ZULU FOR MEDICS
Audio Recording (Tape 19A)
May 21 – 30, 1994

 

It was my habit to visit the Point Road pawn shops to look for any kind of material that could be used in my work, and one day, about a week before the Volkskas Atelier, I came across an interesting item. It was a language tape for teaching English speaking medical students how to communicate with Zulu patients. The broad implications of such a simple object intrigued me, and when I expressed interest in buying it, the pawn shop proprietor simply gave to me what he obviously regarded as a useless item.
I was engaged at that time with a number of sound projects that dealt with issues of communication, but was also painfully conscious of my own limited knowledge of the other languages spoken in Natal, most obviously Zulu. To me the tape, in spite of its ‘well meaning’ intention, spoke not only to class distinction, but the power relations between a physician and a patient, and a white and black South African. This was revealed in the ‘probing’ authoritarian tone of the doctor as well as the personal nature of the questions.
I had used Zulu in cut-up works for the Festival of Laughter, as mentioned earlier, where I took fragments of the language untranslated and experimented with random collage. With this project, however, the identity and function of the original tape was retained in the resultant sound work. The work was built on two distinctly different components that clashed and competed on one level, but combined ultimately to create what some described as a ‘disturbing’ work.
In a continuation of the experiments with my old ‘three stringed’ Spanish guitar; I amped the broken instrument by putting a microphone inside it and ‘playing’. I did not play guitar, nor did I speak Zulu, but I was intrigued by the idea of creating a disturbing soundtrack for the language tape. I played the guitar while listening to the Zulu tape and then recorded the two together. The chaotic guitar gave the language tape a mood or an edge, which seemed fitting to its subject matter.
To present the work at the Volkskas, I used an entire hi‑fi system as part of the work, and this behaved like a ‘found‑object’. This seemed to address the idea of the sound system as being a common household commodity, representing prestige or ownership. To me, the seriousness and complexities embodied in the tape stood in sharp contrast to the obvious commodity status of the rather ostentatious equipment.
The work was full of contradictions. There was, as with all works that ‘spoke’ through a sampled ‘black voice’, a danger of being misread. Such an appropriation might be seen as a disrespectful careless use of another. But my hope was to address the very awkwardness inherent in the bringing together of two cultures or two languages and the power relations inherent in any exchange.
It was ironic that the tape’s explicit purpose was, in the most literal sense, to promote healing. And yet it was an appropriate metaphor for the problems and pitfalls that faced the South African. Was ‘healing’ possible within the dynamics so clearly illustrated in the tape? Was the white South African ‘doctor’ the authority, the Zulu in need of ‘help’? For me that small souvenir of the best and worst of the colonial missionary spirit spoke volumes.
Many Zulu viewers were drawn to the work because of language, and as with other such works, an interaction occurred across racial lines. It was, indeed, an educational tape, and I was amused by how wooden and simple minded the non-Zulu speaker on the tape must have sounded to a Zulu listener.

 

SIEMON ALLEN, Zulu for Medics, hi-fi sound-system, audio-cassette, 1994

EXTRACTS from ZULU FOR MEDICS.

English male:         G-14. Where do you work?
English female:     You work where?
Zulu male:               Usebenza gupi?
English male:         G-15. What job or work do you do?
English female:     You work, which work?
Zulu male:               Usebenza muphi umsebenzi?
English male:         G-16. Do you still work?
English female:     You still are working?
Zulu male:               Usasebenza na?
English male:         G-17. I don’t work anymore.
English female:     I don’t still work.
Zulu male:               Ungesasebenzi.
English male:         I don’t work.
Zulu male:               Ungesebenzi.
English male:         G-18. When did you stop working?
English female:     You stopped when to work?
Zulu male:               Uyeke nini ugusebenza?

English male:         G-42. My father is dead.
English female:     The father to me he is dead.
Zulu male:               Ubaba wami ushonele.
English male:         G-43. My mother is alive.
English female:     The mother to me she is alive.
Zulu male:               Umama wami usaphila.
English male:         G-44. My brother is sick.
English female:     The brother to me he is sick.
Zulu male:               Ubuthi wami uyagula.
English male:         G-45. My sister is healthy.
English female:     The sister to me she is healthy.
Zulu male:               Usisi wami uyaphila.

English female:     In Zulu the question form is simply a statement
said with an interrogative intonation. “Na” emphasizes the
question form like the Afrikaans “Né” and it is optional.
English male:         G-55. Do you smoke?
English female:     You do smoke!
Zulu male:               Uyabema na!
English male:         G-56. Do you drink?
English female:     You do drink!
Zulu male:               Uyaphuza na!
English male:         G-57. What? That is what do you drink?
English female:     You drink which alcoholic beverage, beer?
Zulu male:               Uphuza bupi utshwala na?
English male:         G-58. Do you take medicines?
English female:     Do you drink medicines?
Zulu male:               Uyayiphuza imiti na?
English male:         G-59. Do you see the witchdoctor?
English female:     You go is it so to the witchdoctor?
Zulu male:               Uyaya yini ezinyangeni zabantu?
English male:         G-61. Do you take anything from the witchdoctor?
English female:     You take is it so medicines at the witchdoctor?
Zulu male:               Uyayithata yini imiti ezinyangeni?

