AAF 08/10/2015 AAF 08/10/2015

Slow – Co – Ruption by Dineo Seehee Bopape

An interview with the South African artist on her first UK solo exhibition at the Hayward’s Project Space, London.

Dineo Seshee Bopape is one of South Africa’s most admired, unconventional artist. Her first UK solo exhibition at the Hayward’s Project Space, Southbank, can best be termed as surprising, unexpected, puzzling or wonderful that your brain cannot comprehend it. Too many gadgets going on at the same time. It’s like you are not supposed to grasp what the display is about? Comprehending the works isn’t really the idea here I gathered. You walk into the space and you are challenged by a tremor of everything but the kitchen sink. From sculptural installation with video montages to constant flash photography, two TV set with no pictures flipping between analogue and digital visuals, a machine mix and re-mix ear-splitting sound. What is more? Timber, bricks, mirrors and plants, form multifaceted and wobbly configurations, often across the walls and on grass floor of the gallery, alongside a fresh sculpture conceived especially for Hayward Gallery Project Space. The presentation is overwhelmingly imposing.

Dineo Seshee Bopape
Video still from *why do you call me when you know i can’t answer the phone,* 2012
Digital video, colour, sound
Duration: 10 minutes 42 seconds
Photo credit: © Dineo Seshee Bopape. Courtesy of STEVENSON Cape Town, Johannesburg

DSB: I was born in 1981 in Polokwane, South Africa. I was born on a Sunday. If I were Ghanaian, my name would be akosua/akos for short. During the same year of my birth, the name ‘internet’ is mentioned for the first time Princess Diana of Britain marries Charles; AIDS is identified/created/named; Salman Rushdie releases his book “Midnight’s Children” bob Marley dies ‐ more events of the year of my birth are perhaps too many to have accounted for... I did my undergraduate studies in Art at Durban University of technology, South Africa, (2004), and attained my MFA from Columbia University, USA, in 2010. I work generally in a variety of mediums, mostly installation and video and drawing. My work has generally dealt with issues/ideas of representation so to speak... and memory, whilst some resist the pressure of having to mean something.

Here and now, what made you want to take part in Africa Utopia festival and what do you hope to pull off?

DSB: I was invited to take part. And what I hope to attain is to brush up my talking skills, I get often nervous when I speak in public, and often unsatisfied after because there is so much stuff that remains unsaid. Perhaps agreeing to participate is a chance for another rehearsal for the next time.

How would you describe your art? Is it redemptive, ethical or relative and political. And when putting together your installations what is your end goal?

DSB: It depends on who the viewer is I guess. It can be redemptive. Whilst in the process of making a work, goal posts changes. There is a freedom of sorts that comes with not having a strict goal. The goal is an unamiable thing.

Dineo Seshee Bopape
Video still from *is i am sky*, 2013
Digital video, colour, sound
Duration: 17 minutes 48 seconds
Photo credit: © Dineo Seshee Bopape. Courtesy of STEVENSON Cape Town, Johannesburg

Talk to us about your Africa Utopia exhibition at the London Hayward Gallery project Space?

DSB: "Slow-co-ruption" is the title of the show. I was thinking about data corruption, the data of narrative, of memory, of liberal socio-politics, self, language, sense and order and all thatcorruption implies… rupture... An interruption of a memory/a file/a story... about politics of space and the metaphysics of being... A death… ‘Productive’ death…The show has 3 main works and 2 supports, so to speak. In the first room is “Same Angle, same lighting”, a mechanical sculptural work which I made in 2010 but is now in its 3rd incarnation. The first version had a light that was shining repetitively, back and forth on to a dark photograph (just looking over and over again). The 2nd version which I had shown in Cape town at Stevenson had a camera that was supposed to capture the information on a photograph and send it to a nearby monitor, but the machine kept on failing and what stood in the monitor with it was a pre-recorded video (showing the movement that was supposed to happen); an external memory of sorts…

(Flabbergasting response or what?) Rendered speechless.

And now in its 3rd reiteration in Slow-co-ruption, the camera sends information to several monitors/screens (hosts). The camera goes back and forth scanning the information off the paper (a scanned colour photocopy of picture of a lush garden from a garden and home magazine from the early 1990’s). This machine is hosted on and by these wooden supports and shop display things. Around “same angle, same lighting”- (the other supports) are several copies of video grass green/sky blue and also slow-co-ruption (stickers of flowers and eyes) the flowers are an almost random selection of native SA flowers and some from the garden image in same angle…. The eyes are those of an anonymous person and also those of philosophers Biko and Sobukwe who are also known for having written much about a need for rupture – both mental and spatial (so to speak). In the other rooms are the video “why do you call me when you know I can’t answer the phone” a piece from 2013 which is itself about the rupture of meaning or sense, a corruption or narrative. Whilst “Is I am sky” also speaks of a thing of absence, self-presence and of a kind of a metaphysical death to make a very insufficient summary…

Dineo Seshee Bopape
Video still from *Grass Green,* 2008
SD digital video, sound
Duration: 6 minutes 52 seconds
Photo credit: © Dineo Seshee Bopape. Courtesy of STEVENSON Cape Town, Johannesburg

Do you have a favourite piece from this exhibition and what next for DSB?

