03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
18
19
2
Introduction
Keynote Speakers:
Hubertus von Amelunxen
Achille Mbembe
Participating Artists:
Ulf Aminde
Yael Bartana
Candice Breitz
Gabrielle Goliath
Asta Gröting
Nandipha Mntambo
Athi-Patra Ruga
Penny Siopis
James Webb
Ming Wong
General:
Schedule
Sponsors
Information
Between the Lines aims to reflect on and
facilitate innovative artistic research that
engages specifically with questions of
translation and mediation across social
and cultural difference. The project has
been conceived as a forum for artistic and
academic dialogue that will see ten artists
and thirty art students from Germany and
South Africa invited into intensive exchange
via two symposia and an exhibition.
Between the Lines was initiated by Professor
Candice Breitz (Braunschweig University of
Art) and the late Professor Colin Richards
(Michaelis School of Fine Art).
The participating artists are Ulf Aminde (DE),
Yael Bartana (IL/DE), Candice Breitz (ZA/
DE), Gabrielle Goliath (ZA), Asta Gröting (DE),
Nandipha Mntambo (ZA), Athi-Patra Ruga
(ZA), Penny Siopis (ZA), James Webb (ZA) and
Ming Wong (SG/DE) with keynote addresses
in Cape Town by Achille Mbembe (CM/ZA) and
Hubertus von Amelunxen (DE).
Between the Lines is funded by Germany’s
Federal Ministry of Education and Research in
the context of The German-South African Year
of Science 2012/2013, a year of exchange
between South Africa and Germany that aims
to strengthen cooperation and create new
networks between the two countries.
In memory of Professor Richards, his close
friend Professor Achille Mbembe (Wits
Institute for Social and Economic Research)
has been invited to give a keynote address
during the symposium.
3
Keynote Speakers
Hubertus von Amelunxen
“Boarding Translation, or the Dream of Cultures”
With reference to the work of Édouard Glissant, Hubertus von
Amelunxen will reflect on the ‘poetics of relation.’ His keynote
lecture will consider the edges of exasperation, evoking the
infinite realm of unheard, unseen and unread enunciations of
a possible translation of cultures.
Prof. Dr. Hubertus von Amelunxen (born in Bad Hindelang,
Germany, in 1958) is a literary and visual culture scholar. He
completed his studies of French and German literature, as
well as art history, in Marburg and Paris. He is the author
of numerous books and articles, and the curator of many
international exhibitions.
Most recently, in 2012, he curated the exhibition Cy
Twombly. Photographs 1951-2010 for the Palais des BeauxArts, Brussels. In 2003 he was honoured by his election as a
member of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin and in 2006
was nominated to the Walter Benjamin Chair at the European
Graduate School. Hubertus von Amelunxen lives and works
in Berlin and Braunschweig, and has been president of the
Braunschweig University of Art since 2010.
4
Achille Mbembe
In memory of Professor Richards, his close
friend Professor Achille Mbembe has been
invited to give a keynote address during the
symposium. Mbembe’s address will consider
the importance of radical mediation between
cultures, translating experience and creating
mutual understanding across international
borders.
South African-based, Cameroonborn philosopher, intellectual and social
theorist, Professor Achille Mbembe is widely
accepted as one of the most significant
thinkers theoretically examining the links
between Africa, the contemporary world,
and the way that history in and of Africa has
impacted on notions of the contemporary.
His seminal work, On the Postcolony (2000,
English translation 2001 and winner of the
Bill Venter/Altron Award, 2001), elicited much
debate and ushered in a new discourse in the
understanding and theorisation of Africa.
Achille Mbembe obtained his Ph.D. in
History at the University of Sorbonne in Paris,
France. He subsequently obtained a D.E.A.
in Political Science at the Institut d’Etudes
Politiques in the same city. He has held
appointments at Columbia University in New
York, Brookings Institution in Washington,
D.C., University of Pennsylvania, University
of California, Berkeley, Yale University, Duke
University and Council for the Development of
Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA)
in Dakar, Senegal.
Mbembe is currently a member of the
staff at the Wits Institute for Social and
Economic Research (WISER) at the University
of the Witwatersrand as well as contributing
editor of the scholarly journal Public Culture.
Mbembe has written extensively on African
history and politics and his work has been
translated into various languages.
