Matthew Krouse
‘Will those who want to see the Nguni spirit possession please proceed to level two …” the instruction rang out above the din of revellers who had come to launch the Urban Futures conference exhibitions programme.
The halls of Newtown’s MuseuMAfrika, on July 10, had not seen anything quite like it before. Dried out baboon carcasses hanging in an art installation at one end, smoked snoek and cold meats served on platters at the other. And a thousand people in between.
Outside the venue, on the Mary Fitzgerald Square, there was drumming and video projection amid hundreds of parked cars, security guards and street children begging for small change.
By the time Johannesburg Metropolitan Council mayor Isaac Mogase stood up to officially open the event, the noise was so loud he could barely be heard. Just as well, since he omitted to mention the conference’s co-sponsors, among them the cellular phone company MTN.
All this meant that the organisers had no hope of conducting the official opening of the travelling exhibition blank_ that was held over to July 11.
Another casualty of the event was an original piece of contemporary classical music by Johannesburg composer Phillip Miller. In true Jo’burg style, the throng paid absolutely no attention to the serious-looking quartet, perched on a balcony playing Miller’s solemn “His reaction was instantaneous”, preferring to gossip and eat.
At one stage Miller even appealed for silence – but in Johannesburg such begging rarely helps.
The previous night, on July 9, the conference programme was kick-started at Wits University’s Great Hall, on a much quieter note. Much like the piece of music In 7 Days … by composer John Reid Coulter that launched it. And much like the voice of the university’s vice chancellor Colin Bundy, cracking from laryngitis, as he looked back on the role the university had played in the development of the city.
The chubby, confident Coulter took an eternity to introduce the premiere of his work that had something to do with an encounter he’d had with a shoal of beached white whales somewhere on his travels.
The music’s staging was fussy and conceptually laden, performed under a vaulted construction suspending a moveable curtain of plastic shopping bags.
The orchestra played amid video monitors displaying a working clock, and there were two functioning photocopiers on stage for no apparent reason.
Both events showcased the work of Phillipe Monvallier in co-operation with the Tama Ensemble and children from White City in Soweto. This low-key outdoor work comprises a transportable trolley with percussion instruments attached.
The sounds of the drumming are linked to a computer that animates lively characters that appear to be rendered by children in coloured ink. It’s the kind of work that never gets the attention it deserves.
Many of the works that launched the Urban Futures conference this week had a hand- made feel to them, as though they were cobbled together from artefacts found on the Johannesburg city streets. This is in sharp contrast to the kitschy glitz and glamour – with ballroom- gowned singers and fireworks – of the Aids 2000 conference launch in Durban that was televised, also on the night of July 9, on SABC2.
Next week Brenda Atkinson takes an in-depth look at the art work on show at the Urban Futures conference