AGORA:

the market-place which stood at the centre of every Greek city was not only a trading place of goods but also a meeting place for the community, its discussion forum and the playground for the peripatetic philosopher and early day flaneur. First and foremost a location of public interaction and transaction, it further accommodated other centres with social, political and cultural functions: the cities administration and its institutions for education and worship.

Essentially pluralistic, the agora stages a real democratic project, one which is aimed at involving the public in an open discourse, facilitating encounter and amplifying a polyphonic dialogue of contrasting experiences, views, hopes and aspirations.

This Group show aggregates various zones of the agora and abstracts them into an event structure, paying attention to art-conventional strategies of display, authorship, relational mannerisms and intrinsic conceptual manipulation, re-evaluating the regenerative potential and co-existential discrepancies within socio economical systems, by highlighting and subjectively translating its indicators, signs and modes of communication.  The agora project is thought out as a lab-situation in which the installation is used as the actual meeting place hosting an inclusive debate, which would like to stay open to propositions, promises and reflections on how an artistic practice might continue to reinvent itself as flexible and self-critical approach or quasi investigation. Putting our individual contribution within a cultural context into question, looking at potential ways of inter-relation as well as critically reviewing the currently broadening market for and re-emergence of a contemporary art with socio-political concerns.

London A-Z
2004
London United Kingdom

Questions and Answers

Jena after your MA studies in London you returned to SA and opened up a Gallery in Johannesburg. Can you tell us about the your forthcoming plans/ambitions with your space and how this activity differs from that of making your own art?

Working abroad was a potent experience. I did not anticipate that London would feel so foreign. This prompted me to become aware of my personal sensibilities and of where I came from, and then how of this collided or fused with the context of London. Working abroad also exposed me to artists from all over the world. I became interested in the potential of creative and cultural exchange, and in opening a gallery my interest is to develop these contacts and facilitate exhibitions, projects and exchanges. The space is named franchise, which I understand as emphasising freedom, and fluidity. My inclination is towards international, project-based experimentations. franchise is a professional but unpretentious space. In South Africa there has been debate around accessibility of galleries to public, and I hope that franchise is a stimulating and open space. The gallery gives me insight into the broader context of art-making, and I have new appreciation for the work that goes into running art venues. I love the creative and intellectual tasks of selecting work and developing exhibitions and projects - in many ways the curator is practicing composition. Seeing artists challenge themselves, and the generosity they bring to the space is very special. I sometimes feel desperate that I am not able to focus on making my own work. I hope to remove myself from the management of the gallery in order to focus on developing projects and developing my art making. 

Jena you also started teaching at an art-course, from a educational point of view what are you trying to communicate to your students that you found helpful or lacking in your own art education?

 I lectured a course at the University of the Witwatersrand on ‘post-modern and contemporary art’. I loved studying and I love teaching. Based on my experiences studying I encourage rigour and creativity in my students. As a practising artist and curator my interest was to impress on them that theory and practice should not be separate. I went through a huge amount of visual material to develop my students’ awareness of the broad range of activity they work within. I give confidence to constructive recklessness and an appreciation of complexity. As a student I was extremely focussed on achieving, which is of course important, but have learnt that process and sincerity are more vital. My studies at Central Saint Martins College were hugely influential in terms of creative dialogue with fellow students, and I value the continued support and dialogue- projects like Agora keep me alive, inspire me. I strongly encourage my own students to motivate and support one another.

Jena and Thomas how does your contribution for agora reflect your experiences & feelings of SA and your wishes for change? 