5
Ulf
Aminde
Ulf Aminde
Bildet Banden! (form gangs!)
2011
HD video projection, colour,
sound
7:23 min.
Image courtesy of Ulf Aminde
and Galerie Tanja Wagner
6
In his lecture, Ulf Aminde will screen (amongst other works)
a video piece he made from a large-scale performative
installation at a job agency in Germany. In the video young
unemployed adults try to imitate the “artist” Ulf Aminde. In
this way the artist shares his skills, engaging young people
to participate in his performance work. Through the work
we are able to realize the triangle between us the viewer,
the so-called participants and the artist as the one who is
mirrored in his desire to create a collaborative work. In this
presentation, Ulf Aminde will also try to include the theme of
the symposium.
Aminde’s artistic practice discusses socially relevant
issues through photography, video and performance.
He builds real-life and staged situations, aiming for the
‘alienating effect’ that creates the possibility for reflection.
In his performances, he works with different social groups
from outside of the art world, with images that generate
the desire for community building: images of Inclusion and
Exclusion that question how ideas about minorities occur. In
his participatory work, Aminde reflects on his own position
as a writer, artist and initiator. His “social machinery and
complicity” projects question the relationship of the individual
to a community. He has participated in the 4th Berlin Biennale
by a production in the Berliner Volksbühne (Theatre) and
did several social experiments based on the narration of an
exhibition. Ulf Aminde is currently teaching in Universität der
Künste Berlin and Akdemie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart/
Germany.
Yael
Bartana
Yael Bartana
Mary Koszmary (Nightmares)
2007
video still
Image courtesy of Annet Gelink
Gallery, Amsterdam and Foksal
Gallery Foundation, Warsaw
Yael Bartana will screen and discuss her film trilogy And
Europe Will Be Stunned, which revolves around the activities
of the Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland (JRMiP)
– a fictional movement dealing with political imagination
promoting social change. Bartana’s three films traverse a
landscape scarred by the histories of competing nationalisms
and militarisms, overflowing with the narratives of the Israeli
settlement movement, Zionist dreams, anti-Semitism, the
Holocaust and the Palestinian right of return. In addition,
Bartana will present archival footage as the source of
inspiration for her films.
Yael Bartana (born 1970, Kfar-Yehezkel, Israel) is an
Israeli-Dutch video artist based in Berlin. Her works examine
and question widely accepted social rituals and structures
regarding the cultural identity and historical construction of
her native country and the tensions and conflicts that arise
as a result. In her distinctive poetic approach, she balances
the factual and the fictitious, documentation and propaganda,
evoking ironic overtones to undermine certainties, turn
symbols on their heads, and open up multiple new meanings.
Bartana’s film trilogy And Europe Will Be Stunned was featured
as the official Polish participation at the 54th International Art
Exhibition in Venice in 2011.
7
Candice
Breitz
Candice Breitz will discuss the making of
The Woods, a trilogy that delves into the
world of child performers, reflecting on
the performance of childhood to probe the
aspirations and promises embedded in
mainstream cinema. The work is consistent
with Breitz’s interest in the role that mimicry
plays in the forging of selfhood, and her
ongoing analysis of the circular relationship
between real life and reel life. The Woods
traverses three continents (shoots were
staged in Los Angeles, Mumbai and Lagos) to
explore the rituals and conventions governing
the on-camera and off-camera personae of
professional actors working in Hollywood,
Bollywood and Nollywood respectively.
Candice Breitz is a Berlin-based South
African artist. Central to her work is the
question of how an individual ‘becomes’
him or herself in relation to a larger
8
Candice Breitz
Stills from The Rehearsal
2012
From the trilogy The Woods
Six-Channel Installation
Commissioned by PEM (Salem) and ACMI (Melbourne)
Courtesy of Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg
community: the immediate community that
one encounters in family, or the real and
imagined communities that are shaped by
questions of national belonging, race, gender
and religion, but also by the undeniable
influence of mainstream media such as
television, cinema and popular music.