At the time, Lola Frost had spoken to me about this recording in the context of my other work, and mentioned that she was intrigued by it. In a later interview, I asked her to recall what she had thought and said about the piece.

Allen:         I want to talk about something you said to me concerning Zulu for Medics.
Frost:          I remember getting very excited about it. It seemed to me, on the one level, contained within the tape was already the idea of the grid.
Allen:         Yes, G1, G2, G3…
Frost:          I liked that classical feature, particularly in relation to your work as I already understood it. Indeed your use of the video-tape, now or then, is an extension of the grid. At the same time the “G1” is already inserted with a social set of meanings. And then, how should I say this, culturally adequate to the moment of transition that we were going through. So my understanding of that work was that a) just in a found-object, you had managed to articulate your own aesthetic concerns, as I understood you were working in then. But in an oral format. It seemed as if you had selected this work, as a correspondence to what I perceived in your visual work. I also remember being quite excited at the clarity of the social implications of it. Here you had this grid, and the same message was being repeated in all three languages, corresponding to this utopian moment. I think it was 1994, and we were all terribly excited about this notion of cultural amalgamation. So that work seemed to me to be poignant in relation to the time we were in and in relation to your own way of working.[1]

VOLKSKAS ATELIER
NSA Gallery
June 1, 1994

 

Held at the NSA, as a preliminary exhibition for what was considered then one of South Africa’s most ‘important’ art shows: the Volkskas; this was significant in that a large number of people associated with the FLAT participated. These included De Kock, Marrins, Anthony Scullion, Barry, Lene Templehoff, Erlich, Gainer, Mansfield and myself. Out of the 30 exhibiting, 9 were associated or would become associated with the FLAT.
Then NSA President, Mike McMeeken, opened the show and attributed its success and the rejuvenation of young art in Natal to the FLAT.[2] Art critic Carol Brown in her column in The Daily News wrote:

The show is distinguished by its wide variety of media including the imaginative and intelligently conceived installation by Piers Mansfield. This installation pays tribute to Kennedy and has a nostalgic air which is achieved by a minimum of objects and dramatic lighting which creates an air of tension. Installations are few and far between in our South African art vocabulary although they are well accepted and part of regular art making in the rest of the world. Siemon Allen's “Zulu for Medics” also falls into this more conceptual framework where art is not wallpaper. Both these art forms have been recently shown at the FLAT Gallery where art as that on the show has been given a new venue. This initiative by a group of young artists has perhaps been a major factor in energizing our local art scene.[3]

Meijer in her column also mentioned the FLAT:

“The 1994 regional ‘Volkskas’ is one of the strongest showings we have seen for many years. The exhibition exemplifies the vibrancy and enthusiasm of young artists working in the greater Durban region,” McMeekan said. He then singled out the FLAT Gallery, “Much of this enthusiasm for this exhibition is a direct spin‑off from the alternative FLAT Gallery, which is a valuable and…[4]
SUPERMAN / SOUND EFFECTS & GUITAR
Audio Recording (Tape 21)
June 1994

 

The first five minutes of this recording is a discussion between Barry and myself where we outline future plans to sabotage the FLAT space, if it is ever co-opted by the Technikon. A rumor had been circulating that the Technikon was aiming to buy the property that included the building that housed the FLAT. There is a something of a celebratory atmosphere to the evening and at some point Samkelo Matoti joined in sanging and talking.
Later on the same tape is a recording made some time after. Here, Horsburgh can be heard jamming on the guitar, while I sing and make other noises. We began by playing a crude version of REM’s Superman and then Horsburgh continues to play on the guitar while I create sounds on a record player by manipulating records (including Dylan’s Mr. Tambourine Man).
The sound was uneven and intercepted the chords played by Horsburgh. Later, I also over-dubbed myself playing a repetitive chord on the guitar onto this recording forming along with other sounds a kind of cacophony. This was a recording that would later form part of my audio installation at the FLAT: Songs for Nella.
On the second side, I continued my experiments with guitar and record player. I played a sound effects record, that included among other strange sounds, farm animals, while simultaneously ‘attacking’ the guitar. I subsequently recorded the result. This sound work was made with a method similar to the one I used to construct Zulu for Medics. (which was described earlier.) Near the end of the cassette I began to read from D.H. Lawrence’s Sons & Lovers, over a recording of train sounds. The train shunting resonated with the book’s erotic subject.

SPANISH TRAIN / ENGLISH TRAIN

Audio Recording (Tape 22)
June 1994

 

Spanish Train is the name of a song by pop singer Chris De Burgh, and on this tape Barry and myself constructed 45 minute parody of the music. We recited the lyrics of the song a number of times, each time taking a more experimental approach and by the end of tape, the ‘music’ was rendered almost unrecognizable. Some of the things we used in making this tape included the ‘automatic machine gun’, an Indian music tape, a record player and the De Burgh record itself. This ‘irritating’ parody, along with Superman (Tape 21) and Zulu for Medics, was a component in my multi-tape audio installation: Songs for Nella.
On side two of this tape I continued my experiments with reading from D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, while playing a sound effects record of English train sounds. The shunting of the train, again created a provocative soundtrack. My choice of text was random, as I flipped through pulling out phrases here and there. The entire effect of the recording is one of an irrational movie-soundtrack or audio-book.