Browsing by Author "Brundrit, Jean"
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- ItemOpen AccessClubs of Night: An artistic response into spaces of collective association and coping in a patriarchal time(2022) Chydenius, Isabella; Brundrit, Jean; Campbell, KurtThis academic and artistic research investigates ideas about safety in relation to gender1 and femininity in the heterotopian2 time-space of urban nightclub culture in the context of the current patriarchal time. 3 My aim is to examine the experiences of safety and unsafety within these particular spaces from an individual and socio-political perspective and discuss how contemporary artists have engaged with similar issues in their own practices. Most importantly, I will investigate the need for safety: where, when, how and for whom it “exists” – but, at the same time, it will also be crucial to consider if safety is not merely, as Gay (2014:194) put it in her book Bad Feminist, a much-needed illusion that is “as frustrating as it is powerful”. It is against this background of seeking to identify shared experiences of (un)safety that I will explore the night as a form of metaphor; highlighting it as a romanticised site which can potentially open up the space for imagining alternative possible futures against the oppressive elements in one's day-to-day life (DeGuzman, 2012). At the same time, it is vital to consider the time-space of the night from the rational perspective of caution; as it is often a heightened time of day for emotional and physical violence, specifically with regard to young girls and womxn who are warned of epistemic gendered violence through society and the mainstream media since childhood (Massey, A., 2017). It is from this perspective that my body of work aims to shed light on the theoretical and symbolic meaning of the intentionally created physical “safe(r) space” (Austin, B., 2018) of specific nightclubs and events that challenge patriarchal norms. 4 In other words, I am interested in how these oftenoverlooked spaces can create new configurations of belonging between like-minded people and able to induce new forms of shared subjectivity in the time-space of the night. I draw on art-historical examples of how nightclub culture has historically provided the time-space for expression and reimagination of the ‘Self' and society, and how this has served as a catalyst for change into mainstream culture, as well as national and global politics. While the discourse is mainly produced around the concept of patriarchal violence, there is, nevertheless, a constant search for signs of unity between the marginalised by patriarchal society in the midst of violence (and the night) as will be evident in the work of the artist Gabrielle Goliath (pg. 19). This move, to ensure I use the past (Histories of Art) to participate in finding paths of flight for the present (and future) in my own visual research is an explicit acknowledgment of both the recurring social gender/class/racial challenges faced in society across time and space, and at the same time the role of contemporary artistic production to give form to these challenges so as to enable the production of critique.
- ItemOpen AccessThe distance between us(2011) Edwards, Dominique; Brundrit, JeanSimon Critchley introduces his book on death, philosophy and literature, Very Little - Almost Nothing, with a preface titled As my father, I have already died, and describes his work as an act of mourning. What follows is an account of his last moments with his father who died after a long struggle with lung cancer. Critchley missed his father's death by twenty minutes: A nurse took me to see him and then left me alone. The room was unlit and sparsely furnished. In pale winter light, he lay with a single sheet covering his corpse: tiny, withered and ravaged by cancer. I spent no more than five minutes alone with him, initially standing petrified, then sitting, and finally summoning up the courage to touch his cheek and nose and caress his forehead. It felt cool. So, this is what death looks like, I thought. This is what my death will look like.
- ItemOpen AccessDouble agents : queer citizenship(s) in contemporary South African visual culture(2016) Stielau, Anna; Lamprecht, Andrew; Brundrit, JeanSouth Africa claims the most progressive constitution on the African continent, extending protections to all citizens regardless of race, gender, ability or sexual orientation. Much has been published in recent years about the induction of LGBTIQ persons into this inclusive post-1994 human rights framework, often with a particular focus on the role of the state in instituting non-discrimination legislation and promoting equality. This document reflects my belief that South African sexuality scholarship too often presents incorporation into a unified nation-state as the only desirable outcome for queer citizens. By mapping the manner in which sexual difference has been uneasily imagined in national discourses, I argue here that the ideal South African citizen remains a heterosexual citizen presupposed as private, patriotic, familial and reproductive. I posit that when non-normative sexual identities and practices become visible in the public sphere, they risk assimilation into "acceptable" modes of representation produced in accordance with the expectations and responsibilities attending state-sanctioned national membership. In so doing, I assert, these cultural forms mandate a queerness that leaves structural inequalities intact. To look beyond this horizon I choose to explore dissident citizenship forms that intervene in dominant cultural narratives to expand the boundaries of belonging. Specifically, I concern myself with representations of queer subjects in visual culture and the multiple audiences these representations invite.
- ItemOpen AccessA history of failure(2011) Roussouw, Chad; Brundrit, Jean; Richards, ColinA history of failure implies several things. It can point to a chronology of the concept of failure, like so many contemporary history books that chart a minute aspect of culture. It could refer to a personal record, like a criminal having a history of violence. The implication is also there that history itself has failed to achieve, failed to describe, failed to move forward, failed to be history at all. History in this essay is not just the study of the past, but also its use in culture - to separate us from nature, to validate ideologies or to provide insight into our present. History in these terms is not a sequence of physical events, but the representation of these events. These representations exhibit curious behaviour: no matter their function they appeal to truth. History uses the language of the real to validate itself (Culler 2002: Kindle edition'), and this language is often constituted into narrative (which I will discuss in some detail later).
