"A Black Voice" by Siemon Allen It has been with great interest that I have followed the recent debates around the issues of representation. I believe that cultural production within the particular historical conditions of post‑apartheid South Africa throws into sharp relief issues that have broader relevance in a post‑colonial world. More directly, as a South African artist I have found myself confronting these issues in my own work. This was most apparent when I created a sound work that involved the appropriation (both metaphorically and literally) of the 'voice' of a black African man. I was forced to address the complexities and contradictions that arise when one begins to speak across what was once an impenetrable wall. And then, in a effort to build on that 'conversation' one finds oneself engaged in what can easily become a form of suspect representation of the 'other'. The roots of this particular work began in 1993 at the FLAT Gallery in Durban, South Africa. A group of artists, including myself, were obsessively recording all social interaction that took place at the FLAT. These recordings were made without censure or specific intention, only the urge to record (as neutrally as possible) the 'found sounds' of this environment and so produce a 'purposefully' uncritical social document. Often, the resultant tapes would be used as raw material for further sound pieces. While many of these works were built with ordinary sounds or words reduced through manipulation to pure sound, the most interesting were those created when the recorded words were not (at least initially) unhinged from there signifying function. This brought to the constructed sound piece both meaning and a definite speaker's voice. Though the subjects were aware of being recorded (so that this was never a surreptitious enterprise,) the very act of using and reusing voices other than my own was problematic in terms of (mis)representation, permission, ownership or even coercion. At that time the FLAT had evolved into a space where artists gathered to work and exhibit. It had a free‑flowing atmosphere with people coming and going. In apartheid South Africa it was not insignificant that this included a diverse group of participants. One conversation recorded among many took place during a typical late night session. Four men (all South African) engaged in what was a rather 'ordinary' late night activity for young men ‑‑ drinking too much and talking about politics and women. What was not ordinary by apartheid era South Africa was the fact that one of the men, Moonlight, was black. A grounds‑keeper at the Natal Technikon, Moonlight had befriended one of the FLAT occupants, Thomas Barry. In a recorded conversation, Moonlight expressed this opinion on the subject of prostitution: Black ladies, just stopping to sell your body!
...er....Colored ladies, just stopping to sell your body! (1) I was struck by these phrases. I would not presume to know what Moonlight 'meant,' and our meeting was the result of such a rare contingency that we have not met again. Rather I seek to elaborate on the thoughts that his words provoked for me. That the speaker, a black man, in speaking to women ‑‑ all women ‑‑ would address them as Black, White, Indian, Colored seemed to me to reveal how thoroughly entrenched in one's consciousness was apartheid's notorious classification program. In a system where any single individual was identified first by racial group, it was not surprising at the time that Moonlight would address each group separately. However, it also seemed significant that this 'roll call' put special emphasis on the fact that all women were included, and that no woman, whatever her race, was exempt from his warning. Such an admonishment to women from a man might imply respect, yet such a statement also begins to speak for women. The implication is: "Women should not…" and so reveals the complexity of a man speaking for women (his 'other'). That Moonlight had spoken to women and addresses each group separately revealed a complex dynamic of relationships across gender and racial lines; however the repetitive patterns of these phrases also asserted themselves on a purely formal level. Some months later, when I began to use the collected raw audio material to generate sound works, I revisited this conversation with Moonlight and 'looped' the above quoted sample. The original audio information was subsequently superimposed upon itself numerous times to produce a work that began with recognizable words and then progressed into a cacophony of sounds. My initial influences for this process were the technical experiments of American composer Steve Reich, in which he constructed a 'new music' entirely from recorded words. More significant was the fact that he too appropriated voices in his work, and in two very important pieces, the voices of black men. They were a Pentecostal street preacher named Brother Walter, and a youth accused of murder in the Harlem Riots of 1964, Daniel Hamm. In the recording of Brother Walter, Reich used words from a sermon on the Biblical Story of the Great Flood ("Its Gonna Rain") and by superimposing repeated sounds created a cyclical 'wash.' He described the work by calling it "controlled chaos...appropriate to the subject matter ‑‑ the end of the world." (2) In this way he participated in the original massage of the sermon. And Brother Walter is given credits in the liner notes. The second example operated in a very different way: it also