Adam Levin tunes into aRt, SABC3s long- awaited arts and culture programme, for a touch of spine-chilling cultural diversity
You wanted democratic processes. Well you got em. Mid-last year, when budget cuts snatched The Works and Arts Unlimited off the air, Auckland Park embarked on the unprecedented saga of selecting an external production house to fill SABC3s arts gap. The process was most democratic, most tedious and most inept ensuring, for a critical year in arts development, that the cultural agenda remained eerily absent from our screens. Never mind, right? Let them watch Drive Time.
By last October, Ansie Kamffer, SABC3s unusually young and left-of-centre commissioning editor had received 40 proposals and shortlisted 15. These were then shopped around the building and surprise, surprise the contract was handed to a couple of ex-Arts Unlimited and Portfolio producers. Peter Bode and Etienne de Villiers were not only reliable and experienced enough to dish up 42 minutes of cultural soup weekly, they were unlikely to offend SABC palates in the process which might be why, when you tuned into aRts premiere on June 14 it looked and felt strangely like Arts Unlimited or Portfolio. Hey, so much for the process. It was, as freelance directors grumbled over their seventh street espressos, a safe, but acceptable bet.
Nearly three weeks later, the safe bet is settling in nicely to its 10pm Sunday home. We note, with relief, that were spared the pretensions of skew camera angles, kooky presenters and break-neck editing that Options provides.
We grimace a little at the dated broadcast design (think mid-Eighties Edgars commercials) and the repetitive theme, but we figure the warm, skilfully lit, designer/adobe set holds promise as a nursing venue for weekend hangovers. Most of all, were encouraged by the redeeming smudge of laid-back, street-cred that anchor Sbusiso Nxumalo brings to the aRt gallery.
With sub-cult status as a Rockey Street DJ and MC at the grooviest Arts Alive events, Sbu spikes just enough Hillbrow into the high-brow to pull aRt through the relevance test. He laughs, he chats (a bit too much) and he bonds. (He even touched a guest last week!). Hes also both intelligent and streety enough to cruise with the shows postmodern, largely local content-mix.
This, in itself, is no minor feat. Previously you could chew through your wholesome, high arts fare on Collage, then twiddle over to The Works for some gritty, sub-cultural take- aways. Now that withered budgets will only stretch to a single programme, aRt must be all things, all weeks, to all the viewers in its broad, Living Standards Measure (LSM) six, seven and eight market niche. Euro meets Afro here; techno meets concertos; Breyten Breytenbach meets Bongo Maffin a TV-dream of cultural wholeness in a still-fragmented, cultural landscape. Get this right reveal the complex codes, extract the potent parallels and incongruities and youve distilled the subtle and elusive national zeitgeist; get it wrong and youre simply pushing a lexicon of clichd, cultural caricatures.
aRts freelance producers are inconsistent here. While Cape Town presenter Cindi Sampsons condescending interview with Sidwell Hartman fails to elevate the District Six-born opera star above cross- cultural-stereotype status, Khalo Matabanes insert on Nhlanhla Xaba is a poignant portrait that savours the complexities of Standard Banks current Young Visual Artists Award-winner.
The shows marked attempt at regional diversity achieves similarly varied success: while David Moores insert on Willie Bester evokes a poetic sense of place in the artists native Kuilsrivier, when Theo Antonio takes us to Mmabatho to interview Standard Banks Young Dramatic Artists Award-winner, Aubrey Sekhadi, the piece has so little context it could have been shot in Joburg. When Ronel Loots whisks us off on a tour of the countrys rural neon crosses, backed by a dubbed-out TS Eliot poem, the result is so esoteric it could have been shot on Mars.
aRts greatest challenge, however, lies in elevating itself from a standard cultural PR broadcast vehicle to a genuinely discursive arts forum. Over the years, the national broadcaster has nurtured a proud tradition of sycophantic arts programming.
Dip into the archives and witness the reels of hagiographic biographies and self- congratulatory reportage that, while showcasing our glorious cultural panorama, smartly avoid the messy, more difficult business of passing informed, critical judgment.
While theres nothing wrong with employing a perfectly competent old-school production crew, indulging such old-school tactics is plain dodgy though this of course has less to do with art than with bAlls.
There are hopeful signs (when Sbu drills muso-artist Kaolin Thomson on the awkward whiteness of her band, Naked) and there are less hopeful signs (when he lets her off the hook of her notorious vaginal ashtray with a mere Ive moved on since then).
There are moments (Gavin Elders piece on Peet Pienaar and Barend de Wets body- building-contest-cum-art-work) when youd hope for a snatch of editorial irony, and there are moments (Trevor Brazils clumsy essay on shock in popular culture) when youd hope for some clarity and direction. And yes, every now and then, there are moments of such spine-chilling cultural diversity, you know exactly why you live here.
Its been a long walk to aRt. But after long walks come freedom, wisdom and maturity. Well, we hope so.