Ferial Haffajee
The exhibition is not linear in any way, but is instead divided into 12 positions. The major positions include:
Fortification: From the first one built at the Cape in 1652, architecture in South Africa has been characterised by a series of forts. Later, forts in the Eastern Cape were constructed to stake the new colonial frontiers while 18 000 British blockhouses of the 19th century were built to guard bridges and rail links. Contemporary forts exhibited include photographs of walled shopping malls, office-parks and townhouse complexes. Included are exhibits of warning plaques and barbed wire.
The Promised Land: The Great Trek of the Boers who believed themselves to be God’s chosen people inspired the country’s most ubiquitous monuments: the Voortrekker monuments of Winburg and Pretoria, plus a host of smaller examples, are on exhibition. David Goldblatt’s photographs of churches built from the Sixties show increasingly bombastic places of worship. Documents shown here include the town plans of kerkdorpe like Potchefstroom and Pietermaritzburg. Set against this is Santu Mofokeng’s documentary of worshippers who belong to the Zionist Christian Church. Denied formal space in South African cities, they found God in open spaces from city parks to open ground beneath highways.
Planned Divisions: Perhaps one of the more edifying positions, this section deals primarily with apartheid planning. Apartheid bred the single- entry-road township, the hostels and the 51-series house which became the prototype model for the township matchbox house. It is particularly noteworthy because of the treasure trove of documents from the era, such as original township plans, found by researchers. “While some current efforts are being made to transform these divided spaces, the separation is cast in concrete as part of the built heritage of the country.”
Urban Invasions:The changing cities of South Africa. The “invasion” of the title is a play on what Judin calls “the dominant metaphor for the white experience of integration, defining it as hostile and contaminating”. In this section, photographer Themba Hadebe took snapshots of Hillbrow’s new inhabitants, while a documentary shows the spaces, like the old Turbine Hall, where newcomers to the city have created entire new communities and trading centres. “Change in the city is no longer being generated by plans but by new social groupings and consumption patterns.”
Forced Removals: If the “Urban Invasions” section is about reclamation, then “Forced Removals” forces visitors to remember the three and a half million South Africans who were forcibly relocated between 1960 and 1985. It includes original eviction notices, group areas mappings and photographs of Warwick Triangle in Durban.
Corrugated Iron:Much of the new South African architecture is built in the material of impermanence: corrugated iron is the base construction material of Zozo huts or shacks; cardboard boxes provide the foundation for roadside stalls and many people still make beds of boxes and plastic. Corrugated iron was also the chosen material of construction first used in mining towns like Carletonville by prospectors who thought the gold boom was only temporary. Jodi Bieber’s photographs of Carletonville today form the hub of this section.
The other positions are: “1960s” (the post-Sharpeville period saw a construction boom); “Weave” (the antithesis of a rural/urban divide, this section deals with the overlapping culture; for example, many urban shacks reveal rural building procedures); “International tendency” (borrowings from the avant-garde in other parts of the world); “House as Icon” (eight architects’ homes); “Community Building” (the work of progressive architects in creating new housing schemes and community centres in townships); “Violence” (apartheid siege architecture).
@Nine to the dozen
Adam Haupt
In the summer of 1993, with Nine fans crowding Observatory’s Ruby in the Dust, it seemed like history was in the making -Cape Town would soon realised the future of alternative rock was a black thing.
Nine vocalist Farrell Adams scared the crap out of you with the rage of Not Your Fault, and you’d never forget lead guitarist James Reynard’s psychotic dexterity.
Their debut album, Nine, came out in 1996. They seemed slow in getting their second, Entropy, on the shelves. The reason?”A serious lack of money.”
But they have just signed with Nebula Bos Records, which, say vocalist Adams and Reynard, is good at marketing. “In fact,” says Adams, “there’s an ad out in Y and SL magazines. It’s cool to have a CD out in the stores but if nobody knows about it, nobody’s gonna buy it.”
What is the concept behind Entropy? The theory of chaos in physics is offered by way of explanation, which makes sense when you think of hardcore songs like Lusion and Judgment. “Besides the physics side,” says lead guitarist James Reynard, “there’s also the Freudian concept of entropy. The psyche’s self-regulating principle … If there’s too much energy in one of the drives it gets relocated and converted.”
Naturally, I wonder what this has to do with anything. “You can relate it to external reality in terms of government, [in] people’s perception of change, in culture moving from a more conservative Calvinist society to a more permissive one.”
So which of the new songs encapsulates what Nine is about?
“You can’t focus on one specific song,” replies Adams. “The whole thing is what Nine is about.”
James thinks that Episode is “relevant to where we are at the moment, being an unsigned band. Sort of like being in between fame and fortune and …?”
“Poverty,” interjects bass guitarist Grenville Williams. Williams and Adams say that Episode is about how society is bombarded and controlled by information and the media.
James adds that it is also about how bands take part in it -or face the consequences of not doing so.
“You can’t actually live outside the system,” says Williams. “We can’t realistically live outside the media because the media is what we need to promote our music.” You try to find loopholes so that you can maintain your integrity, says Adams. James adds to the conspiracy discussion: “It’s like the more you are a musician the more you have to move with the industry’s directions. Like move in sync with it.”
I do the obvious and ask whether Episode’s drum’n’bass and retro- Seventies elements are Nine’s way of giving in to corporate interests.
James offers yet another Freudian analogy, in which music industry execs are the stern fathers who need to be pleased. Adams disagrees in a big way: “It’s like being turned on by it. That’s why that song appeals to us. It’s not even a conscious thing that we wrote that song to sound like a Seventies song. It doesn’t even sound like a Seventies song. It has little titbits of the Seventies and Eighties in it.”
And where do they think their music is going? They say they don’t really know; spontaneity is important. And they’re wary of being classified. Williams points out, though, that songs like Revolution and Episode employ non-traditional guitar techniques which sound like keyboards and are very ambient in feel. Williams says that they’re keen to move beyond guitar-driven music.
Entropy is but one of Nine’s projects. There’s Trion-X and Firing Squad’s reggae/funk/drum’n’bass jol music with China, Speedy B and Sebastian Voigt. Look out for the Firing Squad moments in some of Nine’s hardcore songs during gigs – highly bounceable.