appropriated the 'voice' of another, but was originally produced, in part, for a benefit on behalf of the individual whose voice is heard. Reich describes the sources for the work "Come Out" in the liner notes of the CD: Composed in 1966, it was originally part of a benefit presented at Town Hall in New York City for the retrial, with lawyers of their own choosing, of the six boys arrested for murder during the Harlem riots of 1964. The voice is that of Daniel Hamm, now acquitted and then 19, describing a beating he took in Harlem's 28th precinct station. The police were about to take the boys out to be 'cleaned up' and were only taking those that were visibly bleeding. Since Hamm had no actual open bleeding he proceeded to squeeze open a bruise on his leg so that he would be taken to the hospital. "I had to like open the bruise up to let some of the bruise blood come out to show them. (3) Both the appropriation of another's 'voice' and the formal manipulation of that voice are problematic. When words are reduced to pure sound there is risk of loosing the potency of their original content. Yet it is significant that Reich's work has overtly 'political' content and function created in the spirit of a 'protest'; it is done for the benefit of another whose voice is 'taken'. While work of this kind protests the suffering of another, it unintentionally reveals the divide between the experience of the one who 'speaks' (the artist) and the experience of the one 'spoken of' (the subject.) Is there merit in a work which allows the voice of another to be heard, but does so through manipulation. Is that merit somehow negated when formal manipulations 'aestheticize' these words into abstract sounds? Do such efforts speak accurately for the appropriated voice and if so with respect? Are these concepts 'speaking for' and 'respect' mutually exclusive? Reich's abstracted sounds, appropriated from the voices of others, may be problematic, yet what would have been accomplished by leaving these voices silent? These questions are resonant with the contradictions that were inherent in the so-called 'resistant art' of South Africa (from the 70's and 80's). The fact that the work of many White artists of this period was produced at a time when to remain silent, or not to speak of the 'other' in the face of outrageous injustices, would have been immoral. The alternative, to retreat into academic formalist abstraction or sanitized images, would have been unconscionable. Though justifiable at the time, some of these strategies may have been outgrown. Perhaps they now require a sensitivity to the complexities of 'speaking for' and 'speaking of'. Kellner addresses this when he points out that "speaking for ones own position, not through that of the Other, will contribute to a heterogeneous, yet cohesive social politik."(4) And yet I wonder if it is it possible (particularly in race‑obsessed South Africa) to speak solely 'of oneself' without implicating the 'other'? How can any self-critical process not make reference to that which is intrinsically present in it's critique? Indeed, to deny individuals who occupy any particular 'side' (across gender, race or economic lines) access to representation of the 'other side' is to [underline] obliterate their mutual interaction [end underline], (even if that interaction be problematic.) The issue is perhaps not a question of 'who has the authority to represent whom' but rather, a need for more voices in the debate. In exposing the contradictions that lie in any construction of 'self' and of 'other' we may begin to understand the dynamics of 'otherness' operating in a changing society. For this 'otherness' may reveal itself as a relative thing, not always rigidly located in one's race, gender, or economic status solely. Rather, the complex composite of factors that make up each 'individual' shift with each social interaction and with each formation and reformation of affinities within a group. The original recording of Moonlight was a document of an authentic social interaction between a black man and three white men. As with many FLAT tapes, the conversation revealed how awkward our efforts can be when we seek to communicate. I look back on that work without any clear resolution as to the 'correctness' of such an act, but I am certain that the encounter was significant in its implications. Both the original recorded materials and the resultant sound work are resonant with larger 'conversations' that are now taking place. Did I appropriate Moonlight's voice ill advisedly? To have excluded him from the number of voices that I used (and still use) to create sound works would have been to remove a valid 'voice' from the FLAT documents. Notes: (1) Moonlight; FLAT Recordings; Dec. 1993. (2) Steve Reich; Liner notes from the CD: "Early Work", Elektra Nonesuch; 1987. (3) Ibid. (4) Clive Kellner; "Cultural Production in Post‑Apartheid South Africa"; "Trade Routes: History and Geography"; The 2nd Johannesburg Biennale Catalog; pp30; 1997.
BlO: Siemon Allen was born in Durban South Africa in 1971. He studied Fine Art at Technikon Natal and was a founding member of the FLAT Gallery alternative space in Durban. He has exhibited his sculptural and audio installations at a number of venues including the Johannesburg Art Gallery, Generator Art Space, Goethe Institute, Washington D.C. and most recently at the South African National Gallery in Cape Town as part of the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale. |