- ItemOpen AccessRe-forming the monstrous(2023) Jacobs, Gabriele; Alexander, Jane; Brundrit, JeanRe-forming the Monstrous consists of an installation of ceramic and wooden sculpture accompanied by an audio piece, and an explicatory document. This artistic project aims to critique the entwined social and ecological violence associated with the current era, as governed by hegemonic patriarchal capitalism, with particular reference to Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing and Donna Haraway. In the artwork, this is articulated through an imaginative reinterpretation of selected characters from Greco-Roman mythology. The trope of the Hero who must slay a monster to gain redemption for his transgressions (as in the case of Heracles) is examined and subverted. The process culminates in a sculptural installation in two parts: the first a metaphorical contemplation of the ongoing ecological and social devastation; the second composed of a number of discrete tableaux symbolising a sanctuary for the monster. In this figuration, the monster, represented by particular South African and domestic fauna, provides the departure point to consider issues of the environment, queerness and care through the immersive format of installation. The writing of queer theorists, José Estaban Munoz' s and Jack Halberstam is considered with reference to this body of work, as well as artworks by a number of local and international artists, in the context of imagining a creative salve to current global crises.
- ItemOpen AccessShape-shifting: Reimaging mothering and mother-being(2017) Venter, Marguerite; Inggs, Stephen; Brundrit, JeanBased on my lived experience, this body of work reimages the representation of mothering, motherbeing and the space in between through a visual exploration within photography. The overlooked space between mothering and mother-being renders it invisible as the two positions are frequently conflated. My work reassesses and redresses the representation of the mother and the concept of mothering within the context of art. Finally, the practical work and accompanying research challenge the modest, marginalised and repressed place that mothering (and mother-artists) has occupied within fine art. The role of the mother and the concept of motherhood are burdened with expectations, presumption, convention, tradition, judgement and discrimination. Within the context of art, the Madonna and Child trope remains the most instantly summoned and enduring visual standard to address mothering. My project attempts to widen the narrow aperture through which the contemporary mother and mothering is viewed. It would be presumptuous to assume that my voice is representative of the experience of all mothers everywhere. For the purposes of this body of work my own lived experience–being the mother in a middle-class, single-parent household while studying, classified as divorced, South African, white, born at the cusp of Generation X and Y (millennial)–serves as the context from which I approach mothering.1 It is important to emphasise the distinction between mothering and mother-being and acknowledge the fluxive space between—wherein independence and being depended on, meet, clash, reconcile and coexist. I consider mothering to be the active, ongoing process of caring for and raising one's child(ren): caring for their physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual and social needs. Mothering also includes leading by example (actions, words, beliefs). Motherbeing revolves around the mother reconciling her pre- and post-child identity with her mothering identity; the personal experience of being a mother in relation to other identities within oneself (e.g. being an artist and/or a student—as in my case—in relation to one's existence as a mother).
- ItemOpen AccessThe Emblematic Divide: Contemplating Reality, the Imaginary and Perception in Photographic Practices(2020) Tanner, Nicolas; Brundrit, Jean; Inggs, StephenIn The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Seminar XI, the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1977) recounts the ancient Greek parable of the contest between the Zeuxis and Parrhasios, two artists competing to paint the most convincing trompe l'oeil painting. In the first instance, Zeuxis painted grapes so perfectly that birds flew down from the sky to peck on them. Satisfied with his undertaking, he then turns to Parrhasios and asks him to lift the veil to see the painting behind it – failing to realise that the veil itself is the lifelike painting. Naturally, Parrhasios won the competition. This is not due to any superior technical mastery, but because his painting reveals an interesting conception relating to the very nature of human perception. That is to say, perception is never ‘neutral', we never simply see reality ‘as it is' – there is always an underlying psychic economy of (unconscious) hopes, fears, and desires which structures our very perception of reality itself.
- ItemOpen AccessTrace and Time’s Arrow(2016) Milligan, Janis; Brundrit, Jean; Saptouw, FabianTrace can be thought of as a copy, a small amount of something, evidence, a remnant, vestige, residue or mark. Trace can also be considered more actively as a verb, meaning to follow, track or locate. The studio production that I am engaged with encompasses all of these meanings. My MFA research project specifically investigates trace from rust. Rust, also referred to as iron oxide, is a by-product of the breakdown or oxidation1 of iron, and it develops in the presence of oxygen, moisture and time. In my studio practice, I transfer rust onto various materials and it is the resultant vestigial marks, or ‘traces’, that are at the core of my MFA studio explorations.
- ItemOpen AccessUnravelling: Photographic Explorations Of Mending The Forest(2023) Pretorius, Emme; Brundrit, Jean; Josephy, SveaUnravelling: Photographic Explorations of Mending the Forest explores aspects of South Africa's Garden Route Afrotemperate forests and my relationship to them through my artistic practice. This project looks at the unravelling of these forests and at my unravelling within these forests and my artistic process. It is concerned with the coming undone of these forests' intricate systems in the interest of the Capitalocene, and with my figurative artistic attempts to fix these forests. This project further aims to make this unravelling visible, to indicate the faded and fragmented state of these forests. It also addresses the futility of some of the attempts to rectify the damage done to these forests. This document explores the importance of process and materiality in photography and in my artistic practice. Through the experimental use of darkroom processes, expired paper and the sewing of fragmented photographs, I aim to demonstrate how such processes and attention to materiality can make my practical and theoretical concerns visible.