Breitz’s work has been shown at the Palais
de Tokyo (Paris), South African National
Gallery (Cape Town), De Appel (Amsterdam),
Moderna Museet (Stockholm), Castello di
Rivoli (Turin), Louisiana Museum of Modern
Art (Humlebæk), White Cube (London),
Standard Bank Gallery (Johannesburg),
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The
Power Plant (Toronto) and the Kunsthaus
Bregenz. She has participated in biennales
in Johannesburg (1997), São Paulo (1998),
Istanbul (1999), Kwangju (2000), Venice (2005)
and New Orleans (2008).
Gabrielle
Goliath
Gabrielle Goliath
Trip Wires
2013
Installation and dance
performance to Steve Reich’s
‘Violin Phase’
Duration: 15 minutes
Gabrielle Goliath’s presentation will take the form of a
theatrical realisation of her installation ‘Trip Wires.’ The artist
has collaborated with choreographer Tania Vossgatter to
create a dance piece to Steve Reich’s ‘Violin Phase’ that is
disrupted by the aggressive obstacle that is the installation
‘Trip Wires’. As the dancers negotiate the stretched and
threatening wires, the choreography is altered in thoughtprovoking ways.
Trip Wires
Installation and dance performance
to Steve Reich’s ‘Violin Phase’
Duration: 15 minutes
Venue: Whatiftheworld Gallery
Date: Wed 27 Feb, 18:00 for 18:30
Gabrielle Goliath (born 1983, Kimberley, South Africa) engages
and challenges socio-political concerns in her work. Recent
bodies of work have focused on the trauma of violence,
particularly with regards to the experiences of women.
9
Asta
Gröting
Asta Gröting
Convention / cespoupées qui
disentoui 2
2000
black and white photograph
224 x 129 cm
Image courtesy of Asta Gröting
10
Berlin-based artist Asta Gröting will discuss the making of
her work Inner Voice, a complex work in performance and
video with ventriloquists. Gröting will show video pieces of
the dialogs she directed and wrote for ventriloquists around
the world and a dummy she built for Buddy Big Mountain, a
Native American ventriloquist. The ‘Inner Voice’ is a voice that
behaves autonomously as though it does not come out of an
actual mouth. Through this ancient human tradition, the unity
of speech and thought and of voice and body is uncannily
unraveled. The dialogs portray the polyphony of a self, a soul
or a psyche.
Asta Gröting (born 1961, Herford, Germany) is a
German sculptress based in Berlin. She is a professor at the
Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Braunschweig. Since the late
1980s, Gröting’s work has revolved around the possibilities of
making hidden things visible. She works with sculpture and,
driven by her fascination with the medieval perception of the
soul (thought to be an organ in the body) she has turned to
working with ventriloquists in the Inner Voice – a project that
has lasted more than a decade. In Gröting’s works, the unseen
finds form and shape; it makes an appearance. Gröting has
had solo exhibitions at The Henry Moore Sculpture Institute
in Leeds; at n.b.k. Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin; Lentos
Kunstmuseum, Linz, Austria; Freud Museum, London; at
De Appel Arts Centre, Amsterdam; at the 22nd São Paulo
Biennial, Brazil and at the Biennale of Sydney, Australia.
Nandipha
Mntambo
Nandipha Mntambo
Enchantment
2012
Cow hide, cow tails, resin
170 x 100 x 155cm
Image courtesy of the artist and
Michael Stevenson Gallery
Nandipha Mntambo will discuss her recent work as well
as work in progress within the context of the artist as
translator. Although primarily working as a sculptor, Mntambo
has explored print-making, painting, drawing, video and
performance. Her presentation will explore how these
processes have impacted on her representation of the body
within her artistic practice.
Nandipha Mntambo (born 1982 in Swaziland) lives and
works in Johannesburg. She completed her Masters in Fine
Art at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape
Town with distinction in 2007. In 2006 she was one of five
young artists selected for the MTN New Contemporaries
exhibition at the Johannesburg Art Gallery. She was the
Standard Bank Young Artist for Visual Art in 2011. Group
exhibitions include the 17th Biennale of Sydney and the 9th
Dakar Biennale in 2010; Peekaboo: Current South Africa at the
Tennis Palace Art Museum, Helsinki (2010); Life Less Ordinary:
Performance and display in South African art at the Djanogly
Gallery, Nottingham, UK (2009); Undercover: Performing and
Transforming Black Female Identities at Spelman College
Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA (2009); Les Rencontres
de Bamako biennial of African photography, Bamako, Mali
(7-13 November 2009); Beauty and Pleasure in South African
Contemporary Art at the Stenersen Museum, Oslo (2009);
ZA: giovane arte dal Sudafrica, Palazzo delle Papesse, Siena
(2008); and Apartheid: The South African Mirror at the Centre de
Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona (2008).
