Now that Robben Island has an arts and culture programme it has an abundance of potential as a work in progress. DENNIS MAIR reports
INSTEAD of being sold to Sol as a resort of note, Robben Island now intends to set itself aside as a creative platform for the multi-lingual voice of the rainbow land. Transferred from the Department of Correctional Services to that of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology in 1995, the region now resonates as a work in progress.
Presently, an interim management team gives the arts and culture programme a shot at action amid remnants of 1 500 leper graves and a morgue converted into a Trust Bank. It is their hope to leave no rock unturned in the endeavour to create new meaning out of the ruins of the past. The cultural agenda includes limitless art forms, with special emphasis on projects that promote community development. The execution of two art exhibitions is already in progress, as well as an artists-in-residency programme.
The establishment of a publicly appointed council is expected later this year. Zayd Minty, arts and culture officer, says: “No one has been nurturing the role of art in South Africa. Artists have been struggling for centuries all over the world, I know, but even more so here. There’s been very little support in terms of where art is at, with mainly Western concepts getting attention. Our original voices have been lost, and we’re grappling to find a truly South African voice in the global community. With this project we have found the opportunity for artists who have in the past been sidelined because of their colour and lack of opportunity.”
There is an abundance of potential for poetic opportunity on the island, though one hopes that it does not result in a breeding ground for wire spice racks and linocuts. Those hitching a ride on the cultural bandwagon already overrun our community and it is questionable whether they need a domain formerly dismissed to untouchables, thieves and political prisoners.
The artists-in-residency programme that began in early April proposes support and accommodation for up-and-coming artists in South Africa; artists who can create new identity, meaning and worth through various media. Three houses have been put aside for their use, trusting that Robben Island results in a cultural investment for the future.
A trip to the off-shore landmark last week revealed an expanse of desolate terrain. Much of the site is still in transmutation. The area was thronged by pimpled masses and school kids with cellphones, craving exposure to the scattered activity at Murray’s Bay. Amid 1970s matchbox houses and, of course, the prison buildings, they teemed through the desolate landscape with a dark political past.
The highlight of their excursion was undoubtedly their encounter with the local groups Black Noise and Mike, Titti and Frank. With the help of Making Music Productions (MMP) and Street Law, they recorded on the island for 10 days as part of a guided programme. At the end of their residency, drinking brak water and eating without forks, they described their experiences as an inter-cultural exchange that was highly beneficial to all concerned.
They accredited their progress not to the loaded history of the land of thieves, but to their isolation from the mainland. Says Steve Gordon of MMP: “We’re not here to use the prison or other elements of the island as props … It’s incredible being in Cape Town, but out of Cape Town. Being removed.”
Minty explains that it is the aim of the Robben Island Museum to assist South African artists to produce work in the country. Through the remembrance of the past, with brutality and pain, he feels we can work towards a multi-lingual beacon of multi-cultural heritage in the future.
“Artists don’t have the means to do as they like in South Africa, or the support,” he says. “Someone eventually had to come up with an alternative for making art. Our culture is diverse and the island is an intense space that could function as a microcosm of what’s going on here. It’s isolated from the mainland, but still an integral part of it. It’s our history. It has a life of its own, and artists can draw on that.”
The two art exhibitions open on May 24. They are titled Siwelela Ngapheshewa/Crossing the Water and Thirty Minutes