Browsing by Author "Campbell, Kurt"
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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 AccessImprovisation and Healing: Wayfinding as a praxis of knowledge(2023) Hassim, Kamil; Campbell, Kurt; Mahashe GeorgeTwo Zen monks upon hearing a wind bell ringing: “ The Master asks: ‘What makes the sound? Does the bell make the sound or the wind make the sound?' The student answers: ‘My mind makes the sound, because the wind causes the bell to strike and vibrate the air, but there is no sound until that vibration reaches my ear and is interpreted by the mind. Sound exists thus only inside of our mind.' The Master says this is not true: ‘Even if my mind is working, if the wind does not blow, the bell does not shake, and the air does not vibrate – then there is no sound. In reality, they are all making the sound. There is no subject who listens and no sound that is heard, but the entire universe is making the sound through this person. This is total dynamic function.1' – Zen koan from Master Dogēn's Shobogenzo (Cross & Nishijima, 2006) The attached document is the digital library submission for the text which accompanies my MFA body of work. The works I create explore modes of investigation and knowledge in a histor- ical, contemporary and futurist setting. Taking the form of sonic sculptures, instruments, visuals, videos and performance pieces, I consider the artworks as philosophical larynxes2. I used the project to explore how art can be a tool to seek and represent information about certain experiences in my social world and how an individual path of healing through artistic practice is possible and can be realised in the exhibition
- ItemOpen AccessLooking South African: tracing the relationship between national pavilion and nation in South Africa s history at the Venice Biennale(2024) Bronkowski, Annchen; Campbell, KurtThe Venice Biennale, structured around national pavilions, is the world's oldest, largest and most prestigious biennial event for national art participation. South Africa has participated since 1950, and this has engendered thought-provoking, ever-changing debates about what constitutes artistic representation of national identity. This thesis presents the first institutional history of the South African national pavilion at the Venice Biennale. It highlights the organisational system of the pavilion, shaped by the South African Association of Arts in the twentieth century and the Department of Sports, Arts and Culture in the twenty-first, and analyses the politics of the pavilion's structural history. In so doing, it shows how certain sections and members of a community, who in some sense thought of themselves as ‘national' representatives, shaped the notion of a South African ‘national art' throughout the twentieth century. This study argues that the understanding of a ‘national' art has changed throughout the decades in South Africa. In the 1950s, the preoccupation was with stylistic issues and specifically with the shift from an academic to a modern art. Towards the 1960s, under the guidance of the New Group movement and artists like Walter Battiss, Alexis Preller, and Cecil Skotnes, South African art in Venice sought to capture a specific ‘South Africanness' rather than seeking to emulate modernism as it had developed in Europe and America. The country's exclusion from Venice during the boycott years of the 1970s to early 1990s coincided with the emergence of a politically-aware national aesthetic, while South Africa's re-entry to Venice in 1993 highlights a time when the tenets of post-apartheid nation-building had to be navigated within a postmodern, globalist art world focused on issues of post-nationalism. Finally, the thesis considers how contemporary concerns about inclusive representation have completely restructured South Africa's participation. This study shows that South Africa has always been caught, culturally, between national determinations and internationalist aspirations and that this tension is nowhere more sharply reflected than at the Venice Biennale.
- ItemOpen AccessPortable Heritage: perspectives on white mobility in post-apartheid South Africa(2017) Le Riche, Pierre Henri; Campbell, Kurt; van der SchijffThis written component partially fulfils the special requirements for the Master of Fine Arts degree as specified by the University of Cape Town. The content of this document, which is intentionally concise, offers contextualisation and supplementation to my visual research. It must be stressed that this research is not the primary object offered for examination; that important role lies with my body of artworks that work in conjunction with the document. The goal of this document is to locate my practice within a broader field of artistic research, which is achieved through the consideration of relevant theorists and artists working within the same scope as I do. The visual material I reference in this document are catalogued using a captioning system that states the name of the artist or photographer, the title of the work, medium and date of completion, whilst throughout the rest of the document the Harvard (author - date) system is employed as a means of reference.
- ItemOpen AccessPractices of Listening: (Re)percussions of Sound, Silences and Censorship from (Post-)Apartheid South Africa(2019) Swinney, Warrick; Campbell, Kurt; Josephy, SveaThis project is situated in the area of sonic art and explores my personal biography in relation to sound, silence, censorship and social control. Using the artistic productions of John Cage, I examine silence as both an object—a recording in a fixed medium—and as a verb directly addressing the question of censorship of the self and of others. The interplay of silencing and silence is expressed in my artistic practice which employs, as audio palate, the silences between the words of significant political speeches from South Africa. As a consequence of this process I have excised all recognizable words in various aural and video works leaving only the 'Cagean’ noise of the silence. I further examine related aspects of silence and silencing through the metaphor of the mute button—a mechanical silencing device—which serves both as a creative tool in a recording studio as well as a censorial device to prohibit voices being heard. The beating, hitting and silences are all set against a backdrop of (post) apartheid South Africa for the expression of some of my personal and theoretical realisations.