11
Athi-Patra Ruga
Future White Woman of Azania II
2012
Archival inkjet print on Cotton Rag
80cm x 120cm
Image Courtesy of Athi-Patra Ruga
and WhatiftheworldGallery
Photograph by Hayden Phipps
Athi-Patra
Ruga
Athi-Patra Ruga will be presenting a talk
that revolves around his new characterbased performance and solo project titled
The Future White Women of Azania. By
charting his performative trajectory, Athi
would like to delve into issues of nationhood,
performance art history and the consumption
as well as effects of popular imagery on art
production. The lecture will include various
other mediums of the project i.e. video and
documentation thereof and is seen by the
artist as a way for him to expand on the
interpretation of The Future White Woman
of Azania with the goal of soliciting further
responses.
Born Umtata, South Africa in 1984,
Athi-Patra Ruga lives and works in both
Johannesburg and Cape Town. His work
explores the border-zones between fashion,
performance and contemporary art. Bursting
12
with eclectic multicultural references,
his performances, videos, costumes and
photographic images create a world where
cultural identity is no longer determined by
geographical origins, ancestry or biological
disposition, but is increasingly becoming
a hybrid construct. Recent exhibitions
include: Under a Tinsel Sun at the III Moscow
International Biennale For Young Art; Making
Way, in collaboration with Mikhael Subotzky
at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown,
South Africa; Ilulwane, at PERFORMA11 (NY)
and Infecting the City (Cape Town); Beauty and
Pleasure in Contemporary South African Art at
the Stenersen Museum in Oslo, Norway; the
Guangzhou Trienalle in China; Ampersand
at the Daimler Collection (Berlin); Athi-Patra
Ruga - The Works, Solo Exhibition at FRED
(London) and Dak’Art - Biennale of African
Contemporary Art (Dakar).
Penny Siopis
Still from Obscure White
Messenger
2010
8mm film on digital
[15 min 7 sec]
Penny
Siopis
Since 1997, Penny Siopis has made short
films in which she combines old home movie
footage, music and text to shape stories about
individuals caught up, often traumatically,
in larger social and political upheavals.
She will screen one of these films Obscure
White Messenger (2010), which narrates
the life of Demitrios Tsafendas, a stateless
person, who assassinated the South African
Prime Minister and ‘architect of apartheid’,
HF Verwoerd, in 1966. Writer Sarah Nuttall
will then engage Siopis in a conversation
about her working process, focusing on
her research on Tsafendas and how she
translates her sources - often dispassionate
legal documents - into filmic expressions of
subjective experience.
Penny Siopis lives in Cape Town where
she is an Honorary Professor at Michaelis
School of Fine Art. Siopis works in painting,
installation and film/video. Solo exhibitions
include Paintings and Who’s Afraid of the
Crowd?, Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town (2009,
2011), Red: The Iconography of Colour in the
work of Penny Siopis, KZNSA Gallery, Durban
(2009) and Three Essays on Shame, Freud
Museum, London (2005). She has participated
in many group exhibitions, some of the
most recent being Appropriated Landscapes:
Contemporary African Photography from
The Walther Collection, Neu-Ulm, Germany
(2011-2013), Prism: Drawing from 1990-2012,
Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo, Norway
(2011-2012), and Trade Routes Over Time,
Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town (2012). Siopis
has exhibited on the biennales of Sydney,
Johannesburg, Guangzhou, Kwangju, Havana
and Venice. In 2012 Arprojx presented her
films under the banner ‘This is a true story’
at the Prince Charles Cinema, London, in
association with Frieze art fair.
13
James
Webb
James Webb
Prayer (Johannesburg)
2012
sound installation detail with
audience member
16 x 4m
Image courtesy of the artist
Photograph by Anthea Pokroy
14
James Webb will present the working processes behind
several of his artworks dealing with themes of communication
and belief. Projects discussed will include his on-going
Prayer series comprising audio recordings of prayer from all
the religions found within the host city, and Telephone Voice
where the artist used a clairvoyant to contact Orson Welles,
interviewing him and transcribing the resulting speech for a
voice actor to perform.
