Fine Art: Hazel Friedman
VIEWING Jason Crystal’s exhibition From Tokolosh to Lemonade (First Gallery, Parkhurst) is a bit like being taken on a magical mystery tour that begins in the Middle Ages and ends in the Garden of Earthly Delights via the New Age highway. Sounds like an acid trip, right?
Except that Crystal doesn’t do those kinds of drugs. The only acid he’s concerned with in this show is the kind you get from lemons which he uses to power clocks and radios and enhance optical illusions through air conditioners. I kid you not.
As Crystal’s rather unprepossessing press release states, to him art is alchemy. It serves as food for thought and as a poultice for healing body and soul. Hence the presence of garlic cloves and chillies hanging over a phobic bed — smelling like the aftermath of an intercontinentl food festival — which are used to simultaneously ward off flu germs and blood suckers.
Then there are the radios recycled from natural materials — all of which really work, except for the police protection unit (no prizes for guessing what Crystal is trying to say here); telescopes that would have done Galileo proud, at the end of which are magnified paintings the size of a 25-cent coin. And those ubiquitous lemons. Plus the odd seed man and artichoke on wheels. Call it Beatrix Potter meets the technology age, if you like.
But beneath the humour — which is both a palliative and an intoxicant for sober art critics — are pretty sober concerns. Crystal is clearly attempting to point out society’s self-alienation by subverting the tools that create and perpetuate this state.
For example the air-conditioning unit, when switched on, sets a painted sunflower motif in circular motion, which in turn creates the illusion of movement in the painted cloud scene in the centre of the unit. It doesn’t take the intellect of a rocket scientist to decipher the message.
As for the lemons, well — as demonstrated in Lemon Clock, the acid in this fruit iodises and sets up a current strong enough to power elecricity. Maybe Escom hasn’t adopted the lemon as its official logo for its Powering the Future ads, but citrus trees dotting the highways would be a lot more picturesque than radioactive pylons.
There’s nothing revelatory about Crystal’s observations. Even his phallic sculpture suspended above zinc powder and oyster shells, simply confirms what Venus said all along: that a dozen oysters a day keeps frustration at bay.
But aphrodisiacs aside, this exhibition could so easily degenerate into kitsch were it not for the ingenious way in which Crystal’s “power objects for the future through the past” have been constructed. His thinking is unashamedly utopian in desire and holistic in approach (perhaps it’s no coincidence that his surname is Crystal), and he fervently believes in the curative powers inherent in all belief systems — except for science, of course.
Maybe he’s just an incurable nostalgist. But once your nostrils have made peace with the overpowering odour of garlic, chillis and lemons, you can’t help feeling that whatever Crystal’s on, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to try some.
Festival celebrates best of bent
South Africa’s second gay and lesbian film festival is about to kick off next week in Cape Town. What’s on? MATTHEW KROUSE fills you in
Terms of group identification seem to alter from year to year. What was an insult yesterday is a compliment today. Having been freed from its medicollogical state of “homosexuality”, same-sex love became “gay”, then “queer” … and now “bent”. Simultaneously, as homosexuals graduated to becoming proud queers, their sexual state moved from being “the love that dared not speak its name” to “the love that dared not speak its age” — one was either too young or too old. Today we also have “the love that struggles to define its national and ethnic identities”. These graduations are some of the factors which have defined the history of gay cinema, and they are also major themes making up the highly relevant content of this year’s Second OutStanding South African Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.
On the surface, the programme seems biased towards most recent developments in American independent feature filmmaking — and there are historical reasons for this. With New York being the birthplace of the modern liberation movement their cinema has a queer heritage which, today, claims its rightful place in the forefront of alternative film culture.
But there is a further twist in the tale, giving rise to an interesting phenomenon. White gay men are no longer the stock mouthpieces of the movement. Lesbians and people of colour are finding voice and economic clout among audiences, and there are many who value gay film as an almost religious
New lesbian films have broken the “Wooden Witch” stereotype. Spoof humour is in, with dykes performing every rite of rebellion, from serial killing in Ding Dong, to kidnapping in Johanna d’Arc of Mongolia and prostitution in Working Girls. Drags of colour abound, not haplessly trapped in dens of vice, but out on the road in Days of Pentecost, kicking dust, making the Priscillas look tame by comparison.
The festival programme also showcases the tricky area of sexual identity among youth. Today’s gay teens, however, are not the fear-ridden, suicide- sissies of the Fifties and Sixties. They may be struggling for employment and broader acceptance, but, as Gregg Araki’s Totally F**ked Up testifies, they have created a self-styled gay environment in which both lesbians and gay men form a distinctly Nineties family unit.
At least five of the features deal with youth themes, and a collection of short dramatic films, titled Divas in Training, were made by gay, lesbian and transgender youth for a half-hour monthly television series, under the leadership of filmmaker/activist Catherine Saalfield. Saalfield and three other significant lesbian and gay filmmakers will be guests of the festival this
The challenge to society, and to ours especially, is to show solidarity with young lesbians and gay men. The time is ripe for debate, particularly in South Africa, where our legal age of consent is unequal — for heterosexuals it is 16 years old, yet it is 19 years old for gay males.
Another, and very important, aspect of the programme is devoted to Aids in film. Festival press details refer to the “re-gaying of the Aids debate — asserting unapologetically that gays are at greater risk and should not be discriminated against because of this.” Aids is no longer the “downer” subject of the past, and new gay cinema is inclined to show people coping, living and still
Saalfield will present her epic documentary Positive: Life with HIV, a four-part series about HIV- related issues — homophobia, racism, homelessness, health and care, and death.
Other festival highlights include fiction and non- fiction film from as far afield as Russia, Hong Kong, Finland, Australia, the United Kingdom, Japan, the Netherlands, Canada, Germany, France and South Africa.
Local content is not only showcased on the screen, but also in debate. Panel discussions on “The Question of Equality” will be held in Cape Town on November 9 and in Johannesburg on November 19. Mr Justice Edwin Cameron will chair the Johannesburg event, and participants will be visiting directors John Greyson, Lauren Hoffman, Catherine Saalfield and Pratibha Parmar.
The programme also includes major retrospectives of the works of these four filmmakers.
When visiting your local gay drinking hole, or ticket sales outlet, be sure to pick up a
Jump on the bandwagon and, even if you’re straight, see what fun it is to be a fully functioning, cultural queer of the Nineties.