Brenda Atkinson review OFTHEWEEK Since coming back to Johannesburg in 1996 after an absence of more than 20 years, Rodney Place’s work has been characterised by lacerating irony, his perspective that of the city’s prodigal son, returned from his adventures only to find that he can’t get to the fatted calf for the security gates and barbed wire. Place’s voice – at once cynical, practical and hopeful – is a deliciously sly whisper in the cacophony of white suburban outrage. Thus the press release for the event RETREKS: unSUNg CITY, to take place in the city centre on September 30, states bluntly: “We want to declare, upfront, in a high- profile, hybridised multimedia show catering to a mixed, hip and for the most part young audience, that beautiful, modern Johannesburg still stands as the central focus of Gauteng’s uneven ghettoes. It is still the most important city in South Africa …” The ghettoes that Place refers to are not so much the inner-city tenements of horrified suburban legend as the cultural and mental ghettoes that manifest in white suburban survivalism and its associated architectural phenomena. In Place’s world view, Sandton – the city’s “other centre” – is a self-constructed homeland (“KwaSandton”) that recapitulates a protectionist laager mentality, or the defensive strategies of European royalty. “In 10 years’ time,” he observes wryly, “Sandton will figure in Jo’burg’s urban landscape as another Versailles – apart and abandoned. We’ll all wonder what the hell it was ever built for … Maybe for the signing of a treaty or something …” Place believes that inner-city Jo’burg will regenerate itself – no question – and that Sandton, despite the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, is destined to become an anachronistic oddity. RETREKS, his ongoing umbrella project (of which unSUNg CITY is the second part), will, he hopes, in some sense speed up what he regards as an inevitable process. As he describes it, RETREKS is about “making a point by imitating the various modes of information, communication and commerce in Johannesburg: its business and property practices, its media and consumer mechanisms”. With a twist, of course: part of the media produced and disseminated by Place on an ongoing basis is a series of postcards that wickedly parodies the cliches of tourist commodity-fetishism. One of these, captioned Traditional Life, features three bare-breasted white women clad from the waist down in “traditional” Sandton garb: shopping bags from Guess, DKNY, Diesel, Fendi and so on. Behind the women is a panoramic view of the Sandton skyline. The back of the postcard reads: “Umlungu maidens pictured above the Valley of a Thousand Holes, KwaSandton. In an innovative policy, the South African government has established Umlungustans like KwaSandton where minority peoples can continue in their traditional ways and honour their ancient gods and goddesses.”
The RETREKS initiative began with The Washing of the Soaps – a preview dance piece performed by Inzalo at the Dance Umbrella earlier this year. Within the broader project scheme, the performance represents the arrival of the British Settlers and their ubiquitous historical legacy: soap powder, Omo, Fab, the little snow-white flakes that might wash the country clean of darkness, of blackness. All of the props in the piece – including a ship and a washing machine – were made of recycled soap boxes. unSUNg CITY marks the next historical phase, namely the reimmigration of people into the inner city from rural South Africa and the continent – Place calls it “the second Great Trek”. The evening of “urban opera” begins at Market Square with a march led by the Alexandra-based Maredi Brass Band, accompanied by tow-trucks, taxis, a municipal bus and tanks courtesy of Stallion Security. The parade, says Place with some relish, “will send up all the elements that turn the city centre into a suburban-dweller’s nightmare.” The parade’s final destination is the Kings City Parkade at the corner of Bree and Eloff Streets – a disused, nine-story parking garage that will be the stage for an illustrious line-up of visual and performance art. Video installations by Brett Murray, Jane Alexander, Robyn Orlin, Stephen Hobbs, William Kentridge and Place will wind up the first eight floors of the garage. On the top level, starting at 9pm, Sylvain Strike’s Gauloise Blondes will join “Monki Punk” group Boo!, E’smile, DJ Bigga, Spextatah, pantsula and breakdancers in a riotous “one-night stand”. unSUNg CITY will be a fun event, as Place puts it, “about what Johannesburg might become, not what it has been – a vision of its renaissance, not the spectre of its decline”. For information call Arts Alive at Tel: (011) 8386407