James Webb (born 1975 in Kimberley, South Africa) has
been working on both large-scale installations in galleries
and museums as well as unannounced interventions in public
spaces since 2001. His work explores the nature of belief and
dynamics of communication in our contemporary world, often
using exoticism, displacement and humour to achieve these
aims. Webb’s work has been presented at institutions such as
the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and the Darat al Funun in Amman,
Jordan, as well as on international exhibitions such as the 3rd
Marrakech Biennale and the 9th Biennale d’Art Contemporain
de Lyon. Webb was the subject of the survey show, MMXII, at
the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 2012.
Ming Wong
The artist as Emmi/Ali
Image courtesy of the artist
Ming
Wong
Ming Wong will introduce his projects and
practice that engage with the history of
world cinema and popular entertainment.
His latest project Making Chinatown draws
upon Polanski’s iconic film Chinatown for its
use of Los Angeles as a malleable character,
demonstrating the means through which
subjectivity and geographic location are
constructed by motion pictures. Shot on
location in the Gallery at REDCAT, Making
Chinatown transforms the exhibition space
into a studio backlot and examines the
original film’s constructs of language,
performance and identity. Key scenes are
re-enacted by the artist in front of printed
backdrops that are digitally rendered from
film stills. These ‘wall flats’ adhere to the
conventions of theatrical and filmic staging
while taking on the qualities of large-scale
painting and sculpture.
Born 1971 in Singapore, Ming Wong
lives and works in Berlin (Germany). He
participated in the 53rd Venice Biennale
2009 and was awarded a Special Mention
for his solo presentation Life of Imitation at
the Singapore Pavilion, that was inspired by
the cinematic heritage of his home country.
Recent exhibitions include the Liverpool
Biennial (UK), Future Projections at Toronto
International Film Festival (Canada) and
Making Chinatown at REDCAT (Los Angeles,
USA). He has also shown at Performa 11,
New York, USA; Museum of Contemporary Art,
Tokyo, Japan; Hara Museum, Tokyo, Japan;
House of World Cultures, Berlin, Germany;
Museum de Moderne, Salzburg, Austria;
Frye Art Museum, Seattle, Washington, USA;
Cornerhouse, Manchester, UK; Contemporary
Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada; Singapore
Biennale 2011; Sydney Biennale 2010; and
Gwangju Biennale 2010.
15
1616
17
Sponsors
Primary Sponsor
Partners
18
Between the Lines is funded by Germany’s
Federal Ministry of Education and Research
in the context of The German-South African
Year of Science 2012/2013.
Information
Contact
Venue
Natasha Norman
Symposium South Coordinator
Email: [email protected]
Mobile: +27 83 508 4431
www.betweenlines.co.za
Symposium South Venue
Hiddingh Hall
Michaelis School of Fine Art
University of Cape Town
32 - 37 Orange Street, Gardens
Cape Town, 8001, South Africa
Symposium South
Symposium North
Date:
25 February to 2 March 2013
Date:
17 April to 19 April 2013
Venue:
Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town
Venue:
Braunschweig University of Art
Concept:
Colin Richards (University of Cape Town)
Candice Breitz (Braunschweig University of Art)
Concept:
Candice Breitz (Braunschweig University of Art)
Colin Richards (University of Cape Town)
Conveners:
Andrew Lamprecht (University of Cape Town)
Candice Breitz (Braunschweig University of Art)
Conveners:
Candice Breitz (Braunschweig University of Art)
Andrew Lamprecht (University of Cape Town)
Coordinators:
Natasha Norman (University of Cape Town)
Undine Sommer (Braunschweig University of Art)
Coordinators:
Marko Schiefelbein (Braunschweig University of Art)
Natasha Norman (University of Cape Town)
Exhibition Curator (Michaelis Galleries):
Nadja Daehnke (University of Cape Town)
assisted by Elizabeth Wurst
Exhibition Curator (Berlin):
Eva Scharrer
assisted by Anne Prenzler
Design: MacRobert Design Associates
Printed by: House of Colours
19
www.betweenlines.co.za
20