound recording 23:15 193 × 221 cm (each)

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Who Took My Stuff / The Promise of Housing / In Advance of Delayed Construction (Geers Repair), 2012 Glass 5 × 12.7 × 7.6 cm & 5 × 7.6 × 7.6 cm

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The Thrill of it all / Little Lies / The Misunderstanding, 2011 Star Piano Co. upright piano 76 × 75 × 37 cm

Born Under Punches (the heat goes on) 2011 Bass wood, acrylic, pennies, nickles and dimes 32 × 27 × 13 cm

The Dark of Heartness, 2014 Enamel, glass and black fabric 100 × 141.4 cm

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Untitled (Razor Wire), 2013 Cane and Maple Veneer 110 × 60 × 70 cm

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BIOGRAPHY Rowan Smith was born in 1983 in Cape Town, South Africa and has been hailed as one of the country’s ‘Bright Young Things’ by Art South Africa, the continent’s leading art publication. Smith completed his BA in Fine Art at the Michaelis School of Fine Art in 2007 (winning the Michealis Prize for top graduate) and received his MFA degree at the California Institute of the Arts in 2012. Upon graduating he was awarded the prestigious Joan Mitchell MFA Grant. Smith presented his acclaimed debut solo exhibition Future Shock Lost at Whatiftheworld in 2008, followed by If You Get Far Enough Away, You’ll Be On Your Way Home in 2009 and No Everything in 2014. He has also exhibited a solo presentation with the gallery at VOLTA NY in 2012. Smith has appeared in a number of group exhibitions internationally, including COME ON YOU FUCKERS (in collaboration with Ingrid Lee) at The Wulf in Los Angeles, Objects of Revolution at Dominique Fiat Gallery in Paris, Ampersand at the Daimler Contemporary in Berlin, Circulate, Exchange at the University of California Los Angeles and Green Flower Street at the Istanbul Off Biennial. The artist’s work is included in the Hollard Collection in Johannesburg.

Untitled (Burn) (Detail), 2012

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Photo Credits

1 Argyle Street Woodstock Cape Town, South Africa 7925 info@whatiftheworld.com www.whatiftheworld.com

No Everything: Hayden Phipps Where There is Smoke and 2011 /12 work: Jason Davis and Vidisha Saini Come On You Fuckers: Jason Davis

All rights reserved, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, electronic, photocopying, or other means without the prior permission of the copyright holders. All work/photographs © Rowan Smith Edited by: Gerhard Mulder Design: David Karwan Typeset in Kis and Venus Image Production: Hayden Phipps Book Production: Mia Borman Printer: Hansa Print (Pty) Ltd

PAGE 1 Christmas, 2014 Found object 87 × 57 × 2.5 cm ENDSHEETS, PAGE 18 (DETAIL) Oh Nationalism! You look so beautiful in ruin; but we never really loved you and chicken just tastes better