DSB: Not really, I love the different pieces differently...but currently I must say I am most excited about the "slow-co-ruption" stickers. On what next? I would like to show my work more on the African continent (abroad too), I would like to grow as an artist, to clarify my thoughts, for my work to be sharper, to continue being curious and continue to play... also to share with others... to remain healthy and able.

Southbank Centre

AAF 13/08/2015 AAF 13/08/2015

We interview the CEO of FutureEverything Drew Hemment

A 20-year ‘art project’: Drew Hemment’s journey through digital art and innovation with FutureEverything leads him to Singapore.

A 20-year ‘art project’: Drew Hemment’s journey through digital art and innovation with FutureEverything leads him to Singapore

The FutureEverything festival began 20 years ago in Manchester as a hub for digital collaboration and innovation in the arts. This September, the festival lands in ‘the city of the future’, Singapore, ready to blow minds and challenge perceptions of digital art. FutureEverything CEO, Drew Hemment, discusses the implications of our ever-expanding digital culture surrounding the arts.

How did you find your way into digital art and what led you to transition to focus more on curating it in a large festival setting?

I came across Internet art in the early 1990s, when I spoke at and helped organise the Virtual Futures conferences. Before that in the 1980s I got fascinated by networks when I was DJing and organising acid house parties. I set up the festival in 1995. I’d hung up the decks in ‘92 and in ‘95 I ditched the literary agent and book deal and threw myself into festival curation full time.

This was an incredibly creative moment but there was nowhere people could come together. I wanted there to be an event that was about new work and practice as well as ideas. In secret, the festival itself has always been an art project to me, or at least an arts enquiry.

Conference Image. Courtesy FutureEverything

Innovation Lab. Courtesy FutureEverything

Singapore Skyline. Image credit Toh Ming Zong

It seems to me that digital art is a lot more accessible for members of the 21st century public than more traditional or current experimental art forms. What is it about digital art that makes it more accessible and do you think its accessibility promotes or encourages accessibility in other artistic mediums?

Accessibility is a good thing, but it can also be a ruse. Many digital artists working today consume and replay interaction forms and images that saturate our lives, through advertising, social media etc. So digital art can be instantly familiar and accessible, in the same way pop art was before it. Any sense of a single ‘thing’ called digital art is decisively over. I am mostly interested in art, and design, which asks questions about the underlying codes that makes changes, leaving the world and the audience different to how it found them.

How do you focus on encouraging digital art and culture that creates a ‘moment’ or ‘event’ in a digital world that allows for instant access to a variety of archived artistic material and ideas? In other words, how can one innovate artistically and digitally in a world that uses technology to access an infinite amount of ideas and artistic endeavours?

We can access everything instantly; it is at our finger tips. This can create a challenge, however, because we have this overabundance of content and connectivity, people need to meet face to face. We need to focus really hard on one thing that is amazing and profound. We’ve seen music gigs explode because people need the live experience to give meaning to streaming and downloads. It’s the same in art, and ideas events, it’s a symptom of our time.

How important do you think artistic collaboration between individuals is in digital art and culture?

Collaboration, sharing and openness are central to the DNA of digital culture. People can collaborate with tens or thousands of strangers across networks to create original and beautiful media objects in which the results of individual creativity can be seen. Mobile networks enable swift and spontaneous collaboration across loosely connected groups. There are always new ways to collaborate with people from other disciplines using them as tools for new development. Having said this, collaboration does not always lead to good art. Solo practice and isolation can create exceptional things.

How has the FutureEverything festival developed since its conception to the upcoming festival in Singapore? Are you witnessing significant changes in the way technology is being used in collaboration with art?

FutureEverything Singapore does feel like something of a culmination of our journey. We have been on this 20 year rollercoaster, imagining the near future, making it and mucking around with it. Then we rock up in this city that is a city of the future, in so many ways. We have never done two festivals the same, we keep on reinventing it. In Singapore my ambition is that we hit the mark, we tap into deep and unexpected currents there and I feel like we can do something beautiful and profound.

FutureEverything