The red ants[1] were evicting people in Hillbrow, when we went with Alex and Mary for a drive to the coastal city “everyone” leaves in search of a better place to rekindle childhood memories, even though I never grew up there. Alex, since we received your invitation to participate in this show about public space we left our home on the 15^th story of Anstey’s Towers in the oldest part of Johannesburg in the suburb called Johannesburg, a gridded wasteland of aspirations and dreams and clichés, and indescribable vibrancy, which struggles to find a definition that would suit the agendas of all those involved in the evolution of this particular little gold town. It was time to leave, and we were in search of space. Well off we went to a “farm” in Sandton an anomaly in the new hyper materialistic mall obsessed part of the city which popped up just out of sight as business left the inner city, just as apartheid started to fall apart in a big way that would be sometime in the 80’s although some may say earlier. It was paradise, for a about week this is where things get tricky, no-one likes a victim, and to be sure we were but aren’t. they didn’t knock, (on the door) three men whispering gently, hush, but we had been sleeping why should they wake us only to hush us, the reason is obvious, their motives were not clear (it was dark). He put his hand over my mouth and somewhere in the early hours of the morning a scuffle was born out of the hopes and dreams and aspirations and bigotry of this place that had become an instant hell. I remembered the images of prisoners naked and vulnerable like a dream, and understood their moment beyond debates, discourse and politics. We survived they left, and then we decided we’d leave too, in search of a clean slate. Now we had to get rid of our plants so when we took a drive to the coastal city “everyone” leaves in search of a better place, we planted one next to a quiet stream so that it could grow up there and we might think of it sometimes. And now we have a new home, and we can sit down and write and hope we make the deadline, for the moment we have found peace, the movers asked us if we would be staying forever. Last night I heard that a friend of mine died he drowned somewhere in London I don’t know where.(His name was Alex) In approaching Agora, ‘for now we have no solutions’ expresses ambivalence and appreciation of complexity. It can be read as a resignation, but more appropriately as a pause, for now.

Thomas you are an artist but also work as a film editor could you recount for us your most interesting experience with the film business and how it effected your personal work? I think working in the the film industry has given me the opportunity to become fluent in the technical aspects of the medium although my personal work is not strictly video based As a reaction to working in a broadcast environment my personal work is often more low tech and includes traditional mediums such as bronze, oil-paint drawing and found objects mixed with video and installation. I worked for several years with a collective called Mud ensemble as the visual component of the group. This was an interesting collaboration because I had to deal with the limitations of working in video in a realtime live-performance context, interpreting the music on a visual level and adding performance elements. Our live shows took on an aspect of installation combining aspects of the mundane with theatre and music.

Thomas how do you manage living in a country that is undergoing a massive political transformation with imminent problems of extreme poverty and a related culture of crime. What function has art in such a climate?

A funny dance between the state and the individual in a nasty world.(Communism failed and so has capitalism except no-one has said so [as far as I know].) I have a South African passport and so here I am. The changes that have taken place here have been vast and dramatic, and they seem to have inspired the world.There are however pressing social issues that continue to overwhelm the daily lives of most South Africans, these have a history and therefore will play themselves out in which ever way this so called Renaissance makes the “history” a future…but I would suggest that it has to go beyond a “Proudly South African” sticker to eradicate poverty and a “culture of crime”. Issues of poverty (and art) should be seen in a global context as well as a local context. I think art has the same function anywhere in the world and depends on the nature of the work, since the function is (or should be) determined by the individual artist, not by government. In South Africa, funding is available from the Department of Arts Culture Science and technology (and it used to be the Department of Magic as well) through laborious applications based on various social and demographic premises that are enough to drain the last bit of inspiration from any artist’s weary brow. I’m not entirely sure how much they interfere with the actual production of work but I think the fact that this process is selective, and selectively available, to people with the relevant proposal writing skills and contacts is problematic. It would perhaps be better if a registry of artists received a blanket grant from the state- a kind of “free” for all. For the moment I have not bothered to apply for the available funding, and therefore feel the freedom to make work reflecting the “state” of my mind, be that what it may. I do not believe tackling issues of poverty through art is the best solution. It seems that political transformation occurs, as has been proven here and elsewhere, when the people in power put their minds to it. I do think artists in general are influenced by their cultural context and respond to this in some way or other, but there is a difference between painting (or whatevering) a slum and actually transforming it into a better place, a responsibility that ultimately lies with the government of the day. If artists or arts organisations become involved in social causes I do not necessarily consider this an artistic gesture but rather one of compassion, which may be infinitely more valuable to those concerned than a work of art. All of this said, despite public and private outrage regarding the world today it is quite clear that governments do as they wish with the mandates they have been “democratically” given. The role of art in such a context is up to the artist.