- ItemOpen AccessRePair: (im)possibilities of care-taking and making with care in times of isolation(2022) Friess, Carola; Van Der Schijff, Lucas; Campbell, KurtThe sudden and drastic impacts the recent global health crisis had on my life, and on society more broadly, triggered intuitive processes of creation, whereby its context was difficult to grasp in the beginning. Thus, my motivation for conducting this research stemmed from a personal worry about the dystopian situation outside of my private sphere. The many social upheavals caused by the pandemic would ultimately shape my thinking through creative production. This allowed me to grasp the many intangible aspects of my life and my conception of the world in a productive way; and connect many disparate aspects through a process of corporeal engagement that, literally and figuratively, stitched emotional and conceptual ruptures together as can be observed in the art objects displayed in the exhibition. This body of work thus explores the complexity of the act of repairing as a frame for art-making: as a means to articulate strategies of care in times of isolation, with the full knowledge of an indefinite outcome that does not sully the endeavour. My former profession as a surgical nurse, a profession of collective care-taking, and profiled as an ‘essential worker' during this pandemic, has had a substantial impact on this project. My specific interest is the transition from an act of care-taking for a stranger into artistic processes in isolation, that nevertheless involves a manner of care despite important differences. The times of social separation made me realise how interconnected we are. Thus, RePair is an attempt to emphasise the importance of relational perspectives wrought from the two subject positions I inhabited as a nurse and as an artist. I consider this document in conjunction with the body of artworks displayed as a means to explore the transformative potential of a relational and affective set of aesthetic considerations in a time of a shared crisis.
- ItemOpen AccessSurface tension: permeability, the body, and installation(2023) Ducray, Luke; Alexander, Jane; Campbell, KurtSurface Tension – Permeability, the Body, and Installation, is comprised of a multimedia installation and an accompanying minor thesis. The concurrent points of departure for both are the body and the medium of installation itself, exploring their sympathies with the lens of permeability. The installation presents sculptures and video montage works that make use of medical, religious, and pathological renderings of the body, drawing attention to its varied portrayal as reliant on parallel visual technologies. The navigable and immersive nature of installation is used to suggest a reading of the body as permeable, constructed, and fluid. In the document, these portrayals are discussed via an arthistorical case-study approach, each suggested as varying depictions of bodily permeability. In particular, the Cartesian body as the product of Judeo-Christian morality, the Descartes mind-body split, Enlightenment secularization, and Western medical representation that renders the body as a discrete organism ending at the skin is tracked. The project attempts to unsettle this paradigm by focusing on the dialectic of porosity, which aims to situate the body in dialogue with systems beyond itself via consumption, excretion, and infection. The second aspect of the research is an extrapolation of this porous dialectic to modes of representation and their consequent ways of seeing. The Cartesian bodily paradigm is suggested as parallel to the rise of ocularcentrism. Whilst acknowledging the strengths of various mediums, attention is called to the capacity of static, 2D media to emphasize ocularcentric disembodiment. In contrast, installation is explored as a medium that demonstrates a porous capacity via the viewer's occupation of an immersive environment designed to activate multiple senses, thus aligning message and medium.
- ItemOpen AccessTransnational identity, historical entanglements and the living archive: between Medu & me(2021) Makin, Kim Karabo; Campbell, KurtThe doors of culture shall be opened is an audio-visual exhibition and self-reflexive research project that unpacks transnational identity, historical entanglements, and the living archive, through Medu Art Ensemble as the case in point. The project expands on the relationship ‘between Medu and Me', as a method of engaging fragments of the archive, the construction of history, and identity formation across Botswana and South Africa. As the culmination of research and fieldwork in Gaborone and Cape Town from 2019 to 2021, the title of the exhibition references a Medu poster once housed in the University of Cape Town's Special Collections Library. The project aims to unpack and sound a space that centres dislocation, by providing some analysis of the post-traumas of Botswana in the anti-Apartheid struggle, with an emphasis on lived experiences, as well as oral traditions of storytelling and radio. The exhibition and accompanying research document work together to present creative and scholarly ideation of the relationship between art and history in contemporary Botswana and South Africa. With a look at history as circular and cyclical, the project uses a narrative tone in order to engage in an open dialogue with fragments of the archive. In this way, I map the interconnected timelines of individual and collective memory, using photography, sound, installation and sculpture (namely ceramics and assemblage). With a focus on Medu, I engage an extended conversation of Botswana's national history as entangled with aspects of South Africa's. By tracing a coming-of-age story of identity formation across neighbouring nation-states, I simultaneously unpack transnational identity through an exploration of the living archive. With a look at sound as spatialised and socialised, I reengage the interlocutors of history, as in circular motion with my individual present and collective future.