Born from the need to develop a therapeutic, artistic expression to the experience of living on the frontier, on the very edge of first and third worlds. In an endeavor to continually search out a new language, while confronting the difficulty of defining beauty and trauma - an experience that has led to a mystical aesthetic and music which is simultaneously intuitive and obscure. Drawn on the universal mystical power of the arts, to assert Romanticism.
My primary aim as an artist, working with the Mud ensemble musicians was to investigate the relationship between image and sound. By observing and documenting the musicians, I systematically built up an archive of visual and performance elements that subsequently became integrated into live shows, these visual elements slowly began to influence the music, ultimately giving definition to the performances.
We conceptualised shows so that the audience experience was constructed around the idea of dreaming a movie.. I worked with makeshift hi and low tech equipment such as surveillance cameras, doing live feeds that I would mix with pre-recorded material, performance and scripted dialogue, and I integrated this with site-specific installations creating once of events.
My involvement with Mud ensemble influenced my practice and approach to art making beyond film and audio, and the music inspired some of my sculptures, paintings, and installations developed from music and performances blurring the line between different disciplines.
I have continued to collaborate with Marcel van Heerden and Juliana Venter respectively.
‘Angel’ was a site-specific performance by Mud ensemble in Johannesburg, South Africa including live music, installation and video elements. It focused on the poetics of the mundane, recreating intimate, domestic rituals. As Siemon Allen describes the scene, “The main exhibition space housed the band and the very crowded audience, but in a small back bedroom, singer Marcel van Heerden sat ‘lamenting’ on a bed, while a live feed of this ‘scene’ was shown back in the main room. At one point in the performance, Juliana Venter, lead vocalist for the ensemble, took a shower in the gallery’s bathroom. As Van Heerden sang in the main space, Thomas Barry filmed her naked, wet body - feeding this image live to the audience. A large window onto the shower had been opened, also making her physically visible to the audience. The performers, indeed, “acted out these scenes” not only in the public space of exhibition rooms of the gallery, but also the private space of the bedroom and bathroom. The audience moved from room to room, or gazed at the monitors. Like voyeurs the viewers watched ‘private acts’ in a space where public and private were blurred.”
Siemon D Allen (1999) The Flat gallery: A documentation and critical examination of an informal art organisation in Durban, Flat International.
‘Level’ was a show by the Mud ensemble ... loosely based around a medieval morality play, with central themes of hell, earth and heaven. In his review of ‘Level’ Charl Blignaut argues that Mud ensemble captured a creative spirit of throwing down the gauntlet, “not merely to be weird, but to help make sense of our chaos and stir up our intellectual sloth.” He continues, “’The Mud Ensemble’s Level comprises a dangerous mix of music, ritual and performance…all about Emilo and Curly and a DJ called Marc Angelo. And about the crushing impact of the city on their lives. About how Wopko Jensma recounts the death of Can Themba and how an opera singer in a coat of nails can live in two parallel realities at once….let me recommend most highly that you buy a ticket now.”
Charl Blignaut, 16 June 1998
Photography - unknown
Marcel van Heerden and Johan van Wyk with brick and Land Rover
Photography - Toast Coetzer
Photography - Andrew Bannister
Barry and du Toit perform a duet with drill and violin
Venter - Popsong
Empty Radio
Photograpy - Neil Lightfoot
Barry - van Heerden - Marshall - Hauser - du Toit - Venter - Gittel
